Schooling Passions

Schooling Passions
Nation, History, and Language in
Contemporary Western India
Véronique Benei

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 2008 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Benei, Véronique.
Schooling passions : nation, history, and language in contemporary western India /
Véronique Benei.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8047-5905-2 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8047-5906-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Nationalism and education—India. 2. Citizenship—Study and teaching—India. I. Title.
LC94.I4B44 2008
379.54—dc22
2007045352
Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10/14 Minion
To Camille, Ambre, Galane, Anna,
Jade, Clémentine, Eglantine,
Pablo, Rachel, Alice, and Aurion
Le temps était long, l’histoire était brève,
Les mystères éternels réjouissaient les horlogers
Et les enfants énuméraient en chœur
Les règles d’or de la réalité.
Paul Éluard, Marc Chagall

Nation-watching would be simple

if it could be like bird-watching.
Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780
 Contents

List of Illustrations xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Note on Transliteration xix

Prologue 1
Introduction: Sensitive Subjects: Producing the
Nation at School in Western India 9
On Drawing 36
1 Singing the Nation into Existence:
Devotion, Patriotism, Secularism 38
National Anthem and Other Life Stories 67
2 Producing “Good Citizens”: Languages, Bodies, Emotions 70
Of Discipline and Teaching 99
3 Producing Mother-India at School:
Passions of Intimacy and National Love 102
Drawing Gender, Drawing War 130
4 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality:
Passions of Regional Belonging 133
Moments of Suspension: Drawing, Mapping, Singing 170
 Contents

5 From Becoming to Being Muslim: Urdu Education,

Affects of Belonging, and the Indian Nation 175
Playing, Dreaming, Musing, Longing 210
6 Constructing New Citizens in Military Schools:
Gender, Hybridity, and Modernity in Maharashtra 215
Of Inspirations and Aspirations 252
Conclusion 256
Epilogue 266

Notes 273
Glossary 299
Bibliography 303
Index 331
 Illustrations

Map
Map of India, showing Kashmir, Maharashtra, and Karnataka 34

Figures
Birthday girl wearing a “flag sari,” Varsity Marathi School 37
Drawing of “India Rocket” with the national tricolor,
Varsity Marathi School 37
Morning assembly, Modern Marathi School 45
Morning assembly, Varsity Marathi School 55
Map of India colored as the national flag, All India Marathi School 69
“Bharat Mata” sticker from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)
campaign of 2000 99
Republic Day (January 26) celebrations, Prathamik Shikshan Mandal 100
Drawing of a schoolgirl holding a tricolor flag, Modern Marathi School 101
Marathi Language Textbook, Class 1, 1998 109
Drawing of soldiers fighting in various positions on the
Kargil heights, Varsity Marathi School 131
Drawing of Indo-Pakistan war in Kargil, Varsity Marathi School 132
Drawing of Shivaji Chhatrapati and Vyankoji, All India Marathi School 172
xii Illustrations

Drawing of Shivaji Chhatrapati, Marathi Corporation School 173

Shivaji Jayanti festival, Kolhapur 174
Outing to Bijapur with Urdu Corporation School 193
Drawing of a mosque, a fort, or Mecca? Urdu Corporation School 211
Drawing of the Gol Gombaz of Bijapur, Karnataka,
Urdu Corporation School 213
Rangoli drawing, Pratinagar Sainik School 255
 Acknowledgments

When I started work on this project in the late 1990s, I never imagined feeling
compelled one day to write this dreaded phrase. But there I am. “Because this
book has been long in the making,” it owes debts and thanks to innumerable
people, including ghosts. The latter have been duly propitiated, so only the
living appear in this section. They still account for a long list. Some are col-
leagues, some of whom have become friends; no doubt they will recognize
themselves. As usual, it is difficult to do justice to all those who gave, offered,
and shared over so many years. Apologies are therefore in order to those not
explicitly named.
Special thanks are due to the various agencies that funded parts of the re-
search: the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) from 1998 to 2001;
the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), especially the Direc-
tion des Relations Internationales; and the Franco-British program on global-
ization run by Jackie Assayag and Chris Fuller. Subsequent research visits were
supported by the ESRC, the London School of Economics (LSE), or the CNRS.
In no small measure, my greatest debts of the past decade are owed to the
CNRS and the LSE. The former provided me with the material security needed
to freely take off to other horizons and embark on an ongoing passeure’s jour-
ney, back and forth between English- and French-speaking academic worlds.
My colleagues first at the Centre for Sociologie, Histoire, Anthropologie et
­Dynamiques Culturelles, Marseille (SHADYC), then at the Maison Française
in Oxford, and now at the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie des Institutions et des
Organisations Sociales in Paris (LAIOS) have accompanied me in this trajec-
tory in various ways. I am especially grateful to Marc Abélès, director at LAIOS,
xiii
xiv Acknowledgments

for his generous welcome into the center. Special thanks are also due to Jackie
­Assayag, with whom I shared many of the developments leading to this book
and much more; some of his inspiration runs through these pages. Thanks,
too, to my colleagues Irène Bellier, Catherine Neveu, Enric Porqueres i Gené,
and Sophie Wahnich for sharing various topical interests with me, not least
of all that in emotions; and to Gérard Lenclud, then at the Direction des Sci-
ences Humaines et Sociales, for his long unstinting support, as well as Marc
Gaborieau, Catherine Clémentin-Ojha, Frédéric Landy, Jacques Pouchepadass,
Jean-Luc Racine, Marie-Louise Reiniche, Gilles Tarabout, and Denis Vidal at
the Centre d’Etudes de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud for their trust and backing in
critical times.
The LSE, especially the Department of Anthropology, introduced me to the
ways of “Anglo-Saxon academia” many years ago. In particular, Chris Fuller
helped me make my first steps and has since expressed sustained encourage-
ment and critical support, reading and commenting on most of my prose over
the years; so has Johnny Parry, most recently with incisive comments on a pen-
ultimate version of the manuscript. Laura Bear has been a wonderfully stimu-
lating colleague and friend throughout, and an attentive and sensitive reader.
I was fortunate to share an office with Stephan Feuchtwang for many years
and have benefited from intense discussions and his insightful comments over
several portions of drafts. Deborah James, Martha Mundy, and Michael Scott
have offered welcome forays into other regions and topics; and Maurice Bloch
provided for the Malagasy French connection. Catherine Allerton, Rita Astuti,
Fenella Cannell, and Matthew Engelke have been stimulating colleagues. Peter
Loizos always graciously supplied bibliographical references, and Henrike
Donner, insightful suggestions in addition to her linguistic skills. Charles Staf-
ford made my first steps into U.S. academia unreservedly possible at a time of
organizational juggling; Olivia Harris kindly welcomed me back, and Margaret
Bothwell and Yan Hinrichsen, and Camilla Griffiths have been great depart-
mental managers and administrator, respectively! John Harriss, then at DES-
TIN, was a generous partner in discussion and commentator for many years. I
am also grateful to Anthony Smith and John Hutchinson, as well as the mem-
bers of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN), for
welcoming me into their passionate study group one academic year; thanks,
too, to Jude Howell and the Centre for Civil Society, as well as to my colleagues
at the Institute of Education in London.
Versions of parts of this book have been presented in lectures, seminars,
 Acknowledgments xv

workshops, and conferences in Britain, France, India, Colombia, Australia, and

the United States. Thanks are owed to all those who gave me the benefit of
their comments on those occasions. A few “in the West,” however, deserve ad-
ditional mention. They are, in no particular order, Sherry Ortner, then at Co-
lumbia University, as well as Nicholas Dirks and Val Daniel; at the University
of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Sumathi Ramaswamy for her inspiring encourage-
ment, ­Barbara Metcalf, Jayati Lal, Nita Kumar, Tom Metcalf, Stewart Gordon,
and last but most crucial, Lee Schlesinger, whose relentless questioning forced
me to anchor my arguments ever more firmly; I also thank all the other partici-
pants in the lively and thorough discussions of the Kitab Mandal; then at the
University of Chicago, Sheldon Pollock, and William Mazzarella, John Kelly,
Adam Smith, Shreeyash Palshikar; at the University of Edinburgh, ­ Patricia
Jeffery, Roger Jeffery, and Jonathan Spencer; at Oxford University, Nandini
Gooptu, Barbara Harriss-White, and David Washbrook; and on various occa-
sions ­Mukulika Banerjee, Filippo Osella, Caroline Osella, and Geert de Neve,
as well as Sudipta Kaviraj, Peter Robb, and Sunil Khilnani. Adrian Mayer kindly
shared his boundless knowledge and introduced me to the royal family in Kol-
hapur. To Étienne Balibar I remain indebted for his generosity and some inspir-
ing conversations over several years.
Although writing this book started years ago, it truly began in earnest over
my two-year stay in the United States. I am particularly grateful to Princeton
University and Yale University for their institutional support and hospital-
ity, for the kind and efficient use of their libraries, and for the experience of
teaching in yet another academic community. As a Visiting Research Scholar
at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) and
Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology in 2004–2005, I wish to thank
Miguel Centeno for his lively directorship, as well as Atul Kohli, Gyan Prakash,
Greg Bell, Joyce Slack, Susan F. Binding, and Geraldine Horner; at the Depart-
ment of Anthropology, Carol Zanca for her amazing efficiency and Mo Lin
Yee for her kind diligence, Leo Coleman, Mekhala Natavar for her zest for life,
Carol Greenhouse for her supportive enthusiasm, Larry Rosen for his constant
generosity and good humor (even when inflicted with an entire intermedi-
ary draft a year later), Abdellah Hammoudi for his philosophical warmth and
­sagacity, Gananath Obeyesekere for a common interest in psychoanalysis, Jim
Boon, John Borneman, and most specially Isabelle Clark-Decès and Jim Clark
for their generous hospitality. Maria DiBattista and Pat Heslin (then) of Rocky
College provided me with a base away from home; and Walter H. Lippincott
xvi Acknowledgments

kindly shared his operatic tastes with me. Ravi Sundaram unwittingly drew my
attention to the notion of “sensorium.” Archana Joglekar, Marathi friend and
beautiful soul, enchanted me with her dance. I also wish to thank Jean Leca for
his encouragement as I started work on the manuscript, as well as Fred Appel
for reading through an earlier version of what was yet to become this book.
My warmest gratitude goes to Thomas Hansen for his unfailing support over
the years, especially for making my stay at Yale University possible as a Singh
­Visiting Lecturer in the MacMillan Center for International Studies while
teaching in the Anthropology Department in 2005–2006, as well as for his
generous comments on a fledgling version of the manuscript; to Dhooleka Raj
for her administrative care and academic wit; to Lauren Leve for jokingly put-
ting me on the lead to queer theory (which I took seriously); to E. ­Annamalai
for graciously surviving an embarrassingly premature version of a chapter; to
Durba Chattaraj for sharing her “embodiedness of language” with me. I am also
grateful for comments on chapter drafts from Joe Alter and Joe Errington and
to the members of the South Asia Reading group and the South Asia seminar
at Yale, especially Karuna Mantena, Barney Bate (who also read more of my
prose), Mridu Ray, Srirupa Roy, Jayeeta Sharma, Radhika Singha, and Phyllis
Granoff. Thanks, too, to Barbara Papacoda, Marie Silvestri, and Karen Phillips
for their administrative assistance, and to librarians Emily Horning and Rich
Richie. My gratitude goes to Peter van der Veer for reading an earlier version
of the manuscript, as did Gyan Pandey, whose support and understanding have
been critical in the last stages. In other ways, I am also thankful to Arjun Ap-
padurai for his food for thought.
The research on which this book is based would not have been possible
but for the inestimable wealth of support—institutional, intellectual, and per-
sonal—received in various parts of India: in Delhi, the Delhi School of Econom-
ics, the Nehru Memorial Trust, the University of Delhi, the National Centre for
Educational Research and Training, Hari Chopra, Radhika Chopra, Krishna
Kumar, Arun Kelkar, and Dipankar Gupta; in Mumbai, the Tata Institute for
Social Sciences, Mumbai University, S.N.D.T. University and their libraries, and
the Marathi Grantha Sangrahalay, Denzil Saldanha, Sharit Bhowmik, Ramesh
Kamble, Y. D. Phadke, Satish Kulkarni, Sulochana, Arun Khopkar, Chandrakant
Joshi, Prabhakar Pendharkar, and Arvind Ganachari. In Pune, my gratitude
goes to the university, the Fergusson College, and the Ranade Institute as well
as the Archives Section in the Department of Education and the Bhartiya
­Itihas Samshodhak Mandal, Aalochana, the Film and Television Institute, and
 Acknowledgments xvii

the National Film Archive of India, and their libraries. Special thanks are also
due to the staff of the Maharashtra State Textbook Bureau. The “International
Maharashtra connection” welcomed me many years ago, and I learned a great
deal from all of them, especially Irina Glushkova, A. R. Kulkarni, Jim Masselos,
Anne Feldhaus, Eleanor Zelliot, Meera Kosambi, Rajendra Vora, and Jim Laine.
I also owe a great debt to Ram Bapat for his unfailing support and intellectual
generosity, only matched by his dizzying erudition and passion for debate; to
Sujata Patel, Sharmila Rege, Ashok Kelkar, G. P. Deshpande, Vidhyut Bhagwat,
Surendra Jondhale, Gayatri Chatterjee, Vaishali Diwakar, and S. M. Dahiwale,
who introduced me to Kolhapur. In Kolhapur, Professor Dhanagare, then Vice-
Chancellor of Shivaji University always graciously facilitated my research. The
latter greatly benefited from Trupti Karikatti’s invaluable help and companion-
ship as a research assistant over these years of fieldwork. I am also indebted to
Ashok Chousalkar for his intellectual engagement and constant readiness to
share his knowledge with me, Bharti Patil for her helpfulness and her sharp
mind, as well as Vilas Sangave, Maya Pandit, B. D. Khane, Kavita G. Patil, M. A.
Patil, Tyagraj Pendharkar, Nisha U., and Bhaskar Bolay. Ashok Karamde, who
helped in translating shloks and mantras. The Education Department of the
municipal corporation of Kolhapur introduced me to some of the institutions
where research was conducted. Of all the preliminary schools initially sur-
veyed, those where the bulk of the research was done deserve special mention
for letting me share their daily routines so intimately and continuously. I can-
not repay what I have received from them; had it not been for the generosity of
their respective staffs, pupils, and parents, this book would not exist: the Vidhya­
peeth Marathi Shakha, the New High School Marathi Shala, the Pratapsingh
Vidhya Mandir, Santa Gadge Maharaj Shala number 7, Urdu-Marathi Shala
number 53, and the Warna nagar Sainik School. Very special thanks are also
due to Shahu Maharaj and his royal family. To the Pandat family, I am grateful
for their trust and friendship, and to Jaydeep and Mrs. Borgaonkar, for their
caring and good-hearted hospitality. My lasting gratitude also goes to longtime
friends: the D’Mello family in Bombay and for some years now also in Canada
and Australia; and in various other parts of Maharashtra, Simrita Gopal Singh
and Kedarnath Awati, Siddhartha, Sandhya Mawshi, and Admiral Awati.
Many other long-standing and new friends across several continents must
be mentioned at last. Their love, care, and supportive humor enabled me to get
this book “out of my system.” Nadia Benlakhel, my ever faithful “sister,” and
her “Belles” have made life in Paris fun; Floortje and Philippe Dollo, and the
xviii Acknowledgments

“Brooklyn Dolls” provided good mood and wine, especially in the United States;
Poonam Srivastava, my favorite reiki master, has remained a true cosmic friend
throughout. Konstanze Merkel has methodically helped me grow into my own,
and Karen Atkins also taught me to care for my body/mind. Gabriella ­Romani,
my Italian teacher, has become an enduring friend, and Leonor Arfuch offered
me a brilliant demonstration of “feminismo rico.” Special thanks also to Kate
Hayes, and Patrick Arnold, Moley, Richard, and Heidi Hayes for their endur-
ing hospitality and munificent contribution to my ongoing growth into Eng-
lish literacy; and to Eliza Kaczynska-Nay and John Charvet, Vera and Oliver
for showering their kindness and generosity upon me. The Randriamaros of all
three generations deserve mention for their unconditional friendship of many
years. James and Yuko Bourlet found my beloved “Molesworth” again within
two years of its “disappearance,” and David and Val Batterham provided pre-
cious support in times of flood. With my brother, Franck, and his family, I shared
many memories, in addition to champagne, music, and creative passions. My
uncle, Reg Brinded, generously fed my interest in things British and imperial all
these years, and my aunt, Minou Brinded, gifted me with her warmth, sparkling
intellect, and cheerful liveliness. Finally, my mother, Thessy Benei, deserves all
my gratitude for her optimistic faith and visceral anchoring in life, and for teach-
ing me a beautiful lesson.
At Stanford University Press, I wish to thank Kate Wahl for her enthusiastic
support of this book from the very beginning, and Joa Suorez for her efficient
liaising. The two reviewers also helped me tie up some loose ends. I am espe-
cially grateful to Susan Wadley for her strong support. Daniela Berti in Paris
and John Smith in Cambridge graciously provided diacritic fonts, and the lat-
ter, critical emergency assistance. Last but not least, I am grateful to Cynthia H.
Lindlof for her meticulous editing.
The usual caveats apply, and perhaps more so in the present case. Most, if
not all the shortcomings in this book are due to what my best-meaning friends
and family call my obstinacy. The reader may opt for another term.
 Note on Transliteration

All words from the Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, and Marathi that occur more than
once or twice in the text are transliterated with diacritical marks on their first
appearance; thereafter, they are printed without diacritics and their spelling is
adjusted to the commonest usage: ch for c, v or w for v, sh for ś and ṣ. Some spe-
cific adjustments have been made for the Marathi language: ru for ṛ, and dnya
for gya; in addition, many words ending with a consonant are not pronounced
with the usual devanāgari short vowel a, which has therefore been omitted. Be-
cause plural forms may be unfamiliar, I have added an s to create the plural of
transliterated words. The titles of songs, chants, poems and prayers, and entire
sentences have not been transliterated. Terms and names that occur more than
once or twice in the text are listed in the Glossary.
The Marathi-speaking region of the Bombay presidency became Bombay
state after Indian independence; the state was renamed Maharashtra in 1960.
The name of its capital city was changed from Bombay to Mumbai in 1995.
Throughout this book, I use the modern names for the state and city, except
where the historical context requires “Bombay.”

xix
Schooling Passions
 Prologue

Nationality is something sentimental too; it is

body and soul at the same time.
Ernest Renan, What Is a Nation?

How does one become viscerally French, English, Indian, and so on? What is it
that makes one feel irrefragably so? What does it take for us to turn into those
embodied, emotional nationals, even as we see ourselves as “so many other
things,” and much as we at times love to disown “our own nation”? How does
this incarnation of the nation occur in our souls, minds, and bodies? Con-
versely, if love of the nation is spontaneous and instant, “in your guts,” why
does it need to be constantly reproduced and sustained?
The present entanglement of “the national and the global” has brought re-
newed salience to these questions. Movements of populations across national
borders have increased in visibility, and discourses about “the global” in vocal-
ity. Yet neither has shooed away the reality and lived experience of nationhood.
Contrary to some wishful thinking, the nation is here to stay. So are the many
visceral expressions and manifestations of national belonging. The issue of civic
entitlement, too, is as fraught as ever, in light not only of recent migrations but
also of the dialectical redefinitions of the so-called local and global. These re-
flect in competing imaginings within nation-states the world over to the point
that different visions of the nation have seen the radicalizing of the “produc-
tion and reproduction of majorities and minorities,” at times leading to violent
confrontation. In India, the confrontation has mainly occurred between Hindu
nationalists and members of the larger minority, that is, Muslims. Attempts
made by extreme Hindu right-wing political parties are aimed at redefining
membership in the national community along ethnic and religious lines; this
entails building an exclusively Hindu raj whence the members of Muslim and


 Prologue

other non-Hindu—as well as “improperly Hindu”—communities would be ex-

cluded. These exclusivist endeavors have long been accompanied with repeated
outbreaks of violence of varying magnitude. They have also generated activist,
intellectual, and scholarly engagement.
Studying communal violence was until fifteen years ago largely the preserve
of political scientists exploring nationalism and its various predicaments (Vin-
cent 1990: 26). Today, by contrast, these topics have become central for anthro-
pologists interested in the political. Apart from burgeoning work on democracy,
much of the literature in India so far has understandably concentrated on riots
and their aftermath. Yet such a trend has largely missed out on the “before” of
violence, that is, the larger upstream processes potentially feeding into aggres-
sive political projects. These are nurtured over many years, even decades. In
the “making and continuation of contemporary political arrangements,” they
have largely contributed to the “production and reproduction of majorities and
minorities,” which historian Gyanendra Pandey (2006: 1) has called “routine
violence.” What feeds into exclusivist political projects indeed does not spring
ex nihilo; rather, it is constantly reproduced and takes shape in the many folds
of everyday life. Senses of belonging, these most seemingly natural and obvious
pillars of identity, are not manifested only in forms of extreme violence. Espe-
cially in times of political stability, senses of belonging are “naturalized” in the
banality of quotidian processes.
This book therefore shifts the focus away from registered sites of extraordi-
nary communal violence onto ones of daily production of “banal nationalism.”1
The phrase refers to the experience of nationalism being so integral to people’s
lives that it goes unnoticed most of the time. Yet, as we shall see, the banal
nationalism thus constructed in the routine of everyday life is an ever incom-
plete one: it is constantly in the making. The very impossibility of completion,
though unnoticed as it may be in the folds of daily life, also makes this process
a source of anxiety. The same obtains of many other “banal” nationalisms, and
the formulation appropriately denotes the formation of patriotic sentiments
in all kinds of nations, whether “established” or younger ones.2 Similarly, the
distinction between “national” and “nationalist” is a tenuous one, more a mat-
ter of perspective than of objective science. What is deemed “national only,” in
the sense of a justifiable and legitimate expression or manifestation of interest
in the nation, versus what is condemned as “nationalist,” in the sense of sup-
posedly irrational passions of nationhood, is often really the same, depending
on the onlooker’s perspective. Such notional relativity informs much of this
 Prologue 

book, and I will use the terms “national” and “nationalist” almost interchange-
ably. Documenting the making of banal nationalism, then, entails scrutinizing
the daily, apparently benign production and reproduction of processes of local,
regional, and national identity formation, or rather, identification.
Some brief clarification is in order. I find the notion of “identification,”
as an analytical tool, more precise and heuristic than that of “identity.” It is
understood that identities are neither individual nor purely collective but
rather provide means for individuals to internalize belonging and for the
community to instate or prescribe subjectivities (Balibar 2003). Yet the prob-
lem with the term and its usages is that in many analyses, “identities” tend to
get “congealed” and “essentialized” in fixed space and time. In contrast, the
term “identification” lays stress on the processual agency of social actors. It
thus leaves the way open for indeterminacy and the necessarily fragmentary
character of all projects of self-formation, be they individual or collective.
Furthermore, this is so even if and when the act of social actor(s) identifying
is consubstantial to the psychological orientation of the self in regard to the
object of identification, with a resulting feeling of close emotional associa-
tion; or even when the process is deemed largely unconscious and denotes
the modeling by an individual or a group of thoughts, feelings, and actions
after those attributed to an object are incorporated as a mental image. These
definitions are neither mutually exclusive nor contradictory, and we shall see
how a psychoanalytic approach may in part illuminate aspects of national
and regional identifications (Chapter 3), both at a collective and an individual
level (see Obeyesekere 1981, 1990 for an exemplification of how these two lev-
els articulate in a psychoanalytic anthropology; Borneman 2004 for a psycho-
analytic interpretation of the end of political regimes). To a significant extent,
this book is precisely concerned with the agency within the internalization of
socialization. Of interest here is what both becomes and begets an “uncon-
scious” process (Hall 1996; Segal 1996). However much solidly grounded, iden-
tification remains fleeting and changing; it is better understood as a resource,
leaving space for competing modes of action and appropriation. Where the
term “identities” appears, then, it will be to particularly emphasize the fixed-
ness resulting from identification processes—a fixedness often resonant with
specific political projects that make this crystallization central to discourses
and practices of representation for a given social group. But prior to identity
and its attendant political repertoire awaiting deployment in myriad forms,
there is “identification.”
 Prologue

Increasingly in the world of nation-states today, local, regional, and national

processes of identification are in part relayed by state institutions penetrating
everyday life. Most potent among them is formal education, seen as both a pre-
requisite for the stability of the state and a powerful means of national integra-
tion.3 Consequently, the socialization of children has become more intricately
embedded in a multiplicity of culturally defined norms and rules from an early
age (Kumar 2001). This also occurs in the western regional state of Maharashtra,
where I conducted fieldwork in primary schools and kindergartens in the local-
ity of Kolhapur in the late 1990s and early 2000s. An analysis of socialization can
therefore no longer confine itself to a study of initiation rituals or everyday pro-
cesses occurring at the levels of family, caste, community, village, neighborhood,
and so on, all traditional objects of anthropological inquiry. For an overwhelm-
ing majority of urban and rural Maharashtrians today, patterns of authority and
models of behavior are jointly produced by family members (whether parents
or other elders) and teachers. The family, apart from mass media, may still be
the primary source of influence about politics. Yet in a regional state where the
literacy rate averages 75 percent, the first stages of schooling in particular play
a crucial part in providing exposure to political life and symbols of nationality
and nationhood, as they do in other nation-states (Connell 1975).
Formal education has become a major arena of dispute on the subcontinent
in recent years. In India, in particular, its prominence in the fierce debates pitting
partisans of Hindu nationalist (Hiııṇdutva) forces against secularists has gener-
ated anxieties among members of the minorities, social activists, intellectuals,
and scholars alike. After a Hindutva-led coalition came into power in the 1990s,
the population felt the menace of an accrued Hinduization of the core institu-
tions of Indian society. At stake was the potential unraveling of the ­nation-state’s
secular constitutional principles. Much public attention focused on the rewrit-
ing of history and the redesigning of secondary school curriculum (Menon and
Rajalakshmi 1998; Muralidharan and Pande 1998; Sahmat 2002; Sahmat and
­Sabrang.com 2002; Deb 2003; Habib, Jaiswal, and Mukherjee 2003; Mohammad-
Arif 2005). These are definitely crucial indications of the ideological choices
made by Hindu right-wing forces with respect to the production of future gen-
erations of Indian (or Hindu?) citizens.4 The emphasis placed on secondary
and higher education (in keeping with a predisposition dating back to colonial
times) has nevertheless preempted a clear understanding of the very process of
contemporary nation building. It also raises questions about the relationship
of schooling to nation building and underlying theories of learning, suggesting
 Prologue 

that children of a younger age are alien—or, at best, irrelevant—to political pro-
cesses, including those of patriotism and nationalism. By contrast, I aim to dem-
onstrate in this book that crucial to the production of local, regional, or national
attachments are the educational processes taking place from a much earlier age,
right from the beginning of socialization and as early as kindergarten.
Kindergartens and primary schools are unexpectedly fruitful sites for ex-
ploring the culturally gendered production of the political in modern nation-
states. These spaces mediate home and nation, playing a constitutive role in the
daily lives of children who move back and forth between them. Schooling does
not only entail modeling of disciplined bodies and “normalized” social and po-
litical persons (Foucault 1979, 1981); just as important is social actors’ embodied
cultural and social (re)production of regional and national senses of belonging
and identifications. Central to my demonstration is a notion that these feed on,
and into, lived experiences of sensory and emotional bonding developed in the
everyday intimacy of home and family.
The heart of my project therefore articulates a political anthropology of the
senses with one of embodied passions and emotions. Rather than work along the
Geertzian lines of a dichotomy between civil and primordial ties that would run
the risk of further naturalizing an arbitrary distinction between “North/West”
societies and their “less fortunate South/East” counterparts, I contend that fo-
cusing on the emotional and embodied production of the political provides a
more radical approach in any given context. Such a framework furnishes a way
out of binary models as well as intellectual and theoretical biases.5 It also allows
one to register more complex realities so far left largely unexplored. In this
book, I show how processes of identity formation are embodied daily and draw
upon cultural repertoires of emotionality. Emotionality is produced through,
and feeds into, political, cultural, social, economic, and gender negotiations of
nationhood and citizenship central to the everyday production of rights and
entitlements. In these everyday processes of subject, self-, and national forma-
tion, both the state and its representatives, and ordinary citizens—including
children—play a crucial part. Just as important, these processes acquire mean-
ing as embodied experiences involving sensory (re)configurations.
Whereas the notion of “sense of belonging” has become commonplace
in discussions of national sentiments, the emotional and sensory dimension
invoked by such a phrase has received scant attention.6 Here, by taking the
“senses” seriously, I seek to illuminate the ways in which emotions and passions,
as socially and culturally produced, form an integral part of forming the senses
 Prologue

of national belonging. Documenting the emotional sensory and embodied pro-

duction ­entering in the daily manufacturing of nationhood and citizenship im-
plies querying: How do the senses come into play? How are they harnessed in
the everyday project of nation building at the most banal and quotidian level
of experience? How are they actively produced, reshaped, and reinterpreted
by ­social actors? To address these questions requires a phenomenological ap-
proach, which is developed in this book, particularly in Chapters 2 and 3.
A phenomenological approach does not preclude a comparative project. On
the contrary, it calls for one that would jointly pay attention to the complexities
of vernacular realities, not only to rightfully “decenter” Europe (Chakrabarty
2002) but also to illuminate both the contingent nature and the concomitant pro-
cesses of social and political formations in different parts of the world, whether
in the so-called West or in India. In their explorations of the ritual, cultural, and
linguistic idioms of “other” societies, anthropologists have long demonstrated
the necessity to heed local semantic and vernacular notions. With regard to the
study of the political modernity–related topics of nationalism, civil society, and
citizenship, however, such an idiomatic concern has remained conspicuously
absent. The reason may be that reflection on, and exploration of, these topics
has traditionally been the preserve of political philosophy and political science,
whose theoretical instruments are grounded in a European tradition claiming
universality. Nevertheless, even critical perspectives in relation to the founda-
tional period of the Enlightenment have largely neglected vernacular languages
in their reflection on the modalities of European-originated political concepts
and notions in non-European contexts (for notable exceptions, see Kaviraj 1992;
Burghart 1996; Rajagopal 2001).
Arguably, the neglect of vernacular categories has precluded an under-
standing of both their attendant social and cultural semantic repertoires and
local negotiations. Yet their unraveling remains indispensable for a thorough
comprehension of the cultural entailments of political processes, forms, and
models, especially of the nation-state. The fact that the modern nation-state is
a “foreign transplant” in India, for instance, should not monopolize the terms
of debate. What requires scrutiny are the historical configurations and the mo-
dalities of the development of specific, idiosyncratic, local forms (Gupta 1995;
Fuller and Benei 2001; Hansen and Stepputat 2001; Kaviraj and Khilnani 2001).
Pursuing a quest of essential, irretrievably “emic” differences does not lead one
very far.7 To dismiss non-European political forms as purely nonviable under
the pretense that they do not conform to either European ones or the original
 Prologue 

model, or worse still, that they are associated with repertoires of a kind different
from those deemed extant in the West is both unproductive and unfair. As I ar-
gued elsewhere (Benei 2005a), comparing Indian empirical facts with European
theory has precluded heuristic understanding of both the Indian context and
the analogies and similarities that might be drawn between the Euro-American
and Indian cases, especially regarding the issue of secularism. The work of Peter
van der Veer, for instance (1994, 2001; van der Veer and Lehmann 1999), has
highlighted movements back and forth of the concomitant processes of social
and political formations in the West and in India. Thus, arresting parallels and
embedded developments of secularity, religious reform, and idioms of moral-
ity acquire visibility in both locations. This, in turn, illuminates the measure of
contingency in Europe’s or India’s “unique” trajectories. It also reinscribes their
respective uniqueness in a web of parallels, cross-borrowings, and similarities
as part of a worldwide humanity. Such a comparative endeavor, although not
occupying center stage, also animates the soul of this book.
Before inviting the reader to pursue further, I wish to share two incidents
as a caveat. The first was related to me by one of my colleagues in Britain upon
his return from a lecture tour of U.S. universities in 2003, just at the time of
the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Some students, mainly American and Indian,
commented to him on the mistrust of all things patriotic and nationalist they
perceived in my writings. Of course, the different genealogies and realities
of nationalism in Western Europe, the United States, and India probably ac-
counted in part for their comments. Yet these comments arrested me, because,
perhaps somewhat naively, I had until then assumed that being critical of pa-
triotism and nationalism was any anthropologist’s job. Don’t most of our lives
spent as academics revolve around deconstructing naturalized “things,” be they
common sense, feelings, narratives, practices, or all of these together?8 The sec-
ond incident occurred a few months later, in July of that same year. I had been
invited to give a lecture at the “Gender Seminar Series” of a well-known Indian
university’s department of sociology. I had chosen to present the premise of
what is now Chapter 3 in this book. The students were mostly female, includ-
ing only three or four males, one of whom I had met earlier in the corridor.
Hearing that I was visiting from an academic institution located in Britain, he
quipped: “So you have come funded by the VHP or some other such Hindutva
organization?” I was rather puzzled and unsure of the question’s implications
with respect to NRI funding and the general climate of communal violence in
Gujarat and elsewhere in India at the time. I did not yet know this student was
 Prologue

Muslim. My attempts at reassuring him of my benign funding sources hardly

did anything to dispel the doubtful look on his face. I then gave the talk, fol-
lowed by a discussion. After a few noncommittal questions came this particular
student’s turn. He launched into an accusatory diatribe of pro-Hindutva sym-
pathies. Apparently, what had irked him was my focusing on Hindutva-related
practices—and exemplifying a gesture during presentation—occurring during
the nationalist ritual marking the beginning of school days in ordinary Marathi
schools (Chapter 1). Following some clarification on my part, the exchange
continued after the seminar, the student telling me of his and his parents’ secu-
larist involvement. To this day, I have remained thankful for his sharing with
me, however briefly, his experience of growing up in Bombay/Mumbai in the
highly volatile 1990s and early 2000s.
What these two incidents illustrate is the acute sensitivity of the subjects I
address in this book. That I, an outsider, could be understood to hold such ex-
treme and antithetical positions on nationalism ultimately confirms the highly
contentious and visceral nature of everyday processes of nation building. I have
attempted to do as much justice as possible to the complexity of social, cultural,
and political life in this part of India. May it provide the reader with enough to
cultivate sensitivity toward these delicate issues. This, at any rate, is what I see
as the wider purpose of an anthropological contribution.
 Introduction
Sensitive Subjects: Producing the
Nation at School in Western India

[C]ar dans les siècles démocratiques, ce qu’il y a de plus mouvant, au

milieu du mouvement de toutes choses, c’est le cœur de l’homme.
Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique

Imagine yourself in western India in the winter of 1999–2000: Kolhapur, the

southernmost town of Maharashtra state and a friendly, industrious provincial
district capital. Wherever you walk in the busy streets, people are going about
their business as usual. Yet the atmosphere is almost eerie. As days and weeks
go by in the ordinary course of life, you can feel an almost relentless fervor
around you. Is it a result of the silent, ubiquitous, visual reminders that the na-
tion has recently been at war?
The events took place some hundreds of miles further north in Kashmir a few
months earlier. In the first weeks of May, as the snow began receding, the mili-
tary went on their first reconnaissance patrol in the Kargil heights. Upon discov-
ering Pakistanis trespassing over the Line of Control between the two countries,
Indian troops sought to regain the lost territory. After two months of fighting,
the Indian military made a successful final assault in mid-July at a height over
five thousand meters. The events were assiduously covered by the mass media,
from feverish TV news bulletins to fiery press declarations and reiterations of
devotion to the Indian nation. That the mass media should have played their
part in keeping the citizenry alert to the national issue by relaying and further-
ing a sense of besieged nationhood in all corners of the national territory was
only to be expected. After all, the press alone has often been construed as a
fundamental instrument for the production of a sense of nationhood in modern
times (Anderson 1983). What was perhaps less foreseeable was the intensity with
which ordinary social and political actors in Maharashtra elected this moment
for renewing their pledge of allegiance to the “mother country,” then and for the
following two years. This they did through relentless flag exposure.

10 Introduction

The flag display around the time of war in Kashmir in the late 1990s was
no mere celebration of the habitual, taken-for-granted artifact of the nation,
with its horizontal stripes of saffron, white, and green. The patriotic icons re-
produced on fabric or paper are usually seen hanging in front of institutional
buildings; passersby—adults, children, and even babies—hold them in their
hands along parade routes on national public holidays. In such obvious mo-
ments of national devotion, the whole population reiterates its pledge of alle-
giance to the country whose sovereign people became free to govern their own
destiny more than sixty years ago. The flags then serve as so many reminders
of the solemn engagement of unity in freedom that the Indian people took (or
rather, in whose name a handful took) at the time. Children also bring these
vouchers of national integrity to school on these extraordinary occasions, while
teachers display them in classrooms and headmasters and headmistresses give
them pride of place on their desks. However, in the year 2000 in Kolhapur, the
extraordinary had become ordinary. In addition to the freshly painted tricolors
on some facades and signs of hotels, restaurants, and shops, the streets thronged
with an ever-inventive and creative reappropriation of the national icon. You
could see women walking about wearing “flag saris”: the garments, symbolic
of every married woman’s status in Maharashtra, were graded from green to
saffron via a white band; alternatively, women sported only green and orange
shades in a matching duo of sari and blouse.1 Some of the schoolteachers I had
met in primary schools earlier also wore them.2 So did girls on their birthdays.
The visual dimension of this devotional and patriotic inscription in public spaces
was also a conspicuously gendered one. Whereas women sartorially carried and
protected the nation upon their own bodies, men could be seen proudly riding
Hero Honda motorbikes with the tricolor painted across the frame. A rickshaw
driver had stitched his own version on his back seat, with three vertical (instead
of horizontal) stripes ornamented with two (instead of one) wheels on either
side of the seat. His colleagues at night sported tricolor woolly caps. Others
hung tricolor plastic bead necklaces from mirrors; so, too, did many car drivers.
Toward the end of that year, the Hindu festival of Diwali was also an occasion
for families to hang strings of tricolor lanterns in front of their houses.
Thus was a powerful visual semiotics summoned in the daily sharing of
the tragedy of the nation. Yet it has to be envisaged in combination with other
forms of sensory experiences, auditory ones in particular. Television news-
bulletin presenters, politicians across the political spectrum, schoolteachers,
children, and other ordinary citizens alike all proffered their acoustic produc-
 Introduction 11

tion with regard to the treachery perpetrated by the nation’s archrival enemy.
Thus, if most of the continuously conspicuous aspects of these everyday per-
formances of national reconnection engaged the sense of sight, it is only the
tip perception of the iceberg of sensory national re-creation. As we shall see
further, sight is but one of the senses called upon by political modernity, con-
trary to a commonplace giving it primacy over all others. For the moment,
beginning with this nationalist visual semiotics provides an immediate entry
point into the social and political processes involved in the production and
sustenance of a nation.

Tricolor Semiology and War Culture

[A] flag represents an ideal. The unfurling of the Union Jack evokes in the
English breast sentiments whose strength it is difficult to measure: the Stars and
Stripes mean a world to the Americans, the Star and Crescent will call forth the
best bravery in Islam. It will be necessary for us Indians—Hindus, Muslims,
Christians, Jews, Parsis and others to whom India is their home—to recognize a
common flag to live and to die for.
Mohandas K. Gandhi, Young India

[T]he flag is not an object but a relationship.

Raymond Firth, Symbols Public and Private

National flags are the most external and immediately visible rallying symbols of
nationality and citizenship, serving as metonyms for the nation at large. As such,
they are expected to elicit unrestrained allegiance (Firth 1973), an allegiance nur-
tured in various ways in many nation-states, ranging from daily praise and wor-
ship to occasional display and tribute. In the United States, the icon is not only
honored in school morning assemblies but also constantly exhibited outside most
public buildings as well as individual homes, particularly since the events of Sep-
tember 11, 2001. In Britain, the Union Jack is also very conspicuous, albeit in a more
mercantile fashion since the 1960s (Firth 1973). By contrast, in most parts of India,
the national flag was never very visible outside particular annual manifestations.
Yet, in Maharashtra, the Indian tricolor had become strikingly conspicuous in the
wake of the events in Kargil. This sudden change requires further investigation.

Sight, Modernity, Democracy

The production and display of national flags in public spaces are arguably
crucial to the visual shaping of “image democracy,” to borrow John Tagg’s
formulation. In his discussion of sight and modernity, Tagg drew on Walter
Benjamin’s by now reference piece, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
12  Introduction

Reproduction” (1968). Benjamin in this essay discussed the loss of “aura” of the
object brought about by photography as a medium of reproduction ad infini-
tum. Drawing on these insights, Tagg argued that the “real pictorial revolution
effected by photography concerned the ease with which individual likeness
could be systematically recorded, giving photography a key role in bureau-
cratic institutions, including the police station, the insane asylum, the school
and the prison” (Tagg 1988: 56–59, cited in Przyblyski 1998: 2). Tagg particularly
emphasized the withering away of the aura associated with unique works of
art in favor of a photographic “democracy of the image.” Tagg’s argument may
be extended and qualified in regard to mass production processes, especially
those of nationalist symbols and artifacts.
What remains unacknowledged in Tagg’s Benjaminian stance, however, is
the crucial part played by ordinary social (and political) actors in an image de-
mocracy. The flag displays here represent a means for expressing the actors’ tacit
participation—both collective and individual—in the intensive celebration and
symbolic preservation of the nation’s image. In Kolhapur in 1999–2000, this act
of political (re)connection was accompanied by an impressive appropriation of
mass products whereby people selected iconic items to concoct their own nation-
alist bricolage. Here was an example of dialogic social agency and mass produc-
tion defying the habitual, slightly contemptuous vision à la Adorno of ordinary
people’s passive ingurgitation of mass culture. Whether flag saris were mass pro-
duced following a specific demand or whether they triggered the latter is beside
the point. The usual mass production of the national synecdoche had been di-
verted from its ordinary channels as social actors actively transformed these oth-
erwise codified attributes of public patriotism into daily icons of both personal
allegiance and market commodity. These insignia of nationalist semiology be-
came integral to the everyday lives of ordinary citizens, transcending creed, caste,
age, language, gender, and other barriers. Consequently, the replicated, trans-
posed, and reclaimed reproductions of the national flag were the “mere trifles”
that transformed an urban social and cultural landscape into a national one. Such
a national landscape was also closely associated with imagined as well as remem-
bered notions of territorial preservation and, consequently, war.

War, National Community, and Social Memory

War has been one of the most powerful motifs shaping the social memory of
“imagined communities” the world over (Mosse 1990; Audoin-Rouzeau 1993;
Becker 1994; Hinton 2002; Taylor 2002). In India, war since independence has
 Introduction 13

been crucially constitutive of imaginings of citizenship wherein borders and

frontiers played an essential part. Just as in European nation-states (Balibar
2004), territory and national frontiers have centrally defined patriotism and
historical consciousness, with their physical reality becoming the object of
many projections of national identity. Hence the potent symbolism of terri-
torial violation superseded other potentially rallying factors in triggering war
together with reiterations of national love. Indeed, the war in Kashmir took
place a year after another major event occurred in the life of the Indian nation.
Nuclear tests were conducted in the desert of Pokhran in Rajasthan in May
1998, causing great pride and rejoicing among the citizenry.3 The successful
tests proffered a mirror of accomplished modernity reflecting a “shining India”
(to borrow the slogan from the Hindu right-wing coalition then in power at
the central level). In keeping with the masculinist theme and attendant anxiety
that have animated Hindu nationalist ideology since its inception, these tests
also elicited boastful claims underpinned by a gendered imagery among some
Hindu right-wing activists (Bhatt 2001). The declarations made by the leader of
the regional “sons-of-the-soil” Shiv Sena Party were among the most sexually
explicit: Hindus, since the nuclear tests, were “no longer Eunuchs.” Even more
than these nuclear achievements and their gendered symbolic resonance, the
subsequent war in Kargil crystallized devotional allegiance to the (feminine)
nation. That the “body of India” (Assayag 1997; Ramaswamy 2001) should have
been violated acted as a much more potent trigger.4
Furthermore, rather than the high-spiritedness and lightheartedness that
ensued as a result of the demonstration of nuclear prowess, these later events
generated moments of grave recollection and moral indignation that fed into
a “war effort,” as well as a “war culture.” The press, in particular, furthered the
imagination of a besieged national community in its attempts at sustaining the
population’s interest. Indian citizens were invited to support and glorify their
soldiers. For over a year until December 2000, newspapers, English and ver-
nacular, regularly published stories of heroic soldiers meeting a tragic death in
Kargil. Great care was often taken to pay tribute to their families for having sacri-
ficed their boys in the name of the country. Various good deeds accomplished by
“citizens fulfilling their duties toward the nation” were also repeatedly reported
in the press at the time. Arguably, the daily reiteration of their sense of moral
outrage as well as their appreciation of both the dignified grieving of soldiers’
bereaved families and the courageous contributions in cash and kind made by
ordinary citizens in Maharashtra opened up a crucial space for discussing the
14  Introduction

Kargil events, strengthening connection to the Indian nation anew. Because of

the foundational rivalry between the two warring nation-states of India and
Pakistan and the sensitive location of Muslim populations in the former, how-
ever, this space was more open to some citizens (i.e., Hindus) than others (i.e.,
Muslims). Furthermore, this aperture enabled the (re)production of an entirely
legitimate war culture plunging its roots ever so firmly in the recent past of the
postindependence decades as well as in the region’s martial tradition.5
The memory of the preceding wars with Pakistan (1965) and China (1962),
the latter of which had involved defining and contesting territorial frontiers,
was reactivated by the discussion of the Kargil events. The media crucially sus-
tained intensive mnemonic social activity around these events, rallying citizens
to reminisce and, in the process, define themselves anew, as Indians. This is,
of course, not to suggest that media alone played an overdetermining part. As
Brian Massumi (2002: 43–44) has insisted, “Media transmissions are breaches
of indetermination. For them to have any specific effect, they must be deter-
mined to have that effect by apparatuses of actualization and implantation that
plug into them and transformatively relay what they give rise to (family, church,
school . . . ).” So the feverish production of media-enforced patriotism intri-
cately interwove into its narrative numerous and repeated references to these
earlier wars. By November 2000, recent heroes, as well as veterans of the 1962,
1965, and 1971 wars, were honored in commemorative programs throughout the
districts of southern Maharashtra. The press reported these daily, with photos
and texts galore. Such a process of collective remembering even went further
back in time. The glorification of pre-1947 veterans conjured up memories of
the freedom struggle and liberation of the country from the “British yoke.” The
local press began to observe and report an increasing number of freedom fight-
ers’ commemorative events and/or death anniversaries. These events were el-
evated as exemplars of national dedication for the benefit of future generations.
Thus, such mnemic social activity was the incessant product of popular, public,
and media interactions feeding into one another. As important, these processes
were also relayed and amplified in the space of school.

Primary Schools at War

The performative demonstrations of national preservation and regeneration
also occurred in primary schools, where they formed a central part of a dialogic
field between pupils and teachers and further constructed school as a space
where wider issues within society at large resonated and even crystallized. If
 Introduction 15

devotion to the country does get reshaped and reenacted anew in everyday life
(Billig 1995), in these moments of heightened national awareness in the year
2000, devotion had clearly intensified. It gradually came to inform most of the
interactions between pupils and teachers. In many instances, teachers explic-
itly voiced their support of the national tricolor in front of the pupils in an
attempt at shaping their senses of civic morality. While encouraging them to
discriminate between right and wrong as they grew into Indian citizens, teach-
ers actively nurtured and cultivated the trope of war among the young. This
was particularly reflected on the walls of classrooms and school halls, covered
in posters prepared by pupils together with their teachers. From photo collages
of rockets and explosions to drawings of soldiers on the battlefield in Kashmir,
these posters acted as powerful visual reminders that the nation was at war, in-
cluding on educational premises. In most institutions, the posters were pasted
on the main board by the entrance, as if reclaiming the wholeness of the body
of India and of its citizens—pupils, parents, and teachers.
In these celebratory displays, the figure of the “soldier” (jawān) emerged
as a powerful one looming over the entire school space, both material and
rhetorical. Whether in corporation-run or private schools, in Marathi- or
Urdu-­medium institutions, the modern warriors were not represented only on
drawings and collages. They were also impersonated by the (male) children
themselves on occasion. As we shall see (Chapter 3), even toddler boys in kin-
dergarten (bālawādī) were taught to march and hold and fire dummy rifles in
annual school shows. In addition, teachers in their frequent impromptu refer-
ences to the defense of “our country” (āplā deś) emphasized the duty to support
“our soldiers,” who were fighting and giving up their lives for the sake of the
desh and of their own brothers. The soldier thus epitomized the utmost form
of sacrifice.6 His was a superior one offered for the preservation of the whole
nation and his fellow citizens, his “national kin,” as underlined in the pledge
printed on the front page of every schoolbook in India. Praising “our soldiers”
consequently signified more than just reminding “ourselves” that the nation
was engaged in hostilities; it was tantamount to sharing in the sanctity and
celebration of the national sacrifice. This constant rhetoric suffused not only
morning assemblies but also many lessons in class; classes in geography, his-
tory, and Marathi provided the best opportunities, where the military motif
regularly appeared in teachers’ routine interjections of opinions.
One should nevertheless understand that children were far from passive
recipients of bellicose pedagogy. In their interactions with their teachers and
16  Introduction

other adults, pupils developed their own negotiated understandings of social

and political life. They had grasped very early on that the country was at war and
also partook of the patriotic effervescence. Thus, on an October day in a Class 4
(nine-year-olds) at the All India Marathi School,7 the most progressive school
in Kolhapur, I spotted a girl sporting a tricolor tikkli. This was the first time I
had seen such a forehead decoration replacing the usual burgundy or red round
dots, or even the fancy-hued and irregularly shaped figures studded with fake
pearls and other trinkets. In the same classroom, another girl had covered her
head in a handkerchief with tricolor prints. As the teacher, a stout Dalit woman
in her midforties was talking to a colleague at the door of her class, I asked
both pupils the meaning of what they were wearing. The first one answered,
“[It is] for the country” (Deshasathi), and the second asserted, “Our flag” (Apla
jhenda). As she overheard the dialogue, the teacher turned around and nodded
approvingly, vigorously flexing her muscles. Wearing a beaming smile on her
face, she proudly asserted, “For the country,” adding for my benefit, “We need
utmost pride for the country, don’t we?” (Abhiman pahije, deshaca, ’he na?).
On another day in a Class 3 (eight-year-olds) in the same school, a female pupil,
Vanita, had colored a map of Maharashtra with the tricolor. Whereas the arts
teacher inspired the map, she explained, she had decided on her own to fill it
in with the national colors. On other occasions, pupils visibly reproduced the
gender-role division extant among teachers. If girls and boys alike peppered
their sketchbooks with war motifs and inscriptions of “Victory to the soldiers”
(Jay jawaan), girls during recess drew colored-powder drawings (rangoli) of not
only the usual floral patterns and geometric designs but also motifs of soldiers’
guns, rifles, and helmets on the ground; they also dressed in matching patriotic
saris on their birthdays, whereas boys wore battle dress, drew battle scenes, and
played “Kargil war.”
That some of these tokens of national allegiance may be part of an endeavor
to “please the teacher” is a possibility, although not an exclusive certainty. At
any rate, it is significant that pupils of various ages, in the two years that fol-
lowed the Kargil events and in tune with the general atmosphere prevalent in
wider society—including at home—partook in their own ways of the ongoing
war effort and of the war culture thus daily reactivated. In these times fraught
with patriotic emotionality, this war culture provided them with a most fertile
training ground for zealous citizenship and active participation. Furthermore,
this national patriotic landscape is also a regional one that calls for further ex-
ploration: Maharashtra was apparently the only state in the country where such
 Introduction 17

national fervor ever engulfed the citizenry to such a prominent and visible ex-
tent, as several observers testified in other parts of India at the time. As we shall
see in Chapter 4, this national war culture drew on the rich and multilayered
one that constituted the production of locality. For the moment, however, I
delineate the remaining theoretical premises of this exploration.

Sensitive Subjects: Education and

Nationalism in Everyday Life
In its “modern” materialization as an institutionalized system of knowledge
production and transmission supported by a curriculum and a schooling sys-
tem, formal education has long been of interest for political scientists, soci-
ologists, economists, and developmental planners (Rudolph and Rudolph 1972;
Jeffery and Basu 1996; Jeffery and Jeffery 1996). Sociologists in their studies of
schooling have devoted most of their attention to an understanding of social
reproduction, whether of the elite or of particular types of discrimination (so-
cial, racial, ethnic, and so on). By contrast, anthropology has relegated the field
of education to its margins, largely confining it to education departments and
colleges. For the most part, the work thus produced (Spindler 1955, 1982, 1987;
Heath 1972, 1983; Spindler and Spindler 2000) has had little effect on the long
tradition of anthropology in the (former) colonies, occupying itself instead
with informal systems of knowledge transmission until recently.
Former generations of anthropologists primarily concerned with nonin-
dustrial societies, where mass educational systems did not exist, were predomi-
nantly attracted to traditional areas of cultures—however constructed these
were—and focused on informal structures of knowledge transmission and
socialization processes, including initiation and life-cycle rituals. Long under-
girding anthropologists’ primeval concern with the study of pristine cultures
and societies was a regime of authenticity in the discipline that prevented en-
visaging such postcolonial educational projects as truly authentic. Only today,
a long time after postcolonial societies began to build a national system of
education since their independence, have anthropologists begun turning their
gaze to these societies to some effect (Scrase 1993; Levinson, Foley, and Holland
1996; Stambach 2000; Hall 2002; Sarangapani 2003; Kaplan 2006).8
This book, then, explores the most banal, ordinary dimensions of embod-
ied and emotional nationalism integral to educational processes in a modern
­nation-state today. It does so from an anchorage in the western regional state
of Maharashtra, namely, the locality of Kolhapur in the late 1990s and early
18  Introduction

2000s. The gaze, however, does not limit itself to the state’s representatives
alone, here, the teachers. Instead, it attaches itself to the idioms through which
ordinary actors make meaning of their everyday political world by focusing
on issues of identity construction in relation to the locality, the region, and
the nation. How urban middle- and lower-class citizens of all faiths negotiate
the processes of self-making at individual and collective levels in a thus far
“secular state” constituted by an overwhelming Hindu population forms the
main background interrogation. The regimentation of bodies crucial to this
production in fact pervades the entire space of school as well as the quotidian
routine punctuating the lives of many pupils, in India as in most nation-states.
For this reason, attention must be paid to all of the minutiae of daily life at
school, as well as to all extracurricular activities, ranging from school trips to
annual events such as competitions and parents’ gatherings. These also form
an important part of the regular production of identifications and deep at-
tachments through the “cultural artefacts of nationalism” (Anderson 1991: 4)
in primary schools in western India. Some clarification regarding the formal
educational system is in order.

Educating Citizens in Postindependence India and Maharashtra State

Education in India is a matter of both central and state policy. General guide-
lines produced by the National Centre for Education, Research and Train-
ing (NCERT) in New Delhi pertain to the aims and objectives of education
and to the curricula to be evolved for different stages of schooling.9 The last
guidelines evolved by NCERT came out in 1992 and are still based on the 1988
report. In the 1980s a major change was made to the national goals of educa-
tion.10 Whereas the National Policy of 1968 was first and foremost aimed at
promoting “national progress, a sense of common citizenship and culture, and
[at] strengthen[ing] national integration,” that of 1988 stressed how education
should “contribute to national cohesion, a scientific temper and independence
of mind and spirit—thus further[ing] the goals of socialism, secularism and
democracy enshrined in our Constitution.” The last three goals mentioned
refer to political modes of governance that have increasingly come under attack
since the 1980s, as the Congress government and party started losing ground
to Hindu nationalist movements. Officials drawing up national recommenda-
tions may therefore have felt it necessary at the time to restate those previously
taken-for-granted goals. Subsequent events have proved them right.
From the moment that the pro-Hindutva Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
 Introduction 19

came to power in Delhi in 1997 until its defeat in the elections of May 2004,
the central government was repeatedly subject to pressures from the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to give its policies an explicitly Hindu slant (Benei
2001b). This included the application of a yoga-cum-Sanskrit-cum-ethical edu-
cation scheme throughout India (Kesari 1998) with a view to building a “strong
nation,” proud of its rich Hindu heritage and ready to defend it by physical
force. The RSS also demanded that the central government issue guidelines
to all academic institutions, making it mandatory to display photographs of
“national heroes” who had contributed to the “building of the Indian nation,”
specifically Hindutva ideologues such as V. D. Savarkar (see Savarkar 1999 for a
presentation of his political program). Pressures in the educational field proved
mostly unsuccessful in the first years, partly because of the renewed opposi-
tion of secular parties. The Hindu right, however, made further inroads into
higher educational bodies and institutions at the NCERT. After infiltrating the
NCERT, the central government started putting into action its plan of revising
the entire national curriculum framework for education (Rajalakshmi 2000).
It proposed substantive alterations to the existing system, overemphasizing re-
ligious (Hindu) education “as opposed to education about religions,” together
with an “overplay of the importance of indigenous education without giving a
coherent critique of the perceived dangers of globalisation, an overdose of na-
tional identity bordering on jingoism, and an attempt to highlight the need to
redefine the existing understanding of secularism” (92–93).
States, however, do enjoy a right of autonomy in educational matters and
may decide whether or not to follow the national recommendations. This right
explains why particular kinds of politically or religiously influenced curricula
have long existed in some states, such as in the northern Hindi belt over which
the RSS has had a strong influence for decades (Kumar 1992). The continual
tension existing between central and state policies also reflects the difficulty
that a federal state like India has to face with respect to the simultaneous con-
struction of a nation and strong regional states. Arguably, the kind of nation
desired by the state determines the kind of education it imparts, not only at the
national level but even more so at the regional one. An emphasis on the nation-
state nevertheless does not necessarily imply opposition to regionalism, as can
be seen from the Maharashtrian case.
The state of Maharashtra was governed by a “saffron-colored” BJP–Shiv Sena
coalition from 1995 to 1999.11 From the time the coalition came to power in
March 1995, it carried out various social and economic schemes, accompanied
20 Introduction

by a hardened “sons-of-the-soil” drive, at times nearly assuming the form of

ethnic cleansing primarily targeted at Muslims but also at Indians hailing from
other regions (Hansen 2001; Eckert 2003). Most of the official schemes failed,
which further strengthened the xenophobic attitude of the saffron coalition
and its supporters. In the educational field, however, evaluating the success of
BJP–Shiv Sena policy proved more difficult. The government’s power regard-
ing educational matters is theoretically circumscribed by that of separate bodies
such as the Maharashtra State Centre for Educational Research and Training
(MSCERT) and the Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production and
Curriculum Research, otherwise known in Marathi as Patthya Pustak Mandal
or Bal Bharati, after the name of the building that houses it in Pune.12 It receives
its directives from the MSCERT, whose autonomous status keeps it free from
any possible pressure from the state government, unlike educational admin-
istrations in some other states, such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and
Bihar. Government control over these two bodies would therefore be a rather
unlikely prerequisite for significant transformation of the school curriculum in
Maharashtra.
Yet the changes that occurred at the time seemed more ambiguous. The
BJP–Shiv Sena government implemented measures voted in by the previous
Congress government, although there is reason to believe that the Statewide
Massive and Rigorous Training for Primary Teachers (SMART PT) program
conducted in the late 1990s, supposedly according to the last NCERT recom-
mendations (1988), was also given a definite RSS twist (Benei 2001b). The con-
tents of the new textbooks showed a much more nationalist and xenophobic
bias. In addition, the pro-Hindutva state of Maharashtra was first in promot-
ing the dissemination of yoga classes, before similar pro-Hindutva educational
­attempts later took place at the central level. No less significant, bearing in
mind the crucial place ascribed by RSS ideologues to (pseudo-)military train-
ing, was the Maharashtra government decision to carry a military schooling
project one step further. The project was started in 1996 and invited applications
from local educational societies for the creation of “A Military School in Every
District” (Pratyek jilhyat sainiki shala), as explained in the posters sent to each
school throughout the regional state. As we shall see, however, such a project
did not appeal solely to the Hindutva coalition government (Chapter 6). The
projection of a strong, disciplined, fully fledged modern citizen reflected in the
mirror of Maharashtrian society at large. The extent to which the institution of
school is a meaningful one in Maharashtra now requires specification.
 Introduction 21

Of Total Institutions and Unclosed Spaces

School today has become a privileged site where ideas and practices about so-
cialization are both produced and transmitted. Even for young children at an
early age, patterns of authority and models of behavior are now jointly pro-
duced by both family members (whether parents or other elders) and teach-
ers. Consequently, rather than a “total institution” in the Goffmanian sense of
closure entailed by the formulation, school here is envisaged as constantly open
and in dialogue with other institutions and society at large (see Srivastava 1998
for a similar argument). What takes place within schools both reflects and in-
forms wider conceptions and debates, including those pertaining to the local-
ity, the region, and the nation. At times, school may even amplify some of these
debates, as illustrated by the repercussions, in primary schools in Kolhapur,
from the Pokhran nuclear tests of May 1998 and the Kargil war of April–July
1999. Upon my return six months after the war, I certainly did not anticipate
such a display of patriotism so far away from the scene of conflict. Clearly,
a “Kargil syndrome” was lingering. Particularly noteworthy was the consen-
sus in the views and attitudes of teachers and parents. Here was a matter of
uncompromising, viscerally anchored national pride. There seemed to be no
question among adults—including Muslims—that celebrating the Indian vic-
tory in Kargil and the spirit of fighting and war with young children might have
been counterproductive to achieving the otherwise professed goal of a peace-
ful Indian democracy. On the contrary, views concurred on the desirability of
building a “strong” nation in the most concrete sense of the word, a view con-
gruent with that shared by many Hindutva followers, as is well known. While
disrupting commonly dichotomous understandings of secular and religious
nationalism (Chapter 1), this congruence of parents’, teachers’, and children’s (to
a lesser extent) views with those of Hindu nationalists confirms the need for an
articulation of life at school with life in society at large.
Furthermore, school is also a particular kind of space in metaphorical, figu-
rative, and empirical senses. Although its physicality is rarely evoked, the speci-
ficity of school reflects in its space being enclosed within gates and grids. Its
buildings—frequently made of unappealing square concrete blocks—are often
the tallest, largest, or most visible in a neighborhood, to the extent that they are
used as landmarks for directions. As such, school is not just a space for learn-
ing and official education but one of the most omnipotent manifestations of
the state in people’s lives and/or surroundings that powerfully inserts itself into
the imaginaries of social actors, whether literate and “educated” or not. As an
22  Introduction

icon of state modernity whose contours are delineated in contrast to the rest
of the ordinary everyday, school, then, crucially marks the quotidian reality of
social actors. It also forms part of a continuum of spaces between home and
more public spaces, as illustrated by the fact that even though enclosed, school
is rarely shut off, even physically, from the rest of social space: grids are kept
ajar, and gates are often wide open, even during school hours. This material
flexibility best illustrates the lability and ambiguity of the space of school as
clearly marked off as different, autonomous, endowed with authority and state
legitimacy, yet also made, reappropriated, and inhabited by social actors, teach-
ers, children, and to a lesser extent, parents.
In documenting the visions and practices of nationhood and citizenship
that ordinary social actors forge and reshape in their daily dealings with state
primary schooling, and bearing in mind the importance of culture in pro-
cesses of state formation and operation (Steinmetz 1999), this book pays due
attention to the ways in which schooling as a state apparatus feeds upon and
into cultural processes and attachments, drawing upon existing structures of
feeling and material constitutive of ordinary social actors’ repertoires of pub-
lic culture and popular knowledge. At the same time, it shows how school-
ing reshapes these repertoires in a process attuned with dominant ongoing
narratives within wider society while crystallizing these narratives. In such a
naturalizing process, this crystallized knowledge acquires further authentic-
ity and legitimacy while being reappropriated by social actors. Central to this
reappropriation are bodily practices and emotions.

Toward a Phenomenological Anthropology

of the Body and Emotions in the Political
If national unity is maintained and produced by a daily routine rather than by
a “vague [and] intermittent . . . allegiance to a civil state” (Geertz 1973: 260),
this routine implies more than mere bodily disciplining of pupils. It involves
the joint, intricately imbricated production of cultural and political schemata
together with bodily experience. Drawing on Raymond Williams’s notion of
“structures of feeling,” understood as never a given but constantly reshaped—
consciously as much as unconsciously—by social actors in the course of ordi-
nary life, I aim to demonstrate how bodily experience is itself constituted by
cultural and political schemata.13
A large corpus of work on the anthropology of the body has been brought
to light over the past decade. Some of it has documented the bodily techniques
 Introduction 23

and affective dispositions related to “the inscription upon bodily habits of dis-
ciplines of self-control and practices of group discipline, often tied up with the
state and its interests” (Appadurai 1996: 148). Yet, rarely have these practices
of citizenship manufacturing (Benei 2005a) been approached phenomeno-
logically, discussing bodies from an anchorage in empirical reality, and least
of all in relation to political imagination (although see Feldman 1991). When
they have entered discussion, bodies mostly served as testamentary bearers of
exactions and atrocities committed upon them. More rarely have they been
envisaged prior to the eruption of violence—ethnic or otherwise—as constitu-
tive parts toward the production not solely of social and cultural persons but
also of political, and especially national, ones. The very political socialization
of these bodies right from infancy remains to be documented. In attempting
such documentation, this book seeks to offer an understanding of the “sense of
psychic, and embodied, rage” attendant on the “sentiments of ethnic violence”
whose meaning lies “within large-scale formations of ideology, imagination,
and discipline” (Appadurai 1996: 149) and that are not exhausted by cognition.
To reach such an understanding, I explore the symbolic and affective dimen-
sions of political emotions, drawing on, and departing from, existing work on
the anthropology of bodies, emotions, and language.
In an ambitious article about liberty and political emotions, Reddy (1999)
argued that the social “constructedness” so often highlighted in recent anthro-
pological works did not leave much room for agency and individuality, let
alone liberty. In the case of political emotions, and especially those multiscalar
attachments whose production I seek to document, the issue is further com-
plicated by the fact that we are dealing with endeavors of an explicitly collec-
tive sort, that is, national projects and nation building. This entails achieving a
delicate balance of exploring the collective, cultural, and social dimensions of
these emotional political projects while giving voice to individualities and their
variously idiosyncratic understandings of these projects. The most promising
tool for achieving such an equilibristic construction is a phenomenological one.
Recourse to it stems from the recognition of the inadequacy of paradigms used
in sociological research on violence that are largely dominated by a causation
model. An uncritical “scientific hunt for causation” (Whitehead 2004: 55, cited
in Staudigl 2005: 4) has prevented acknowledging the “corporeality, the non-
instrumental expressivity or ‘senselessness’ of violence as integral parts of this
phenomenon.” By contrast, moving away from any causational explanations
and reinstating the phenomenological dimension of lived experience enable
24  Introduction

one to register other levels of embodied emotional experience that may—or

may not—be harnessed into the production of violence, as well as to delineate
its collective, social, and cultural framework (Chapter 2). Hence, in the chapters
that follow, the two central notions developed are those of “sensorium” and
“embodiment.”

Sensorium and Embodiment: Producing Visceral Senses of Belonging

Several years ago I discussed in a preliminary article the public liturgies start-
ing each school day in this part of Maharashtra (Benei 2001b) and ended with
a reflection on their “experiential specificity of effects” (Csordas 1994). I pon-
dered whether the children also get transformed in the process of chanting
the liturgies and to what extent. What bearing did singing, chanting, and cal-
isthenics have upon both the students’ individual bodies and on the collective
school body thus produced and incorporated concomitantly with the national
one (Chapter 1)? I argued then that through this public worship of the nation,
children were simultaneously creating their physical and emotional selves and
enacting and embodying “India” into existence. Children, in other words, were
phenomenologically taught to “feel” the nation within their own bodies.
This reflexive attempt was met with some skepticism at the time. The ques-
tion of practice efficiency was often raised in the ensuing discussions: Did these
daily ritualized iterations, as well as the constant rhetoric of nationalism that
suffused daily life at school, really succeed in ingraining a sentiment of de-
votion and loyalty to the nation in these kids? What puzzled me were both
the formulation and the content of the question. Anthropology, and the other
­social sciences to varying extents, are disciplines marked by various works that
have reinstated the body as a primary medium for socialization, whether in the
sense of a disciplining documented by Foucault or along Bourdieu’s notions
of habitus and bodily hexis inspired by Mauss’s foundational text on bodily
techniques.14 That socialization does take place largely through social actors’
bodies—however these are to be defined and located, socially, culturally, his-
torically, and politically—has now become commonplace. The question of effi-
ciency, therefore, seemed both inappropriate and unproductive. Inappropriate
because it smacked of antiquated positivism and functionalism and summarily
brushed aside heuristic epistemologies constitutive of the social sciences in the
past decades. Unproductive because, if this kind of question were to be asked at
all, it may well have been so of any other process of socialization falling within
the purview of anthropological inquiry. What of class and gender, for instance?
 Introduction 25

No scholar today would deny the respective embodied dimensions of either

class or gender. So why question so vehemently the embodied dimension of
nationalism? I shall return to this in Chapter 2.
Here, I want to draw attention to the “commonsense” notion of personal
experiences of schooling that we, as academics, feel entitled to draw upon in
our scholarly discussions. These discussions are almost inexorably drawn back
to a kind of natural positivism: “Does it work?” is relentlessly asked. So com-
ments of the following type may often be heard: “According to my school expe-
rience, it doesn’t work: I was made to sing the national anthem every day of my
student life, and this has not turned me into a blind and stupid, emotional pa-
triot.” Beyond a somewhat naive conception of pragmatics, whereby the “work
of culture” (Obeyesekere 1990) and society might only be approached through
explicit discourse, it is significant that the same proponents of such bold decla-
rations would often privately confess later on that “each time [they] heard the
national anthem, whether [they] liked it or not, it gave [them] the creeps.” In
some ways, these testimonies inadvertently point to the crucial dimension of
the formation of a patriotic attachment as embodied emotions of national be-
longing nurtured over time. The emotional and corporeal dimensions inherent
in the construction of national attachment in Maharashtra form the main focus
in this book. In studying the various registers of expression of emotions and
emotional practices, I document the articulation of the production of political
emotions with language ideologies that play a central role in the functioning of
particular institutions of power such as schooling (Schieffelin, Woolard, and
Kroskrity 1998: vii).
In my attempt to articulate bodies, languages, and emotions, I expand fur-
ther on the notion of “sensorium,” introduced by Walter Benjamin in his ­Arcades
Project (1999). As is now well known, Benjamin was fascinated by the technolo-
gization and commodification of things characteristic of nineteenth-century
European modernity, the former of which, he claimed, generated a new apper-
ception of the urban, industrialized world, a new way of being into this world.
What, for instance, characterized the three figures of the flâneur, the gambler,
and the collector in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Paris, Benjamin
argued, was their “reception in distraction,” that is, the fact that all three are
“touched and inspired” by “the world’s scatter”: “they spend themselves and ex-
pand themselves in being dispersed to the current of objects. And their recep-
tion in distraction . . . is not merely visual but tactile and visceral; it involves their
whole sensorium” (Eiland 2005: 11, emphasis added). These three figures, with
26  Introduction

those of the ragpicker, the sandwich man, the street-corner boy, the dandy, and
the prostitute, “embodied new human capacities and reactions to stimuli in the
metropolitan street,” especially in relation to the “new ‘haptic’ and ‘optic’ envi-
ronment of the big city” (Benjamin, cited in Lloyd 2002). Thus, new subjectivi-
ties developed out of the “complex kind of training” to which “technology has
subjected the human senses” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
ries. Although Benjamin at times insisted on the variegated dimensions of this
new sensory disposition, at other times he also seemed to place more emphasis
on the gaze and the visual aspect of modern apperception. Since then, many
scholars of modernity have made passing references to the notion of sensorium
without elaborating on it, and they, too, have mostly concentrated on sight.
Sight, as is well known, is considered to have played a pivotal role in the
realization of “Western modernity” (Latour 1986; Ong 1991). Singling out the
visual sense, however, operates within a sensory stratification and specializa-
tion whose counterpoint often is the repression of other perceptual disposi-
tions (Feldman 1994; Seremetakis 1994). It obfuscates the fact that sight is only
one of the senses involved in a general apperception of the modern world and
the construction of a modern political subject, as shown by the works of his-
torians and anthropologists that reinstated the other senses.15 While drawing
on these approaches, throughout the book I revisit and redeploy the notion of
sensorium as entire sensory apparatus, especially by locating and illuminating
various historical, social, and cultural sensory configurations and mediations
participating in the formation of senses of regional and national belonging.
The notions of sensorium and embodiment are especially deployed in an
examination of two powerful resources for the production of incorporated
senses of belonging to locality, region, and nation: namely, the sensitive subjects
of language and history.16 Chapter 2 focuses on the production of attachment
through language ideology and its incorporation; Chapters 3 and 4 document
the gendered production of a continuum between home, school, and nation,
as well as that of locality and historiography, respectively. Central here is the
notion of embodiment or incorporation, which presupposes that one cannot
distinguish the contents of the process from the process itself, as the two are mu-
tually produced. Incorporation refers to the formation of a habitus that not only
has to do with corporeal practices but also conjures up socially and culturally
produced emotional, sensory, and cognitive resources enabling interiorization
of the self. Thus, the manufacturing of interiority and embodiment cannot be
dissociated from that of a collective regional and national self. If the notions of
 Introduction 27

sensorium and embodiment may at first glance appear somewhat far-fetched

in the consideration of nationalism, I aim to show that they are in fact central
to an understanding of the production of political attachment. By answering
the questions of how people come to substantialize and bond with their nation,
how they become passionate in its defense or praise and express their senses of
belonging, this book sheds light on how passions of belonging come into exis-
tence and acquire such central import in people’s senses of self.

Of Sociological Parameters, Writing Experiments,

and “Historicality”
In more ways than one, this choice of focus is the product of a writing pro-
cess that spanned several years and that bears elaboration. First, this writing
process has theoretical and analytical consequences, highlighting particular
dimensions of self-making while leaving others in the shadows. This obtains
of a more sociological dimension relegated to the margins, especially a treat-
ment of parental strategies and school choices in relation to economic oppor-
tunities and political affiliations and leanings. Such a marginalization was also
dictated by empirical fact: at the level of primary instruction and save in the
case of minorities (Chapter 5; Benei 2005c), most parents opted for the school
closest to their homes. They did so especially if the school had a good, or
decent enough, reputation. This disconcertingly crude finding was common
among Marathi-­speaking parents of children attending corporation schools
(although in this case, economic considerations also played an important
part) as well as those in privately run schools. Political preferences, much to
my disappointment, did not appear as a primary motivator for most parents of
children attending Marathi schools (at the time of research, an overwhelming
84 percent of children attended Marathi-medium schools). Of course, such a
bare fact neither exhausts the analysis of differential strategies occasionally
existing even within the same family nor dispenses one from a sociological
analysis in its own right. The same is true of a more thorough discussion of
class and caste in relation to the (re)production of social inequalities within
schooling, despite some treatment of the issue throughout the book.17 The
military school discussed in Chapter 6, as much as the differential languages
of instruction and the very existence of privately run schools, point to the
crucial dimension of class in the production of schooled identities.18 A simi-
lar point may be made of caste, also a major object of sociological inquiry
in studies of social system and schooling in India, especially in relation to
28  Introduction

unequal access to schooling facilities (Nambissan 2003; Subrahmanian et al.

2003). It is true that caste today forms an important part in the production
of identity markers, including in the most extreme forms of—conscious and
unconscious—Hindu-inflected or Hindu-sympathetic behavior. This book
nevertheless presents only basic contextualizing data throughout the chap-
ters inasmuch as my project is less concerned with hierarchy than with the
production of a “common substance,” a shared “essence of belonging.” Rather
than reiterate the importance of caste in contemporary India, then, this book
wants to lay emphasis on shared icons, signs, and substances (Daniel 1984) of
nationality. It seeks to document a process that cuts across classes and castes
and speaks to each and every individual about both his or her sense of be-
longing to locality, region, and nation and sense of entitlement to being part
of a national community. In regard to the latter, predominant divisions con-
structed and reshaped within the context of school along the lines of “faith”
appear to have acquired much more visibility and disruptive potential.
Second, this book to a certain extent represents an experiment with writing
anthropology. As often happens, the project at a given moment seems to take
on a life of its own, deviating from its intended course. Remarkably, whereas
this aleatory character is generously invoked in the phase of fieldwork—the
literature abounds with examples of researchers gone to the field to investigate
political parties and who came back with a full study of village rituals, or vice
versa—it becomes more suspicious at the time of “writing up the material.”
The “empirical facts” are now there to be presented, according to a more or less
fixed storyboard. Where chance and contingency had received pride of place,
they are no longer personae gratae. Anything that may appear too distractive
from the initial synopsis is oftentimes ruthlessly put aside, “for later.” In some
ways, this book falls prey to this predicament. For in the course of writing and
regularly browsing through the wealth of material accumulated over the years,
I often felt I was not doing justice to the richness and texture, the depth and sig-
nificance of the lives of all the people met over the length of this research. Fur-
thermore, each time I looked back on the original synopsis, I was also struck by
the distance gradually widening between the imagined project and its written
materialization, a result of serendipitous readings and encounters that changed
the course of thinking and writing.
Though liberating as it was, such a free, open writing process had another
unintended consequence. The divide in the book is unequal between teach-
ers—the most prominent—parents, and children, despite the research project
 Introduction 29

revolving around the latter as main targets of educational and other socializa-
tion processes, including political.19 The overall difficult conditions of obser-
vation in cramped and overcrowded classrooms called for a predominantly
collective form of interaction with the pupils at school. My keen interest in
observing the “spontaneous” eruption of national and regional affect in every-
day life was also matched by a sheer reticence at artificially provoking such an
eruption by engaging in the question-and-answer interview of the type prac-
ticed in the few available studies concerned with children’s understandings of
the political (Percheron 1974; Connell 1975; Coles 1986). Consequently, unless
students brought up the discussion in one way or another, I avoided prompt-
ing them about my own topics of interest even while with them outside school.
If such self-restraint made fieldwork more challenging and uncertain, it also
allowed more spontaneous expression and richness of material. At the time
of writing, however, I found myself in a predicament as to how to reintroduce
children’s voices in the chapters’ narratives as these had gradually shaped up.
To be sure, I could have shifted the projectors’ lights onto the pupils within the
chapters themselves. This was done to a certain extent: although pupils’ agency
is not always foregrounded, it operates as a running thread throughout, en-
hanced by means of writing techniques ranging from dialogues to depictions of
classroom observation, to third-person reconstitutions. Yet more was needed
in light of the original project. Indeed, I wanted to demonstrate and document
how even at a young age, children are already not just “imbibing” knowledge
and information, contrary to the many pronouncements of pedagogy still ex-
tant in Indian primary schools even today. Rather, children process knowledge
and information and develop understandings of things political, though frag-
mentary these may be.
Encouraging evidence in the respective cases of Australian and North
American children (Connell 1975; Coles 1986) had demonstrated that children
do relate to the political world they live in, even if sketchily, and even at ages
early as five and six; some of the details they mention about real politics may
be mere scraps, variously woven into narratives about their everyday lives and
imaginations. If they do not have a conception of politics as a distinct sphere
of activity, children are able to make meaning of political life. What sense,
then, did they make of the Kashmir events that gripped the “Maharashtrian
nation”? How were they affected? How did they express their interest—or lack
thereof—in the topic? We encountered some answers to these questions ear-
lier; other answers were meaningfully provided by drawings, a technique long
30 Introduction

used by child psychoanalysts, from Melanie Klein to Robert Coles. Drawings,

together with the commentaries children offer on them, may serve as windows
into their worlds, imaginings, and understandings. Whether drawn upon my
request or spontaneously, or even already made in their sketchbooks prior to
my visits to the school, pupils’ drawings show that children indeed process
much more political information than is often acknowledged, which demon-
strates their autonomy as agents. Far from furthering a vision of children as
passive recipients, this pictorial evidence suggests that they are also very ac-
tive in, as it were, the manufacturing of nationhood and citizenship. There
remained, however, the issue of incorporation of these drawings in the book.
Were they to be the object of a separate chapter pontificating on theories of
childhood socialization and psychoanalytic interpretations? This ran the risk
of once again muting children’s own voices through overly academic appro-
priation. So another experiment appeared necessary. It requires elaboration,
and to begin with, a brief foray into the implications of this project as, willy-
nilly, a state-related one.
In a critical essay published in 2002, Ranajit Guha, well-known founder
of subaltern studies history, engaged with what he called the “statist predica-
ment of South Asian historiography” (74). Such a predicament, he claimed, was
characterized by the haunting gaze of the nation-state looming ever so large
over historical narratives purportedly describing Indians’ everyday lives. The
categories of “worker,” “citizen,” and “woman” used by historians have an un-
fortunate effect: that of inescapably reinscribing people’s lives within the narra-
tives of the state while flattening out the “historicality” of their experiences. By
this, taking his cue from Rabindranath Tagore’s essay on the same (see Guha’s
appendix for a translation), Guha meant much more than what the historian
can usually grasp in her or his scientific-minded factual accounts: “multiplic-
ity and singularity, complexity and simplicity, regularity and unpredictability
of ” a human’s being in time and being with others (46). Such historicality, as
might be expected, is best captured by literature and fiction.20 Although it is
not my purpose to give an account of the richness of Guha’s essay, here I want
to both engage with his statist stance and vindicate his take on historicality.21
On the one hand, as justly remarked by Chakrabarty, Guha’s critique of the
“aspirations of the masses to statehood and to state-centred identities” (2004:
129) relegates to oblivion the fact that the state does play a fundamental part in
people’s ordinary lives, from delivering ration cards, to supplying postal and
other services or organizing chaotic elections, and as important, to providing
 Introduction 31

basic elementary education. On the other hand, any narrative of life in a state
institution, precisely because it is located in that particular space, is bound to be
caught in the webs of shortcomings entangled in the “statist predicament.” The
present book is an obvious case in point, even though I have attempted in some
of the chapters (especially Chapter 3) to lift the statist veil of people’s lives and
suggest a much fuller and richer complexity. Still, more was needed in regard to
the children being central to this project.
Here is the experimenting. Between chapters written in a more academic
style, I have interspersed “interludes.” These consist of my own reflections on
extracurricular activities (e.g., “On Drawing,” “Drawing Gender, Drawing War,”
“Of Inspirations and Aspirations”) and what I have called “moments of suspen-
sion” (in an interlude of the same title) as well as, crucially, of vignettes made
of children’s drawings and narratives. These vignettes are meant to operate as
contrapuntal voices, as in a musical score. They provide an avenue for bestow-
ing more visibility on children in the entire project. In addition, they open up a
wider space for the expression of their agency in the processing of information,
knowledge, and more largely of socialization. Even as some of these voices are
narrativized (e.g., “National Anthem and Other Life Stories,” “Drawing Gen-
der, Drawing War”), they make heard vocalizations on the pupils’ everyday lives
in general, and their social, cultural, emotional, and political surroundings in
particular. They are expressions of both disillusionment and resignation, and
excitement and aspirations. These voices also offer a decentering of adults’ regi-
mentation techniques rather than a parroting of them. Moreover, some of the
narratives are written in the first person, whereas others borrow from the stream-
of-consciousness Joycean technique (although there is much more punctuation
here than in Molly Bloom’s famous closing chapter in Ulysses). The experiment-
ing goes even further inasmuch as these children’s voices are fictional. Already
in the process of interacting, observing, and transcribing empirical facts and
gathering material, subjectivity—even when subdued and muted—is so fun-
damental to anthropological practice that whatever account we may give is de
facto fictional.22 Furthermore, these voices are fictional in the sense that they
do not all emanate from a single, unique individual. Although most of them
do, some are the product of collages of “real” voices and moments shared in the
course of fieldwork with children in and out of school, within the classroom, at
lunchtime, during recess, after school, at home, and so on. These latter voices are
“reconstructions,” assemblages if you will, of comments and expressions of feel-
ings and sensitivities encountered in my interaction with “real people” made of
32  Introduction

real flesh, bones, and much else. For instance, the Sunila presented in one of the
vignettes is a combination of several female pupils (“Drawing Gender, Drawing
War”). I am aware of my own background, a “white”—though mixed—predom-
inantly European one with the privileges and limitations entailed by this loca-
tion, and the bearing it may have on my attempts to convey what a Sunila sees
in a Mohina Bai as a window onto wider horizons; horizons extending beyond
the shanty dwellings of a dark, minuscule, damp, and hot single room for a fam-
ily of seven in a slum in Kolhapur. Yet this endeavor is neither about romantic
voyeurism nor about redeeming expiation for an easier material life. What it is
about is uncovering the historicality of ordinary life, revealing the vibrant space
of human doubts, fears, worries, and uncertainties, as well as enjoyment, aspira-
tions, longings, and desires, through “coaxing up images of the real” (Ortner
1995: 190). It is now time to situate the scene of these emotions and affects in
greater depth.

Situating the Context: Maratha Historical

Legacy and Social Reform Movements
Set along the western industrial corridor linking the regional state capital of
Mumbai to that of Bangalore in Karnataka, the town of Kolhapur today is fa-
mous for its recently built industries, ranging from sugarcane to mechanics to
engineering, as well as its leather shoes, gold jewelry, and inordinately spicy
cuisine. But there is much more to Kolhapur than meets a hurried traveler’s eye.
Even amid the fumes of buses, trucks, cars, and scooters noisily plying its busy
roads and congested center, the town has an unmistakable languor. It is the lan-
guor of a friendly provincial town “still human size” (by Indian standards), and
of a welcoming Mahalakshmi temple.23 It is also a somewhat aristocratic languor
that attaches itself to the parks, buildings, and former palaces. For ­Kolhapur
was an independent kingdom until 1949, before merging with the then state
of Bombay. So the town possesses a rich historical heritage on several counts.
It traces its genealogy back to Śivājī Bhonsale, the seventeenth-century hero-
warrior and founder of the “Maratha nation” (Chapter 4), and its more recent
past of non-Brahmin movements in the nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies also has made it a stronghold of social reform in southern ­Maharashtra
(Zelliot 1970; Copland 1973; Omvedt 1976; Mudaliar 1978; ­Kavlekar 1979; Gore
1989). The former kingdom today is particularly known for its advancement of
lower castes and classes and for the promotion of education among the poorest
population at the turn of the twentieth century under the aegis of Chhatrapati
 Introduction 33

Shahu Maharaj (Copland 1973; Kavlekar 1979; Sangave and Khane 1994; Benei
1997). The chhatrapati himself is revered as a great, enlightened ruler who do-
nated much land and money to the building of educational institutions, from
schools to hostels and boarding lodges. Such a predominantly Maratha and
Maharashtrian non-Brahmin background offered a welcome contrast to that
of its rival city, the historically influential Peshwa Brahmin-dominated Pune,
stronghold of the Maratha Empire from the late seventeenth to the early nine-
teenth century. Deemed “educational headquarters” from the days of the Bom-
bay presidency in the nineteenth century, Pune was at the heart of educational
innovations and policies under the British. This legacy reflects in the number of
colleges and famous Orientalist institutions known the world over, even today.
In comparison to the Puneite intellectual heritage, Kolhapuris would often
qualify themselves with some embarrassment as “not as refined,” especially in
their mastery of the Marathi language.24 Immediately nullifying such a confes-
sion, however, would follow a claim to Kolhapuri distinctiveness predicated on
a strong “Maratha culture” encompassing all Maratha-allied and lower Hindu
castes in Maharashtra. For all these reasons, Kolhapur held the promise of a
fascinating location of inquiry where differential notions and practices of edu-
cation could be hypothesized to exist. If education was to be less Brahminized,
more ecumenical, and less Hindu oriented, Kolhapur would be the place. Yet
my fieldwork experience revealed otherwise.
To be sure, social welfare policies were inaugurated by Chhatrapati Shahu
Maharaj at the turn of the twentieth century. A dense network of privately
initiated and run educational institutions also started in the wake of social
reform movements that spread across this part of Maharashtra (Benei 1997,
2001b). Nonetheless, even thirty years ago those entering the profession of
schoolteacher in Kolhapur overwhelmingly belonged to Brahmin and urban
middle-class Maratha literate families of the surrounding region: very few
were of the Maratha-allied and Scheduled castes. Only in the last fifteen to
twenty years has the voluntarist policy of “universal education” conducted by
the regional state over several decades finally yielded significant results in this
domain. Many of the young teachers belonging to Maratha-allied and Sched-
uled castes today are first-generation graduates, with parents and grandpar-
ents that are half-literate small farmers or laborers.25 The local educational
fabric in Kolhapur is largely made of urban lower-middle- and middle-class
society, of which primary schoolteachers are probably among the most telling
representatives.
34  Introduction

Both as agents of the state and ordinary citizens, primary schoolteachers

occupy a particular position in the participating in and making of ordinary,
banal nationhood. In their professional capacity as representatives of the state,
teachers do play a prominent role as social actors. In a country where an aver-
age of two-thirds of the total population is literate (over 75 percent in Maha-
rashtra and almost 80 percent in Kolhapur, per Census of India [2001]), their
social, economic, and professional capital endows them with a moral authority
that may become instrumental in shaping pupils’ and parents’ attitudes on vari-
ous matters, including national. Whether belonging to Brahmin and Maratha-
allied castes, non-Hindu or lower castes and classes, teachers at school often
played a most vocal part in the patriotic upbringing of children, at times relay-

Map of India showing Kashmir, Maharashtra, and Karnataka.

source: Courtesy of Tsering Wangyal Shawa, Geographic Information Systems Librarian Head, Digital
Map and Geospatial Information Center, Geosciences and Map Library, Princeton University.
 Introduction 35

ing regional and national messages, at other times publicly voicing their per-
sonal opinions. This was so in all five schools where most of the research was
conducted: the two old schools located in the heart of town, Varsity Marathi
School and Modern Marathi School, famous for their long Hindu orienta-
tion and a staff who predominantly belonged to upper and middle castes and
classes; the most progressive and ecumenical All India Marathi School; and the
two corporation-run institutions (one Marathi, hereafter “Marathi Corpora-
tion School,” and one Urdu, hereafter “Urdu Corporation School”) located in
the Sachar Bazar area on the outskirts of town, where a large number of lower-
middle- and middle-class and -caste teachers worked.
What was more perplexing to me, however, was how my hypotheses were to
be confuted. Brahmins, although distinctly cultivating difference, claimed an inti-
mate share in the local historical, including Maratha, heritage, the term “Maratha”
here encompassing all Maharashtrians. The strong sense that Brahmins have of
belonging to a superior caste even in Kolhapur seemed at first difficult to recon-
cile with their claims to being a part of a seemingly contradictory, and perhaps
also mutually exclusive, sociohistorical setting. However, what some Brahmins
and members of other castes in Kolhapur exemplified was the plurivocality of
understandings crucial to studies documenting the production of senses of be-
longing. I was rather unprepared for the apparently antithetical view of Brahmins
embracing the local king’s heritage as their own when he had opposed their an-
cestors in a major controversy over his status and legitimacy as a Kshatriya (Cop-
land 1973; Sangave and Khane 1994; Benei 1999); nor had the literature trained me
for encounters with members of Maratha and other allied castes who both stoutly
defended social reform and shared so many anti-Muslim views and Hindu politi-
cal inclinations with their more assertive Hindutva counterparts.26 Consequently,
while documenting ordinary people’s daily routines, this book also highlights
the ambiguities of what it means to be a Maharashtrian Indian citizen, whether
Hindu or Muslim, and belonging in a lower-, lower-middle-, and middle-class
urban setting today.
1 Singing the Nation into Existence
Devotion, Patriotism, Secularism

A sentence which has no sense does not commit you to anything.

Ernest Gellner, Interview

The day is just about to begin at Varsity Marathi School, one of the oldest and
most popular Marathi primary schools set in the bustling heart of Kolhapur. It
is January 1999. Just like any other day, the pupils have assembled in the play-
ground under an already scorching sun. They are standing in columns cor-
responding to their class divisions. Mandabai, a middle-aged teacher who is
in charge, presently signals to the peon (someone of low administrative rank,
who, in schools, usually works as a gatekeeper or does other menial jobs) to
begin playing his large drum (dhol). The silenced children are made to stand
absolutely still, their arms stretching downward. Latecomers are hurried into
their respective columns with a perfunctory slap on their head. All at once, the
pupils raise their right hands to the forehead in a military salute and start rock-
ing to and fro to the martial Hindi command of “one-two one-two one, one-
two one-two one” (ek-do ek-do ek, ek-do ek-do ek) shouted out by Mandabai.
The Brahmin woman’s shrill, powerful, energetic voice is being relayed by a mi-
crophone. The children now stand still, their arms stretching downward again.
Meanwhile, another teacher joins in with the sound of a harmonium (peti), the
same type notably used in singing sessions of popular forms of devotion (bha-
jana).1 As Mandabai bellows at the children in Hindi: “Attention! Ready to start
the rāṣṭragīta: start!” (Sawdhan, rashtragit shuru karne ka tayar: shuru kar!),
the pupils begin to sing the Indian national anthem:

Jana-Gana-Mana-Adhinayaka, Jaya He
Bharata-Bhagya-Vidhata
Punjab-Sindhu-Gujarata-Maratha-

38
 Singing the Nation into Existence 39

Dravida-Utkala-Banga
Vindhya-Himachala-Yamuna-Ganga
Uchchala-Jaladhi Taranga
Tava Subha Name Jage,
Tava Subha Ashisha Mage
Gahe Tava Jaya Gatha.
Jana-Gana-Mangala Dayaka, Jaya He
Bharata-Bhagya-Vidhata
Jaya He, Jaya He, Jaya He,
Jaya Jaya Jaya, Jaya He.

The other teachers have been singing along. They are standing nearby, up-
right and stiff, their arms stretching down either side of their bodies, just like
the children. They, too, are singing the nation-state into existence. For this is
“moral education” (naitik śikṣaṇ) time, the time to pay tribute and show one’s
love to the nation, (re-)creating it in the process; the time to build future gen-
erations of patriotic Indian citizens in the state of Maharashtra.

The daily chanting of the nation into existence provides an apposite entry point
for exploring issues of formation of patriotism and nationalism, and of a sen-
sory repertoire that draws upon other experiences of the devotional in everyday
life. It also enables one to draw unexpected convergences and similarities be-
tween Indian, European, and North American histories and cultural trajecto-
ries of secularism and patriotism. Everyday rituals of publicly worshipping the
nation extend beyond Maharashtra or India. In England, too, daily assemblies
are conducted in some schools, and religion is taught as part of the curriculum.
There have been flag-raising rituals in schools in the United States since the
1880s, wherein the nation celebrates itself routinely (Billig 1995: 50). In many
ways, these rituals and procedures are reminiscent of liturgical ones extant in
Christian celebratory services, whether modeled on the Church of England or
brought by the Pilgrims. In this sense, these rituals and procedures partake of
a theology of nationalism, a notion common to many nations across the world,
however different they are. A “theology of nationalism” may indeed encompass
at least three meanings. First, it may refer to the explicit conception of nation
building as a theological project, that is, one informed by claims to adhere to
an already existing religious doctrine or set of principles.2 Such are Hindutva
projects of nation building, where Hindu right-wing parties ­ purport to draw
40 Singing the Nation into Existence

on ancient Hindu scriptures to reinstate the kingdom and rule of the god Ram
(Ramrajya). Second, the notion of theology of nationalism may also usefully
highlight the religious rituals used by ideologues and other nation builders in
their construction of a secular nationalism, as was the case after the French Rev-
olution. In their attempts at instating a “secular nation,” the oft-cited paragons of
hardcore secularism heavily borrowed from popular Catholicism (Ozouf 1988).3
The French case, although extreme, is by no means exceptional. Rather, it points
to a more general, and third understanding of the notion of theology of nation-
alism, that of the sacral element underlying most projects of nation building.
Whether explicitly conceptualized as religious or purportedly secular, the pro-
duction and sustenance of nations are endowed with an inevitable sacredness.
It is not the place here to supplement the reflection on the modalities of this sa-
credness (see Anderson 1983 for his account of the concomitant fall of the great
religions with the rise of nations). Rather, my intention is to draw attention to
the usually unseen or unacknowledged similarities existing between European
and Indian forms of nationalism. The politically correct and sacrosanct distinc-
tion between secularism and religious nationalism, or between secularism and
communalism, is but a tenuous one, even in India (Hansen 2001). To begin with,
a detailed analysis of the nationalist liturgical procedures starting the school day
is required to highlight the specific modalities of nation building in Maharash-
tra. Explicitly religious and cultural motifs of everyday life are intertwined and
embedded in life at school and summoned in the production of a devotional
sensorium forming the background to the formation of national(ist) bonding.
Those motifs are significantly informed by the categories of bhakti, desh, and
dharma, crucial to an understanding of (Hindu) nationalism in this part of
India and fraught with delicate implications for a discussion of secularism.
In the next chapters, I explore the daily singing and ritual celebrations tak-
ing place throughout an ordinary school day as well as the pedagogical tech-
niques used in the classroom, and the phenomenological experiences of social
actors. These are all mediated by particular deployments of bodies, emotions,
and languages and the development of semantic repertoires and specific sensory
registers. In Chapter 2, in particular, I discuss the emotionality and corporeality
produced in this part of India along with language ideologies in the forma-
tion of a linguistic sensorium upon which are predicated senses of belonging,
regional and national. Here, by contrast, I focus on the concepts and repertoires
involved in the daily production and cultivation of national(ist) sentiment and
a devotional sensorium at school.
 Singing the Nation into Existence 41

Everyday Banality, Nationalism, and Patriotism

As one moves away from the extraordinary violence of conflicts and zooms into
the particulars of everyday production of nationalism, the notion of “­banality”
becomes central to understanding processes of nation building. If the formula-
tion of “banal nationalism” echoes that of Hannah Arendt on the “banality of
evil” in her famous work on the bureaucratization of violence under the Nazi
regime, in Michael Billig’s usage (1995), the notion encapsulates the extent to
which senses of national belonging, rather than erupting ex nihilo, are nur-
tured and become so integral to people’s everyday lives that they go largely un-
heeded. “Daily,” avers Billig, “the nation is indicated, or ‘flagged,’ in the lives
of the citizenry. Nationalism, far from being an intermittent mood . . . , is the
endemic condition” (6). The notion of banal nationalism needs further elab-
oration in comparative studies. It also entails clarification on the distinction
between patriotism and nationalism. Many students of Western nationalism
have restricted the category of “nationalist” to the description of “irrational”
events, such as outbursts of violence, riots, and civil wars occurring in “other”
parts of the world, thereby denying the concept any other reality (for a simi-
lar argument, see Chatterjee 1993). For the latter, the term “patriotism” is pre-
ferred and, of course, positively valued and appropriated, so that “our good
patriotism” eventually stands in opposition to “their evil nationalism” (Billig
1995), or in a more recent version, “their evil fundamentalism.” Needless to say,
such a dichotomous conception does little to advance our understanding of the
formation of national sentiment in any part of the world. Arguably, however,
provided they be relieved of a simplistic and bellicose usage, the distinction
between the categories of nationalism and patriotism may serve heuristic pur-
poses. In this chapter, I want to dialectically approach them by exploring their
local modalities and the articulation thereof. Schools are obvious privileged
sites for the production of “the ideological habits which enable . . . nations . . .
to be reproduced” (Billig 1995: 6) at the heart of everyday life. The phrase also
aptly describes nationalisms in “non-established nations,” particularly India.
There, as in most other nation-states, the value of amor patriae is nurtured to-
gether with the love for parents, the family, and elderly people, through the
acquisition of basic knowledge.
Educational agendas and their implementation provide a vantage point
for a comparative study of Indian and Western nationalisms, including their
more totalitarian dimensions. Indeed, the educational program conducted in
Maharashtra in much of the 1990s shares many common features with some
42  Singing the Nation into Existence

­ ineteenth-century European nationalist programs and their use of singing

n
and calisthenics. Singing and calisthenics belong to a particular type of knowl-
edge deploying the body in ways different from most ordinary teaching. These
practices also bear emotional dimensions meaningful for a cultural construc-
tion of the self. Collective singing in particular is a powerful way of binding
people together, as research on nationalism in Europe, Germany in particular,
has shown.4 Attempts were made in the very first years of the nineteenth cen-
tury to create singing schools for spreading German language and culture.
These attempts were concomitant with educational innovations meant to “re-
generate the German nation” in a response to Johann G. Fichte’s call in his
Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die deutsche Nation, 1807).5 Thus,
Friedrich L. Jahn attempted to promote German patriotism by founding phys-
ical education societies designed to build young people’s character together
with their corporeal strength (Thiesse 1999: 60). These societies held meet-
ings during which the young minds would be read the Nibelungenlied.6 The
combination of these language deployments, singing, and physical education
fed into the development of German nationalism throughout the nineteenth
century and were later harnessed into the project of National Socialism in the
early decades of the twentieth century, with the result that is now history.
In India, a similar process of nation building occurred slightly later, also
drawing on musical repertoires and physical education. Forms of popular
culture played an especially important part (Goswami 2004), including in
­Maharashtra, where, in addition to attempts made at devotionalizing music as
part of a (Hindu) national project (Bakhle 2005), nationalists at the turn of the
twentieth century began collecting ballads and songs in earnest (Dighe 1961;
Deshpande 2006).7 Kirtankars, too, played a meaningful role in the awakening
of a nationalist/regionalist consciousness, harnessing kīrtans, or popular devo-
tional songs that drew heavily on the regional bhakti tradition and the poetry
associated with it since the thirteenth century (Divekar 1990; Schultz 2002).
All these regionalist and nationalist forms of popular expression have, since
independence—and especially since the creation of the Maharashtra state in
1960—crucially converged and further fed into the production of regional and
national selves. Such a reshaping of regional and national structures of feeling
owes to various influences perceptible even today at the most banal, quotidian
levels of experience in the space of school.
If the work of contemporary Kirtankars was most influential in reshaping
regional structures of nationalist feeling, another powerful line of influence
 Singing the Nation into Existence 43

was the relaying through some Brahmin educationists of the Rashtriya Swayam­
sevak Sangh (RSS) ideology. The latter drew inspiration from totalitarian move-
ments taking place in Europe in the 1920s, notably German National Socialism.
In their most exacerbated form in Maharashtra in the late 1990s and early 2000s,
educational practices bore an uncanny resemblance to the earlier German ones.
In RSS branches and schools, extracts from the great Hindu epics of the Rama-
yana and Mahabharata were read and a rather biased Indian history taught,
along with a similar emphasis on bodily discipline (Sarkar 1995; Setalvad 1995).
More generally, such bodily emphasis has become an integral part of physical
education in schools in Maharashtra today. If it is not associated with deliber-
ately distorted history, physical education is nonetheless put at the service of
nation building and fully integrated into the morning liturgy that opened this
chapter. The combination of singing and calisthenics is an essential component
of daily contemporary school life that requires analysis. However, analyzing the
practice of singing in India entails examining its specific and intricate relation-
ship to the notion of mantra (ritual formula, chant) and its performative power.8
It also entails exploring the homology between school and temple particularly
evidenced by some of the ritual procedures extant in schools in this part of Ma-
harashtra. (Compare Srivastava [1998], chap 4, on the elite Doon School.)

Of Performative Power, Schools, and Temples:

Singing the National Goddess into Existence
Thou art the ruler of the minds of all people,
Dispenser of India’s destiny.
Thy name rouses the hearts of Punjab, Sind,
Gujarat and Maratha,
Of the Dravida and Orissa and Bengal;
It echoes in the hills of the Vindyas and Himalayas,
mingles in the music of Jamuna and Ganges and is
chanted by the waves of the Indian Sea.
They pray for thy blessings and sing thy praise.
The saving of all people waits in thy hand,
thou dispenser of India’s destiny.
Victory, victory, victory to thee.

India has often been labeled a “society of speech, prayers, and chants,” as well
as a society of discourse and “of the oratory.” Whether this is specific to India
is obviously debatable although unimportant here.9 Important is the way in
which speech, prayers, and chants on the one hand, and discourse and oratory
44  Singing the Nation into Existence

on the other, combine as resources in the production of a devotional sensorium

along with that of nationalist and patriotic sentiments. Crucial here is the belief
in word efficacy: efficacy of the word uttered, said, chanted, and sung. It is this
belief that presides over much of everyday speech and prayer, from singing
and rituals in temples to politicians’ endless speeches, as well as the daily reit-
eration of the national anthem, the pledge (pratigyā, hereafter pratidnya), and
other songs, chants, and prayers in morning liturgies at school. Such efficacy
lies in the notion of the word as mantra. In the case of the national anthem,
the efficacy is unaffected by the latter’s genealogical teething troubles. Contest
over the narrative of its creation still prevails in Bengal today. Many oppose
the version of the anthem first sung (on December 27, 1911, at the Calcutta Ses-
sion of the Indian National Congress) to welcome King George V, and later in
government schools and in scout groups, which fostered loyalty to the Brit-
ish throne.10 Be that as it may, most parents and teachers in the schools where
fieldwork was conducted in Kolhapur have reinterpreted it as a “prayer to God”
(see the English translation above): from Brahmins to Marathas to allied and
Scheduled castes, including some Dalits, from members of the upper-middle
classes to those of the lower classes, the notion that the anthem is a prayer to
God as the nation is a widespread one. Regardless of its troubled genealogy,
therefore, the performative efficacy of the song as national mantra ensures con-
tinuity between the time of its writing by Rabindranath Tagore and the pres-
ent. Moreover, contrary to its rival “Vande Mataram” (see note 10), this mantra
is acceptable to both Hindus and other “communities” in India. For instance,
Muslims, whether secularist or not, can relate to “Jana Gana Mana” as a secu-
lar masculine representation of the nation-state while ignoring any religious
dimension altogether. As for many Hindu Marathi speakers, there is no contra-
diction between the masculine wording of the song’s deity and their dedication
of the anthem to Bhārat Mātā, or Mother-India; this reconfiguration of the im-
perial salutation for national purposes borrows from early conceptualizations
of the Indian nation marked by explicit and traceable forms of Hindu religiosity
redefining India as a goddess (Goswami 2004).
Here, rather, it is meaningful that mantras are usually considered the most
important aspect of daily worship, as well as conceived as “sound aspects of the
realities that they designate.”11 The enumeration of the different parts of India
in the anthem truly refers to India as a deity: the several territorially named
elements (Punjab, Sindh, and so on) function as metaphoric referents for the
demographic components of the nation (Punjabis, Sindhis, and so on), con-
 Singing the Nation into Existence 45

Singing the national anthem (rashtragit) at morning assembly. Modern Marathi

School, Kolhapur, October 2000.

stituting the limbs of the “body of India” (Assayag 2001; Ramaswamy 2001,
2003). Furthermore, foremost in this act of quotidian re-creation of the na-
tional deity by means of mantra is the importance of proper uttering and pro-
nunciation, according to the official pedagogy promoted in refresher courses
at the Teachers’ Training College of Kolhapur. In February 2000, during such
a refresher course, a former local school principal taught the trainees how to
teach the rashtragit, particularly emphasizing the importance of prosody. He
made proper pronunciation central to the process of explaining the meaning of
the words while pointing out on a map the regions mentioned in the anthem.
So, too, in schools, did teachers throughout the day lay emphasis on the proper
pronunciation of prāmāṇit bhāṣā, that is, the “standard” version of the Marathi
46  Singing the Nation into Existence

language deriving its authority from its legitimacy as “superior knowledge.”12

This emphasis on proper pronunciation culminated in the pronunciation of
the national anthem, toward which exertions often superseded the search for
meaning. Significantly, when asked the meaning of the national song, pupils in
Classes 3 and 4 did not know. By contrast, they were all able to pronounce and
chant each and every word of it precisely.
Beyond the importance attached to pronunciation, the dominant praxis in
schools shares other interesting similarities with religious practice, whether
Brahminic or popular. The conditions of performance also bear on temple con-
ceptualizations and procedures within the space of school. This Hindu praxe-
ological dimension pervades the Marathi-speaking educational scene at large in
Kolhapur. Here again, it is encountered at the level of both primary schools and
district Teachers’ Training College. The college regularly organizes one-week
refresher courses throughout the year. Among these are singing courses, further
testifying to the importance of songs and singing in Maharashtra and their use
as a pedagogical resource. When I attended one of these Git manch in February
2000, one of the trainees, an experienced teacher in his midforties, elaborated
on a comparison between dev (god), prārthanā (prayer), and paripāṭha (the
routine at the time of morning assembly): “As one is at the temple, one should
be at the time of paripath, collected and silent.” A further illustration of this
equation of school with temple can be found in one of the mottoes commonly
written on classroom boards at the beginning of the school day. Mottoes exist in
all types of schools, whether municipal corporation or privately run, including
more secular ones run by Antar Bharati, the nationalist and socialist educa-
tional society. They are either written in chalk on the board as part of the daily
“good thoughts” (suvicār) or in calligraphy on posters mounted on the class-
room walls. One of these explicitly articulates the connection between temple
and school as follows: “School is not a theater but a temple” (Shalahi rangbhumi
nasun te devalay ahe).
The homology between school and temple requires further exploration. The
similarities between the two institutions and the respective associated proce-
dures are not only symbolic and performative but also structural. The space
of school is re-created as that of a temple during the morning assembly. Wor-
ship (pūjā) of other, presiding deities (Ganesh and Saraswati), for example, may
be performed in the equivalent of the temple’s “inner sanctum” (garbagruha),
that is, the school’s office, just before or during the singing of the national an-
them. Alternatively, incense is burned and waved around the office perfuncto-
 Singing the Nation into Existence 47

rily. Even in the most secular schools, Hindu chants will be sung, whether in
Sanskrit or in Marathi. The officiating teachers are usually among the senior
staff, often Brahmin or Maratha women in their mid- to late fifties. What they
actively accomplish at the opening of these assemblies may in some ways be
compared to preparing the deity (alaṇkāra), together with the crowd of “devo-
tees”—the other teachers and the children—directing their ritual offering of
singing (and calisthenics). The term alankara encompasses the meanings of
“provid[ing], mak[ing] ready and fit for a purpose, prepar[ing],” and so on,
as well as “adorning, beautifying, ornamenting.” Ornamentation refers both to
an object of decoration and a process of preparing an image of a deity for wor-
ship, of dressing that image with the attributes defining the deity. The notion of
membering, giving form and power to an image (Coomaraswamy 1939: 377) is
especially relevant to the school setting: the “adorning” of the nation as Bharat
Mata is meant to re-create “her” anew and empower “her” daily. The hymns,
“with which the deity is said to be ‘adorned,’ are an affirmation, a confirmation
and magnification of divine power to act on the singers’ behalf ” (377). Associ-
ated with the notion of glorification and magnification inherent in the meaning
of “adorning” is that of “leading the deity into form” by means of ritual formu-
las or mantra (Davis 1991: 128). The observation made about the Tamil temple
of Tiruvanmalai at the time of the alankara ritual therefore obtains of the situa-
tion in school morning liturgies whereby “the divine in its maximum degree of
condensation and in its multiple virtualities—these include the Devi—is entirely
rendered present hic et nunc at the centre at each and every period of time dur-
ing which the deity’s body is constructed and reconstructed in its entirety.”13
Thus, the performance and power of the word chanted in a temple are rep-
licated in school. During the remaining part of the morning liturgy, the sing-
ing of the national anthem and the recitation of the pledge are followed by the
utterance of yet more mantras, among which is the school prayer. This can be
a prayer to Saraswati, the goddess of learning; to Ganesh, the elephant-headed
god, remover of obstacles, whose cult was revived by both Lokmanya Tilak
(Cashman 1975) and Maratha leaders (Kaur 2004, 2005) at the turn of the twen-
tieth century; another strophe (śloka); or a patriotic song.14 This can be fol-
lowed by some more shloks, a moral story, news items, and another collective
song (git manch), the latter generally secular. Concluding the re-creation of
Bharat Mata is the vigorous shouting, in military fashion, of slogans such as
“Bharat Mata ki Jay” (Victory to Mother India), “Hindustan zindabad” (Long
live India), with right fists raised. The school day also theoretically ends with the
48  Singing the Nation into Existence

chanting of either the “Pasaydan” or of “Vande Mataram,” alternatively thank-

ing the goddess or “putting her to sleep.” The “Pasaydan” refers to the last nine
verses of the “Gyāneśwarī” (hereafter “Dnyaneshwari”) usually sung to thank
gods at the end of the school day. The morning and evening sequences may be
customized according to the schoolteachers’ preferences, but it is understood
that they should always be performed in the same fashion, similar to temple
procedures described by Reiniche and L’Hernault.15 However, as is well known,
practice often contradicts theory, and some changes do occur that disrupt the
orderly routine. What remains, then, is a sense of authoritative norms and rules
undergirded by the observance of some invariable elements—whether ritual
components or sequential structures.
At first blush, it would seem that the homology between school and temple
goes further, as the orthopraxy of speech, utterance, and pronunciation extant in
temples similarly plays a crucial part in the space of school. So do rote learning
and memorization in the performance of daily liturgies.16 In fact, memorization
pervades the entire learning process and is in some ways a logical extension
from temple procedures, albeit with a phenomenal sociological difference:
where the temple memorizing is the privilege of an officiating elite, here it is
rendered accessible to—even forced upon—the collective social unit at large. It
must be noted, however, that memorization and rote learning are common to
many educational processes the world over and do not necessarily entail any as-
sociation with temple or other religious practices. Furthermore, and as impor-
tant, the homology between school and temple does not exhaust the analysis of
this morning liturgy. In many ways, what is being performed daily is a singular
mix of religious and civic rituals. So, for instance, the fact that the teachers
in charge, in some way acting as officiants and other priestly equivalents, are
women also suggests another legacy, more directly political: that of meetings of
Congress in the twentieth century where women were newly invited to partici-
pate in, and officiate, some form of public rituals.17 Similarly, that the everyday
ritual is also meant to include presentation of news items and culling from the
morning press suggests an act of (re)connection quite comparable to that de-
scribed by Anderson (1983) in other, so-called secular contexts. News reading
here converges with rote learning and memorization in the production of ev-
eryday, banal nationalism. Their use, both as a general pedagogical practice and
as continuation of a more specific value education performed in the classroom
(pāṭhāñtara) bears illustration to this (however Hindu-inflected) civic and na-
tional ritual. To illustrate this, let us return to Varsity Marathi School.
 Singing the Nation into Existence 49

At the end of the assembly just described, I followed Mandabai, the teacher
in charge of the naitik shikshan, up to her Class 2 (pupils age seven). Unlike
some other classrooms in the same school, this room had bare floors covered in
rugs, with no benches or tables. Its walls were decorated with posters illustrat-
ing various topics, among them Hindu religion and nationalist leaders. After
a puja to Saraswati, the lesson started—rather, the value education continued:
first with the singing of a Ganapati stotra (a hymn to elephant-headed Ganesh),
followed by a Maruti stotra (to the monkey-god Hanuman). Without pausing,
the pupils then struck up a song devoted to the love of, and for, mothers (Ai
majhya guru), followed by the “Five salutes” (namaskārs) (the first three ad-
dressing country, parents, and teachers); only then did they recite the lists of the
Marathi and English months, respectively, the days of the week, the lunar days
(tithis) of the Hindu lunar month, the seasons (in both Marathi and English),
the lunar asterisms (nakshatras), numbers (multiplication tables), followed by
all the songs and poems thus far learned from the Class 2 standard Marathi-
language textbook, all sung in the same breath. All this was performed within
ten minutes, rather mechanically, the children rocking their bodies to and fro
while enumerating those strings of lists in repetitive tones.18 Thus was the daily
liturgy begun in the playground through singing and gesticulating continued
in the classroom.
In such a continuation of the morning liturgy, the re-creation of the national
mother-goddess was also mediated by displaying and conjuring more mundane
representations of the nation-state. For instance, exhibits of the “body of India”
figured prominently in the form of maps attached to the classroom walls.19 These
maps had either been drawn during one of the creative activities (karyanubhav)
or, for the majority, brought by the pupils themselves. By the same token, the
paripath ended with the recitation of currency charts. To be sure, the recitation
served arithmetic and economic pedagogy. Yet it should also be apprehended in
relation to the production of a sense of national belonging. Indeed, if flags and
maps are conspicuous emblems of nationhood, so are coins and notes (Billig
1995: 41), and the currency is taught, learned, and remembered daily in primary
schools in Maharashtra, from displays on classroom walls to the chanting of
equivalences (how many paise in a rupee, etc.). Furthermore, the quotidian enu-
meration of these iconic manifestations of the Indian nation-form suggested an
attempt at celebrating its continuity over time. Pupils chanted the equivalence
of not only “new” paise to rupees but also of annas to rupees, a currency dis-
carded since 1957 with the decimalization of Indian currency. Although elderly
50 Singing the Nation into Existence

people—especially in rural areas—still count in annas (twenty-five, fifty, and

seventy-five paise represent four, eight, and twelve annas, respectively), count-
ing in annas did not make any sense to most schoolchildren in Kolhapur in the
late 1990s and early 2000s. Yet the mere performative reiteration of this “cur-
rency chanting” was integral to the daily forging of a collective sense of nation-
hood, past and present. In sum, far from some “nationalist propaganda” being
transmitted to the children, a nationalism totally integral to school life and every­
day knowledge was actively produced by both children and teachers, offering a
rather persuasive instance of daily banal nationalism (Billig 1995).
A fuller understanding of the specificity of such banal nationalism requires
analysis of its associated local forms of patriotism. The definition of citizenship
in this part of India is predicated upon that of belonging to Maharashtra as a
cultural and political entity. If the singing of the nation into existence provides a
means by which all Maharashtrians may imagine themselves as Indian citizens,
in these daily school routines, the production of love for India articulates with
practices of regional Maratha/Maharashtrian patriotism.20 As is well known,
the idea of an Indian independent nation was born in the time of the Brit-
ish Raj and eventually materialized through regional movements—drawing on
what C. A. Bayly (1998) defined as “regional old patriotisms,” themselves instru-
mental in shaping the regions (see also the seminal work of Cohn, particularly
1987b). This is especially so in the almost archetypal instances of Bengal, Maha-
rashtra, and Tamilnadu, where clear cases of “old patriotisms” elaborated over
several centuries were used by intellectuals, politicians, and other citizens as re-
sources in the awakening of a national consciousness.21 Chapter 4 will explore at
length how Marathi speakers conceive of their relationship to the Indian nation
through a regional prism (see also Benei 2001b). Here, I wish to explore further
the conditions of the Marathi speakers’ attachment to the nation/region and the
anchoring of the attachment in regional forms of devotion. The national liturgy,
apart from its unvarying sequential order and essential elements of national
anthem and pledge of allegiance, is also a product of local cultural devotional
forms subsumed under the notion of “devotion to the land” (deśbhakti).

Political Devotion, Embodiment,

and Popular Participation
In a recent volume on war and politics in twentieth-century Europe, Chris-
tophe Prochasson (2002: 443) observed that to Tocqueville, every political
regime was endowed with a particular emotional system. The establishment
 Singing the Nation into Existence 51

of popular sovereignty, for instance, was linked to the reign of emotions (le
règne des émotions). Popular sovereignty entailed good rhetoric of the kind
that moved people (448). Although the psychologizing of politics has been a
controversial topic, Prochasson arguably draws attention to a heuristic tool.
On the one hand, the validity of an argument about emotional differentiation
between political regimes does not appear convincing: both authoritarian and
democratic regimes have been shown in history to play on the production of
similar emotional repertoires, only to varying extents. On the other hand, pro-
vided that the disdainful ring and thinly veiled characterization of democracy
as demagogy be discarded, and the restrictive vision of plotting politicians ral-
lying “the masses” by means of strategically emotional speeches be abandoned,
the notion of political affect is useful for envisaging the emotive dimension
inherent in any political process. In the next chapter, we shall examine the phe-
nomenological aspect of such a dimension. Here I confine myself to a con-
ceptual exploration of “what moves people” and of the ways in which political
discourses and practices of devotion to the nation (deshbhakti) play on regional
traditions of “devotion to the godhead” (bhakti) in Maharashtra.

Devotion to the Nation and Regional Patriotisms

The recent notion of deshbhakti encapsulates a “sense of loyalty to the home-
land” (Bayly 1998: 27) in which the highly polysemic concept of desh designates
the region as well as the country, and even smaller units of “patria” defined in
terms of villages, clusters of villages, and fiefdoms (Bayly 1998: chap. 1; Benei
2001b; Goswami 2004). In all these senses, the desh is conceptualized in rela-
tion to a sense of belonging to the soil and according to a physiological-­political
humoral theory. This humoral notion encompasses physical well-being and
social and ecological harmony, together with an ethical mode of governance
characteristic of old patriotisms in India (Bayly 1998: 17, chaps. 1, 3). Further-
more, the notion of cosmic moral order entailed by the concept of desh is ex-
tant in the composite swadeś, where the prefix swa denotes “one’s own, proper.”
Such a composite is often combined with the other central notions of language
and “religion” that in the nineteenth century came to define a sense of be-
longing to the desh, as in the triad swadesh, swadharma, and swabhāṣā (one’s
own country, one’s own religion, and one’s own language, respectively).22 The
nationalist developments occurring in Maharashtra at the time were similar to
those in various parts of India known for their strong local patriotism. Thus,
the trinity swadesh, swadharma, and swabhasha was reconstructed during the
52  Singing the Nation into Existence

anticolonial struggle in a process similar to one documented in northern India

(Kumar 1992).
Concepts closely imbricated with the notion of deshbhakti were forged at
this time and functioned as analogous referents to “Western patriotism” (Bayly
1998: 3–4): the respective Marathi and Hindi terms of swadeshabhiman and
swadeshhitkari, referring to love for one’s country, were purposely coined from
the earlier cognate words desh and deshmukh within Indian intellectual circles.
In Maharashtra, students and teachers at the Poona College played a prominent
part in these conceptual redeployments (Bayly 1998: 90), similarly to processes
described at length primarily in studies of Western nationalism (Hobsbawm
1992; Thiesse 1999). It is important to note, however, that these inventions were
neither elitist nor “artificial.” They were predicated on notions of old patriotic
bonds, which may account for the root desh being chosen in the first place.
Although these terms seem to have emerged in the early nineteenth century
from “early contact between missionary dictionary-makers and the Indian
learned, [they also] predated the emergence of modern nationalism by several
generations” (Bayly 1998: 4). In fact, it might even be argued that some of these
notions date back to earlier times, possibly as early as the fifteenth century,
albeit in association with a somewhat different usage. As Bayly insists, “[The]
sentiment of attachment to land and political institutions developed rapidly in
some regional Indian homelands between 1400 and 1800. In particular cases,
most evidently in Maharashtra, a patriotism underpinned by language, devo-
tional religion and economic integration was energized by an expanding state
which promoted themes of war and remembrance” (1998: 36).
The latter themes of war and remembrance are especially important to the
official narrative articulating the establishment of self-rule (swaraj) in the early
twentieth century with the work of bhakti inspired by the saints of Maharash-
tra, as we shall see in Chapter 4. Here, by contrast, I focus on the existence of
a dominant form of patriotism that gradually built up in the course of four
centuries prior to British colonization and partly drew on devotional songs and
prayers. It is noteworthy that these are replete with references to the region as
a geographical, if not political, unit of worship. For instance, bhakti to Bharat
was already inscribed in the thirteenth-century bhakti of Maharashtrian saint
Dnyaneshwar.23 Of course, the notion of Bharat was different from that of the
postcolonial nation-state of today. But it already entailed conceptualizing a
larger unit that encompassed Maharashtra (actually, the hilly western ghats), in
which “people could and did imagine yet wider communities” (Bayly 1998: 37).
 Singing the Nation into Existence 53

These imaginings and senses of being part of a wider community are reflected
even today in devotional popular forms, especially that of bhajan (song or
music composition meant for worship or offering prayers to a deity, especially
in bhakti movements). For example, most bhajans begin with the shlok “City of
Alankar, holy land of religious merits” (Alamkapuri punyabhumi pavitra). This
shlok is commonly sung in schools in Kolhapur during morning assemblies or
later in the classroom, regardless of the type of school considered. The shlok is
addressed to Saint Dnyaneshwar, native of Alandi, a famous pilgrimage site also
known as Alamkapuri, “city of Alankara,” in explicit reference to the holiness
and the re-creation of the deity at the shrine. The shlok, which follows in the
translated and original versions, was written four centuries after Dnyaneshwar
died, possibly by Ramdas or one of his disciples, and is contemporary with
­Tukaram, a seventeenth-century Marathi poet.24

Alandi, holy land full of merits

There the holy son is being given a hard time
Remembering him brings you heaps of great blessings
I salute my revered guru Dnyaneshwar.

Let all differences [among people] be ended

Once again may this thought be espoused by Bharat [this nation]
Let Arya dharma be a teacher to the world
Oh god, in the world let universal “religion” prosper
Glory to Raghuvir Samarth [i.e., Ramdas].

Alankapuri punyabhumi pavitra

Tithe nandto Dnyanraja supatra
Taya athvita mahapunyarashi
Namaskar majha shrisadguru Dnyaneshwarashi.

Jao layala matbhed sara

Punha varo Bharat ya vichara
Ho-o jagaca guru arya dharma
Deva jagi vadhwi vishvadharma
Jay Jay Raghuvir Samartha.

The Alamkapuri shlok may obviously be interpreted differently from the

context in which it was composed. Nonetheless, what ensures its contempo-
rary relevance is the particular meaning many of the notions it contains have
54  Singing the Nation into Existence

acquired in the course of the last two centuries. There is no question of anach-
ronism here. It is a matter of reinterpretation and, perhaps, resonance. All the
concepts (holy land, Arya Dharma, Bharat, and so on) that bore a different
meaning in the context at the time it was written resonate with a situation
today in which social actors, whether mildly Hindu sympathetic or assertively
Hindutva, can find meaning. This is made especially possible by the collective
act of singing, which articulates devotion to the regional homeland with that
to the national homeland. Thus, in this collective expression of “telescoped”
devotion, the use of a kinship vocabulary acquires particular and renewed sig-
nificance in the context of the modern nation-state.
A closer look at the translation opens windows into the association of forms
of devotion to the homeland with idioms of regional kinship and morality. The
phrase “holy son” here refers to Dnyaneshwar, whom his fellow Brahmins sub-
jected to hardships for translating the Bhagavad Gita from the Sanskrit into
Marathi—or rather, writing a commentary on it that he would not translate
into Sanskrit. The entire shlok is remarkably informed by a kinship vocabulary:
suputra (auspicious son), nandne (being subjected to the trials of life with in-
laws, ordinarily applicable to a woman’s situation), varne (to marry—either a
husband or a wife—and by extension, to accept willingly and forever). As noted
previously, this shlok is among the most popular ones in Maharashtra and com-
monly sung during morning assemblies in schools. The vocabulary of kinship
it invokes, also extant in other bhakti poems, resonates in interesting ways with
the notion of “kinsman,” and by extension “brotherhood” (bhāūbaṇd), char-
acterizing the national vocabulary—whether in the pledge of allegiance or in
songs—in accordance with kinship terminology usages conveying notions of
national imagined community (Anderson 1983). The idea of Indians as a large,
united family is also explicitly expressed in the pledge, a fundamental mantra
immediately following the national anthem as part of an unalterable sequence
in the morning liturgy. Even its solemn performative quality is meant to impart
a sense of common brotherhood: the pupils are first made to stretch out their
arms so as to stand in evenly spaced rows. The teacher in charge then sum-
mons them to begin reciting the pledge, in Marathi, while holding their right
arm horizontally as if taking an oath in court. A literal translation in English-
­language textbooks reads as follows:

India is my country [desh]. All Indians are my brothers and sisters [bhauband].
I love my country, and I am proud of its rich and varied heritage. I shall always
strive to be worthy of it. I shall give my parents, teachers, and all elders respect
 Singing the Nation into Existence 55

and treat everyone with courtesy. To my country and my people, I pledge my

devotion. In their well-being and prosperity alone lies my happiness.

The pledge is printed on the first page of every schoolbook from Class 2 on-
ward, for all subjects and in all languages used as a medium of instruction. Even
kindergarten and Class 1 pupils learn it from older children at the time of naitik
shikshan, mumbling it as well as they can.25 By taking this “mantra pledge”
daily, schoolchildren of all ages are performatively re-creating the conditions of
possibility of India as a large family of “brothers and sisters.”

Fists raised while performing the “Vande Mataram” exchange with the teachers at
morning assembly. Varsity Marathi School, Kolhapur, December 1998.
56  Singing the Nation into Existence

In many ways, deshbhakti in the present national sense encompasses vari-

ous series of developments in the meaning and practice of Brahminic chants
as well as more popular forms of bhakti. The latter importantly defined local
idioms of morality integral to notions of social and cultural personhood, as in
Tamilnadu, where long before any notion of Tamil nationalism arose, “being
a good bhakta” was synonymous with “being a good Tamil” (Prentiss 1999:
9). The intricate entanglement of bhakti with the Marathi language in west-
ern ­ Maharashtra offers a similar case evidenced in Marathi schools in Kol-
hapur today. Thus, in February 1999 at the Marathi Corporation School (in
Sachar Bazar), when I asked Class 3 pupils what they had sung outside on
the ground at the beginning of the school day, they answered, “The national
anthem.” As in many other instances, they were not confident about the na-
tional anthem’s meaning although they knew its words perfectly. So as I asked
why they sang it, along with the Ganapati stotra and the school prayer they
performed every day, one girl responded, “Because we are devotees” (Amhi
bhakta ahot, ­mhanun). It is on this tradition of religious patriotism that the
formation of a notion of national patriotism was built, in this part of India as
in Bengal and Tamilnadu. Therefore, before we explore the implications of the
contemporary notion of deshbhakti any further, the foundational one of bhakti
requires elaboration.

Devotion, Embodiment, and Participation

In its common usage, the term bhakti emphasizes “the emotional current in
religious devotion” (Kakar 1999: 111). In Maharashtra, the bhakti tradition and
its lived experience have been a powerful one since the thirteenth century, with
the Marathi commentary on the Bhagavad Gita by the regional poet and saint
Dnyaneshwar.26 Even today, many sessions of bhakti worship, consisting of col-
lective singing of hymns known as bhajans and kirtans draw on this tradition. A
substantial number of the hymns and prayers sung in schools are also products
of this tradition as well as of the later bhakti cult of Rama developed by Namdev
in the fourteenth century in the tradition of Ramananda (Ahmad 1999: 151). In
contrast to the habitual emphasis placed on the emotional experience of reli-
gious devotion inherent in the notion of bhakti, Karen Prentiss sought to offer
a new perspective. Drawing on the root of the word, which signifies “to actively
encourage participation” (1999: 6), Prentiss proposed an understanding of
bhakti as a “doctrine of embodiment” that urges people toward active engage-
ment in the worship of God. Rather than being confined to established modes
 Singing the Nation into Existence 57

of worship, bhakti should consequently be made the foundation of human life

and activity in the world: “As a theology of embodiment, bhakti is embedded in
the details of human life” (6).
The difficulty with Prentiss’s thesis, however, lies in the fuzziness of her no-
tion of “embodiment.” The term at times refers to a personification of bhakti
itself under the guise of a wandering woman traveling from south to north
(Prentiss 1999: 31–34); at other times bhakti is localized in regional-language
expressions, poetic voice, region, pilgrimage, and saints (40); at yet other times,
the term denotes the incarnation of bhakti through its saints within a given tra-
dition; and “the accessibility of God to embodied humanity . . . represented pre-
cisely in the details, including the names and life stories of special bhakta, the
language of the bhakti hymns, and the efficacy of certain named regions” (41).
It may be that by “embodiment” are meant all these definitional layers at once.
Yet some clarification would help unleash the heuristic potential of this notion
within the context of school. Such a notion of embodiment indeed appears cru-
cial for an analysis of schooling and social and political devotional personhood.
As an alternative theoretical perspective, it is susceptible to a phenomenological
approach, for the embodied quality of (desh)bhakti also pervades life at school.
Devotion to the nation is not only crystallized in the morning liturgies but
imbues each and every action throughout the school day. A good deshbhakta
should exemplify (or perhaps “embody”) his or her devotion in myriad ways,
ranging from the most trivial and unnoticeable to the most visible and explicit,
as will be shown in the following chapters.
If the specifically postcolonial national form of bhakti draws on repertoires
of popular devotion and participation, however, it can nonetheless not be merely
equated with regional bhakti. Indeed, teachers summon a highly eclectic mix
of older forms and traditions with newer ones dating back to the independence
period—a time of high patriotic spirit and political fervor—weaving in many
other strands of Marathi popular culture. Today, these unprecedentedly include
Hindi-language elements.27 Importantly, no specific orthodoxy seems to govern
the selection of shloks and songs other than a concern for patriotic and moral
edification. Whereas the notion of deshbhakti is explicit in schools and teachers’
training colleges, it never operates within the parameters of a purist register.
For instance, teachers often seemed surprisingly unconcerned about the period
and identity of the composer, or even the language of composition: asked to
identify the language of a particular shlok (even the national anthem, for that
matter), they would often indistinctly and alternately define it as Marathi or
58  Singing the Nation into Existence

Sanskrit. Nor did teachers lay emphasis on historical accuracy, but rather on the
performative power of the words as mantra (see previous discussion).
Furthermore, although the national anthem and many recent patriotic
songs have been included as staples, they are not restrictive, and the implemen-
tation of deshbhakti is deliberately left for schoolteachers to concoct. For in-
stance, some—mainly Brahmin teachers—made collages of songs and prayers
from famous excerpts in Sanskrit and Marathi bhajans, including extracts from
Marathi movies of the past five decades; others—Brahmins, Marathas, but also
members of “lower castes”—would select Hindi pieces (especially songs from
1950s movies). In sum, this deshbhakti is an ever-evolving one, now encom-
passing features of popular culture beyond the sole region of Maharashtra, not
least those of Hindi cinema. Thus unfolds a vibrant and lively “tradition” of
modern bhakti, constantly being reshaped by all its participants. This eclecti-
cism and amalgamation suggest a kind of bricolage, although not in the fully
Lévi-Straussian sense. If the repertoire is heterogeneous, it is not limited. The
Sanskrit and, more often, Marathi forms coexist with secular freedom fighters’
songs, Hindi film songs, and other children’s songs devoid of specific patriotic
meaning. It is precisely this intertwining of ordinary children’s songs together
with explicitly “patriotically devotional” ones that enables naturalization of
banal nationalism. Such banal nationalism is also peculiarly tainted with reli-
gion, as we have seen. In this sense, it is as much “banal Hinduism” that is being
produced as “banal nationalism.” How can we then assess both productions?

Secularism and Patriotism: An Unhappy Combination?

At first glance, the Marathi evidence suggests a religious conception of patrio-
tism in antithetical relation to the apparently secular English one. The discrep-
ancy between received English usage—generally unquestioned in discussions
of secularism—and the Marathi term translating as “patriotism” results in a
theoretical and semantic abyss. It is so especially in light of the latter’s associa-
tion with another slippery concept, that of dharma. The notion of dharma is
fraught with conceptual and semantic difficulties. Compounding this difficulty
is its frequent translation into an equivalent to the Western notion of “reli-
gion.”28 To begin with, it must be emphasized that the so-called separation of
religion from political power is an ideal, a norm, and an incomplete and unique
product of European post-Reformation history (Asad 1993; van der Veer 2001).
The universalization of the concept of “religion” as an easily identifiable and
watertight set of beliefs and practices enclosed in the “private” realm of indi-
 Singing the Nation into Existence 59

viduality is closely related to Europe’s exposure to the rest of the world, where it
exported its specific version of modernity. Arguably, it is also from the depths
of this theoretical and semantic abyss that all kinds of misunderstandings and
erroneous conceptualizations may surface and develop. This renders the task
of examining the implications of the notion of dharma ever so necessary for a
discussion of secularism and patriotism, especially in view of the heightened
communal tensions that have pervaded Indian society in the recent past.
On the one hand, the term dharma can be understood as “religion,” in a
way similar to the so-called book religions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity),
due both to the religious movements initiated in colonial times leading to the
concept of sanātana dharma (eternal religion) and to subsequent developments
over the past century (Thapar 1985). Notwithstanding this restrictive redefini-
tion, dharma has also retained connotations of socioreligious moral order, law,
and duty, making it akin to “the right order of life and worship” (Bayly 1998: 27)
or, with reference to Maharashtra dharma, “Maharashtrian moral order” (23).29
The notion of dharma therefore encompasses the meaning of “appropriate way
of life.” Therein lies the ambiguity and consequently the difficulty of drawing
a line in everyday life between obvious Hindutva militancy and a mere Hindu
worldview providing an idiom of morality.
In many ways, the Hindu atmosphere pervading the classroom in Marathi
schools is but another instance of dominant religious and moral idioms com-
parable with the Christian ones that earlier generations of schoolchildren in
India had to contend with during British rule (Viswanathan 1989). In this sense,
Hindu dharma in the late 1990s and early 2000s often bore a meaning akin to
“culture” among social actors belonging to a broad spectrum of political in-
clinations and faiths: even Muslim teachers in Marathi schools used the term
in reference to a consensual dominant culture that they felt part of to variable
extents. Yet some teachers, including Hindu ones, were also critically aware of
the political implications of dharma as “Hindu religion,” even if neither Muslim
nor Hindu teachers openly commented on them. As often happens with sensi-
tive issues, only in impromptu situations would this awareness surface. Such
was the case in the exchange that I had with Aruna Kothe in December 1998, a
few months into fieldwork at the Varsity Marathi School.
Aruna Kothe was an elderly Brahmin teacher whose strong Hindutva pro-
clivities had been apparent on a number of occasions. She was also aware of
the interdiction made to civil servants in Maharashtra state of being affiliated
with the RSS, in stark contrast with the move made by the prime minister in
60 Singing the Nation into Existence

the neighboring state of Gujarat at the time, with the results that are now his-
tory. Although Arunabai was close to the female Rashtriya Swayamsevika wing
of the Hindu right-wing organization, she took care to specify that she was not
officially part of it. One day as she asked about the main difference I perceived
between schools in Kolhapur and those “in my country,” I candidly offered
this response: “We do not teach religion [dharma] at school there” (Amhi tithe
dharma shikhwat nahi). Arunabai’s immediate response was, “Oh, but we don’t
teach religion here either” (Nahi, amhi pan dharma shikhwatac nahi). What
she claimed they taught in schools was “Indian culture” (Bhārtīya saṃskṛti).
Arunabai’s statement much echoes the ongoing debates in some public circles,
in which the fine line between overt Hinduism as a political militant project
and a culturally dominant system has been displaced from the locus of “reli-
gion” to that of “culture,” with a similarly blurred result.30 In the space of school
and pedagogical discourse, this fuzziness is further compounded by the use of
another, central notion, that of saṃskār.
The signification encompassed by the term samskar may alternate depending
on the contexts at play. From its meaning as a “rite,” “ceremony,” or “sacrament,”
the notion also extends to “purification,” “improvement,” and “refinement.” In
the last three senses, it composes the root of other words expressing a state of
being “cultured,” “well reared,” and “of refined taste.” One of the best examples
of the notion in Maharashtra lies in the well-known book written by education-
ist and freedom fighter Sane Guruji, Shyam’s Mother (Shyamci ai). This book is
one of the Marathi favorites among both teachers and children, even today. First
published in 1935, it was reprinted in a thirty-fifth edition in 1999 and consists of
the author’s childhood recollections. Through a series of examples drawn from
life experiences, Shyam’s mother teaches her son several lessons about respect,
generosity, and so on, all qualities contributing to the making of samskar. In
schools, teachers like Aruna Kothe used this book as well as hymns, prayers,
songs, moral stories, and thoughts for the day. They taught them to the children
with the explicit purpose of cultivating samskar. Such moral edification, the
teachers proffered, was crucial to a child learning “how to behave” (kase wa-
gayce) so as to grow into a well-rounded, moral person and citizen (nāgarik).
How are we to reconcile these vernacular notions with the English ones
of “patriotism” and “secularism”? Can these even be reconciled? The answer
is not easy to determine. However, an anthropological project should attempt
to address this issue, precisely through a comparative approach. What follows,
then, is one such attempt. In his introduction to a collective volume on bhakti
 Singing the Nation into Existence 61

in North India, David Lorenzen (1996) reproached Ashis Nandy with his “anti­
secularist” position. Nandy, he claimed after many others, is mistaken in his
view of an all-tolerant Hinduism conceived as the cement of Indian society
in lieu of a “pseudo-secularist” project lacking sense and reality for the ma-
jority of Indian people. Nandy’s positions have long been attacked, especially
for their utopian vision of political Hinduism. What the ethnography in this
chapter suggests, however, is that if his advocacy of middle-class hegemonic
Hinduism is untenable (Nandy 1990; Lorenzen 1996: 7–8), Nandy’s conception
of largely Hindu-inflected social and political fields in India today is certainly
more attuned with vernacular praxis and conceptualization of the notion of
deshbhakti than are those of most of his scholarly contemporaries. Arguably,
any discussion of secularism in India, and for that matter any secularist project,
must reckon with local empirical and historical realities. Rejecting any notion
of popular devotion as “religion” and therefore taboo in the public sphere of po-
litical and academic discourse, lest one be branded a supporter of Hindutva, is
unproductive. It misses out on the constitutive dimension of vernacular idioms
of political, social, and moral personhood that have to this day shaped popular
understandings of loyalty to the nation, or patriotism. To be sure, that we are
dealing with deshbhakti, “devotion to the nation” premised on popular forms of
devotion, certainly begs the question of how to conceive of a secularist attach-
ment to the nation, or rather, the patria. The question here is twofold. First, it
is that of the meaning of “secularist” in the Indian context. Second, it is that of
the historical contingency of secular forms of political governance, in India as
in Europe and elsewhere. Let me first attend to the former.
As is often remarked, secularism in India has come to mean tolerance of all
creeds, rather than their relegation or disappearance from public view pure and
simple. Yet there seems to be a persistent misunderstanding in the debates about
secularism conducted in the English language, because of their seeming oblivi-
ousness to the various vernacular understandings of the term. To be sure, the
public hue and cry over the celebration of the nation through particular forms
of “religious” devotion rightly and poignantly draws attention to the disruptive
implications these may have for non-Hindu citizens. And indeed, the pedagogi-
cal predication of citizenship on the Hindu moral notion of samskar always runs
the risk of overinterpretation by extreme right-wing elements of the society con-
sequently rejecting alternative visions and constructions of citizenship, thereby
denying the status of fully fledged citizenship to members of “minority commu-
nities,” that is, non-Hindu ones. Therein lie all the ambiguity and slipperiness of
62  Singing the Nation into Existence

Indian secularism. For the Hindu majority, the notion of “secular”—in the sense
of ecumenical—is manifested in Hindu praxis. Even songs seeking to promote
tolerance of all religions are couched in the terms of a Hindu prayer and per-
formed in similar ways in schools. Such is the case of the commonly sung “Unity
Song” (“Khara ci ek to dharma” or “Ekatmata git”).31 Yet this should not preclude
one from envisaging a peaceful Hinduism, reconciled with other “religions.” The
forms of bhakti centered on the Vithoba shrine at Pandharpur, for instance,
brought about “a certain measure of reconciliation with the presence of Islam in
India” (Ahmad 1999: 151). Most influential among Marathi saints, ­Tukaram (b.
1608) shared a similar conception of God as Kabir’s and occasionally used Sufi
terms in his hymns.32
Granted, such reconciliation is tenuous, as suggested by Ahmad, who re-
marks: “And yet according to Tara Chand ‘he was a contemporary of Shivaji
and one of the inspirers of the spirit which welded the Marathas into a people’ ”
(1999: 151). To Ahmad, this translates as “another interesting case of Bhakti
eclecticism paving the way for anti-Muslim militarism.” Whether this view of
bhakti is fully justified or not may be a matter of debate. The fact neverthe-
less is that other later religious reform movements did emerge in antagonistic
construction against Muslims. Such is the case, for instance, of the Hindu cow
movement that spread in northern India in the nineteenth century as part of
a communalist and nationalist awakening (Pandey 1990). Maharashtrian revo-
lutionary leaders, who founded the (in)famous RSS in Nagpur in 1925, were
also eager to promote the cow protection movement. It is with this history in
mind that the educational project of the late 1990s and early 2000s in Maha-
rashtra should be approached, and the potentially deleterious implications of
the new textbooks envisaged. A simple example should suffice: that of the 1999
version of the Class 5 Marathi as a Second Language Textbook, whose main
client minorities in Maharashtra are Muslims. Lesson 17 consists of a poem
celebrating the virtues of the cow, ending with “This is how useful the cow is,
it [feels, looks] like a second mother!” (Ashi upyogi ahe, gay, waatte jashi ki
dusri may!) (35). The injunction clearly resonates with the precepts of Hindu
sanatana dharma and the cow protection movement. Moreover, given that the
prelude to communal riots from the late nineteenth century onward involved
the slaying of cows on the Muslim side (and that of pigs on the Hindu side), this
exhortation by Marathi-speaking educationists to respect the cow as a mother
must be interpreted as an explicit command especially targeting Muslim com-
munities. Such a command owes to the counterprojection against Muslims that
 Singing the Nation into Existence 63

was instrumental in the historical and ideological construction of the Marathas

into “a people” over the past centuries (Chapter 4). Nevertheless, bhakti in its
most reconciliatory forms bears potential for the pursuit of a truly secular soci-
ety. This potential might profitably be acknowledged, celebrated, and nurtured,
especially in the renewed climate of communalism in India today.
Furthermore, if such an emphasis on the religious dimension of local forms
of patriotism and nationalism may still appear far removed from developments
that occurred in the so-called West (van der Veer 1994, 2001), it may not neces-
sarily be so on closer look at the categories of secularism and patriotism. To
begin with, the idea that ethics and values can be empirically separated into
personal and social categories is a fallacy, even in Europe and the United States.
As important, the category of “patriotism” in most European languages entails
notions of Christian religion and culture, not only in Britain, which is constitu-
tionally a Christian kingdom, but in other nation-states less explicitly religiously
informed. Historically, the notion of patriotism involves the transposition of a
notion of “defense of Holy Land” to that of national soil, and vice versa, with
the concept of Holy Land developing in association with that of patria Christi
from the later Middle Ages (thirteenth century) to the twentieth century. The
kingdom became patria (fatherland), an object of political devotion and semi-
religious emotion (Kantor­owicz 1981). In the early thirteenth century, the only
domain where patria had retained its full original meaning was in the language
of the Church. A Christian was a citizen of a city in another world. The true
­patria was the kingdom of Heaven. A Christian martyr, who had offered him-
self up for the invisible polity and died for his divine Lord, was the genuine
model of civic self-sacrifice. The new territorial concept of patria therefore de-
veloped as a secularized offshoot of a Christian tradition. Thus, the new patrio-
tism thrived on ethical values transferred from patria in heaven to polities on
earth. The equation of patria with the “holy soil” is especially relevant here: the
patriotic notion was endowed with religious, emotional values whereby to de-
fend and protect the soil of one’s country came to have “semireligious” connota-
tions relating to the defense and protection of the sacred soil of the Holy Land
itself. Consequently, death in Crusaders’ wars became interpreted as self-sacri-
fice for one’s patria as well as for the Holy Land, and the sacrifice being realized
for one’s brothers similar to the self-sacrifice Christ had made for humankind.
Thus, an emotionally powerful religious connotation of political death in war
as the transposition of Christian martyrdom to war victims of secular states has
been effected even in the West. To this day, such connotations have retained
64  Singing the Nation into Existence

their evocative force, both symbolic and emotional, as testified to across Eu-
rope by the annual memorial services to the Great War (celebrated in church in
Britain, as opposed to lay services in France—laïcité oblige!); or even, in Britain,
the annual “poppy appeal” to contribute to the fund for those killed in war and
the aura of sacredness surrounding it. Mention need not even be made of the
embeddedness of a Christian idiom in the doxa and praxis of internal and ex-
ternal U.S. politics. All these developments across a wide range of temporalities
signal a need to reconsider the too often assumed radical difference of the West
in matters secular, however the term is to be defined. These same developments
must be considered in any balanced understanding of political processes else-
where in the world of nation-states, especially in India.

Openings
This chapter has described and discussed the daily performance of the nation
in India and the various cultural, symbolic, and devotional repertoires it con-
comitantly draws upon and reshapes. Such a quotidian performance occurs
only at school, and in no other modern institution (apart, possibly, from the
army), making school a unique site for the ritual creation and embodiment of
the nation as well as a space that reflects, resonates with, and amplifies ideo-
logical processes at play within larger society. The collective (re)enactment of
national devotion and the production of an emotional attachment to the ­nation
are predicated upon an everyday devotional sensorium. Although the latter is
largely informed by religious notions of popular Hinduism subsumed by the
concept of bhakti, the production of emotional attachment is by no means
specific to Indian schools. Mass education plays a similarly prominent role
in building national love the world over. What is singular are the modalities
of nation worship, coterminous with vernacular idioms—ritual and linguis-
tic—rooting patriotism in local forms of devotion. Devotion to the nation here
is partly predicated on local popular forms of bhakti, commonly translated as
“devotionalism,” some of which hark back to the thirteenth century. As we have
seen, however, these forms of devotion to the region and the nation do not ex-
haust the cultural repertoire at play.
Furthermore, if the contents of these devotional forms are specific, their
conceptual associations share some similarities with other forms of patriotism
existing in Europe and North America. In European schools, for instance, it
is through the idea of the nation that children are taught legitimate feelings of
love, learning paeans and poems in celebration of the nation’s grandeur and
 Singing the Nation into Existence 65

beauty (Thiesse 1999: 238). The specificity of the institution in a relatively new
nation-state such as India, however, is to place emphasis upon the national
integration of all citizens. Perhaps this integration is nowhere more realizable
than in particular locales whose very construction is predicated upon such
an integrative vision. That, as suggested by Johnny Parry, in the Nehruvian
space par excellence of the Bhilai steel plant, people from all parts of India
should be more tolerant of faith, class, regional, and ethnic differences proves
the point.33 As for other places, the local historical configurations at play may
jeopardize achievement of such an integrative project. Indeed, there exists an
arresting tension between the secular ideal professed by the constitution and
the regional implementation of the national project. On the one hand, citizens
are invited to view themselves as part of a single imagined community, in spite
of their differences. That this is still considered a fundamental prerequisite in
Maharashtra, both by the state’s successive governments and the teachers, is
evidenced not only by the continuous directives given in this respect but also
in the choice that teachers make of teaching patriotic songs to the children. On
the other hand, as we have seen, the repertoire of these songs is a long-stand-
ing Hindu one; even Hindi and Marathi movies dating from the independence
period to this day are endowed with such pervasive “Hinduness” (Vasudevan
2000; Benei 2004). Popular and public culture is therefore central to teachers’
negotiations of the state goals and objectives, whether in their capacity as its
representatives or as ordinary citizens. In this process, ordinary social actors’
agency surfaces most prominently. This bears further elaboration.
Due to the nature of the project, a tension will be perceptible throughout the
book between a Spinozist framework and one granting some degree of free will
and agency to those passion- and emotion-stirred social agents in their proces-
sual identification to locality, region, and nation. The project, while concerned
with documenting the institutional production of national allegiance and its
attendant construction of the state in everyday life, also seeks to make mean-
ing of varyingly coherent fragments of state projects as much as of ordinary
actors’ lives. It seeks to illuminate how social actors, including children, are not
simply passive agents; they negotiate these multifarious processes, singularly
and individually. The wide array of possible negotiations ranges from almost
unconditional allegiance and wholesome identification to downright rejection,
via claims to leeway or autonomy, not always explicit but nevertheless extant, if
only in the form of minimal discursive subversion. Examples of such individual
negotiations may be found in regular acts of mild insubordination, such as
66  Singing the Nation into Existence

regularly coming in late to school or reluctantly performing devotion and al-

legiance to Bharat Mata during morning assemblies by mumbling the national
anthem or the pledge. Of course, empirical evidence can only be fragmentary,
as none of the pupils so explicitly articulated acts and personal views, whether
in the space of school or the intimacy of home. It may also be that these acts
of negotiation are much easier to acknowledge and articulate several decades
later, regardless of the nation-state to which they pertain. And so the seemingly
sibylline quote at the beginning of this chapter may now be appositely situ-
ated more fully, and justice rendered to Ernest Gellner’s account of his summer
camp memories in former Czechoslovakia (1991: 63):

I did regularly go to summer camp, and the ritual of raising the flag was accom-
panied by an oath of loyalty to the Czechoslovak republic, and I always used to
miss out one word. Not because I had any intention of committing high treason
against the republic—quite the contrary: the family had basically loyal gratitude
for Masarykian liberalism. But I didn’t see why I should close my political op-
tions so early: I didn’t wish to bind myself. It seemed to me slightly premature,
and I hadn’t figured it all out. So I used to miss out one word of the oath at ran-
dom. A sentence which has no sense does not commit you to anything. I would
not articulate some parts of the sentence in such a way that the whole sentence
made no sense as an oath and consequently didn’t bind me.

In the following interludes and chapters, we shall encounter other examples

of such negotiations while analyzing of the production of national(ist) emotions
as processes of embodiment. Articulating with a discussion of a devotional
sensorium, discussions of the phenomenological implications of the “affective
shaping of nationhood” (Yano 1995: 20) will also lead us to explore negotiations
of a linguistically incorporated sensorium: Marathi-language ideology therein
provides a potent frame for defining idioms of morality associated with the
attempted making of a well-rounded civic person, a true samskara-­predicated
national bhakta or devotee citizen.
2 Producing Good Citizens
Languages, Bodies, Emotions

[A]nd the body is our anchorage in a world.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception

Political integration has already taken place to some extent, but what I am
after is something much deeper than that—an emotional integration of the
Indian people so that we might be welded into one, and made into one strong
national unit.
Jawaharlal Nehru

Just like you have sucked your mother’s milk, you have at the same time
imbibed your mother’s language.
Shantabai Vankudre, mother of Sushila, Class 3

The classroom is rather bare, with four to five rows of wooden planks aligned on
the floor for the pupils to sit on, a few posters of the national and regional lead-
ers (nete) stuck onto the dark painted walls, and an uneven board covered in
neatly chalked words. These would hardly be legible in the room darkened by
the stormy, cloudy skies of a March afternoon were it not for the light filtering
in through the half-closed shutters. At times, a slight breeze gently pushes the
shutters back and forth, relieving the fanless room’s occupants from the humid
heat. Behind the small desk to the right of the board is sitting Mr. Pawar. The
young Class 3 teacher, in his early thirties, was posted two years before, in 1997,
at Marathi Corporation School. The school is one of seventy-two run by the
municipality of Kolhapur. Located in the slum area of Sachar Bazar, the insti-
tution is also competing with the All India Marathi School, founded and run
by the progressive socialist Antar Bharati society, and the Urdu Corporation
School that caters to most of the Muslim students of the area. Apart from its
small size, however, nothing really distinguishes Marathi Corporation School
from its counterparts: the teachers have undergone the same training as their
colleagues and are equally paid by the state government. Their schooling years

70
 Producing Good Citizens 71

have been similarly shaped by a patriotic education geared toward national

“emotional integration.” The latter was deemed “easily the most important
component element . . . of . . . national integration” in a homonymous Report
(1962: 1) commissioned by Jawaharlal Nehru in the late 1950s. “Emotional in-
tegration” has been a staple of the national curriculum for the past forty years.
Even today, the report in which the concept first appeared in many ways pre-
figures and informs much of the ideology undergirding life in primary schools
in Maharashtra. Emotional integration is not only instantiated in textbook
contents but also permeates routines and procedures of daily national produc-
tion, whether during morning liturgies (Chapter 1) or in classrooms like that
of Mr. Pawar.
The Marathi lesson has already started. Today, it is devoted to a recapit-
ulation of the vocabulary learned in the course of the past few months. Mr.
Pawar has concocted a revision schedule of his own based on the syllabus. His
neat and clear handwriting covers the entire board: words in four columns on
the left-hand side face whole sentences on the right. Armed with a ruler, he
points to each word methodically, column after column, the pupils repeating
the words in chorus. At times the teacher interrupts his enumeration to call
for a distracted pupil’s attention, firing copious chalk bullets at the recalcitrant
pupils; at other times he selects several students to repeat words and sentences
one after another. And so the repetition goes:

“My school is very nice, my village is beautiful, I like my country very much,
I have pride and respect in my country, in my country live people from differ-
ent jāt,1 in my country people live happily.” [Majhi shala chan ahe, Majhe gaon
sundar ahe, Majha desh mala khup avadto, Majhya deshaca mala abhiman ahe,
Majhya deshat vividh jatice lok rahtat, Majhya deshatil lok anandane rahtat.]

Mr. Pawar’s choice of words and sentences is nothing exceptional in this part
of India. Rather, his examples are integral to the daily iterations of devotion to
the Indian nation in the Marathi language. Although the lexical selection here
is clearly informed by the official textbook in use in every Class 3 across the re-
gional state, it also partly stems from Mr. Pawar’s own inspiration. For there ex-
ists no stipulation of procedures for vocabulary revisions along such explicitly
national lines. Asked why he chose these examples in the first place, Mr. Pawar
seemed somewhat puzzled. He had not really given it much thought. Wasn’t it
obvious that children had to be taught how to love their country (deshvar prem
thevayce) and become good citizens (cangle nagarik huvayce)? Was it not the
72  Producing Good Citizens

same where I came from? This, then, is an illustration of Maharashtrian and

Indian nationalism at its most banal level of quotidian experience.
How does the nation become this natural object of devotion, and what are
the modalities of this “affective shaping of nationhood” (Yano 1995: 20)? How
are political emotions constructed? In the previous chapter we conducted a
conceptual and ethnographic exploration of “what moves people” and of the
ways in which political discourses and practices of deshbhakti play upon re-
gional traditions of devotionalism in the production of a national devotional
sensorium. This exploration brought home the usefulness of the notion of po-
litical emotion for envisaging the emotive dimension inherent in political and
social processes. I now turn to the phenomenological entailments of such a
notion by addressing the issue of the intertwined production of ideals of love of
nation and good citizenship feeding into the construction of national citizens.
This requires identifying the kind of labor that goes into the naturalizing objec-
tification of the nation, and through what mediations. This chapter explores the
mediation of language, both as ideology and incorporated practice. Rather than
confining my analysis to the level of linguistic performance, I also examine the
embodiedness of discourse on language. My reflection is situated at the cross-
roads of three main anthropological trends: an anthropology of emotions, of
bodies, and of language ideology. Anthropology, and the other social sciences
to varying extents, has been marked by various genealogies of works reinstating
the body as a primary medium for socialization. That socialization does take
place largely through social actors’ bodies—however these are to be defined and
located, socially, culturally, historically, and politically—has by now become a
commonplace. Similarly, it has been firmly established that language and emo-
tion are social, cultural, and political practices. Yet little work has sought to
explore the intersections of the production of language ideologies and emo-
tions with any notion of embodiment in the formation of national attachment.
In this chapter, I seek to illuminate the crucial dimension of embodied linguistic
emotions of national belonging nurtured through schooling.
Elsewhere (Benei 2001b) I showed how children through morning liturgies
create their physical selves while enacting and embodying the nation into ex-
istence. I want to pursue this approach here and explore the ways in which
the body is not only one of the main sites of inscription of a national project
of citizenship through the disciplining procedures extant in everyday life at
school but, as crucially, a phenomenological site of feeling and experiencing the
construction of the nation. In other words, the body is not solely acted upon
 Producing Good Citizens 73

and acting in a subjected rapport to discipline and inscription of the law; it is a

felt and feeling body. Arguably, much of the production of national bonds in the
early years of socialization, especially schooling, involves teaching and learning
how to “feel” the nation. Here I aim to unravel the joint modalities of embodied
self-formation and instantiation of the nation, and its articulation with idioms
of citizenship. As I will also suggest, the plasticity of the body is, however, not
exhausted by either this national emotional sensorium or its associated project
of collective and individual self-formation.
First, I want to take you out of Mr. Pawar’s classroom on the periphery of
Kolhapur and drive you fast-forward in time, to another, more popular school
situated in the bustling heart of town. It is a year later, at the Varsity Marathi
School, one of the oldest privately run Marathi primary schools. It is Saturday
noon, and the school day has just ended. We are in the teachers’ room. The
new Congress government in the regional state has just announced its decision
to introduce compulsory English from Class 1 onward. Ms. Kirari, the school
headmistress, who, like many of her colleagues, has always voiced her pride in
her “Indian culture,” is strongly opposed to such a measure. She is vehemently
discussing the government’s intention with her staff. I have known Kirari Bai
well for over two years. She is a strong-willed and generous lady in her early fif-
ties and is often rather outspoken. Never have I seen her behave so passionately.
Her face is red with anger, her hair flying loose as she gestures forcefully in the
course of her diatribe against the new government’s “populist policy.”
A few days later, when we meet again, Kirari Bai takes up the topic afresh
on her own initiative. Although she has cooled down by now, she makes no
mystery of how dear to her heart the issue of language is, shaking her head
in negation: “No, it is definitely not good, one should not do it.” “Why not?” I
prompt her. Her answer is pat:

“Before, we had the Moghuls, in the times of the Muslims, and we had to learn
the Persian [Farsi] language. Then with the advent of Shivaji the Marathi lan-
guage was successfully imposed. But then, later on, the English came and forced
their English language on us. Then we got our independence, and our Marathi,
our own language [swabhasha] back again. Now, what is the point of impos-
ing the firangi [English] language on us again? Besides, learning in a foreign
tongue is just so unnatural [aswābhāvik]. Learning in a foreign language is
not right [barobar nāhī]; it hinders the child’s development. It is more natural
[swābhāvik] to learn in one’s mother tongue [mātṛ bhāṣā].”
74  Producing Good Citizens

Throughout this chapter I will use Kirari Bai’s visceral linguistic perfor-
mance as a guiding thread and tease out its underlying understandings, as-
sumptions, and implications. But first, let me delineate the contours of my
theoretical positioning at the crossroads of an anthropology of emotions, bod-
ies, and language ideologies.

Public Emotions or Private Feelings?

Toward Phenomenological Reconciliations
My purpose here is not to offer one of many possible genealogies of the wealth
of works on emotions in anthropology. Rather, it is to highlight some important
developments and emphasize avenues yet to be fully explored in light of a phe-
nomenological approach. Hildred Geertz long ago suggested in her work on
Java that outside/inside feelings and emotions are mutually constructed by ad-
justments and approximations (1974: 261). It is in the process of social interac-
tion that people can form both their own personal and more or less collectively
adjusted understandings of the specific repertoires of culturally legitimated
emotions at their disposal. Geertz’s insight, however, remained rather isolated
in the following decades. Only in the past twenty years has emerged a critical
engagement with the theories of emotion that had remained prevalent in the
social sciences. These theories propounded particular ideologies of self, gender,
and social relations that reinforced the notion of higher forms of rationality
characterized as technical, nonemotional, and nonmoral, in opposition to the
“private realm of home, family, and love” as the site of individual expression of
real, authentic selves. In the United States, Joe Errington was among the first
to criticize such a dichotomous vision of emotion and reason. He was soon
echoed by Michelle Rosaldo (1984), whose article on self and feeling sought
to approach emotion as intricately and complexly interwoven with systems
of cultural meaning and social interaction. Lila Abu-Lughod and Catherine
Lutz—both separately and in a collective volume (Abu-Lughod 1986; Lutz 1988;
Abu-Lughod and Lutz 1990)—further engaged with these “tropes of interiority”
supposedly defining the proper realm of emotions in association with the natu-
ral body. By virtue of their location in the natural body, emotions were then
deemed as the most innate and irrational, hence least lending themselves to
sociocultural analysis. Turning this position and its attendant doxa on its head,
Abu-Lughod and Lutz sought to understand emotional discourses as “prag-
matic acts and communicative performances” (1990: 11), placing an emphasis
on the fundamental constructedness of emotions.
 Producing Good Citizens 75

This furthered an understanding of the social and cultural dimensions of

emotions, highlighting their negotiated nature as cultural constructs, in a dia-
lectic between universality of feelings and the culturally specific range of their
definitions, productions, and experiences. At the same time, the understandable
distrust in Western theorizing of emotions led to an overemphasis on cultural
relativity and distinctiveness at the expense of both theoretical and experi-
ential convergences. Furthermore, the anthropological discourse of emotion
became predominantly concerned with verbal productions, whether everyday
conversation (including songs, poems, etc.) or more formal, elaborate, or ar-
tistic. Although acknowledged in these explorations, the bodily discourse on
emotion was relegated to the margins of analysis.2 In other words, emphasizing
the sociality of emotions often entailed glossing over their individuated bodily
production, depriving anthropology of the possibility of reflecting upon the
phenomenological experience of their joint formation with that of social and
individual bodies. However, all emotions are expressed and displayed by means
of bodily performance, whether collectively or individually. As Margaret Lyon
has insisted, social relationships are “necessarily bodily: social processes are not
just given being through ideas, rules, and customs” (1995: 254). Lyon’s further
comment more than a decade ago that “[i]t is through the study of emotion that
anthropology may best be fully ‘re-embodied’ ” (256) has powerful resonance
even today, despite recent theoretical attention paid to the phenomenological
dimension of emotion.3 It is also an invitation to further our understanding of
emotion by giving recognition to the body not only in relation to the mind but
also as integral to the conception of emotion per se (256).4
Bodies, as is by now established, are as much the principal medium for most
socialization processes as they are social and cultural constructions. Bourdieu’s
notion of “bodily hexis” as a “set of body techniques and postures that are
learned habits or deeply ingrained dispositions that both reflect and reproduce
the social relations that surround and constitute them” (as summarized by Abu-
Lughod and Lutz 1990: 12) has become received wisdom in the social sciences.
Other works have made much of Foucault’s insights into disciplinary processes
(1979) and the notion of individuals’, agents’, subjects’, actors’ bodies as the site
of the “inscription of the law.”5 Arguably, heeding the embodied dimension of
socialization also illuminates the processes at play in the quotidian production
of national imaginings and senses of belonging. Among other things, an emo-
tional, embodied discourse of the nation is produced in the morning rituals
as much as in the ordinary school day routine in Kolhapur. It does not consist
76  Producing Good Citizens

only of words, verbal utterances, and gestures, through which emotion, how-
ever defined, is expressed at every level of language, from intonation to inflec-
tion, grammar—especially syntax—and vocabulary (Ochs and Schieffelin 1989;
Besnier 1990; Irvine 1990; Errington 1998a, 1998b). It is also concrete, physical,
embodied. For this reason, it is as much a collective discourse as an individu-
ated one (or whatever finer continuum of experientiality between these two
arbitrary extremes is available as a cultural resource), without any necessary
implication of primacy or authenticity of one over the other.

Bodies, Emotions, Nations

[O]ur mental life is knit up with our corporeal frame, in the
strictest sense of the term.
William James, “What Is an Emotion?”

As intimated earlier, Michelle Rosaldo’s article inspired a large part of the in-
tellectual approach to be found in later work on emotion. However, such in-
spiration has been partial, for Rosaldo was genuinely interested in the notion
of embodiment. She explicitly referred to “flushes, pulses, ‘movements’ of our
livers, minds, hearts, stomachs, skin” as “embodied thoughts, thoughts seeped
with the apprehension that ‘I am involved’ ” (1984: 143). Such a phenomeno-
logical awareness seems to have been lost in much subsequent work.6 I want
to pause on Rosaldo’s comment of “I am involved,” which resonates with the
approach developed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Per-
ception (1989). Drawing upon earlier conceptions that emerged in the late
nineteenth century (especially Husserl’s notion of “I-can”), Merleau-Ponty ex-
panded on the notion of the body as the medium of involvement in the world.
Rather than the objective body, he saw the “phenomenal body,” that which has
a ­representation/consciousness/image of itself, as our medium for relating to
the world: “The body is the vehicle of being in the world, and having a body
is, for a living creature, to be intervolved in a definite environment, to identify
oneself with certain projects and be continually committed to them” (1989: 82).
This conceptualization of human beings anchored in the world through their
bodies parted with a dualistic—and still prevalent—assumption of disjunction
between organism and psyche (88).7 Here I want to take this insight into an
exploration of the ways in which bodies are, through what might at first sight
appear “mere” disciplining, also made to feel the nation in the space of school.
Even in schools where the morning assembly would regularly take no
more than ten minutes, the body always operated as a fundamental vehicle
 Producing Good Citizens 77

for producing a national attachment, with different drills being practiced at

each stage. In the process, the idea of the body of the nation (Assayag 1997)
was enacted by the pupils, congruently with the idea advanced more than a
century ago by the historian of religions Ernest Renan (Prologue). In all the
schools visited, pupils would sing the national anthem while standing, keeping
their bodies upright and stiff, arms alongside. This would be followed by the
recitation of the pledge (pratidnya) in Marathi, with the children holding their
right arm horizontally as if taking a pledge in court. After the pratidnya would
ensue the school prayer, other shloks, and more contemporary songs, promot-
ing various topics ranging from national unity to girls’ schooling. All these
sung items were often interspersed with simple calisthenics, involving arm
raising, repeatedly putting the legs apart and together, sideways movements of
the arms, and so on. Orchestrating the session, the teacher in charge—often a
middle-aged Brahmin or Maratha woman—would lead the children into gym-
nastic movements while singing along with them. In many schools, this was
accompanied by continuous drumming performed by an office boy, a teacher,
or a pupil while the other teachers stood by their divisions and joined in the
singing, their bodies stiff and their facial expressions grave, adding to the mar-
tial physicality of the ceremony. What we have here is an exemplification of
incorporation of a “spontaneous” national sentiment, also acknowledged—yet
hardly documented—in Europe (Thiesse 1999: 14). This incorporation is inte-
gral to the child’s everyday life, blending patriotic sentiment with other, ordi-
nary matters (Chapter 3).
Moreover, the idea of this national physical integration is made very explicit
in the official textbooks produced by the Maharashtra State Bureau and in some
of the supplementary ones used for physical education prepared for each class
by private educational publishers. Thus, the textbook Vocal and Physical Educa-
tion (Sangit ani Sharirik shikshan) designed for Class 4 and published by Vikas
(literally, “progress”) starts with the pratidnya and the rashtragit. It includes the
song “Jay Bharta,” inspired by the national anthem and additionally glorifying
Hindu gods and all the various revolutionaries and builders of modern and in-
dependent India.8 The song also appears as the first lesson in the official Class 3
Marathi-language book, together with explicit instructions as to how it should
be practiced and repeated individually and collectively, accompanied by, or in-
terspersed with, calisthenics.
This disciplining of bodies, both at the time of the morning liturgy and
later on in the classroom, is regulated by the concept of śista. Commonly
78  Producing Good Citizens

translated as “discipline,” the term also refers to the controlled immobility and
stiffness that pupils are expected to adopt, whether during phenomenologi-
cal experiences of daily assembly in alternating drills and physical training
(PT) movements with rigid, standing postures or in classroom situations. A
teacher calling for pupils’ silence or attention, for instance, will often shout:
“Shistit basayce; gap basayce” (Sit properly; shut up [literally, “sit quiet”]). As
important, the notion of shista encompasses the meaning of moral rectitude
and is explicitly enacted as such in everyday school life as well as in the offi-
cial pedagogy. To give an example, the Class 3 Marathi book mentioned con-
tains another instance of incorporation of the nation: the very first story in the
language manual emphasizes the bodily and moral rectitude to be observed
while singing the rashtragit. It is a masterpiece of the nationalist pedagogical
genre and a wonderful Bourdieusian illustration of how “obedience is belief
and belief is what the body grants even when the mind says no.”9 The story is
narrated by a schoolteacher and is about untrained schoolchildren on their
first school day. The narrative adroitly weaves another story into the plot, that
of a retired army officer (subhedar) walking past the school with a water jug
in hand. As he hears the shouting of the call to attention (sāwadhān, the call
marking the beginning of both military and nationalist school drills, as well
as ending the first ritual in wedding ceremonies; see Benei 1996), the retired
officer “instinctively” straightens himself up to adopt the shista position and
drops his jug to the ground. The last words of the story provide an excellent
illustration of the intricate relationship between the teaching of the nation and
the disciplining of bodies:

Like [that of] the subhedhar, the body of each schoolchild should become
proper, fit . . . . While singing the rashtragit, correctness should be displayed.
Whenever and wherever our country’s rashtragit is started playing, we must
stop and stand in the sawdhan position; we must show respect to our rashtragit!
(Marathi Bal Bharati 1998: 11)

This intricate interplay of bodily and moral rectitude undergirds the at-
tempted production of a social body of future generations of Indian citizens: a
social body that should ideally be unconditionally devoted to loving and serv-
ing the nation. These last two aims of unity of and love for the nation are made
explicit in the pledge, as we saw in the previous chapter. In many ways, this ex-
ample of schooling projects draws attention to the embodied kind of morality
integral to the formation of personhood and citizenship, and to which language
 Producing Good Citizens 79

socialization practices crucially contribute while shaping notions of ethnicity

and cultural identity (Garrett and Baquedano-Lopez 2002: 350). I now turn to
these language socialization practices.

Language Ideologies, Standardization, and Nationalism

Language invites people to unite, but it does not force them to do so.
Ernest Renan, Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?

Language acquisition obviously entails more than a child simply learning to

produce “well-formed referential utterances” (Garrett and Baquedano-Lopez
2002: 342).10 It involves the child’s developing skills in order to use language in
socially appropriate ways and make meaning of culturally relevant contexts and
activities. These are determined by language ideologies, that is, “self-evident
ideas and objectives a group holds concerning roles of language in the social ex-
periences of members as they contribute to the expression of the group” (Heath
1989: 53, quoted in Woolard 1998: 4). In other words, ideologies of language
articulate historical constructions with the developmental process of language
acquisition, as well as with local notions of cultural and group identity, na-
tionhood, personhood, and childhood (Garrett and Baquedano-Lopez 2002:
353–64). Working with the notion of language ideology has rendered possible a
“debunking” of the claims to pristine purity and authenticity inherent in most
nationalist language ideologies. In particular, it has highlighted the contin-
gency and arbitrariness of language as a referent and mediation for the imagi-
nation of the nation. Despite Ernest Renan’s comment of over a century ago
upon the arbitrary equation of language and nation, fetishization of language
as a referential system for a national community of speakers has been the con-
sequence of Lockean and Herderian ideologies (although distinct as language
philosophies) and their profound impact on the modern theories of linguistic
nationalism prevalent since the nineteenth century in Europe and elsewhere
(Kroskrity 2000: 11). Many studies of nationalism across the world stressed the
prominent part linguistic factors have since played in the cultural formation of
the nation—whether at a national or a regional level (Anderson 1983; Gellner
1983; Hobsbawm 1992; Hastings 1997). Linguistic movements in the formation
of ethno-nationalisms have also been documented in the subcontinent (King
1996; Rahman 1996, 2004; King 1998). In India, regional nationalisms have been
intricately associated with regional languages, particularly in Bengal, Tamil­
nadu, and Maharashtra (see Phadke 1979; Cohn 1987b; Ramaswamy 1997). The
80 Producing Good Citizens

case of Maharashtrian nationalism and Marathi language offers a particularly

rich historical instance of a linguistic and cultural regionalism mediating na-
tional sentiment.
The very issue of how languages come to be naturalized in locutors’ rep-
resentations requires further probing. Why are conceptions of languages as
“discrete, distinctive entities . . . emblematic of self and community” so uni-
versally prominent (Fishman 1989, quoted in Woolard 1998: 18)? Here I seek to
reach an understanding of such emblematization through Marathi discourses
of belonging. The mediatory role of linguistic ideologies in relation to language
and emotion (Wilce 2004: 11) also calls for a phenomenological exploration of
language ideologies and their physicality as indigenous discursive practices as
well as lived, embodied experiences. In Maharashtra, as we shall see, social ac-
tors both possess and share a language ideology of Marathi and have a linguistic
discourse on the physicality of emotion. The first step of the demonstration,
however, requires probing into the idea of an imagined, homogeneous language
for national purposes.
At first glance, there may appear a contradiction between Marathi lin-
guistic belonging and Indian nationalism. Yet, as shall be seen in Chapter 4,
the two are intricately related: the notion of a Marathi/Maratha nation stands
in Maharashtrian conceptualizations as the precondition for the possibility
of the Indian nation. Marathi-predicated Maharashtrian nationalism owes
much to the processes of homogenization that have accompanied the de-
velopment of the language into a nationalist/regionalist ideology. Indeed,
Marathi nationalism clearly instantiates the notion that if language alone sug-
gests—mostly in the form of poetry and songs—“a kind of contemporane-
ous community” (Anderson 1991: 145), “homogeneous language is as much
imagined as is community” (Irvine and Gal 2000: 76).11 Marathi’s normaliza-
tion and homogenization were enabled by the philological efforts of British
linguists and educationists working closely with local Sanskrit pundits in the
mid-nineteenth century (McDonald 1968a, 1968b; Nemade 1990; Benei 2001b;
Naregal 2002). In the process, the Marathi spoken by Pune Brahmins emerged
as the sanctioned legitimate standard. The colonial concern for codifying and
standardizing Marathi and its (written) usages later proved indigenously in-
strumental in its development into a medium of communication for Marathi
speakers whose “dialectal” varieties had heretofore made it difficult for them
to communicate with one another.12 Consequently, official Marathi today is to
some extent a modern creation, and the underlying standardization process
 Producing Good Citizens 81

was at the core of the birth of a vernacular print literature providing recon-
ceptualization of social and political space on the basis of a unified “imag-
ined community”: through this literature were produced common ideas about
Maharashtra as a region celebrating a glorious martial past and bhakti tradi-
tion. The (re)definition of a modern Marathi and Maharashtrian identity thus
participated in the emergence of a regionalist consciousness in the last de-
cades of the nineteenth century. This regional consciousness was also largely
nationalist.
Marathi provided the medium for celebrating at length the “idea of India.”
Indeed, despite full recognition within the regional state of the role Hindi
played as a linguistic and national unifier, the notion of “Marathi language”
(Marathi bhasha) operated as a powerful, rallying trope and a crucial media-
tion for the production, assertion, and defense of a sense of both regional and
national belonging.13 Evidence of this in the space of school lies in the contents
of the language textbooks designed by the regional state’s production bureau
for Classes 1 to 5, and in the wealth of poems and songs pupils learned and
were made to recite, sing, and mime. The primary Marathi language manuals
are replete with poems, stories, and songs glorifying India. Even the Class 1
Marathi textbook has its fair share of devotional national contents. In addition
to reproducing the words of the national anthem on the last page of the book
under the title “Our National Song” (Aple rashtragit), it has a twelve-line poem
entitled “This Is My Country of India” (Ha majha Bharat desh). These are the
poem’s first and last lines:

This is my country of India Ha majha Bharat desh

Superb, superb is my country Chhan chhan majha desh
... ...
My country is superb Majha desh chhan ahe
India is my country. Bharat majha desh ahe.

This kind of poetic declaration is reiterated throughout the day, whether by

rote learning of the textbook contents and recitation at the time of the paripath
(Chapter 1); by teachers selecting examples “at random” for the purpose of il-
lustrating a point, grammatical, geographical, historical, or otherwise; or, as we
saw in Mr. Pawar’s class, merely practicing acquired vocabulary. Among the
examples selected, the stories of independence heroes and nationalist fighters,
especially Mahatma Gandhi and Subhas Chandra Bose, figure prominently. Tell-
ing these stories provides occasions for teachers to proffer side commentaries,
82  Producing Good Citizens

often ending with an exhortation for the pupils to emulate these edifying mod-
els. These moments are clear instances of affect being linguistically mediated,
permeating talk and “infusing words with emotional orientations” (Garrett and
Baquedano-Lopez 2002: 352; see also Ochs and Schieffelin 1989; Besnier 1990),
and in which the very celebration of the nation occurs in the intricate folds of a
linguistic intimacy with the region.
Such an intimacy is further undergirded by the concept of “one’s own lan-
guage” (swabhasha). The notion may have already existed prior to the colonial
encounter; yet it was reinscribed as a political and nationalist one in the throes
of redefining and strengthening a sense of communitas predicated upon a sense
of belonging to the soil as swadesh (one’s own country) and sharing swadharma
(one’s own religion; although see Chapter 1 for the ambiguities of such a defi-
nition) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.14 In Maharashtra
today, this trinitarian conceptualization meaningfully informs the reworking
and reproduction of emotional structures of feeling. In Kolhapur, in the late
1990s and early 2000s, Marathi-speaking parents of both English- and Marathi-
educated children often expressed their attachment to Maharashtra as a whole
in those very terms. This connection between language and the (re)production
of a sense of belonging (to both a community of speakers and people living on
the same soil) is also poignantly revealed in the wording of Kirari Bai’s impas-
sioned diatribe and emotional expression, verbal and bodily. Furthermore, in
using the notion of swabhasha as standing in opposition to other languages
(especially English), Kirari Bai was reproducing a pattern common among
Marathi speakers today. Many parents and teachers similarly expressed their
contrasted attachment to the Marathi language, resorting to the popular ex-
pression of swataci bhasha—as in “Amci bhasha ’he, swataci” (This is our lan-
guage, our own). Often, they would utter these words while scanning them,
with an emphasis on each syllable; the physicality of the utterance would also
be completed with a gesture of the hand (palm flat, or fist) tapping on the chest
or heart. Of all the embodied aspects of such a testimony, this gesture, common
in many other contexts of claiming, confessing, and pledging faithfulness, best
signals emotional involvement.
This emotional involvement vividly resonates with discursive practice where
even the pronoun used in discussions of ownership of the Marathi language cru-
cially encapsulates and furthers a sense of cohesiveness of the thus-­constituted
Marathi-speaking communitas in opposition to the linguistic outside. Like
most Indian languages, Marathi has two pronouns for the first-person plural
 Producing Good Citizens 83

pronoun we used in English: one is the exclusive āmhī (āmce, -ā, -ī for neutral,
masculine, and feminine possessive forms respectively), which demarcates the
speaker from her or his audience. In contexts where the audience is meant to
be included in the speaker’s reference group, the pronoun used is the inclusive
āpaṇ (āple, -ā, -ī in possessive forms). Hence, there is always a notion of clear
demarcation in ordinary and daily speech and interaction between those who
do belong to one’s group of elocution and those who do not. Of course, such
demarcation is highly fluid, variable, and context specific.15 When used in dis-
cussions of belonging, however, such a lexical marker powerfully contributes
to emphasize—and thus reinforces—a collective sentiment of cohesion. There-
fore, when, as in political discourses, teachers address their audience referring
to “our country” using the phrase apla desh, they are clearly calling out to the
children as part of the same united, exclusive group. The potentialities of such a
deictic marker are obviously vast and need to be borne in mind in a reflection
on identity, citizenship, and belonging (see also Billig 1995 on the notion of de-
ictic marker). They have special import given the close association of swabha-
sha with swadesh, especially with respect to conceptualizations of members of
non-Marathi-speaking, non-Hindu communities in Maharashtra (Chapter 5).
For the moment, I want to concentrate on the predication of Marathi language
ideology upon notions of naturalness mediated and legitimized by the concept
of “mother tongue.” I wish to illuminate the ways in which schools are sites
of language naturalization and homogenization, thereby creating a conscious
notion of the mother tongue “already there” as an object and a medium of love
and attachment. This “already there,” however, is by no means a natural given.
Rather, it is itself the product of early childhood socialization processes oc-
curring in the intimacy of home (Chapter 3). Schools, therefore, draw upon,
amplify, and crystallize senses of linguistic belonging while making the latter’s
ideology explicit and further anchoring it in lived and experienced bodies.

Mother Tongue, Naturalness,

and Philological Explorations
What accounts for the meaningfulness of language ideology as both social
practice and pedagogical tool is its experiential association with the concept
of “mother tongue.” Language ideology crystallizes, almost reifies, Marathi-
as-swabhasha as the naturalized object of motherly love experienced in the
infancy of social and family life. Notwithstanding the cultural specificity of
its conceptual formulation, however, this crystallization of mother tongue and
84  Producing Good Citizens

its lived experience is not unique to the Indian case. Rather, it is congruent
with the many processes of national formation that took place from the late
nineteenth century onward and wherein language played a constitutive part.
Today, as Woolard noted, with the equation of one language to one people “has
come an insistence on authenticity and moral significance of ‘mother tongue’
as one first and therefore real language of a speaker, transparent to the true
self ” (1998: 18).16 By the same token, the emergence of a Marathi-speaking
national (e.g., pan-Indian) consciousness was coextensive with a conception
of a true, authentic yet new and modern Marathi-speaking self. This requires
qualification.
Dating the concept of mother tongue among Indian vernacular speakers
prior to the advent of European philological influences in the nineteenth cen-
tury has generated some debate. On the one hand, evidence has been proffered
of earlier notions linking regional language with mother tongue (Bayly 1998;
also see Ramanujan, quoted in Prentiss 1999; Chapter 1). Lending further cre-
dence to this thesis is the concomitant movement of written vernacularization
following “the old cosmopolitan epoch” observed in southern Asia and western
Europe in the first half of the “vernacular millennium” (1000–1500) wherein
“vernacular literary cultures were initiated by the conscious decisions of writers
to reshape the boundaries of their cultural universe by renouncing the larger
world for the smaller place” (Pollock 2000: 592, emphasis in original). In Eu-
rope, the historical construct of the mother tongue took shape at the time of
written vernacularization (Haugen 1991: esp. 79–80, for Germany in particu-
lar). On the other hand, as Sheldon Pollock remarks, “The expression ‘mother
tongue’ was current in no Indian lexicon before European expansion” (2006:
319). The concept of mother tongue in India only emerged in the latter half of
the nineteenth century under European philological influences (Ramaswamy
1997: 15–17). It may be that the concept was largely alien to Indian vernacular
speakers in southern India prior to the advent of standardization in the nine-
teenth century. At any rate, the concept today is a powerful vector of regional
and national identification. As in Tamilnadu, the mother tongue can be seen as
both bonding its speakers in a “net of unity . . . as firmly and surely as the love
of their mother(s)” and potentially transforming its speakers into patriots and
citizens (Ramaswamy 1997: 53, 57, 140). This is particularly so when the state as-
sumes its promotion in various arenas of everyday life, especially schooling.
The felt authenticity of the idea and lived experience of the Marathi lan-
guage as mother tongue has in many ways been relayed by schooling, not only
 Producing Good Citizens 85

at an official level with explicit discourses promoting a Marathi-predicated Ma-

harashtrian identity but also, and most important on the ground of everyday
practices, intricately linking it to an idiom of motherhood. Thus, the large num-
ber of prayers and poems in Marathi addressed to both mother and motherland
and officially part of the syllabus are supplemented by primary schoolteachers’
own daily pronouncements on the topic (Chapter 3).
The deployment of the trope of motherhood in imaginings of the nation
since the nineteenth century has received renewed attention in the last decade.
Gender-conscious scholars have devoted their efforts to exploring the gendered
dimension of nationalism and nationalist sentiment, showing “how (middle-
class) women came to be sanctified as reproductive beings through valorisations
of the ideology of motherly love” (Ramaswamy 1998: 83; see also McClintock
1993; Sarkar 1995; Gupta 2001; T. Sarkar 2002). In a suggestive article on the
somatics of nationalism in Tamilnadu, Ramaswamy documented the tropes of
motherly intimacy and the somatic imagery of the mother’s body parts and
substances (milk, tears, womb) that Tamil nationalist discourses associate with
the notion of mother tongue. Using “body language” as a conceptual grid, Ra-
maswamy mapped the ideological work to which various parts and substances
of the female body are subjected in nationalist discourses serving the project of
incorporating citizens into the emergent body politic. In the end, Ramaswamy
argues, nation and citizen-patriot in Tamil India relate to each other politically,
materially, and emotionally, as well as somatically: “the nation is a somatic for-
mation . . . because it exists, literally, in the guts . . . of its female embodiment,
and of her citizen-subjects” (1998: 79–80). The tropes of the mother tongue are
“part of a routine repertoire deployed strategically . . . guaranteeing effective-
ness of somatic imagery in nationalist discourses” (84).
The modalities either of this strategic deployment or of this somatization,
however, remain unspecified. Here, rather than suggest or endorse a principled
effectiveness (in the sense of producing a decided, decisive, or desired effect) of
the political use of this somatic imagery by skilled politicians, I want to concen-
trate on the deployment of the mother trope in ordinary people’s everyday life
experiences and explore the modalities of its instantiation. Taking Ramaswa-
my’s proposition of the embodied mother tongue literally, I aim to document
the cognitive and phenomenological deployment of this trope. In particular, I
seek to understand the articulation between the level of somatic imagery and its
transposition to “the guts” of its ordinary citizen-subjects. Documenting such
a transposition requires that we recognize it as not metaphorical (­Strathern
86  Producing Good Citizens

1993). In the next chapter, I document how the mother trope operates at various
levels in the construction of emotional bonding and attachment both to family
and national values. Here, I want to emphasize the physicality of the mother-
tongue ideology for its speakers. This physicality is evidenced in the analogy
often drawn between mother language and biological mother. Thus, Mr. Joshi,
an art teacher running a cultural center for schoolchildren, explained in the
summer of 2003:

Before traveling abroad, it is important that we should first see our gaon, Maha-
rashtra, our desh, etc. Today, everybody wants to go to America; people are all
forgetting their mother tongue. . . . Yet your mother tongue is like your mother’s
womb: you cannot forget it. Moreover, it is unique. Just like you only have one
mother, so you only have one mother tongue. It cannot be changed.

Mr. Joshi’s statement echoes those frequently made by both female and
male parents and teachers, who identified other bodily parts and substances,
the mother’s milk in particular. Thus, Shantabai, Maratha mother of Sushila,
a Class 3 student at Modern Marathi School quoted earlier, states, “Just like
you have sucked your mother’s milk, you have at the same time imbibed your
mother’s language.”
Both Mr. Joshi’s and Shantabai’s words are strikingly reminiscent of the
views of the eighteenth-century linguist, poet, and philologist Johann Gott-
fried von Herder, famous for his influential theology of cultural nation building
premised on linguistic revelation through one’s people (Volk). At the core of
Herder’s vision of national forms lies an organic connection between human
language and natural and historical forces that the most enlightened people
would realize. The “true character” of a nation, its soul, spirit, and genius, would
be reflected in, expressed through, and further strengthened by the uniqueness
of its language conceived, produced, and transmitted as mother tongue. Espe-
cially noteworthy in the present case is that, if language is more than a mere
cognitive tool, it is also associated with motherly substances and operates as
a material object: it is the very substance of one’s cultural and national being.17
Thus, by going away, by leaving one’s homeland, one loses one’s own culture
and, more precisely, the nurturing substance of motherly milk and idiom. In
some ways, it is as if the humoral theory of old patriae analyzed by C. A. Bayly
(1998) had been transposed and transmuted into that of the mother tongue in
a triadic association with soil and faith. We need to go one step further and
examine how the notion and ideology of mother tongue are embedded in a
 Producing Good Citizens 87

process that concomitantly naturalizes language. The apparent “obviousness”

and “naturalness”—and their emotional implications—of the Marathi language
need further attention, especially because they are crucial elements in ordinary
Marathi speakers’ discursive iterations. Furthermore, paying heed to local un-
derstandings of “naturalness” also illuminates the moral dimension associated
with somatic and emotional notions of language.
Linguistic ideologies characteristically operate a kind of neutralization or
naturalization of language value through semiotic processes erasing both the
historical contingency of languages and the relations of power and interest un-
derlying them (Spitulnik 1998: 163). This begs the question of how ordinary
social actors produce, posit, and understand such naturalness. Drawing on dis-
cursive constructions of language as well as observations and descriptions of
speech acts and performances, I contend that the construction of “naturalness”
is premised on an understanding of language as incorporation, both as dis-
course and practice. We have just encountered Mr. Joshi’s views on the substan-
tialization of language and the fear and anxiety attached to the idea of identity
loss generated by distance and forgetting. Although such fears and anxieties
culminate in comments from expatriate Maharashtrians, they are generally
pervasive in discussions “back home,” especially of the medium of instruction
for schoolchildren, as suggested by Kirari Bai’s passionate defense of Marathi
over English at the opening of this chapter.
Yet if Kirari Bai’s statement was clearly one of the best articulated ever
encountered in the course of research, it was in no way exceptional. Many
Marathi-speaking parents shared the same fears of potential identity loss associ-
ated with the teaching of, and in, the English language. Moreover, the discursive
(and pragmatic) favoring of instruction in Marathi was by no means specific to
­Hindutva-sympathetic teachers or parents. In addition, such a preference re-
curred both among parents of children schooled in the Marathi language and
among those whose children attended English-language institutions. In both
cases, the discursive preference was primarily couched in an idiom of natural-
ness associated with the notion of mother tongue: “Learning in one’s mother
tongue is so much more natural [swabhavik]” was a leitmotif among parents
who would cite evidence of children having gone through the primary phase of
instruction in their native language as being more scholarly grounded than oth-
ers.18 Here, the Marathi word used for “natural” crucially illuminates the breadth
of the semantic repertoire of emotionality characterizing Marathi language ide-
ology. Naturalness is conceptualized as both an emotional and embodied state.
88  Producing Good Citizens

The word swabhavik (from the root bhāv) encompasses many layers of meaning,
including that of a natural state of being, innate property, disposition, nature,
but also, as important, sentiment or passion, emotion or feeling, a class of affec-
tions, as well as the actions, gestures, or postures constituting corporeal expres-
sion thereof. When Marathi native speakers elaborate on the naturalness of their
language, therefore, they are often—whether consciously or not—playing into
an embodied experientiality of linguistic emotion.
Perhaps the best exemplification of such embodied experientiality lies in
the expression trās yeṇe, as in the phrase “Tras yeto, English maddhe shikayla.”
Such a statement was often encountered among parents voicing their concern
about the difficulty caused by the unnaturalness of learning in any language
other than one’s mother tongue. Loosely translated, the sentence means “It
creates problems, to learn in English.” The semantic register is however much
wider: tras in Marathi may refer as much to emotional as physical issues. Con-
sider, for instance, the common expression kunala tras dene (to give a hard
time to someone). In the idiom of domesticity, and especially among married
women, the expression is used with reference to kin relations within the con-
jugal family, whose epitome lies in the figure of the mother-in-law. Narratives
pertaining to daughters-in-law—young brides in particular—suffering at the
hands of their mothers-in-law would often be couched in these terms. In this
context as in others, tras could be psychological, emotional, and physical. To
return to the context of learning, the physical connotation of tras must be taken
seriously, rather than hastily dismissed as merely metaphorical. As Andrew
Strathern argued, the notion of metaphor should not be considered as a heuris-
tic device for the “unfamiliar or the strange.” In contrast, Strathern proposed,
we should favor an “against metaphor” perspective and take discourses about
bodily emotions literally: “A stress on metaphor goes with a textual emphasis,
but ‘reading the body’ may require us to alter our categories more radically”
(1993: 6). Here, it must be emphasized that the expression tras yene is also used
in association with the disruption of the ordinary course of bodily functions,
especially that of the digestive system. Important to note is that the verb “to
digest” (pacavne) itself conveys connotations of harmony, and its use in the
negative sense is common to refer to disruption of social and political order
and the resulting degradation of moral order. Thus, if a battle is lost, the shame
incurred in defeat goes “undigested” (apacavleli).19 When parents or teachers
voice their concern about the naturalness of learning in one’s mother tongue
(and the converse tras generated by learning in any other idiom), therefore,
 Producing Good Citizens 89

they are not just demonstrating the appropriateness of such a conceptual vo-
cabulary in the South Asian context today, despite its historical genealogy of
vernacular language ideology rooted in the West (Nemade 1990; Pollock 2006:
318–19). They are also explicitly referring to a phenomenological understanding
of language. Both vocabulary and understanding also entail a moral dimension,
which requires elaboration.

Anxious Emotions, Idioms of Morality,

and Family Tropes of the Nation
Language does not only encode embodied emotions; it also forms the basis for
the socialization of morality, that is, the social sanctioning or rejection of ac-
tions (one’s own and others’). As participants in everyday routines internalize
and express emotion, they also learn to make sense of the moral order they are
actively constructing through interaction with others. Notions of morality are
thus negotiated through linguistically (and corporeally) mediated understand-
ings of daily life and events, providing bearings for one’s place in the world,
both as an individual and as part of a collective (Abu-Lughod and Lutz 1990:
13). Producing a sense of national belonging, whether through morning school
assemblies or throughout the day—during language and history lessons in par-
ticular—was mediated by a Marathi vocabulary of kinship. This vocabulary
furnishes a moral trope for articulating belonging to the family community of
the nation identified by Anderson (1983). Here, in addition to the mother trope
analyzed previously, the kinship one of “brothers and sisters” (bhauband) in-
forms the pledge daily recited in Marathi. The pledge is taken almost verbatim
from the Report of the Committee on Emotional Integration commissioned by
Nehru in the early 1960s. The national leader envisaged such emotional integra-
tion as central to his project of nation building and explicitly resorted to meta-
phors and rhetoric of kinship: the nation was understood as a mother, whether
implicitly or explicitly, and her children, the citizens of India, were to be bhau-
band. The term possesses many layers of meaning in Maharashtra: predicated
on bhāū (literally, “brother”), bhauband defines a kinsman, or in some contexts,
all agnatic kinsmen. By extension, it can apply to all the men of a village. In all
these senses, the term often conveys a strong sense of emotional and practical
commitment, sharing, and friendliness, implying some form of cohesion and
loyalty. As suggested earlier, such notions of cohesion and loyalty are integral
to the Marathi language ideology, with the result that any move away from the
language is conceived by Marathi speakers as a form of betrayal; a betrayal not
90 Producing Good Citizens

only of language and its incorporation but also of desh and dharma (associ-
ated with bhasha, as discussed earlier) and of the community of the (Marathi-
speaking) nation. Thus, parents’ affective bodily displays accompanied assertive
vocalizations about the necessity to teach in Marathi as against the firangi lan-
guage. This moral imperative was also voiced by social actors who did not abide
by this rule, as will be seen shortly. But such are the entailments of Marathi
ideology that the moral and embodied emotionality associated with the notion
of the language remains a powerful one. This bears elaboration.
In a recent article about the linguistic choices and dilemmas obtaining among
Marathi speakers in the face of a so-called English-mediated globalization, I dis-
cussed the complex tensions between the educational and professional choices
linked to middle-class aspirations and expectations on the one hand, and local
and regional linguistic attachments on the other (Benei 2005c). I showed how the
notion of morality tied up with the Marathi language ideology is reflected in the
contrapuntal conception of “foreign” languages held by many Marathi speakers.
English occupies a particular place in this linguistic moral economy. Kirari Bai’s
virulent statement about British rule indicates the lingering malaise associated
with the “colonial language” in this part of India.20 In many ways, such a malaise
has moral resonances dating back to British educationists’ attempts at disciplin-
ing and moralizing the Marathi language in the course of their standardizing en-
deavors (Benei 2001a). Today, this malaise is compounded by the perceived lack
of morality associated with American English. Many Marathi-speaking middle-
class people in Kolhapur can boast about a—however distant—family connec-
tion currently living, studying, or working in America; however, the underlying
fascination for the new world’s promise of a potential site for better economic
opportunities, prosperity, and happiness is also matched by ambivalent imagin-
ings of a land of high rate of divorce, loose morality, and loss of parental and filial
values. In these representations, America often emerged as the place of all moral
and familial perdition, in a sense, an archetypal site of Kaliyuga. Remarkably,
the tensions documented here were as salient in cases of successful exposure to
English-language instruction. The decision parents made to have their children
learn in a language other than Marathi often gave rise to anxieties of cultural loss
similarly couched in an idiom of morality. An example is that of Baba Pankat,
the head of a Bhangi (ex-Untouchable) family.
At the beginning of my research, the family was composed of sixteen mem-
bers spread across three generations living together. Two of the sons ran the
prosperous spare-part workshops started by their father decades earlier. Baba,
 Producing Good Citizens 91

in his mid-seventies at the time of research, recalled the early days when he
had to do his caste’s calling (scavenging) and had to struggle hard through
the educational system, paying for his studies by working as a mechanic. His
educational beginnings were harsh and besmirched by the stigma attached to
his “caste untouchability.” Baba remembered not being allowed to sit within
the classroom at the primary school and having to follow the lessons from the
threshold. Against all odds, he managed to study up to Class 7 in Marathi at
Kolhapur New High School before switching to English Class 5. He left after
finishing Class 6. In the following two generations, those of his children and
grandchildren who, regardless of gender, could handle studying in English
were sent to English-language institutions, and the less academically able
ones went into Marathi instruction. Some of the English-educated children
pursued higher education and later secured mid-ranking jobs in a company
and the local administration, respectively. Even so, Baba, for whom (particu-
larly English) education was a precious asset representing a means of escaping
the socio­economic status ascribed to him by his caste, sometimes expressed a
sense of unresolved tension between the desirability of learning in one’s mother
tongue and that of acquiring the linguistic proficiency necessary to rise above
the condition of one’s caste. Over the years that I got to know him, Baba, who
had consciously pushed the ablest among his offspring into English-language
instruction, would increasingly confide that he “had made a mistake” (majhe
cukle), “now felt bad” (atta wait watle) because “one should definitely learn in
one’s mother tongue” (matru bhashemadhyec shiklec pahije).21
Like comments by many Marathi parents and teachers, Baba’s were not just
an elaboration on the naturalness of learning in one’s mother tongue. His formu-
lation also suggested moral self-condemnation, as in English: cukṇe in Marathi
bears the dual meaning of “making a mistake or a blunder” and of “being mor-
ally wrong, unjust,” “straying or wandering,” “deviating from a righteous path,”
or even “falling short of one’s duty.” By the same token, the concept of “wrong”
(wāīṭ) also has moral connotations: wait can be approximated as “bad,” as in “I
feel bad,” but it can also mean “foul” or “evil.” If it was not “wrong” strategically
for Baba to have pushed his offspring away from education in their mother
tongue, it was so morally, even though the aim of socioeconomic upward mo-
bility had in his eyes been a legitimate one. So Baba concurred in the statement
proffered by Kirari Bai at the beginning of this chapter, contrasting the notion
of wait with that of barobar, or “right, correct, good”: “It is not right to learn in
another language but one’s mother tongue.” The moral condemnation implicit
92  Producing Good Citizens

in these judgments suggests a sense of anguish and betrayal generated by the

neglect of the Marathi language. It is in fact in similar discussions that anxiet-
ies and fears about loss of linguistic and cultural substance become explicitly
formulated. For, as C. Wright Mills had already written in 1940: “[M]en live in
immediate acts of experience and their attentions are directed outside them-
selves until acts are in some way frustrated. It is then that awareness of self and
motive occur” (905). In Kolhapur and elsewhere in western Maharashtra, such
anxieties were rarely manifest until parents and teachers made linguistic and
educational choices that elicited questions about their implications.22
Finally, drawing on Mills’s proposition that “typal vocabularies of motives
for different situations are significant determinants of conduct” (908), it may be
argued that these anxieties are also caused by the tension between moral vocabu-
laries of motives associated with Marathi language ideology and strategic choices
that run counter to them. There is, as Mills suggests, a sense of self-­fulfilling
realization in the process of motive enunciation (907), a kind of performative
iteration: the act of describing one’s motive is not related exclusively to experi-
enced social action. Rather, it is about “influencing others and [one’s] self.” Mills’s
argument resonates with the concept of “emotive” inspired by Austin’s notion of
“performative” and developed by William Reddy in his history of emotions: its
heuristic value is to point to the performative (in addition to embodied) character
of discursive iteration of emotional attachment (Austin 1962; Reddy 2001, cited
in Wilce 2004: 14). In sum, it is as if by reiterating one’s emotional attachment to
language and nation, one has experienced it more fully. This has yet wider rami-
fications touching the core of local notions of patriotism associating the patria
(Bayly 1998: 26) with dharma. As Baba and many Marathi speakers of his and
younger generations would often proudly assert, “It is our language, our own”
(Amci bhasha ahe, swataci). In some ways, then, neglecting “one’s own mother
tongue” amounted to an act of moral and political deviance, and of potential
regional and national treachery. This is so also because of the notion that the cor-
rect mastery of the Marathi language, vocabulary, and grammar is fundamental
to the training of proper, fit social and political persons, as I now wish to illustrate
by taking you back to Mr. Pawar’s classroom, where we began this chapter.

Producing Moral Citizens: Language and Righteousness

We are again in Mr. Pawar’s classroom on that hot, humid afternoon, picking
up the thread of the vocabulary repetition where we left it earlier. We have
just reached the last proposition: “I have pride in and respect for my country”
 Producing Good Citizens 93

(­Majhya deshaca mala abhimaan ahe), which Mr. Pawar suddenly interrupts,
barking to a boy pupil: “Sunil, shut up; sit properly; now it’s your turn!” Sunil,
who had been whispering conspiratorially with his classmate, instinctively
straightens up and, with somewhat startled eyes gazing at the board, begins,
painfully stuttering upon the next group of words:

“Ma-jh, majh, majhya da.”

“Deshat, hurry up, Sunil!” bellows Mr. Pawar impatiently.
“De-shat, vi-vidh ja-tic.”
“Vi-vi-dha ja-ti-ce lo-ka raha-tat,” the teacher pounds in, accentuating each
syllable. “Jatice, Sunil, say it again; say it properly. The pronunciation [uccār]
must be good. Isn’t it so?”

Mr. Pawar now turns to the class.

“Yes!” (Ho!), some children chorus back.

“This is what correct language [pramanit bhasha] is about. What does cor-
rect language mean? It means proper pronunciation, and to speak nicely. The
way we sometimes speak at home, isn’t it; well, this is speaking language [bolī
bhāṣā], but it is not correct [barobar]. It is not good [cāngale]. How can you
grow into good people [cangle lok], good citizens [cangle nagarik], if you don’t
pronounce correctly?!”

Silence fills the classroom, while some pupils nod and gesture in vigorous ap-
proval, and others seemingly remain noncommitted. The enumeration, led
again by the teacher, continues:

“In my country live people from different jat. In my country people live happily.”
[Majhya deshat vividh jatice lok rahtat. Majhya deshatil lok anandane rahtat.]

Inasmuch as morality, justice, and rectitude are characteristic of the Marathi

language ideology, they are also inherent in the project of producing a good,
schooled citizen. This is particularly evidenced in the emphasis teachers, like
Mr. Pawar, often lay upon the notion of pramanit bhasha, in opposition to boli
bhasha. The distinction between pramanit and boli bhasha is a recurring one
in many Marathi classrooms. At a general level, pramanit bhasha represents
the “standard” version of the Marathi language officially taught in schools in
Maharashtra. It is a version deriving its authority from its legitimacy as “supe-
rior knowledge” and, as intimated earlier, is the negotiated product of linguis-
tic encounters between British educational officers and Marathi pundits in the
94  Producing Good Citizens

mid-nineteenth century. At a more specific level, pramanit (from the Sanskrit

pramān, “proof, evidence, authority”) is used in Marathi to denote a measur-
ing standard, in the sense of what is true, just, right, and authoritative. The
phrase pramanit bhasha thus translates as “the correct, authoritative language”
in contradistinction with boli bhasha as the “oral language” spoken at home or
more generally in everyday life, without much concern for hard-and-fast rules,
whether of pronunciation and grammar, let alone punctuation.
Furthermore, the notion of pramanit bhasha encompasses proper pro-
nunciation and utterance, to which meaning becomes secondary. Teachers
throughout the day lay emphasis on the proper pronunciation of this standard
version of the Marathi language, as Mr. Pawar did. As we saw in Chapter 1, this
emphasis culminated in learning the pronunciation of the national anthem,
which often superseded a search for meaning. Proper pronunciation and the
register of pramanit bhasha are also intricately associated with notions of good
personhood, more generally predicated upon the notion of samskar. Teachers
in Marathi primary schools often considered the hymns, prayers, songs, moral
stories, and thoughts for the day as fulfilling the purpose of cultivating samskar.
Such moral edification was deemed crucial to a child learning “how to behave”
(kase wagayce), thus growing into a well-rounded, moral person and citizen
(nagarik). Marathi language ideology, then, is predicated on idioms of morality
that play a potent part in shaping the attempts at producing civic persons, as
true samskara-predicated national citizens. Implicit in the project of schooling
is therefore the understanding of school as a space where students, as future
proper citizens, should internalize pramanit bhasha naturalizing it as their own
boli bhasha.23 Whether this is ever really successful, in Indian schools or in
those of other nation-states, is of course debatable. A stark opposition exists
between this attempted naturalization and the resilience of everyday speech,
especially among students of lower-caste or non-Hindu backgrounds, whose
spoken idioms are generally the furthest removed from the version acknowl-
edged as “proper and standard” Marathi.

Notes for a Provisional Conclusion

Central to this chapter is the notion that language and the passion it elicits are
truly somatic instantiations. They are so not only in a descriptive, deictic sense
but in a more profound, embodied one. It is not language that structures a
human being but a relationship to body and emotion that is mediated by lan-
guage as ideology. And because language—and its ideology—is incorporated in
 Producing Good Citizens 95

everyday bodily experience of the world as well as relayed in schools to acute

levels of emotional figuration, it acquires this emotional and passionate quality
for its speakers, regardless of the strategic choices they may make for their chil-
dren’s education. Inasmuch as emotions are socially and culturally constructed,
then, we should pay closer attention to what local discourses of emotion have
to say about their concrete location. Furthermore, such discourses do not nec-
essarily espouse the unhelpful dichotomy of public (emotions) versus private
(feelings). Eventually, the extent to which they are conceived as “personal” and
“interior” and culturally constructed is almost impossible to assess. Arguably,
the imprecision remains precisely because it is so difficult, nay, impossible,
to disentangle personal feelings from public emotions, as both are mutually
constituted. This, if anything, should already alert us to the illusionary char-
acter of the “public/private” dichotomy (to be discussed later). A phenomeno-
logical approach to emotions thus provides a way of reconciling what at first
glance appear radically, irreconcilable categories acknowledging social actors’
perceptions of them as “embodied.” Put differently, the notion of embodiment
dissolves the conceptual boundary between public and private. This has far-
reaching implications, which I want to begin to unravel here.
In what has come to be considered a foundational text, Jean-François
Lyotard argued that the end of meta-narratives such as nationalism was the
distinctive mark of postmodernity. Lyotard’s comment was undoubtedly gener-
ated by the observation at the time of the development of discourses counter
to those of nationalism, at the levels of regional, international, and transna-
tional movements. Although his voice was a rather specific one, his observation
was shared by many scholars who, whether explicitly engaging with his argu-
ment or pursuing other lines of inquiry, joined in agreement until the 1990s
in tolling the bell of the national formation. Since then, history has, cruelly
and often poignantly, disproved these willful yet un-self-fulfilling prophecies.
More nations saw the light of day in the last quarter of the twentieth century,
often through bloody and traumatic births amid vivid longings and ethnic vio-
lence. If anything, these painful engenderings have brought home the notion
that, perhaps more than ever before, the nation form is alive and kicking. De-
spite these ontological realizations, the category has in many scholarly circles
acquired a slightly antiquated ring of passé-ness, overridden by more flashy,
trendy notions of “globalization” and “global civil society,” whether pragmatic
or phantasmic. I suggest that, if the notion of the national formation, despite
its dramatic enactments and practical translations in the lives of an increasing
96  Producing Good Citizens

number of ordinary social actors the world over, has become taken for granted,
it is precisely because it has been naturalized to an unprecedented extent. The
idea, of course, is not new. Part of the theoretical canvas Benedict Anderson
developed was aimed at furnishing the premises for an understanding of how
nations become culturally formed, that is, how they come to be produced as
cultural, natural units of belonging. Michael Billig later drew attention to the
banalization of the nation in people’s daily lives, especially through the per-
formative iterations of the nation in the mass media. Yet I want to formulate a
different kind of argument and suggest that more than sharing a commonality
of nationhood with newspaper readers or “banally flagging” the nation, the
naturalization of the idea and experience of the nation entails its “incorpora-
tion.” It is because of the nation’s deep incorporation into who we are as bodied
social persons, subjects, and citizens that we can somehow entertain a sense of
national belonging, much as this sense may at times be fleetingly vague, and de-
spite a professed lack of patriotic appetence. Remember Bourdieu’s pronounce-
ment: “what the body grants even when the mind says no” (1990: 167).
Of course, I do not mean to suggest that this somatization of national emo-
tionality is either ever present or exhausts the potentialities of the body/mind.
Such production of an “emotionationality” requires daily labor, as we have seen,
and does not determine all social action. Rather, this production allows for
the “something recalcitrant in the body” to remain and possibly surface at any
time. Embodied emotionationality can never fully exhaust the pliability and
resourcefulness of social and cultural agency, whether individual or collective.
However absolutist the prevalent ideological structure, any exploration of ide-
ology, both as structure of belief and “interpellative subject positioning,” has to
allow for some measure of “openness onto heterogeneous realities” (Massumi
2002: 263). Therefore, despite the potency of Marathi native-speaking social ac-
tors’ emotional social and individual constructions and lived experiences of
the Marathi language ideology, a space must be left open for the “conceptual
enablement,” not necessarily of “resistance” but at least for alternative negotia-
tions “in connection with the real” (263). Thus, for instance, despite teachers’
obstinate attempts at impressing a military-like atmosphere during the morn-
ing liturgies, much of the school day was characterized more by unruliness than
discipline: such unruliness started soon after the classes left the ground of the
morning liturgy, as pupils would walk to their classrooms in a sort of stampede.
Similarly in overcrowded classrooms, some teachers had relinquished their au-
thority, abandoning any notion of an entirely quiet and disciplined class, and
 Producing Good Citizens 97

would only mildly, though regularly, “tsa tsa” in vain efforts to impose total
silence. Often when teachers under some pretense interrupted their class and
momentarily left the room to attend to some more pressing business, general
bedlam would ensue. Pupils greatly relished these moments that, in addition to
the recesses that punctuated the school day, provided welcome outlets for their
energy and vigor. Arguably, these formed as important a part in the production
of future Maharashtrian (and Indian) citizens.24
The workings of Marathi language ideology therefore have to be under-
stood as both official implementation processes and social actors’ agency.
Here is the double bind of all processes of language socialization, whether
national or otherwise: in the same movement of ideologically shaping, natu-
ralizing, and incorporating language ideologies in the constitution of social
and cultural units, language ideologies fail to grasp the totality of agency, un-
wittingly allowing for interstices and cracks in these processes. On the one
hand, even cases of diglossia leave room for negotiating the production of
national emotional attachment. In the social production of a schooled self, a
readjustment between the language spoken at home and the standardized ver-
sion taught in school may concomitantly be effected. In particular, variations
existing between the official standardized version of the Marathi written in
official textbooks and the local brand spoken at home may become erased, es-
pecially in the common referent to the notions of “mother” and “motherhood”
(Chapter 3). The mother language might thus be envisaged as uniting her dia-
lectal (school)children in her lap. On the other hand, such union is arguably
best realized in cases of convergence of family and school idioms. These gen-
erally pertain to upper-caste and upper-class Hindu children. Even in these
cases, there may always remain unconquered space and unpredictable agency.
Ultimately, because even the mother tongue, for all its instrumentality in ne-
gotiating internal divisions between different local varieties of a language, is
never totally realized, never fully complete, this linguistic incorporation of the
nation generates accrued anxieties and fears of loss of substance and morality.
These anxieties and fears are inherent in the pursuit of any project of linguisti-
cally premised national (or regional) formation, if only because such projects
are de facto predicated upon processes of self-definition athwart other idi-
oms, whether these be local, vernacular “dialects” or “foreign-born” ones. So
social actors, while beholden to an emotional attachment to a linguistic na-
tion, are deeply—although rarely explicitly—aware of the fragility of projects
of language-predicated nationalisms. As the nation (or the region) is working
98  Producing Good Citizens

toward its linguistic realization, it is constantly battling with the possibility of

its self-perdition.
What implications does this have for the naturalization of a sense of be-
longing? What kind of community is thus created, and what room is there
for an “other,” speaking a different language, in the participation in the life
of the polis? The issue is obviously further complicated by the fact that this
Marathi-­speaking Indian citizen is by default a Hindu-inflected one. I hope to
have brought to light in this chapter how the project of Marathi self-formation
is potentially always an exclusivist one that seeks to exclude other, improper
Marathi- or non-Marathi-speaking locutors. Despite an overtly integrational
approach, it is clear that those children deemed less capable of becoming
good Indian citizens in this part of Maharashtra are those standing the fur-
thest apart from (standardized) Marathi. Later, I explore the ideology of Urdu
language among Maharashtrian Muslims and suggest that the room left for
non-­standard-Marathi speakers is very exiguous. Especially so that the incor-
poration of a linguistic sense of “self ” is an emotional process occurring within
early processes of socialization.25 In the following chapter, we take up again the
issue of early processes of socialization and explore their articulation between
the space of home and family and that of school. Looking at conceptions of
motherhood, pedagogy, and motherland, we show how embodied emotions
of national belonging nurtured through schooling draw upon, and feed into,
attachments developed in the intimacy of home.
3 Producing Mother-India at School
Passions of Intimacy and National Love

[T]he public and the private worlds are inseparably

connected; . . . the tyrannies and servilities of the one
are the tyrannies and servilities of the other.
Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas

It is getting slightly chillytonight in Kolhapur, despite the hubbub and effer-

vescence prevalent in the municipal stadium on this Republic Day of January
26, 2000. The Shahu Maidan, as it is locally known, is thronging with parents.
As they do every year, they have come to attend their children’s performances
in the primary schools’ competition organized by the municipal corporation.
Most of the schools in town have gathered for the event, regardless of their
status and characteristics in the local hierarchy—public, privately run, semi-
private, elitist, long-standing, progressive, Hindu right-wing—they are here to
participate in the yearly patriotic celebration. As the show is proceeding with
one school after another, some teachers can be seen busying themselves, pro-
ceeding to final checks and rehearsals on the side, applying ultimate touches of
makeup on the performers’ cheeks, making last recommendations. Children
from each school, in turn, present their skits on the stage, with the sound of
music of their own choice playing in the background.
One school has just finished its presentation: amid the final beats of the
music, the participants are now bowing as the audience claps. As the stage is
being vacated, another school prepares to make its entry among hushing noises
behind the scenes. Like many schools that evening, this one will start with a
welcome song (swagatam song), followed by fishermen’s dances (kohli natak).
Like many others, the actors will set their skits in the gracing presence of Bharat
Mata, “Mother-India,” often with the song “Mere watan ke logon” playing in the
background. The song, sung by generations across India on patriotic occasions,
has been largely popularized by singer Lata Mangeshkar. Her rendition is such
that it is said to have brought tears to Jawaharlal Nehru’s eyes upon her first
102
 Producing Mother-India 103

performance. As the music begins, a young girl draped in a pink sari with gold
brocade majestically enters the stage from the right. She is young, grave, and
beautiful. From either side of her golden diadem are hanging two long, neat
plaits of black hair. The audience has become silent and watches her intently as
she slides across the platform. She is carrying a tricolor Indian flag in her right
hand, holding a trishul scepter in her left. Meanwhile, a polystyrene map of
India has been brought to the rear. The national mother-goddess incarnate now
stands still in the center of the stage as the last notes of the patriotic song re-
cede. Her figure superimposes itself on the map behind her in a perfect confla-
tion of national territory, divinity, femaleness, and Hinduness. Many men’s and
women’s faces among the watching crowd carry an enraptured look; glowing
eyes, intense stares, and longing smiles, heads nodding approvingly sideways,
all these bodily gestures suggest an act of (re)connection on the part of much of
the local audience whose child is occupying the stage; it is a reconnection with
both an imagined and an instantiated ideal of the nation.
In these moments suspended away from everyday life, the young schoolgirl
is no longer just an ordinary Kolhapuri maiden, nor is she merely impersonat-
ing Bharat Mata. From anonymous maiden, she has become the (national) deity
incarnate and an object of intense worship reminiscent of Satyajit Ray’s filmic
Devi. The comparison stops here, however. For tomorrow, “Miss Bharat Mata”
will return to her ordinary life as a schoolgirl, donning her daily uniform as all
her friends do. Yet in many ways this performance is not totally disconnected
from everyday life, for the re-creation of Mother-India is also integral to daily
(Marathi) school routine, as we saw in Chapter 1. The morning liturgy starting
the school day consists of the re-creation of the national deity through praising,
singing, and discursive as well as embodied practices. This yearly incarnation of
Bharat Mata therefore represents more than a suspended moment in the school
calendar: it is a culmination of national imaginings and longings, a crystal-
lization of hopes and dreams, a tangible condensation of the making of Indian
“mother-goddess-nation.” What are the modalities of her production outside of
these liturgical moments? What is it that makes them so potently meaningful
in the emotional and symbolic economy of so many Maharashtrians? How is
this emotional and symbolic economy daily produced, and how can we tease
out the combined aspects of gender and national production in these socializa-
tion processes largely occurring at school “where sexual and other identities are
developed, practised and actively produced” (Epstein and Johnson 1998: 2)? In
this chapter, I pursue the demonstration that cultural and social productions of
104  Producing Mother-India

regional and national identifications within the context of formal education are
not only central to the making of the disciplinary institution of schooling, of
modeled and disciplined bodies, and of “normalized” persons (Foucault 1979,
1981) but are also cosubstantial to the production of gender discursivity and
­corporeality. Deploying yet again the notion of sensorium in a different direc-
tion, that of the constitution of spheres of “attachment” (or “bonding”) and of
“emotional bubbles” developed in the intimacy of home and family, I attempt to
reconcile the phenomenological approach already developed in Chapter 2 with
a pragmatic and psychoanalytic one. This entails registering and describing
what Husserl called “Evidenz”—that is, the matter itself as disclosed in a clear
and distinct way by social actors—and redeploying psychoanalytic concepts
around its interpretation. Crucial here again is the notion of incorporation,
which, as noted earlier, presupposes that one cannot distinguish the contents
of the process from the process itself: the two are mutually produced. Thus, the
manufacturing of gendered interiority and embodiment is indissociable from
that of collective regional and national selves. Furthermore, if such construc-
tions feed upon the articulation of the mother figure at the levels of family,
school, and national space, they conversely feed into the daily reproduction of
Mother-India as a gendered political project.
The mother trope lends itself well to an exploration of categories of gender
and national sentiment. Over the last forty years, figures of women have fre-
quently embodied the nation the world over. In India, even in the 1950s and
1960s the promotion of a national development agenda during the so-called
Nehru years saw the deployment of the female form.1 The values of auspicious-
ness and plenty culminated in the mother figure, alternately nurturing and
fiercely protective. These multiple and contradictory aspects of Indian society
have played an important part not only in popular culture but also in national
constructions and pedagogical projects in which the motif of the mother has
become crucially emblematic of the construction and self-­projection of the na-
tion (Assayag 2001; Gupta 2001). That education may serve the (re)production
of motherhood in India (Kumar 2000) is by now a commonplace. What re-
mains to be analyzed is how the category of “mother” as a hegemonic marker
of femaleness and nationhood in social and cultural discourse pervades the
pedagogical environment—especially that of primary schooling. To be sure,
this “motherly pervasiveness” is not specific to India and has been docu-
mented elsewhere. In the United Kingdom, for instance, primary school today
is a female national space par excellence (Woodward 2003: 46). Yet in India,
 Producing Mother-India 105

it represents much more: the category of “mother” looms large over the pro-
duction of persons (Trawick 1989), but also of citizens (Ramaswamy 1998) and
institutions.

Mother Love, Bonding, and Attachment:

Producing a Continuing Sensorium
In many ways, life at school draws upon, and extends, a sensorium constituted
in the intimacy of family. It does so both metaphorically and pragmatically,
primarily through the mediation of the nurturing figure of the idealized “good
mother” and its transposition to that of the female teacher. This is most sug-
gestively captured by one of the favorite stories heard in schools and during a
week-long refresher course held at the Teachers’ Training College (DIET) of
Kolhapur. The story is that of the “female teacher and the little boy.” It starts
on the very first day of school. After lunch, a little boy walks up to his female
teacher and wipes his dirty hands clean on her sari. The teacher, rather non-
plussed, scolds the boy. The next day, however, the same pupil reiterates his
performance. The teacher tells him off again. At the end of three days of spoiled
saris and with irritation mounting, the teacher finally decides to confront the
boy’s mother. The mother explains her son’s behavior: “Just as I am his mummy
at home, you are his mummy at school, he trusts you, you take care of him,
you are a mother to him, this is why.” Although I heard the story in several
versions, what always came forcefully across from all the narrations was the
transposition of intimacy, security, and trust from the familial environment
onto the semipublic one of the school. These two qualities, care and trust, are
precisely those that child psychoanalysts Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott,
followed by Erik Erikson and Sudhir Kakar—the latter two with special ref-
erence to India—have emphasized as fundamental to the development of the
infant or child and the constitution of his or her “emotional bubble.” Obvi-
ously, what are projected in the sanitized space of the training college and the
Marathi primary school are idealized visions of motherhood, mother-child re-
lations, and teacher-pupil relations. In these visions, very little room is left for
alternative, harsher realities where the mother would be unavailable, unable, or
even unwilling to fulfill these revered duties, or the teacher a regular absentee.
Nevertheless, these visions suggest an interesting convergence of popular un-
derstandings with scholarly ones about the modalities of the constitution of an
emotional and sensory environment at home and at school through the media-
tion of the “good mother,” which need unpacking.
106  Producing Mother-India

Interestingly, the notion of “the good mother” so prominently expounded by

teachers in Marathi schools is congruent with that elaborated by Melanie Klein
in a series of pathbreaking conferences in the 1930s. Klein accorded great impor-
tance to bodily functions and hypothesized that unconscious fantasy—which
she claimed also exists within a child—was always based upon them. Bodily
functions also played a crucial role in both the growth of a young child and the
child’s future development into an adult: “Because our mother first satisfied all
our self-preservative needs and sensual desires and gave us security, the part she
plays in our minds is a lasting one, although the various ways in which this influ-
ence is effected and the forms it takes may not be at all obvious in later life” (1964:
59). Most important, the notion of the “good mother,” or “the good breast,” has
become foundational to modern psychoanalysis. Heavily influenced by Klein’s
work, Donald Winnicott developed the concepts of “handling” and “caring.” Put
simply, these lay emphasis on the building of a safe, trustworthy, sensory mater-
nal environment. Expanding the analysis in another direction, Indian psychoan-
alyst Sudhir Kakar elaborated on the notion of “good mother” by developing the
concept of mother’s sensory presence (emphasis in original) and its vital impor-
tance for the infant’s earliest developmental experiences and awakenings (1999:
54). An important caveat applies to Kakar’s analyses, however: they tend toward
reifying the “Indian” in Indian society, essentializing Hinduness, and centering
on notions such as “the Hindu psyche” or “the Hindu mind”; these notions are
problematic not least because of their engaging a political equation of “Indian”
with “Hindu.” If we bear these limitations in mind, Kakar’s insights are helpful
toward developing a notion of sensorium. Unlike Klein, Kakar does not confine
the mother’s sensory presence to “the good breast” but extends it to actions such
as caressing, touch, speech, singing, and so on—in other words, to the consti-
tution of a “primary sensorium.” Moreover, in contradistinction to this phase
of development being habitually identified with infants in European society,
Kakar extends it among Indian children to the age of three to five on the basis
of his own observations pertaining to differential experiences of separation and
constraints. The extended scope of this period for the production of a primary
sensorium significantly suggests the possibility of an even deeper experiential
continuum between life at home and life at school; for the experiences of earlier
nurturing are largely invoked in Marathi classrooms, where teachers frequently
resort to positive associations and normalized memories of “mother-at-home.”
Indeed, reference to mother fills the school day continuously. Pupils are
constantly reminded of their home and family during lessons wherein female
 Producing Mother-India 107

and male teachers regularly take mothers as examples for purposes of explain-
ing or clarifying a point. The material drawn upon here also ranges from dis-
tinctly regional stories about seventeenth-century hero-warrior Shivaji and his
close relationship with his own mother (Chapter 4), to moral stories popular
across many parts of the world. Examples abound, from “One should listen to
mummy’s advice” (Aice aikayce), narrating the trouble caused for a child who
disobeys his mother; to autobiographical accounts, notably by freedom fighter
and educationist Sane Guruji (Shyam’s Mother; see Chapter 1). In addition, the
mother’s ideal nurturing quality is conjured up and discursively reproduced
through various mediations, particularly that of food. In this respect, it is no
coincidence that the story of the little boy should take place during lunchtime.
In the many references to family life and domestic routine that teachers make,
mummy’s cooking (aica svaipak), to which she is expected to lovingly devote
hours for the benefit of her offspring, occupies a prominent place.2 Even math
lessons can provide an impromptu occasion for such culinary evocation; for
instance, Ms. Pratima B. at Varsity Marathi School borrows a chapati from a
pupil’s lunchbox for the purpose of teaching division to her Class 3 and tears
the chapati into several identical parts. Arguably, these everyday school experi-
ences crucially reinforce and (re)produce “precursors” constituted in the early
phases of an infant’s life.
Food as an intimate, tactile, sensual object most often mediates bonding
between a mother and her child. In Maharashtra, mothers (and elder females)
feed their children from their own hands until the children reach the age of
four or five, and this is often accompanied with some playfulness on either
part. Following Klein, Erikson contends that these “seemingly small and play-
ful bits in the earliest ritualized behaviour in life” are especially important,
for they operate as “precursors to lifelong behaviours of great emotional and
adaptive significance, all the way to ritual ceremony” (2002: 18). I shall return
to this shortly. For the moment, I want to emphasize that this “maternaliza-
tion” of the pedagogical space is also congruent with official teachings. For
instance, the mother ideology is reflected in the textual and pictorial presence
suffusing the official curriculum.
The textbooks produced by the regional bureau are replete with illustra-
tions of the normalization of the mother trope. The latter informs even the
pupils’ first official encounter with the written word in Class 1. The Marathi
textbook (Marathi Bal Bharati 1998: 15) presents children with two small pic-
tures of “house or home” (ghar) and “mother or mummy” (āī), the latter being
108  Producing Mother-India

depicted in a loving embrace with a small child. These drawings are set below
a larger one covering the full width of the page, representing a school scene
with pupils leaving for home and, prominently displayed, a mother picking up
her daughter while carrying an infant on her hip. The words and correspond-
ing phonemes are repeated on three different lines occupying the bottom third
of the page. In addition, the figure of the mother recurs in many subsequent
lessons, where she is pictured engaging in diverse activities with her children,
from going to the market (18), to choosing fruit (20), to having a glass of fresh
sugarcane juice (usaca ras; 21), and so on. Similar references also appear in the
textbooks meant for the next three classes of the primary curriculum.
Mothers do not only metaphorically pervade the public yet secluded space
of school. As illustrated by the sari story, the family space itself is re-created at
school and inhabited by other mothers, that is, female teachers. In this con-
text, the sari importantly functions as both a corporeal envelope for the female
protagonist and a comfort blanket for the child, that is, as a mediation for ma-
ternal bonding first constructed in the warmth of home.3 The sari here may
be compared to what French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu (1989) called the
“moi-peau,” or “ego-skin,” thereby defining a transitional and protective space
between the child’s bodily envelope and her or his environment. The “ego-skin
sari” illustrates the fundamental relation between a motherly teacher and a
child-pupil, a relation explicitly articulated by female teachers themselves, even
the most severe and awe-inspiring ones. Teachers would often conflate the no-
tions of wifehood and motherhood with the bodily discipline of sari wearing.
The wearing of a sari in Maharashtra is emblematic of a woman’s married sta-
tus and, by extension, of motherhood. Congruently, teachers often made com-
ments such as these: “In order to teach, a woman must be married; a teacher is a
mother.” Or “It is our culture; we must be like mothers at school.” Through such
statements, these female teachers enacted discursive and bodily incorporation
of a norm extant in Marathi-speaking schools, namely, that no female teacher
is allowed to wear anything but a sari.4 This norm is officially enforced from the
beginning of teacher training: teachers’ training colleges alone have in Maha-
rashtra established the sari as compulsory uniform for female students, thereby
explicitly conflating normative patterns of pedagogical behavior with wifehood
and motherhood.5
It should also be noted that it is not any sari that is made compulsory, but
the “six-yard sari” (sawari sari). This by now “classic” icon of female modernity
has come to replace the more traditional Maharashtrian “nine yards” (nawari)
Marathi Language Textbook, Class 1, 1998. One of the first lessons Marathi-speaking
children learn, on “home” and “mother.”
source: Marathi Language Textbook, Class 1, Pune, Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production and
Curriculum Research, 1998, p. 15.
110 Producing Mother-India

both in urban and rural settings, especially among the younger generations. In
rural areas, women married in the past fifteen to twenty years and whose own
mothers wore cotton nawari saris, have begun wearing polyester sawaris. When
asked the reason for this choice, they would often declare: “We feel ashamed,
when/if we wear a nawari sari” (Amhala laj watte, nawari sari nesli ki). The lat-
ter garment in fact embraces and reveals the female form rather conspicuously,
as the cloth is passed in between the legs and tied up at the back, leaving the
calves exposed. Although it is much more practical than its more recent coun-
terpart for an “active modern life,” in that it allows greater freedom of move-
ment for cycling, riding a scooter, or boarding a bus, it makes the female body
more open to public gaze. By contrast, the sawari sari attempts to conceal much
more, as it wraps up the entire lower body. Furthermore, especially in urban
settings and in the workplace, women tend to pin the border (padar) to the
tonal matching blouse, in an ultimate gesture toward keeping modern modesty
in its place. At play here is an interesting convergence of idioms of modernity
and Victorian-like morality in the production of respectable motherhood and
“teacherhood,” similar to that documented in earlier projects of national con-
struction (Gupta 2001).
The conflation between “mothers-at-home” and “mothers-at-school” is
both made manifest and naturalized through poems and songs. Mothers in
Maharashtra have at least since the seventeenth century been associated with
the notion of life gurus, even though the majority of them would not have been
trained in any formal way. Thus, the famous poem “Guru Brahma guru Vishnu”
written by Marathi poet Ramdas exemplifies this equation of mother with guru
in its second part:

My mother is my guru; she is the kalpataru [wish-fulfilling tree] to me.

She is the ocean of happiness; she is the maher [a girl’s natal family residence]
of love.
She is the stream of amrut [water of life or immortality]; my mother is the
essence of good.

This song has been sung in Kolhapur for the past fifteen to twenty years
in some Marathi schools—including the two most Hindu-sympathetic schools
wherein fieldwork was conducted—and more recently in others. The poem is
chanted daily, usually during the morning assemblies, whether in the hall or
within each classroom. Interestingly, it is through the mediation of the con-
cept of guru that the association (in the psychoanalytic sense) of mothers and
 Producing Mother-India 111

teachers seems to come rather “naturally” to children and adults. Thus, when
the teacher of a Class 2 of girls at Modern Marathi School attempted to ex-
plain the meaning of two chants about mother and country, she asked, “Who
is a guru?” Two pupils immediately answered: “God” (dev) and then “Mother”
(ai). The teacher then asked the children, “Why? Why is mother a guru?” After
much perplexed silence in the classroom, she herself volunteered an explana-
tion: “Because she gives life. Mother, Madam [Bai, used as a term of address for
female teachers], they both give life. Mother teaches at home, she feeds you,
and Madam continues the job at school and teaches you well.” This explicit
articulation of divinity and motherhood is of special import with regard to the
gendered notion of the Indian nation, Bharat Mata.

Domestic Space, National Space: Producing Mother-India

The conflated idea of mother and country pervades all Marathi-language
schools, from the most secular to the most Hindutva-leaning ones, where it
may take on an exacerbated character. Moreover, the conflated conceptualiza-
tion of motherhood, devotion, and pedagogy is resonant with Erikson’s elabo-
ration of Klein’s argument that “capacity for identification with another person
[or a deity] is a most important element in human relationships in general, and
is also a condition for real and strong feelings of love” (1964: 66). For ­Erikson,
the central element of the ritualization of infancy—which he calls the “numi-
nous”—remains closely associated with the devotional ritual, whether in insti-
tutionalized religion or in other belief systems (2002: 19). This is important in
light of motherhood providing a common thematic as well as symbolic resource
for ideologies ranging from totalitarian to liberal (see Koonz 1987 for the Nazi
regime). In these ideologies, motherhood is conceived of as the fundamental
constitutive and emblematic expression of the family to be put at the service
of the nation. In India, as we have seen, this emblem is especially powerful
among the majority Hindu society, for the country is both a mother figure and
a (Hindu) goddess. India is indeed Mother-India, Bharat Mata.
Bharat Mata is the product of colonial negotiations from other parts of
India, Bengal in particular. Exemplifying the crucial equation of “mother-
deity-­country” from the very inception of the modern Indian nation is the song
“Vande Mataram” (“Mother, I Bow to Thee”), which first appeared in Bankim
Chandra Chatterji’s late nineteenth-century novel Ananda Math (The Monas-
tery of Bliss) (1882), famous for its strongly anti-Muslim overtones.6 The song
is an address to India in the form of a (Hindu) mother-goddess. Importantly,
112  Producing Mother-India

this mother in the novel is devastated and violated, in dire need of protection,
and the address is performed by “her sons,” that is, men (mainly combatant
monks) who have taken up arms to right the wrong done to her. Chatterji’s nar-
rative crucially needs to be situated within the production of the Indian nation,
where the category of “Bharat” progressively became naturalized as a concrete
geohistorical unit involving a gendered territorial mapping: producing the na-
tion came to entail both “naturalizing” an abstraction and endowing it with
corpo-reality, not least of all that of a mother (Goswami 2004: 199).7 Particu-
larly noteworthy in this production is that the modern trope of Bharat Mata
came to work as a highly gendered “matrix of nationalist identification and
desire” (199). Unfortunately, even with reference to popular nationalism, the
repertoire so far discussed in the literature has been of exclusively upper-caste,
north Indian Hindu devotional practices. This leaves unattended the advent
of such a gendering (apart from a first appearance mentioned in a Hindi play
in 1876 [199]), as well as the other repertoires of popular practices feeding into
such a construction. Arguably, the conditions of production of such an incar-
nation require attention, if only because the notion of Bharat Mata has been a
political object of contention between Hindus and Muslims since the latter part
of the nineteenth century and well into the early decades of the twentieth. More
recently in the postindependence decades, the motherly notion has further
crystallized nationalist desire among Hindu middle and lower-middle classes.
Similarly to the reconfiguration of space as nation/mother in the colonial
period, postindependence Bharat Mata draws on the “constitutive slippage in
mother-child relations and that between devotee and godhead in popular Hindu
devotional practices” (Goswami 2004: 202). This slippage is exemplified by the
singing of “Vande Mataram” in Maharashtra as well. The song is sung on spe-
cial occasions of national commemoration, although it has long been opposed
by Muslim and secular groups. More recently, it has become prominent in the
daily marking of school time in an increasing number of Marathi primary insti-
tutions in Kolhapur. As elsewhere in the regional state (including Mumbai), pu-
pils and teachers used to end the day with the chanting of the “Pasaydan.” This
extract from the epic poem “Dnyaneshwari” takes its name from its author,
the popular thirteenth-century regional saint and poet Dnyaneshwar (Chap-
ter 1). Despite the poem’s long-standing popularity, it is now being replaced
with the singing of “Vande Mataram.” I first heard the latter sung at a private
school in Kolhapur in August 1998. By the end of 1999, it had spread widely
throughout the schooling network and was sung in many other (private as well
 Producing Mother-India 113

as corporation) schools, either during collective assemblies (rare) or separately

in each classroom. The controversial song’s accrued resonance in schools may
be a product of refresher courses systematically organized for primary school
teachers throughout Maharashtra in the mid- to late 1990s under the BJP–Shiv
Sena coalition government (see Introduction). Nonetheless, many teachers and
parents in Kolhapur claimed to have sung it regularly as schoolchildren, too.
Whatever the case may be, it is noteworthy that (Hindu) devotion to the na-
tional motherland today appears to have superseded regional devotion.
This pedagogical conflation of domestic, devotional, and national female
figures is both meaningful to a sizable number of social actors in this part of
Maharashtra and congruent with official expectations at the district level where
it is taught, as testified by the proceedings of an afternoon session held in Feb-
ruary 2000 at the DIET College during a week-long “singing refresher course.”
The main instructor was a Mr. Biradarkar, a former headmaster from Kolhapur,
who also was a former member of the local RSS branch. After teaching the
trainees children’s mimes and animal songs, he continued with a “moral story”
(boddh katha) about two children left to their own devices. One of them did not
listen to his parents’ advice and consequently ran into trouble, while the other,
virtuous child was praised as a paragon to be emulated by the listeners. The
instructor concluded the story by emphasizing the morals the trainee-teachers
should thoroughly teach the young ones in their care, stating: “To the chil-
dren, you must tell them these morals, that they must love their mothers [aivar
prem (thevayce)].” After much persistent exhortation, Mr. Biradarkar added,
“So, just in the same way, [they must love] Mother-India; they must learn to
love her” (Mag tasec, Bharat Matevar prem, shikayce). And, lest the identifi-
cation of mother and nation and the compelling nature of the love they were
both supposed to elicit were not explicit enough, the instructor burst into an
emphatic and feverish demonstration of morning liturgy: after a shlok meant to
be sung every day, “My Mother Is My Guru” (Ai majhya guru; see Chapter 1),
he continued with the national anthem, whose meaning and teaching he ex-
plained in elaborate detail. Then he proceeded to recite the pledge, with due
emphasis on each word. Next came a series of Marathi and Hindi nationalist
songs, the first of which was “Victory to Mother-India” (Bharat Mata ki Jay)
and the last, “Mother-India” (Bharat Mã).8 Here is the literal translation of the
refrain: “Say: Mother-India’s Victory” (repeated three times) (Bolo Bharat Mata
ki Jay).9 Judging by the body language of most of the trainees, Mr. Biradarkar
clearly succeeded. To be sure, not all teachers in the district may have been as
114  Producing Mother-India

interested in this patriotic singing as the majority of their fellow trainees. Even
among these, some were more blatantly enthusiastic than others, regardless of
gender. However, when it came to punctuating the songs with the above slo-
gans, whether automatically or on their own volition, all of them partook of the
collective energetic outburst of these emotional iterations.
Such iterations form an important part of the incorporation process I seek to
document and require further elaboration. Incorporation indeed involves the
developing of uttering, iterative capacity: songs are important items in the con-
stitution of this primary sensorium, but so are shouts and screams, especially
what, in psychotherapeutic parlance and since the work of Arthur Janov (1970),
is referred to as “primal scream.” Remarkably, in ordinary Marathi schools, it-
erations of devotion to the nation most conspicuously take place at the time
of chanting and praying Mother-India into existence, as well as, congruently
with Hindu mythology, invoking the mother-goddess’s side as a fierce warrior.
It is in this capacity that she protects the country and receives praise from her
children, of all ages. In Kolhapur’s schools, after singing “Vande Mataram,”
the teacher would often command the pupils, “Say: Mother-India’s?” (Bola:
Bharat Mata ki?). The pupils would respond, “Victory!” (Jay!) As the children
shouted, they would “automatically” clench their fists promptly as taught to do
in the daily morning sessions. The teacher might finally order them once more,
“Vande?” “Mataram!” would chorus the children again.10 Furthermore, the im-
portance of this primal scream is such that in some classrooms, particularly
among the junior classes, “Bharat Mata ki Jay!” was the only regular iteration
punctuating the end of the school day. This iteration needs to be further quali-
fied, in light of the very notion of “primal scream.” In his foundational book,
Janov discussed the central issue of psychospiritual, often hidden, suffering.
Janov distinguished three levels at which traumatic experiences occur, the sec-
ond and third ones being related to teenage years and adulthood, respectively.
The first-level experiences, which have been the most controversial and de-
bated of Janov’s theory, are associated with early childhood deprivation and, as
crucially, both the traumas of the birthing process and various experiences of
intrauterine distress.
Although Janov’s work is still considered a precursor today, it can be situated
in a genealogy dating back to the work of Otto Rank, an early disciple of Freud.
Freud himself never gave much weight to Rank’s insights. Yet the disciple was
undeterred in his conviction of the reality of birth trauma and devoted himself
unconditionally to the creation of a form of psychoanalysis that worked directly
 Producing Mother-India 115

with birth.11 Rank’s work, however, was to remain at the periphery of mainstream
psychoanalysis. It was still so at the time when Janov wrote, almost half a century
later. Taking his cue from Rank’s work and elaborating on the trauma of birth,
Janov made central to his theoretical focus the need to be loved and the psychic
torments resulting from the unfulfillment of that need. He subsequently devised
the famous “scream therapy” that has since known many variants. Although I
do not know of any experimentation of this therapy in India, the trauma of birth
is not specific to Euro-American countries and linked to their birthing practices
alone. Especially among the Indian middle classes, increasing medicalization
practices have compounded the probability of traumatic birth (Henrike Don-
ner, pers. comm. 2006; also Parry 1994 about the travails of embryonic life). The
point of this clarification is to shed light on the “matrix of nationalist identifi-
cation and desire” (Goswami 2004) that has known many vicissitudes since its
reconfiguration in the latter nineteenth century, especially in the mid-twentieth
century in the years of Partition. Arguably, the slogans and other iterations daily
regurgitated by children and adults alike in the school space of national recon-
struction may be read as unconscious attempts at healing the entangled traumas
of their own births together with that of the nation. Inasmuch as the nation is
daily produced within their own bodies (Chapter 2), screaming in unison allows
conjuring of their own pain, suffering, and anxiety of birth, together with that
of the birthing nation. More than just inscribing the nation in their own bodies,
then, pupils and—even more so—teachers are in effect transacting its pain and
suffering with love and desire for it. Such an interpretation is also congruent
with the notion Gananath Obeyesekere (1981, 1990) developed in his work on
Hindu and Buddhist myth and ritual that anxieties and deep motivations of the
group, by being externalized, enable the individual to share her or his anxiety
and achieve “elation or consolation” (1990: 27).
To be sure, the notion of a loving and nurturing mother used for purposes
of nationalist constructions is a modern, idealized one whose psychoanalytic
and mythological counterpart lies in the figure of the horrific mother (Doniger
1980). Yet the latter precludes neither the foregrounding of the former in con-
temporary times nor its operating as an all-encompassing, potentially exhaus-
tive figure. On the contrary, it reinforces the thesis of a split—two contrasted,
incomplete images. The possible existence and experience of an alternative neg-
ative figure may produce and further strengthen anxieties about the ever unre-
alizable ideal of “the good mother” so dominantly reproduced in the ideological
space of school. It might even be argued in light of Juliet Mitchell’s (2003) recent
116  Producing Mother-India

study of sibling rivalry in her reappraisal of Melanie Klein’s work that these
anxieties may render transference at the level of Mother-India a process ever
more fraught with potential sectarian violence.12

Mother, Country, and Children:

The Performative Power of Tautology
Reconciling a phenomenological approach with a pragmatic and psychoana-
lytic one also entails addressing the issue of meaning and meaningfulness to
the children of what they chant, recite, and sing. Because many of the songs
and prayers chanted by the pupils in an average Marathi school refer to Bharat
Mata, one may also ponder the meaning the children endow on these songs and
prayers. How do they understand this Bharat Mata; how do they relate to “her”?
The issue is especially relevant that mata in Marathi is only used for goddesses,
unlike in Hindi, where the term also signifies “mother” (as in the phrase mata-
pita). This exclusive meaning raises the issue whether the pupils are able to
establish a connection between “India” and “mother” in ordinary life. Evidence
from Classes 1 to 4 reveals that most of the pupils had at least a vague idea of
this connection. Moreover, if their notions of “motherland” were not yet very
articulated, their teachers were often willing to help them make it explicit. In
the process, verbal allegiance to both the family and the country in the guise of
an unconditional love of the mother and of the motherland reunited, were in-
formally “reenacted” and further nurtured. Bearing witness to this is a session
that took place at the Modern Marathi School. The exchange occurred in the
class of Ms. Sonya M., a warmhearted woman in her early forties of the Sutar
caste (carpenters), according to the following pattern: I put my questions out in
Marathi (Class 2, all girls), and then the teacher repeated the questions, at times
clarifying and/or illustrating them for the pupils.13 For instance, when I began
by refreshing the children’s memories about the start of their school day, with
the singing of the national anthem, Sonyabai repeated my words in several dif-
ferent ways. During the entire intercourse, she also encouraged the pupils upon
each utterance on their part, by repeating their answers approvingly. Next, I
(“VB” in the dialogue) asked:

“After you have sung the national anthem, what do you say?”
The teacher repeated, breaking up the words and emphasizing thus: “You
have sung the national anthem, haven’t you? ‘Jana Gana Mana,’ haven’t you?
Then after this, what do you actually say?”
 Producing Mother-India 117

Several pupils in a single voice: “The pledge.”

VB: “No, before that, just when you finish singing the national anthem.”
[What I had in mind were the slogans performed immediately after the song,
in praise of and swearing allegiance to Bharat Mata. Meanwhile, Sonyabai re-
peated my question, hammering out the words distinctly and loudly several times.
A group of children started singing the national anthem, promptly interrupted
by the teacher, who repeated the question yet again, helping them to the point of
almost giving out the answer.]
Several pupils suddenly burst out all at once: “Mother-India’s Victory!”
[Bharat Mata ki Jay!] [Some of the girls automatically raised their fists as they had
been used to doing in the morning assembly.]
VB: “What does it mean?
The teacher repeats: “What does ‘Bharat Mata ki Jay’ mean?”
One pupil: “It is in Marathi.” [The slogan, as many others, is actually in Hindi
but is also used by Marathi speakers.]14
Another pupil: “Bharat Mata is our country.”
VB: “What about ‘Jay’? What is it?”
The teacher repeats: “Bharat Mata is our country, but what does ‘Jay’ mean?
Whose ‘jay’?”
One girl, Purnima R.: “ ‘Jay’ is our tricolor [triranga],” referring to the na-
tional flag.
[By that time, Sonyabai has started losing patience. Intent on clarifying mean-
ings for the pupils, she begins pacing up and down the classroom as she speaks
with a clear, loud, energetic voice, summoning their attention. Her entire body
language reflects her tension and concentration. The children, who were getting
slightly fidgety, are quiet again.]
Teacher: “Our country is Bharat Mata, isn’t it?”
The children duly chorus: “Yes!” [Ho!]
Teacher: “We call our country ‘mother,’ don’t we?”
The children chorus again with the same diligence: “Yes!”
Teacher: “Well, we celebrate our mother, don’t we?” [Jayjaykar karto, aila?]

The term jay (or its reduplicated form) encompasses the meanings of “con-
quest, victory, and triumph.” It is significantly used primarily for deities (as
in “Jay Vithoba”) and with reference to heroes, warriors, and soldiers, from
­seventeenth-century Shivaji to the soldiers fighting in Kargil in the late 1990s.
By extension, the phrase jayjaykar karṇe means “celebrating the praises [of a
118  Producing Mother-India

deity, of a hero, an important person, and so on], extolling with acclamations

and shouts.” The use of such a phrase in the present context vividly illustrates
the intricate association of motherhood, divinity, and war. Here again, the
children duly chorus: “Yes!” Next, Sonyabai goes on to explain that the chants
“Vande Mataram” and “Pahila Namaskar” (which contains separate references
to mother and country) are about the “same thing: ‘mother’ and ‘country.’ ”15
As no pupil appears to know the meaning of either prayer/chant, the teacher
apologetically tells me in an aside that she did not know it either when she was
little, in spite of chanting the prayers every day. After her explanations, I pursue
the interaction on the meaning of deshbhakti (patriotism; Chapter 1). In order
to exemplify the question, the teacher asks the pupils: “Why do we sing a song
about the country?” At this point, a pupil named Purnima promptly raises her
finger and, in a perfectly logical association with the preceding exchange, prof-
fers: “For our mothers.”
Whether Purnima and her fellow students really conceptualized Bharat Mata
as a mother at all is obviously difficult to assess from this and other anecdotes. At
no point in the course of research did a pupil or a child offer such an explicit ver-
balization of transference from mother/teacher to mother-as-­nation. Yet, the fact
that at least an association of “their own mothers” with the country somehow,
and however confusingly, did at times surface is enough of a convergence with
the bodily processes at play in the crucial early years of schooling and socializa-
tion. Indeed, it does not matter whether children understand in the cognitive
sense what they are doing. Rather, what does matter is the re-creation of a pri-
mary sensorium in everyday life at school. This is accompanied by bodily incor-
poration of powerful and emotionally resonant songs, music, martial rhythms,
beating of drums, and so on. That children may not fully understand or be able
to explain (which indicates a higher level of conceptualization) the songs they
are taught is irrelevant. It is so both with respect to the phenomenological ar-
gument I am making here and to teacher’s pragmatics. For, according to the
teachers, children should first and foremost feel these chants and prayers, imbibe
them, all of this contributing toward making them good Hindus/Indians. Other
teachers similarly confided that they also did not understand the meaning of the
songs and prayers they used to sing at the same age. Parents, too, commented
that they were only much later able to make meaning of the prayers and songs
they had been made to commit to memory and sing daily as children. What
nonetheless made these actions very powerful, according to the Hindu teachers
among them (Brahmins as well as Marathas and allied castes), was their being
 Producing Mother-India 119

sung as prayers (prarthana), imbuing them with a “sacred” (pavitra) character.

This much, they claimed, was understood by all the children, for it was similar
to what would be done at home by the gods’ shrine. Such a comment obviously
leaves unattended the implications of this pedagogy for Muslim teachers and
pupils in Marathi schools (Chapter 5). As we will see, it more generally points to
the limitations of emotional incorporation of the nation.
Furthermore, the notion of “feeling the song, chant, or prayer” emphasized
by some teachers brings home the utmost import of accessing the songs’ mel-
ody and musicality, the latter becoming a powerful emotional and sensory res-
ervoir in the daily performance of the re-creation of Mother-India. It is through
the constitution of this sensory resource that transference from mother-teacher
to mother-nation is actually enacted. Later on or in adult life, the meaning of
what was then sung may become more explicit; then, even impromptu situa-
tions may trigger some behavior drawing on this emotional and sensory res-
ervoir. This may be the case, for instance, when teachers draw upon their early
childhood experiences of singing patriotic songs during refresher courses at
the training college. In these circumstances, the adult trainees often appeared
strikingly infantilized by their instructors and conformed to a disciplinary pat-
tern internalized from school days, the very same pattern they reproduced in
their daily professional life with their own pupils.16 Other impromptu situations
may be more dramatic, especially those triggering anxiety over the threat of
the mother-nation’s bodily integrity and calling for her protection. The long-
­standing issue of Kashmir bears testimony to this: it is viscerally impossible for
many Indians to conceive parting with “the head of the body of India,” whether
for the realization of an independent state or, “worse still,” for a merger with
Pakistan.17 The issue of the nation’s integrity has been emotionally charged
since the birth of the independent nation-state. It is in this context that the
potent register of war engaged by the “mother” motif at the levels of family,
school, and nation must be situated.

War, Gender, and Nation

If Mother-India instantiates the nation, it is also in her name that the frontiers
with the archrival enemy of Pakistan must be preserved and war be fought. In
the two years that followed the Kargil war in the summer of 1999, this martial
quality was redeployed in myriad ways, further reinforcing the gender and war-
rior ideologies incorporated from an early age. Thus, in the show that took place
in the kindergarten section of the Varsity Marathi School in February 1999, the
120 Producing Mother-India

concluding skit pictured “soldiers of Kargil.” Fifteen four-year-old boys dressed

as soldiers in fatigues marched onstage to the air of “Vande Mataram,” cutting
imaginary enemies’ heads off and killing them in various other ways. The skit
ended with the following short exchange between the teachers and the boys,
who answered each time while raising their fists:

Teachers: “Say: Mother-India’s,” “Bola Bharat Mata ki,”

Pupils: “Victory!” “Jay!”
... ...
Teachers: “Beloved beloved,” “Pyara pyara,”
Pupils: “Hindustan!” “Hindustan!”
... ...
Teachers: “Hindustan.” “Hindustan.”
Pupils: “Long live!” “Jindabad!”

Thus is attempted incorporation of gender together with national sentiment.

It is also in this light that we can read the story encountered earlier of the little
boy and the teacher’s sari. This story is not only suggestive of the imagined con-
flation of mother and teacher; in addition, it speaks of an especially nurtured,
emotional relation between a female parent and a male child. Such a relation
is congruent with the historical construct of Bharat Mata and the dominant
patriarchal norms in popular culture where maternal love is supposed to focus
on—or be exhausted in—little boys. (The epitome of such a relationship is the
mythological one of baby Krishna with his mother, Yashoda, often represented
as absolutely wrapped up in her beloved prodigy’s pranks.) As such, it is also
a vivid illustration of the first phase of gendered national bonding: that of the
nurturing mother taking care of her son, until the latter becomes old enough
to protect her. This particular relationship is exemplified in various other ways,
thus further contributing to the informal production of gender in the peda-
gogical space. It was especially so in the two years that followed the 1999 war in
Kashmir. The events revealed the soldierly heroism of Bharat Mata’s sons at the
level of the nation. In schools, too, the events gave rise to lessons in masculine
heroism. These were noticeably and actively taught by female teachers of all
castes and classes. Moreover, in teaching war to male pupils, the female teach-
ers reproduced gendered metaphors of motherhood and war: mothers giving
away their sons for the protection of the country.
By way of example, let me take you to the rehearsals and preparations for
the annual show of the kindergarten section that took place in January 2000 at
 Producing Mother-India 121

All India Marathi School, the most progressive primary school in the city, run
by an educational society founded by a socialist freedom fighter. The teachers,
all females from Maratha, Nav Boddh, and Mali castes, are feverishly setting
the stage, aligning the children for the last skit and making final recommenda-
tions to them.
The show consists of four mimed and danced performances. The first three
are ordinary, circular children’s dances, including a fishermen’s dance (a “must”
in all school shows). The last and crowning skit, however, is nowhere near as
ordinary. At least, so I think at the time, shortly upon my return to Kolhapur
that year. As I will discover in the following weeks, it has actually become part
of the ordinary in Marathi schools. Put simply, this skit reenacts “war in Kargil.”
Six boys aged from three to five are made to lie down while holding a large piece
of wood meant to represent a gun. The teachers are now busying themselves in
earnest, teaching the boys how to mime rifling and gunning from the ground.
Whereas some of the toddlers appear uninterested in the proceedings, others
seem more receptive to the martial teachings. All along, a four-year-old girl is
dancing hesitantly in the forefront with arabesques gesturing toward the sky,
in a shy yet smiling attempt at miming her love of, and delight for, the country.
Indicating the centrality of this skit is the eagerness displayed by the teachers
to get it exactly right, as well as the amount of time spent comparatively on re-
hearsing it. As teacher Kamla B. vehemently asserts at the end of the rehearsal:
“This is to do as in Kargil; you know, Kargil, there is war over there, they [sig-
naling to the children] must learn.”

Female Negotiations
Obviously, such a gendered production and incorporation of the nation at
school jointly entails models of “proper feminine” behavior in accordance with
patriarchal rules of female subservience. These models are constantly rede-
ployed in daily life. Although the principle of gender equality is conveniently
paid lip service—namely, by teaching the basics of the Constitution at the Class
4 level—every single aspect of the school day often reinforces the contrary mes-
sage, that is, that girls come second. This is exemplified in subtle ways ranging
from proxemics to sexuality and hygiene wherein boys are given precedence:
for instance, in the seating arrangements in coed classes; while coming out of
the classroom at break time, going to the bathroom, getting off the bus during
the annual school trip, visiting a public place on the trip; or even when special
arrangements are made for boys’ proper concrete bathrooms but girls are still
122  Producing Mother-India

expected to go and hide behind a makeshift screen (such was still the case in
2000 at Varsity Marathi School, one of the most popular primary schools in
Kolhapur and famously known for its founding by Brahmins).
Because they are exemplified by an overwhelming majority of female
teachers, these behavior patterns may also acquire particular significance or
legitimacy in view of the conflation of “good wifehood, good motherhood,
and good patriotism.” Yet enacting these ideals and model behaviors does not
preclude a liberating role reversal in which women, by virtue of their positions
as teachers, are also able to indirectly convey injunctive messages to male par-
ents while posing as the guarantors of national order. In this sense, this role
reversal also effects a pragmatic realization of the transference from “mother
at home” to “mother at school.” Such transference further enables that from
“mother-teacher” to “Mother-India.” Through taking their roles as mothers
into the national domain, female primary school mistresses effected a link—
symbolic, discursive, and pragmatic—between the space of home and school
and that of the wider nation. Teachers would often assert, “We are in fact
better mothers than these children’s mothers, because we know better how to
teach them how to behave, how to become clean and proper, how to become
good citizens.” This they demonstrated in various ways and deeds.18 Even a
Marathi lesson in Class 3 about the invention and introduction of television
would provide the schoolmistresses with an impromptu avenue for lecturing
on civic and patriotic duties. Thus, at the end of the lesson on that morning
in October 1999 at the All India Marathi School, Sherifabai, a sharp and lively
Muslim teacher then in her late thirties, proceeded to admonish the pupils to
both limit their daily TV consumption and tell their parents to watch the news
bulletins. As she bitterly complained that parents tend to turn off their sets as
soon as the film has ended and just before the news, a boy exclaimed: “This is
just what Daddy does!” Sherifabai promptly answered: “Well, from now on,
you must tell your daddy to watch the news. Yes, you must tell your daddy to
watch the news so you all get to know what is happening in the country, what
is going on in our country [apla desh], what is going on in any other coun-
try.” She paused, then started again more vehemently, referring to the military
(sainik) in Kargil: “While we are sitting here at home watching, they are wag-
ing war for our country; they are giving their lives for us. Therefore, we must
watch the news.”
Furthermore, analyzing instances of dominant role models in the school
context begs the question of the processes and margin of negotiation that
 Producing Mother-India 123

women may make available for themselves. Much as social institutions are sites
of gender role production, they should not be misconstrued as either total or
final or as preempting negotiation. Important to note is that the dichotomized
understandings of male and female categories in Indian society—and many
other societies, for that matter—today are the contingent products of colonial
encounters with Victorian notions (Connell 1995b). However, this should argu-
ably not exhaust the field of possibilities for thinking about gender in India. The
same comment obtains with respect to the supposed homogeneity of the reali-
ties encompassed by the categories of male and female in psychoanalysis. As
shown by the work of Nancy Chodorow (1994, 1999), the categories used in psy-
choanalytic discourse, not least of all Freudian and Lacanian, have largely op-
erated within normative formations tying heterosexuality to male dominance
and sexuality to gender.19 It is with this awareness that we should approach
the production of gendered knowledge, bodies, disciplined persons, citizens,
and institutions along with norms and values. These processes, no more than
early socialization does, imply systematicity or exhaustiveness. In other words,
the gendered construction of citizens and nations, even as it occurs through
incorporative processes and successive deployments of variously constituted
sensoriums, is always an incomplete one. If daily labor is required to perpetuate
appearances of habitus-based dispositions, the habitus itself allows for failures
and also interstices, from which social actors, as they evolve their socially in-
teriorized selves, can develop “arts de faire” (de Certeau) involving as much
accommodation as cunning negotiation. Consequently, whether in the domain
of health and hygiene or in that of education, the state’s relaying institutions
cannot irrefragably impose their will upon social agents. Rather, institutions
are made of and by social actors in a series of adjustment processes (Fuller and
Benei 2000). Testifying to this is the implementation at the grassroots level of
the program in ethical education introduced by the BJP–Shiv Sena coalition in
power from 1995 to 1998 in Maharashtra state, wherein teachers negotiated state
instructions in their daily work (Benei 2001b).
This raises a more general question of how female social actors generally
accommodate the social constraints imposed upon them, and of the inter-
stices within the social fabric in which they can knit their own narratives.
What resources do they have at their disposal outside the more traditional
settings of rural life and popular songs (Grodzins Gold and Goodwin Raheja
1994; Bagwe 1995; Goodwin Raheja 2003) within the school precincts? Pos-
sible forms of negotiation with respect to dominant patriarchal expectations
124  Producing Mother-India

of patriotic and pedagogical motherhood abound. They may range from sheer
diplomacy to overt resistance. Faced with significant pressure to conform to
patterns of gender domination prevalent in Indian society, female teachers at
times actively and subtly engage with them even when they seem fairly sub-
missive to, and instrumental in, furthering them. The dress code provides a
telling illustration.
We saw earlier that the “modern sari” dress code strongly prevailed for mar-
ried women in this part of Maharashtra. Female teachers conformed to such
a dress code in their work environment and were often rather vocal about it,
sometimes expressing pride in it. Thus, in all the Marathi schools (even the
most progressive ones) where research was carried out, the following comment
was often heard from the female staff: “It is our Maharashtrian culture, our
Indian culture, after marriage, women should wear nothing but a sari” (Amci
­Maharashtratli sanskruti ahe, amci Bhartiya sanskruti, lagna jhale ki striyala
saric nesayci). Female teachers were also prompt to publicly stigmatize any
“­deviant” form of clothing, whether worn by their colleagues or any other
women, including foreigners (such as the anthropologist). Such deviant forms
of clothing included Punjabi suits (also worn by the anthropologist), of the
type in fashion in Maharashtra at the time, not only among unmarried young
girls but also among the urban upper classes priding themselves on a touch of
“modernism” and “cosmopolitanism.” Yet I encountered two instances where
the hard-and-fast rule about wearing saris was regularly broken without any
sanction: the arts teacher, Kavita R., and one of the regular class teachers (out
of a total sixteen female staff), Pushpa S., both young and unmarried, regularly
wore Punjabi suits. Although they were sometimes the butt of jokes from some
elder colleagues, they were never much ostracized by the rest of the teaching
community, nor were they made to change their dressing habits by the succes-
sive headmasters. It was also very clear, at least in Pushpa’s case, that her rejec-
tion of the expected dress code was an expression of her resistance toward peer
and family pressure as well as an open statement of autonomy and indepen-
dence from patriarchal models of femininity. Pushpa hardly ever wore jewelry
or even a light touch of talcum powder, unlike most of her same-age colleagues,
and incidentally expressed her lack of enthusiasm about marriage.
If Pushpa’s stance lay at the extreme of a negotiation continuum, it never-
theless confirms the more general point that women’s displayed conforming to
socially and culturally sanctioned patterns of behavior—especially in their ca-
pacity as teachers—does not characterize their social action as a whole, whether
 Producing Mother-India 125

within or outside of school. To be sure, the discursive emphasis women ex-

pressed about “Maharashtrian culture” (maharashtratli sanskruti), “Indian cus-
toms” (bhartiya paddhati), and so on in the course of public conversations may
conjure up a vision of extreme rigidity in their observance of patterns of behav-
ior. Such a vision is contradicted by behavior away from professional surround-
ings, as I observed at a later stage of research. As I began visiting the teachers in
their homes, I found their attitudes in the domestic space far more relaxed than
in that of school, even among the staunch defenders of patriarchy. In a sizable
number of cases, female teachers even behaved at great variance with the norms
they professed at work. One of the most senior schoolmistresses belonging to
the old Hindu guard, Ms. Pratima Bhaviskar of Varsity Marathi School, was
considerably more lenient than her many pronouncements on “Maharashtrian
tradition” might lead one to assume: Ms. Bhaviskar was a staunch advocate
of married women wearing saris, tying their hair tight, and abstaining from
wearing makeup. She had invited me over several times before I was at last able
to pay her a visit during the Diwali holidays of 2000. That day in October she
introduced me to her two married daughters, both of whom regularly spent
most of their entire days in the natal home while their husbands were at work.
One of the daughters ran a small beauty parlor in her mother’s house and was
markedly made up. Both sisters wore Punjabi suits in and out of the house
and sported loose hair, as “cosmopolitan” upper-middle-class Maharashtrian
women would do. As I gently pointed this out to Pratima Bai, she responded
with a slightly embarrassed laugh, “Today, it is ‘fashion’ [sic] to sport ‘loose’
[sic] hair and wear Punjabi suits; this is not a problem.” The senior teacher even
attempted to persuade me that despite the strict institutional etiquette, I, too,
could indulge in wearing my hair loose at school. Pratima Bai was not an excep-
tion. Often, female teachers would wear Punjabi suits at home and on family
outings and in many instances acknowledged in private their preference for a
more comfortable and airy garment.
This is but one of many examples in which the women most assertively ob-
servant of cultural norms and rules at school were found circumventing them
once far removed from professional gaze. The dress code may have been among
the most trivial and oft-recurring instances of negotiation; there were many
others, sometimes even involving life-cycle events such as marriages, with ar-
rangements falling outside the purview of ordinary, acceptable possibilities. In
all cases, such instances of negotiation confirmed the fundamental importance
of situating the school environment within the larger social and cultural context.
126  Producing Mother-India

As importantly, the unraveling of the multiple, varied, and colorful threads of

teachers’ personal lives away from work suggests the incompleteness of social-
ization and normalization processes.

Conclusions
Schooling in this part of India articulates a specific production of regional/
national sentiment with a conspicuously gendered one of fictive kin through
notions of bhauband and “mother.” Rather than schools “privatizing” the indi-
vidual and the family, consequently eroding identifications with kin groups as
a basis for resistance to the state, as done in Egypt (Abu-Lughod 1990), here,
the very motif of the family, and of the mother in particular, is redeployed as
mediation between family, school, and nation. A school sensorium is further
produced articulating and reconfiguring early childhood experiences with ones
of schooling, from kindergarten onward. This sensorium is at the heart of the
production of national (and regional) schooled selves. Thus, as in Japan, the
national (and regional) performance of singing actively builds on the “most
physically intimate of relationships—that of mother and child” in an attempt to
“establish a sensual link between all national citizens as children,” not only of
their mothers but, as crucially, of the “mother nation” (Yano 1995: 458–59). Un-
like the situation in Japan, however, the production of this sensual link in the
Maharashtrian case is dual: the very nation needs to be conceived as a mother
in order for this connection between all citizens to happen. Conversely, the
notion of mother tongue (matru bhasha) operates a selection upon the inhabit-
ants of the regional state, marking those deemed more worthy of sharing the
bhauband community (community of brothers; see Chapter 1) and associate
with a regional Maratha heritage (Chapter 2). Thus, an emotional and sensory
definition of national and regional identity is created through the trope of the
mother.
Here as in many other instances of nationalism, the trope of the mother
importantly articulates with a notion of longing. Analyzing the relationship of
Indian television and Hindu nationalism, Arvind Rajagopal (2001) built an ar-
gument around the notion of desire: the national serial broadcast of the Hindu
epic Ramayana crystallized a desire and longing for an authentic nation steeped
in a golden age. Now, articulating Rajagopal’s argument with Kakar’s psycho-
analytic notion of desire primarily centered on the mother, it can be argued
that school itself purports to function as the womb of the nation where, as the
goddess of India is daily reproduced, it also produces its children, its future de-
 Producing Mother-India 127

siring patriots. Such a conceptualization clearly fails to integrate non-Marathi

(and nonstandard) Marathi speakers into the regional/national fold, regardless
of all the lip service paid to “religious” tolerance and national integration. Even
the less Hindutva-sympathetic teachers, while explaining conceptualizations of
the mother-deity-nation, articulated them in implicit Hindu terms (also often
in congruence with the notion of samskar; see Chapter 1). Rarely did a Hindu
teacher (Brahmin, Maratha, or even lower caste) express a sense of inclusive
awareness of non-Hindu pupils. It is not that the most progressive among them
entertained similarly exclusive views of citizenship as those of their RSS-, BJP-
or Shiv Sena–inclined counterparts. To some well-meaning, even ecumenical
teachers, this formulation in Hindu terms was due to the dominance of Hindu
culture as an implicit definer of national culture across India. Yet, arguably,
such was the powerfulness of phenomenological school experience primarily
premised on Hindu notions that it went unnoticed, or rather, that its political
implications did not often surface.
In rethinking gender production in nationalist discourses and practices
within the space of school, this chapter also offers a reconsideration of the
dichotomous notions of “private/public space.” Much has been written about
postmodernity and the “decentering of the self.” Crucial in this repositioning
of the interiority of the subject has been a legitimate critique of the Enlighten-
ment notion of a consistent, unified self operating within a rational Haberma-
sian “bourgeois public sphere” (Habermas 1989). By contrast, postmodernist
scholarship placed an emphasis on the notion of a fragmented self, as well as
on the plurality of discordant and conflicting voices that surfaced upon lifting
the illusory veil of consensual rationality (Lyotard 1984). It may be that tolling
the bell for meta-narratives such as the “rational, bourgeois public sphere”—
and its oft-attendant nationalism—was unduly optimistic. Yet the critique ar-
ticulated by some of the thinkers of postmodernism had heuristic potential
(Lyotard 1993), in particular in the recognition that “modern” societies, too,
rely on “grand narratives.” Even Habermas’s discussion of the Enlightenment is
another attempt at authoritative explanation, itself calling for deconstruction.
In an important collective volume, Craig Calhoun (1997) and others (espe-
cially Nancy Fraser) pointed to the largely sexist, class-determined, and ideal-
istic bias of the Habermasian concept. However, most, if not all of this critique
has been couched in terms of qualifying and redefining such a public sphere,
maintaining the same terms in operation within the derived set of oppositions
that have organized Euro-American modern epistemological understanding
128  Producing Mother-India

of the sexual since the beginning of the twentieth century.20 A similar situation
obtains in subalternist and postcolonial scholarship.
There appears to be a paradox in the subalternist and postcolonial scholar-
ship’s embrace of postmodern deconstruction. Prominent in, and constitutive
of, the intellectual enterprise of the subaltern studies has been the cultivation
of vocal plurality. The reinscription of the “voiceless” yet agentic masses within
meaningful historical narratives has been accompanied by a need felt to radi-
calize a critique of the Enlightenment. Whereas subaltern studies have voiced
the necessity to decenter both the colonial meta-narrative of capitalism and the
body of knowledge it had constituted, they have not gone as far as putting in
question the “omniscient and ordering categories” (Arfuch 2002: 18–19) preva-
lent in the Enlightenment paradigm. Indeed, subalternist scholars have largely
continued to work within the same categories used in the construction of a
rational, bourgeois discourse congruently with the emergence of nationalisms.
And thus the overarching notions of “public” and “private” spheres have re-
mained largely unchallenged in many debates in South Asian and, more gener-
ally, postcolonial studies.
Yet these spaces of the public and the private remain arbitrarily defined,
standing in an intricate relationship. Works illuminating the debates of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries about the social conditions of women
(widow remarriage, dowry practice, marriage age, and so on) demonstrated
the important role women played as fully fledged social actors both in the pri-
vate sphere and in the construction of public (Hindu) Indian national identity
and imagery, thus implicitly shadowing the lines of a public/private dichot-
omy (Kumar 1993; Sangari 1999; Gupta 2001; T. Sarkar 2002).21 Despite these
breakthroughs, however, the inadequacy of the respective notions of public and
private spheres remains to be fully discussed.22 My purpose is not to expand
unduly on this question here. Rather, it is to point to the need for such a discus-
sion to take into account the concomitantly constitutive dimension of gender
as discursive, material, and embodied production. Arguably, documenting the
production of gender and nation together with spaces in the making of in-
stitutions and persons provides an alternative way for thinking beyond these
respective dichotomized understandings.
Moreover, the notion of a (school) sensorium predicated upon the primary
sensorium formed in the early years of infancy confirms that if the categories of
“public” and “private” spheres were good to think through in the first place, and
especially to describe the constitution of a national, media space and attending
 Producing Mother-India 129

processes in the nineteenth century, today these categories have become all too
often taken for granted as empirical realities endowed with a timeless value of
reified concreteness, thus functioning as a “crystallization of an adaptable model
in every circumstance” (Arfuch 2002: 75). By contrast, the notion of sensorium
developed here helps puncture “the antagonism between the intimate sphere
and the public/social one,” which “is nothing else but a discourse effect: rules,
constraints, power devices, impulses and emotions” (74). Finally, the tyrannies
and servilities of the public and private worlds that Virginia Woolf bemoaned
no longer appear distinct; rather, they are the product of an arbitrary distinc-
tion that dissolves into the world of everyday life today. Arfuch adds that the
political transformations of the last decades as well as the incessant deployment
of new technologies have definitively done away with the classic sense of public
and private, to the point of turning the distinction to be tenuous and “ineffable”
(76). I would like to suggest that this is so in light not only of these political and
technological transformations but, perhaps more fundamentally, of processes
of construction of the self that occurred with generalized schooling. In the fol-
lowing chapter, we pursue this discussion further with the (re)production of
history and masculinity.
4 Historiography,
Masculinity, Locality
Passions of Regional Belonging

Andrea: “Unhappy the land that has no heroes!”

Galileo: “No. Unhappy the land that needs a hero.”
Bertolt Brecht, The Life of Galileo

[T]he force of sound in alarming the passions is prodigious.

Charles Avison, “An Essay on Musical Expression”

It was late in the afternoon as the bus entered Satara, a city once the seat of
Maratha power. On that hot and dusty April day, the atmosphere aboard was
one of tranquil torpor. As the bus made its entry into town amid general indif-
ference and drowsy passengers, a three-year-old suddenly sprang to her feet,
shouting: “Shivaji Maharaj! Shivaji Maharaj!” Drawn out of some aimless rev-
erie, I turned around to discover the girl’s radiant face a few seats away from
mine. “Shivaji Maharaj! Shivaji Maharaj, look, look!” Neelima kept shouting
excitedly. Her finger, pressed against the window, pointed at the majestic bronze
statue standing outside. The seventeenth-century hero-warrior was mounted
on a horse, impervious to the traffic and horns of modern times. The bus drove
around the monument. The little girl by now stood on her bench seat with great
trepidation. A few other passengers turned their heads to watch the child in
amusement. Seated next to her, her parents smiled proudly at their daughter’s
precocious achievements. The family was from the well-off middle classes of
Kolhapur, on their way to some relative’s wedding a few miles further. Nod-
ding in approval, the parents praised their daughter: “Yes, Shivaji Maharaj, our
Shivaji Maharaj, that’s right. Well done, Neelu!”
This brief encounter several years ago on an intercity bus in the south of
Maharashtra changed the course of my research. At the time, I was working
on a sociological project looking at higher secondary educational facilities and
industrialization (Benei 1997). I had envisaged studying regionalism and na-
tionalism in an educational setting, focusing on university- and college-level
133
134  Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

students as a kind of follow-up population. In a matter of a few seconds, Nee-

lima brilliantly shattered this plan, bringing home to me the need for studying
regional attachments along with early socialization processes occurring in the
making of a social, cultural, and, should we add, political person. In the previous
chapters, we encountered some of these processes at work in the construction
of an attachment to the nation and the production of gender. We pondered the
importance of the Marathi language ideology in relation to modes of emotional
production of citizenship (Chapter 2), especially premised on the development
of a motherly bond and an early childhood sensorium (Chapter 3). Here I want
to shift the focus to the production of both locality and regional attachments
by means of historiographical resources. In so doing I want to redeploy and
extend the notion of sensorium; from the preverbal, affective primary senso-
rium developed in the early years of social life to an emotional linguistic one
that includes singing, the sensorium developed throughout school years and
into adulthood is one gradually involving verbal resources as well as cognitive
ones. Yet these cognitive resources are not devoid of emotionality at all; they
are constantly and dialectically colored by affects. I focus in this chapter on a
particular type of resource at play in reasoning and narrativization, namely, his-
toriography. Arguably, this cognitive resource is a major site for the production
of gendered senses of regional belonging.
In the case of Maharashtra, historiography has also been instrumental in
producing a hegemonic notion of regional masculinity. Such a notion needs
further explanation in light of the increasing body of work that has renewed
perspectives on gender since the mid-1990s (Butler 1990; Connell 1993, 1995a,
1995b; Mosse 1996; Ortner 1996; Goodwin Raheja 2003; Chopra, Osella, and
Osella 2004; Srivastava 2004). These works have stressed the importance of en-
visaging the concept and practice of gender as relational: both the production
of the men/women difference and the notions of femininity and masculinity
should be envisaged as plural. Rather than a singular concept, masculinity, for
instance, is best approached as a set of hierarchically positioned constructions
of manhood. These positionings may vary in time and across different sections
of the population. They may also generate alternating dominant—or even hege-
monic—conceptions of the entailments of “masculinity.” These, in Maharashtra
as in many other parts of the world (Connell 1995b), are linked to issues of po-
litical and social power and representation. In this chapter, I focus on a crucial
emblem of both Maharashtrian masculinity and political power and represen-
tation: the figure and history of Shivaji Maharaj. The regional seventeenth-
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 135

c­ entury king today is not simply revered as the maker of self-rule (swaraj) and
founder of the Maratha nation through defeating the Mughal power in Delhi
and the Deccan sultanates then ruling over Maharashtra. As Thomas Hansen
once remarked, “The Shivaji mythology is a nodal point, the historical fiction at
the heart of state practices, political rhetoric and historical imagination in this
part of India” (2001: 21). Several decades after the creation of the Maharash-
tra state in 1960, the iconic figure of “Maharashtrianness” today graces public
spaces with a unique sensorial omnipresence, ranging from institutional sites
renamed after him to the “proliferation of visual cues,” especially in the form of
statues in parks and other important places.1
Shivaji Maharaj therefore provides an apposite entry point into the com-
plex entanglement of idioms of regional masculinity and attachments. These
regional attachments combine ties of language, history, ethnicity, and religion
that are often subsumed by the category of “primordial ties.” In contrast to this
category, I explore the theoretical alternative possibilities offered by the notion
of sensorium, here primarily understood as a historical sensory reconfigura-
tion. Finally, I seek to illuminate how the production of the region and of the lo-
cality articulates with that of the nation. Against the grain of the oft-heard and
facile argument of the nation imposing itself on the locality, the Maharashtrian
example invites one to envisage the joint production of locality and nation.2

In his critical review of theories of primordialism, Arjun Appadurai remarked:

“[T]he creation of primordial sentiments, far from being an obstacle to the mod-
ernizing state, is close to the centre of the project of the modern nation-state.”
Indeed, the nation-state itself draws on “culturalist mobilization” in its attempts
at creating a culturally homogeneous citizen (1996: 146). Appadurai was careful
to emphasize that such projects may also trespass borders; hence, movements
in exile making claims to nationhood also play on a culturalist logic whereby
identities take cultural differences as “their conscious object” (147). Conversely,
even for locally situated social and political actors, local events acquire mean-
ing through a close imbrication of various scales—from local to regional to
national, transnational, global, and so on. Most of the literature discussing the
contemporary institutional production of ethnicity and violence nevertheless
lays much emphasis on the bioproduction of identities at the nation-state and
transnational levels at the expense of other, more local ones. Yet transnational
and national projects more often than not have to contend with processes oc-
curring at the levels of region, locality, and so on. Regional states in India are
136  Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

a case in point, and the Maharashtra state offers a fascinating illustration of

attempts at producing a homogeneous citizen. Whether run by a long-standing
dynasty in the Congress or by an extreme right-wing populist coalition, the
state has since its inception sought to build Maharashtrian citizenship upon
notions of Hinduness, Marathaness, Marathi language, and a historical heri-
tage anchored in the figure of Shivaji Maharaj. Furthermore, the relation of the
region to the nation is an intricate one in this part of India, and the notion of
Maharashtrian citizenship predetermines and encompasses that of Indian citi-
zenship, as we shall see. For the moment, I wish to focus on the production of a
regional sense of belonging and the part played by history therein.
In South Asia, as elsewhere, history may, as much as language (Chapter 2),
operate as a powerful vehicle for producing and transmitting senses of belong-
ing (Lelyveld 1978; Hobsbawm 1992; Kumar 1992; Amin 1995; Hastings 1997;
Pandey 2001; Deshpande 2006). It is not the purpose here to enter postcolonial
debates on historicity and the definition and dating of a sense of history in
non-European contexts. Suffice it to say that in the Indian case, these debates
have partly revolved around the issue of whether Indians had a sense of time
and history prior to British colonialism, and partly around the colonial ne-
gotiated modalities of modern historical practice (Kaviraj 1995; Thapar 1996;
Sarkar 1997; Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam 2003; and more specifically on
Maharashtra, Deshpande 2006, 2007). As importantly, a concern for identifying
alternative historiographical sources for “challenging the state’s construction of
history” has been powerfully voiced by the subaltern studies (Pandey 1991: 571).
Although I share Gyan Pandey’s concern for “recover[ing] ‘marginal’ voices and
memories, forgotten dreams and signs of resistance” for purposes of writing a
history that would not be beholden to “victorious concepts and powers like the
nation-state, [and] bureaucratic rationalism” (1994: 214), I contend that we must
also reckon with the effects of modern state apparatuses on the production of
history, and on an unprecedented scale. As the colonial education system pro-
vided avenues for a job and a middle-class status for an ever-increasing num-
ber of aspirants, it transformed the significance of, and expanded the access to,
history, the latter now leaving the confined dwellings of scribes employed by
notables (Deshpande 2006) and providing the means for expressing collective
identities defined in various ways (Cohn 1996; Sarkar 1997). But only with the
advent of a generalized system of mass education in postcolonial India—and
even more so since the creation of the regional state in Maharashtra—did his-
tory, and institutionalized knowledge generally, acquire such prominence in
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 137

actors’ and citizens’ imaginaries. Arguably, schooling has further strengthened

a sense of history in the “modern sense” among members of the public.3
At the level of grand meta-narratives of the nation, this sense of history
has been supported by usages of historiography deriving their legitimacy from
scholarly authentication, as illustrated by the recent and still ongoing historio-
graphical debates in India pitting leftist historians against Hindu right-wing
ideologues. Some of these debates have an uncanny resonance with earlier colo-
nial ones that saw British historians and educationists, from Mills to Macaulay
and other administrators of the presidencies at that time, bent on “extirpating
obscurantism, superstition, and fanciful mythologies, from the Indian psyche”
(Trautmann 1997; Prakash 1999). In the current debates, lack of scientific spirit
has appeared as a recurrent motif in judgments passed against textbooks that
tend to blend mythological stories with factual histories of, say, national lead-
ers. That myth and history could thus find themselves amalgamated in official
contemporary manuals purported to enlighten the Indian masses is interpreted
as a blatant sign of misplaced religiosity flouting itself in the face of constitu-
tional and rightful secularism. It is deemed unacceptable by both secular elites
and scholars. How one can take such amalgamating as serious scholarship has
been the relentless question asked on many sides of the secularist debate. Two
points require elaboration.
First, it must be noted that such a juxtaposition of the mythical and the his-
torical does not characterize only recent endeavors undertaken at the national
level (NCERT) under the Hindu-right wing coalition in power until May 2004.
It has also long been extant at the regional level, not so much in official manuals
and textbooks as in primary schoolteachers’ pedagogical discursive practices.4
In Maharashtra, for instance, the teaching of history as a separate subject offi-
cially starts in Class 3. In the preceding years is taught “environmental science”
(parisar vidnyan). To this end, and contrary to the rest of the syllabus, teach-
ers have no textbook to follow and are thus left with a significant measure of
freedom for introducing the young pupils to the specificities of their local sur-
roundings. When asked to orally list the topics they encompass in these teach-
ings, schoolteachers often offered a list of names ranging from stories about
Ganesh and a nearby Ganesh temple, Maruti, Mahalakshmi temple (famous
in and outside Kolhapur), as well as Shahu Maharaj and Shahu Palace (the Old
Palace that houses a museum of the former local king’s memorabilia; discussed
later), types of grains and trees, the nearby industrial and commercially suc-
cessful town of Pratinagar (name changed, Chapter 6), and invariably, Shivaji
138  Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

Maharaj. Marathi teachers and other adults regularly referred to these charac-
ters by using the category of deivat.
Second, this practice confirms the necessity of heeding the vernacular cat-
egories that ordinary people use in their daily lives, providing another perspec-
tive on some English-dominated discussions (see Chapter 1). Lying in between
the historical and the mythical, the category of deivat might indeed be called
devotional by many standards. The term can be used for both deities and hu-
mans of high stature, including religious and historical characters, parents,
and teachers. In all these cases, the character thus labeled is held in an affec-
tionate relationship with the locutor. Arguably, this popular category invites a
reconsideration of the oft-bemoaned blurring of the categories of “mythical”
and “historical.” I will return to this later. For the moment, I concentrate on a
particular example of deivat: that of Shivaji Maharaj, hero-warrior incarnation
of the Maratha nation.
This heroic figure offers a privileged entry point into the production of lo-
cality and masculinity. It also presents an interesting parallel with models of
national heroes in Europe. In a pioneering volume on the comparative making
of national heroes, Pierre Centlivres, Daniel Fabre, and Françoise Zonabend
(1999: 5) noted that the figure of the “ploughman-soldier” has often been an
archetypal model that best represents legitimate attachment to a nourishing
soil and mother earth. The character of Shivaji appositely fits that model in-
asmuch as he is often portrayed—even in competing versions—as the chief
of the Marathas, a caste cluster known as warriors and tillers of the land (on
the Maratha-Kunbi complex, see O’Hanlon 1985). Particular among these are
the Mawlas (from the Mawal country in the Konkan), appearing by Shivaji’s
side at all important moments, from childhood play to his taking an oath to
build an independent kingdom (swarajya) and throughout his heroic struggle
to achieve his ends. This friendship with the loyal sons of the soil is one of
the recurring motifs in both the Marathi cinematographic production about
Shivaji until the 1980s (Benei 2004) and the school curriculum. Although chil-
dren are likely to have come across his august figure in many public places
across urban Maharashtra, this year is their first, and long, official encounter
with the near-legendary hero: the Class 4 history textbook is almost entirely
devoted to the narration of his legendary deeds. This year-long curricular focus
on the character of Shivaji is remarkably reminiscent of, and congruent with,
the didactic uses of history propounded by nationalist educationists such as
V. K. Chiplunkar in the late nineteenth century: biographies of great men, to
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 139

Chiplunkar, represented among the best historical resources for imparting the
“teaching of morality and the importance of certain kinds of behaviour and ac-
tions in life” (nitibodh; Deshpande 2006: 15). It is to the official narrative in the
syllabus as well as to its enactment in primary schools that I now turn. Rather
than debunking the myth and drawing attention to the “cracks” in the narrative
of the hero’s deeds (see Laine 2003 for a masterful and no less consequential
demonstration), my aim is to document its contemporary institutionalization
through daily school production.

Popular Culture, Institutionalized

Knowledge, and Social Agency
The institutionalization of Shivaji’s history is a complex issue for several rea-
sons. First, Shivaji has long been a popular figure, resuscitated by various lead-
ers, such as social reformer Mahatma Phule and freedom fighter and nationalist
Bal Gangadhar Tilak in the late nineteenth century (Cashman 1975; O’Hanlon
1985). Throughout the twentieth century, Shivaji was the stake of many other,
oftentimes conflicting, reappropriations (see Hansen 2001 for a discussion of a
more recent one, that of the sons-of-the-soil Hindu right-wing party Shiv Sena
since the 1960s). This suggests an interesting paradox. The reappropriation of
the hero’s character, narrative, and purpose by social actors of all persuasions
shatters the notion of an omnipotent state imposing its designs on its citizens.
However, an overwhelming majority of these social actors today have been
educated in the Marathi primary school system in the last forty years, learning
from the same, unique, Class 4 Shivaji textbook. This simple fact has a num-
ber of consequences and implications, especially in terms of class and gender,
which require sociological elaboration.
My contention is that, contrary to an oft-found argument predicated upon
a reference to powadas and other popular ballads and legends, knowledge
about, and celebration of, Shivaji at a widespread popular level is a rather re-
cent phenomenon in Maharashtra. This phenomenon not only owes much to
anti­colonial reappropriation by Bal Gangadhar Tilak but is also largely linked
to the growth of literacy across the regional state. This phenomenon is also
gendered, given that literacy initially spread among male Maharashtrians. Even
today, those most left out of the literacy process in Maharashtra, that is, elderly
illiterate women living in rural areas or in urban slums, may not be able to even
identify a picture of the great hero-warrior. They are also the ones least likely to
have seen movies of Shivaji at the time of their release because of limited access
140 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

to outside sources of entertainment. As an illustration, let me take you to the

slum of Sachar Bazar where I conducted part of the present research.
The year was 1999, a time of hot public debate about the date to be adopted
for the annual celebration of Shivaji’s birthday, Shivaji Jayanti. The debate hov-
ered around comparative calendrical issues and historical details, and its incon-
clusiveness resulted in the adoption of a second date for the celebration. Shivaji
Jayanti thus became celebrated twice in the year according to both calendars.5
One might therefore have expected any Marathi speaker in Maharashtra to at
least have an inkling of who Shivaji was. That afternoon in late March 1999, my
encounter with Sunita’s grandmother proved me wrong. Sunita was in Class 4
at the only Marathi corporation school in the vicinity.6 That day I had gone
home with her after school. Her brother and sister were sitting with me on
the floor in the one-room shack that they shared with their father (the mother
had tragically died two years before) and his mother, Rukminibai, well into her
sixties. As we were chatting away, Rukminibai came back from her work as a
domestic servant. Soon, I could sense the grandmother’s uneasiness faced with
what she probably perceived as educational authority: her granddaughter had
introduced me as “a teacher from France doing some work in Indian schools.”
The fact that Sunita seemed to know where France was (“a faraway country, it
takes ten hours to get there, by plane, oh no, you can’t go by car, nor even by
bus or boat; you have to sit on a plane to get you there”) and that I had regularly
spent time in her school seemed to confer some measure of prestige on her. It
also had the unfortunate effect of awing her grandmother, hindering the nor-
mal flow of conversation. So I tried to shift from school topics to more mun-
dane matters. We began talking about the posters and images attached to the
walls in the room. Rukminibai seemed to relax somewhat and offered comment
and information on the various family pictures and representations of deities,
regional and local. As we went through one picture after another in the room,
we hit upon a smaller one of Shivaji’s stuck in a corner, at which the grand-
mother went blank. I asked who this was. Rukminibai helplessly confessed that
she had heard about him in other people’s homes, but she did not really know
who he was. She had not placed the poster; her grandchildren had. But it was to
no avail that they shouted the answer to her in disdainful support; Rukminibai
had not been schooled, ever, and “what [did she] know, [she could] not read or
write, [she was] poor and uneducated, so how [could she] know?” was her mor-
tified answer. This was one of those awkward moments in fieldwork when the
fieldworker wishes for the situation not to have been allowed to happen; I, too,
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 141

felt mortified, for unwittingly subjecting Rukminibai to what seemed a humili-

ating confession of ignorance. I was also struck by how Shivaji was apparently
part of a domain out of her reach, a public and popular domain to which she
saw herself as having no access.
It may be that Rukminibai’s answer was largely informed by her perception
of my “educational persona.” Yet this encounter also suggests the generational
and gendered dimension of learning about the Maharashtrian nation’s founder,
so-oft portrayed as pervasively popular. Rukminibai’s was not the only case I
encountered in the course of research; rather, hers is an illustration of a wider
empirical fact and sociological argument about a supposedly public culture,
in fact largely informed by institutionalized knowledge. This argument runs
surprisingly deep, as similar findings show with reference to knowledge of
Shahu Maharaj, the local king who, at the turn of the twentieth century, led
a non-Brahmin social reform movement and donated much land and money
toward building educational institutions (as well as toward accomplishing in-
dustrialization). Apart from those families with a direct connection with the
royal house through a history of service, most adult Kolhapuris I spoke to
had acquired knowledge about the benefactor at least as much in the space of
school as through the yearly public celebrations of his birth held in July (Shahu
Jayanti; see Benei 1999). Teachers told pupils about the enlightened ruler when
their parents did not, and the most dedicated took them to the museum to
see the mounted specimens of the famously adroit hunter. Yet what most of
these adults in Kolhapur often reminisced about the king appeared blatantly
vindicated by the narrative of his achievements as told in the earlier official
syllabus in use from the 1960s through the late 1990s. The 1982 Class 3 Marathi
textbook was used until inception of the current one in 1998 and featured the
history of Shahu Maharaj as one of the most prominent lessons, consisting of
several pages placed near the beginning of the book (16–19).7 Of course, I do
not mean to suggest that schooling alone accomplishes this. As has already
been demonstrated in the previous chapters, schooling draws upon existing
and evolving structures of feeling and material constitutive of ordinary social
actors’ repertoires of public culture and popular knowledge. Arguably, how-
ever, schooling operates a crystallization of these repertoires while reshaping
them in a process attuned with dominant ongoing narratives operating within
wider society. In such a process, these crystallized bodies of knowledge be-
come naturalized, authentic, and legitimate while concomitantly reappropri-
ated by social actors.
142  Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

Furthermore, Rukminibai’s reaction and position lie at the end of a contin-

uum, at the other end of which stand young Marathi-educated Maharashtrian
males. Some of them have attracted scholarly attention and generated impor-
tant work, especially in their association with extreme right-wing movements
like that of the Shiv Sena (Hansen 2001). Nonetheless, largely ignored is the fact
that these young men have all been schooled in the Marathi system. Now, as we
have begun to see, Maharashtrian schooling is shot through with a recurring
tension between a Nehruvian ideal of integration of all citizens and a more
exclusivist construction of a Marathi/Hindu Indian nation. Consequently, the
slippage toward chauvinistic regionalism/nationalism is always a potentiality,
as will be shown in this chapter. There is something missing in the sociology of
Hindutva militantism. When the education level of these youths is taken into
consideration, it is generally so within an argument correlating higher educa-
tion and unemployment, turning them into frustrated and dissatisfied agents of
violence, hence perfect recruits for Hindu right-wing organizations. The phe-
nomenological and ideological implications of even the basic stages of their
schooling, however, have remained unexplored. In what follows, I document
how the local/regional historical character of Shivaji Maharaj becomes an ob-
ject of competing emotional attachment on the part of social actors positioned
in the middle of the above-mentioned continuum. I also explore local reinter-
pretations of this history. Instead of focusing on the space of school, here I want
to start with an exploration of the shared archive available to people in this part
of Maharashtra.

“Modern” Pilgrimage and Historical

Reappropriation: A Visit to Panhala
Among the many topics of wide currency in studies of the subcontinent, the
domain of religion and local notions of the sacred has been one of the most
covered, from studies of temples to deities, darśana, and pilgrimage (yātrā)
(Fuller 1984; Gold 1988; Eck 1998). The Hindu right-wing’s reappropriation
since the 1980s of the yatra form for strictly political purposes has also received
due attention. Yet in the past fifteen to twenty years, another form of yatra has
developed throughout India, especially among well-off families, urban and
rural: these are yatra done on a holiday to historical sites and other “places of
interest” (in Marathi, pahanyasarkhi, literally, “worthy of seeing”). If the cre-
ation of the British railway system in the nineteenth century made for increas-
ing pace and movement among Indians, so has the more recent development
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 143

of good tarmac roads, highways, and transport industries. Such a development

has particularly facilitated and increased visits by predominantly middle-class
families to natural areas, temples, and other nearby sites of leisure. Whereas at-
tention has been paid to the (at times competing) occupation of public parks in
cities (Kaviraj 1997), an entire body of work awaits constitution on these other
forms of collective and individual self-formation. Arguably, these outings are
occasions for entire families to both actively produce and reenact their senses
of belonging to their locality, region, and nation outside official school visits, as
well as to articulate their own personal and familial histories to the larger one of
Maharashtra and, by extension, India. During these one-day visits, whose regu-
larity and frequency in a year may be highly variable, social actors (re)connect
themselves to, and make meaning of, both natural and historical scapes. In fact,
even the “naturalness” of these scapes is concomitantly produced. It is from the
carefully crafted and valorized sites of historical legacy that the natural scenery
around can be enjoyed. The historical loci here function as not just bearings
but also producers of meaning, for collective, familial, and individual memory.
They are so because their historicity is constantly produced by their being used
as such, in a dialectical production of social (and historical) actors. By way of
illustration, let me take you on one of these picnics to nearby Panhala.
Situated at about twenty kilometers northwest of Kolhapur and rising four
hundred meters above sea level, Panhala is one of the many sites of Shivaji’s most
well-known heroic deeds. Today, it is known to the lay tourist as a “hill station”
visited for its magnificent views of the Sahyadri mountain range and surround-
ing landscapes. To any Marathi-speaking Maharashtrian, Panhala means much
more: it is, as a Web page says, “redolent with memories of Shivaji.”8 Panhala is
a Maratha heritage site, where some of the most famous episodes of Maratha
(as well as Mughal and British) history took place. Its geographical proximity to
Kolhapur endows it with a distinctive potential for both familial and collective
reappropriation. Political meetings of all sorts take place there, as if the glory
of the Maratha hero would illuminate the speakers and the audience, gracing
the meetings with an ineffable, magical, cosmic dimension. Moreover, the fa-
mous national(ist) singer Lata Mangeshkar is said to originate from Panhala
and has a house there, which adds a more immediate and mundane prestige
to the place. Yet, despite the discursive traces of their existence weaving into
the tapestry of visitors’ social memory, neither the meetings nor the popular
singer interests me directly. Rather, families from Kolhapur coming to the site
on Sunday visits do.
144  Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

To many a family on one of these picnics, Panhala represents a locus for

the production of historicity—as well as masculinity. During the relaxed con-
sumption of food, comfortably seated on blankets set in the shade of well-kept
lawns in the “family park”—endowed with a children’s playground—families
commented on the importance of Panhala in the regional (and national) his-
tory. I once accompanied the grown-up children of a school headmistress and
their friends. The headmistress, Mrs. Herabaikar, had told me how she and her
husband, some thirty years earlier, used to take their four children on picnics
to Panhala “ever so often” on Sundays.9 In those days, they owned neither cars
nor scooters, and the whole family would go by bus. Upon reminiscing on
these outings, Mrs. Herabaikar explained that she would clarify some parts of
Shivaji’s history to her children on these occasions. On the day I accompanied
the now grown-up children, she reiterated the point that these picnics signified
both a fun, relaxing time for the entire family and a most vivid and enjoyable
way “for the children to learn and remember something about Shivaji’s history.”
As Mrs. Herabaikar put it, these visits provided an avenue for them to make
sense of their local history, to relate to it in a more immediate, tangible, and
concrete way than through lengthy classroom expositions.
Interestingly, such active transmission and production of knowledge con-
comitantly reappropriate filmic, popular, and official history, blending them to-
gether. In addition, a number of factors suggest that the knowledge appropriated
today is still a predominantly bookish—or at the very least, standardized—one.
As mentioned previously, the textbook in use has presented the same history
to generations of schoolchildren since the 1960s. The narrative it proffers of
Panhala’s history refers exclusively to the time of Shivaji’s heroic and successful
fight to recapture the fort, glossing over its much longer history that began in
the twelfth century with the Shilahara dynasty.10 In congruence with this official
version, as you overtake middle-class families leisurely strolling along the paths
leading around the fort, you will hear comments pertaining just to the history
of Shivaji; in particular, comments on how one of his generals, Baji Prabhu, led
a fierce battle against “the Muslims” and, in his loyalty to Shivaji, prepared him-
self to die only after hearing the sound of gunfire signaling his chief ’s success-
fully reaching Vishalgad.11 What one hears then, is a rather faithful rendition
of the Class 4 textbook passage. Similarly, my friends playfully struck theatri-
cal poses as we walked along the path of scenes resonating with the primary
school curriculum. These scenes have somehow carved themselves a dominant
niche in individual, familial, and social memories. By enabling Kolhapuris to
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 145

articulate these different levels of memories into meaningful and concrete lived
experiences of belonging, sites like Panhala serve as a special locus for the pro-
duction of locality, masculinity, and region.
Such a production is also integrated within the larger network of other local
resources of cultural and religious historicity and sociality. Indeed, rather than
being isolated, these visits to Panhala are often part of a pilgrimage itinerary
that first takes Kolhapuris to Jyotiba temple, seventeen kilometers northwest of
Kolhapur on the way to Panhala.12 In the following section, I elaborate further
on ordinary literate people’s reappropriation of Shivaji’s narrative and its predi-
cation upon the official version peddled by the state textbook bureau.

Textbook, History, and Secularism in the Vernacular

Important to note is that the production of primary school textbooks in the
state of Maharashtra is entrusted to an independent—though public—organi-
zation, the Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production and Curriculum
Research. Consequently, the manuals are relatively unaffected by changes in
the politics of the regional government. The textbooks to a large extent are the
outcome of a consensus among Marathi-language educationists of all walks of
life. Although some dissent may occur, the Marathi manuals thus arrived at
may be envisaged as useful illustrations of dominant norms and values extant
in Maharashtrian society at large.13 These norms and values have been partly
shaped by the reconfiguration of historical and historiographical traditions over
the past century. For instance, the Class 4 textbook, almost entirely devoted
to the history of Shivaji, draws on some shared historical accounts from early
­twentieth-century historians (such as Justice M. G. Ranade’s) that have fed into
Maharashtrian popular culture, including that of Marathi cinema propounded
by filmmaker Bhalji Pendharkar.14 According to Satish Kulkarni, Mumbai-
based Marathi producer and film director, schools, at least in urban areas, were
important sites for spreading knowledge of “Shivaji cinema” prior to the ad-
vent of television and new technologies.15 Bhalji Pendharkar’s films were shown
for several decades until the 1980s in schools all over Maharashtra on 16 mm
projectors with sound, the equipment provided by the state government’s In-
formation Ministry. It is against such a cinematographic background of histo-
riographical narratives that the history textbook for Class 4 was prepared in the
1960s. It was to become the only available version for the following decades. To
this day, any attempt to amend it has been met with violent opposition by some
sectors of the population, for various reasons.16
146  Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

Lost in Translation: Writing Communal Tensions

In the preceding chapters, we saw that if textbooks provide a window onto
the worldview of those who make them and the society where they originate,
their analysis can form but one part of the study of syllabi and curricula.
However much they partake in the production of a schooled, educated self,
they account for only a standardized, almost ossified version. Of immense
bearing are the ebb and flow of daily interaction among teachers and chil-
dren at school, between children, and with their parents and society at large.
This calls for an exploration of the articulation between pedagogical tools and
daily praxis. What teachers and children do in the classroom (and outside it)
becomes of paramount importance for studying the production of senses of
belonging, at the local, regional, and national levels. The remainder of this sec-
tion therefore documents both the contents of the history manual for Class 4
and its usage in the classroom, shedding light on teachers’ and children’s—as
well as parents’ in absentia—negotiations. If social actors’ interpretations of
the official narrative are intricately tied to the textbook’s, we shall see that the
latter leaves room for great diversity in these matters, including potentially
violent reappropriation.
Here again must be taken seriously Sudipta Kaviraj’s (1992) advocacy to
pay heed to the vernacular phrasings of political notions such as “secularism,”
“­religion,” “civil society,” and so on used in Indian society. The need to do so is
nowhere more apparent than in the comparison of the two versions, English
and Marathi, of the Class 4 history textbook in Maharashtra. As noted earlier,
the textbook was prepared in the late 1960s, a period of heightened conflict
with Pakistan, with repercussions on communal tensions across India. Yet these
were also post-Nehruvian times, during which the spirit of the great national
socialist and secularist leader still loomed large. The preparation of the textbook
reflected these politically conflictual and conceptually eclectic times (as con-
firmed by a retired educational officer then working at the textbook bureau). A
conscious, deliberate attempt was made to produce the textbook within a secu-
larist and ecumenical framework, avoiding any explicit discussion of religion,
to the extent that jat, rather than dharma, was systematically used to also refer
to members of other, non-Hindu (principally Muslim) communities.
Despite these conscious efforts to promote an inclusive framework purport-
edly conducive to social harmony, many secularist critics encountered in Ma-
harashtra commented on what they perceived as a condemnable invitation to
violence stemming from the official Class 4 textbook.17 In their views, the official
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 147

manuals should lay more emphasis on Shivaji’s skills as an administrator rather

than tirelessly detail the hero’s warfare and acts of aggression, even in the name
of self-rule. Of the nineteen lessons devoted to the history of Shivaji’s making
of swaraj, they remarked, thirteen deal with war, conquest, battle, spilling of
blood, heroism, bravery, and so on, while a meager three are devoted to Shivaji’s
skills as an efficient administrator (lesson 15), a people’s king (lesson 18), and a
“living source of inspiration” (lesson 19). Even if these narratives are written in
an ecumenical fashion, the critics argue, they cannot but generate communal
mistrust and hatred because of their antagonistic—and often religious—formu-
lation, whether explicit or implicit. Indeed, despite many corrective attempts
throughout the book, a dominant narrative pitting Maratha (de facto Hindu)
and Muslim communities against one another emerges. This is largely due to the
systematically differential portrayal of the protagonists as Hindus and Muslims,
turning religion into the main determinant for social action on either side. Thus,
the very first lesson, referring to the two kings ruling Maharashtra at the time
of Shivaji’s birth, Nizamshah of Ahmednagar and Adilshah of Bijapur, describes
their “narrow outlook” and how they “oppressed the people over whom they
ruled,” preventing the people from “celebrat[ing] their festivals or worship[ing]
their gods openly and freely” (1996: 1). The tone is set, and religion appears one
of the main reasons why Shivaji will resolve to set up his own swaraj, encapsu-
lated by the motto “Swadesh, swadharma, swabhasha” (Chapters 1 and 2). Other
instances abound (lesson 2) that tie Shivaji’s mission to the work of saints of
Maharashtra, the latter who “instill[ed] in [people] the desire to protect their
religion, . . . preached the ideal of brotherhood . . . and gave them the message of
equality [as well as] lessons in good thought and good conduct” (3–8). The social
awakening these saints brought through their bhakti movements is thus put at
the service of a foundational political narrative of the making of swaraj.18 Thus,
by both implicitly and explicitly framing the entire account in Hindu terms, the
textbook makers have unwittingly given it a communal slant. These criticisms
appear justified, since some of the textbook’s wording was deemed fit enough
to be reproduced almost verbatim by a Hindutva Web site, and judging by the
latent antagonism existing between Hindus and Muslims in Maharashtra today,
which both national and international events of the past decade have contrib-
uted to reinforce.19 In many ways, however, the issue of communalism is also
one of shifting interpretation and translation. This bears elaboration.
The history textbook was first written in Marathi and subsequently trans-
lated into English and the other five languages recognized for instruction in the
148  Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

regional state. Although the Marathi and English versions are at first blush very
similar, they contain a number of divergences that bear potentially deleteri-
ous significance in the loaded and sensitive context of communalism in India
today. As we will see, the English version creates a more contained, dispassion-
ate reading in two ways: where the Marathi text uses graphic depictions and
vivid, direct passages meant to convey the liveliness of the story and arouse the
pupils’ sustained interest, the English one opts for a distancing effect achieved
by a more sober phrasing and use of indirect style. In addition, it reformulates
some passages in a more “secular-conscious” garb, even introducing the lan-
guage of liberalism in its interpolations. For instance, in the English version, the
concluding sentence to the lesson on Shivaji as an administrator contains the
added phrase “good government”: “In this way Shivaji established good govern-
ment and gave a clean administration to his subjects” (62). Similarly, where the
Marathi version maintains an “othering” implying Hindu and Muslim commu-
nal distinction, the English translation adapts the Marathi version to the ideal
of a secular nation commonly propounded in the English-language print and
other media. The English version privileges an egalitarian treatment of Shivaji’s
subjects even in averred cases of disloyalty: “Such [disloyal] persons were se-
verely punished irrespective of their caste or religion” (62, emphasis added). By
contrast, the Marathi original introduces subtle distinctions of belonging: “To
the traitors he administered severe punishment. Whether he be from his own
[stock] or foreign.”20
The issue of Muslim loyalty is a crucial thread running through the entire
manual’s narrative. Thus, in contradistinction to the emphasis on faithfulness
of Mawlas and Maratha sardars, Muslim officers in Shivaji’s armies are re-
ferred to in cautious terms whose initial integrative purpose is defused, at
least in the original version. Here again, the Marathi and English texts differ
significantly, if only by one word. The English translation reads: “His army
consisted of Hetkaris, Marathas, and Muslims. One of his naval commanders,
Daulatkhan Siddi Mistri and one of his Vakils, Kazi Haidar, were both Mus-
lims. They were all loyal servants of Swaraj” (72). The Marathi original can be
translated as follows: “In his armies there were officers such as Daulatkhan
Siddi Mistri and similarly his Vakil, Kazi Haidar; they were Muslim. But they
were all faithful servants of Swaraj” (72, emphasis added).21 A whole world of
understated mistrust lies in this But. This very wording generated consider-
able ambiguity in classrooms, especially in discussions of the notion of swaraj,
qualified as Hiṇdavī.
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 149

The phrase Hiṇdavī swarājya itself lies at the center of the tentative secu-
larist promotion of a consensual Shivaji narrative. The official version of the
concept proffered in the textbook is that of a secular—Indian style—model of
religious tolerance and acceptance within the political community. Thus, in les-
son 19, the “dream” of the chhatrapati, Hindavi swaraj, is explained as follows:
“Anyone who lived in Hindustan, no matter to what community or religion he
belonged, was a Hindavi” (76). This echoes the very first lesson where Hindavi
swaraj is said to be “based on justice, fair play and equal treatment to people of
all castes and religions” (2). However, the term Hindavi is never defined more
precisely. Despite the textbook bureau’s professed concern for secularism, such
lack of clarity leaves the door open for misinterpretation and distortion, even in
the classrooms of well-meaning teachers, as will now be illustrated.

Classroom Negotiations: Open Narratives, Ambiguous Interpretations

We are at Varsity Marathi School, one of the oldest Marathi primary schools in
Kolhapur. The school is famous for its Hindu leanings and formerly predomi-
nantly Brahmin staff, although of late its composition has significantly broad-
ened. It is February 1999, and we are in Mrs. Dalave’s Class 4. Mrs. Dalave is a
Maratha woman in her early thirties from Nagpur. The decorations are com-
mon to most other Class 4 classrooms, with artifacts pertaining to the syllabus
(as well as the dominant culture) adorning the walls, from posters of Nehru to
Ganesh-as-child; to various pictures of vegetables and grains; a map of Kol-
hapur district; a poster of famous religious places in Maharashtra; an English
chart entitled “Our Great Leaders of India”; posters of Swami Vivekananda,
Mahatma Phule, the Trimurti, Subhas Chandra Bose; and a few other pictures.
Here, as in other classrooms, most of the children are able to correctly identify
the protagonists of each image except that of Mahatma Phule.22 Crowning all
these characters’ representations are those of Shivaji.
Mrs. Dalave begins the history period. Today is devoted to lesson 19, en-
titled “A Living Source of Inspiration.” This is the last lesson; it recapitulates the
entire syllabus of Shivaji’s history. Mrs. Dalave has pupils stand in turn to read
a paragraph as the others follow along in their own texts, pointing to each line
with their fingers. The teacher sums up each paragraph and explains its mean-
ing, then asks questions to ascertain the children’s understanding. Although the
method is rather straightforward and lackluster, the pupils answer rather viva-
ciously. We have just reached the third paragraph, about Shivaji’s respect for all
saints and religious places, temples, mosques, and churches alike. Mrs. Dalave
150 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

conscientiously emphasizes this point, reiterating that all kinds of people and
“jat, including Musalmans” lived in Shivaji’s swaraj. Now putting her book
down, she proceeds to explain, in a pseudo-dialogue form:

“The Muslim armies were more numerous; Hindu people were less. Even
then, did Shivaji get scared?”[Musalman phauj jast hote, Hindu lok kami hote,
tari Shivarayani ghabarle ka?] [engaging with the pupils]
[The pupils shake their heads no, eyes glittering, their bodies tense, leaning
forward on their seats in a posture of intense listening. Rare are the students dis-
playing a total lack of concern about what is presently going on in the room, unlike
on many other occasions.]
The teacher continues: “No! He didn’t. He fought for his own dharma, his
own language, and his own country” [swadharma, swabhasha, ani swadesh].
“He fought for Hindavi swaraj. Jijamata, Shivaji’s mother, no?” [seeking the pu-
pils’ assent before continuing]
“Jijamata, she saw in her dream Shivaji would create swaraj. Who saw Shiv-
aji would create swaraj? Jijamata did, Shivaji Maharaj’s mother.”
[The pupils nod in agreement with the by now familiar history. Mrs. Dalave
moves on without a pause.]
“Who was the enemy?” [Shatrun kon hote?]
“Adilshah!” several students shout.
Mrs. Dalave nods approvingly, then adds: “He was a Muslim king. The
enemy, who was he?” [Musalman Raje hote. Kon hote, shatru?]
“A Muslim king!” [Musalman Raje!] the pupils chorus.

Later, Mrs. Dalave invites me to test the children’s knowledge of Shivaji’s

history. I am curious to find out what they have understood of it all. Com-
pared with the history of humankind they learned the year before, this one
seems more appealing to most of the pupils, especially because it is written “in
a story format” (goshtirupat mhanun). Some names have also stuck in their
minds more than others. Among them is that of Netaji Palkar, one of Shivaji’s
lieutenants with a complex story (more of which will be discussed later). Asked
about their favorite episodes, many pupils refer to the loyalty and heroic deeds
of Shivaji’s captains and army. Some girls refer to the king’s coronation, which
contains one of the most emotional scenes with Shivaji’s mother, Jijabai. Here,
unlike many other classrooms in this school and elsewhere, no one mentions
the graphically violent episodes of Afzal Khan and Shahiste Khan. To boys and
girls alike, Shivaji’s greatest achievement is without a doubt that of “having
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 151

fought all his life to bring about swaraj” (janmabhar swaraj nirman karnyasathi
ladhat rahile) and “having destroyed the enemy” (shatrunna nash kela), as well
as having “founded Hindavi swaraj” (Hindavi swaraj sthapan keli). Upon their
mentioning Hindavi swaraj, I ask the pupils to explain the phrase’s meaning:

“Hindavi swaraj means those who live in Hindusthan in free swaraj” [Hin-
davi swaraj mhanje swatantra swaraj Hindusthanat rahnare], offers Sharmila.
The teacher reiterates: “They can be of any religion, any religion, they can
be: Hindu, Muslim, Christian, anything.”
[Then I ask the pupils if they talk about their school day at home. Most of them
answer yes. Do they talk about their lessons? Yes. Do they talk about their history
lessons, about Shivaji’s history?]
“Yes, at least with mummy.”
“What does mummy say, then?”
“Shivaji fought for our swaraj. Had he not established our swaraj, we would
all be living in a Muslim raj by now,” replies Sharmila.
“He was a great king; he set up a kingdom with rules,” Hussain asserts.

I will return to Muslim children’s understandings and the space of school

in the construction of shifting allegiances and identifications in the following
chapter. For the moment, I want to unravel the many other strands of argu-
mentation and reflection offered by this exploration of a history lesson on an
ordinary day in a Marathi classroom. I have chosen this particular vignette
because, unlike some other examples of clear antagonism toward Muslims—
through their systematic conflation with Mughal political power—this one is
rich in ambivalence and ambiguity. This ambivalence and ambiguity, both in
the teachers’, the parents’, and the children’s cognitive utterances, need atten-
tion, if only because these may let the phenomenological balance tilt either way
in case of heightened communal tension.
The notion of Hindavi swaraj thus formulated is problematic not only be-
cause of the ambiguity inherent in it but also because of its performative reit-
eration. By emphasizing throughout how “Shivaji made no distinction between
Hindus and Muslims” (2), and no difference between the holy books of the
Hindus and the Muslims (lesson 19), it is clearly a modernist and postcolonial
version that is being reshaped here; one of monolithic Hinduism and Islam,
and in which difference, on grounds of being negated as a potential cause for
(unjust or unfair) action, is discursively reinforced as difference. In the process,
the separateness and distinctiveness of both Hindus and ­ Muslims are further
152  Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

strengthened. ­ Consequently, groups and social actors with distinct agendas,

including those with Hindu right-wing leanings, may interpret Shivaji’s toler-
ance differently. In the latter version, Hindavi swaraj is one of tolerance toward
Muslims with the implicit understanding that they are, precisely, merely toler-
ated in Maharashtra. This is the version that Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray has
repeatedly voiced in his fiery speeches of the past three decades (Hansen 1996,
1999). It also gloomily echoes the speeches and presentations of the Hindu right
more generally, whether in the threatening declarations of the chief minister of
Gujarat at the time of the anti-Muslim riots in Ahmedabad in March 2002, or
those of many Hindutva politicians over the past twenty years. The presence of
Muslims in India has increasingly been made conditional, that is, conditioned to
a majoritarian political principle. Muslims, as part of the minority, should just
conform to the majority’s rule (including a Uniform Civil Code premised on
reconstructed Hindu patriarchal notions; Hasan 1994; Kapur and Cossman 1996;
Sunder Rajan 2003). In this version, therefore, religious difference is emphasized
only to be negated at the expense of the conception and representation of minor-
ities. Of course, the same official textbook narrative lends itself to other, more
generous interpretations. Shivaji’s tolerance toward minorities, and Muslims in
particular, may also justify reappropriation by members of the Muslim minority
(Chapter 5). Yet the Marathi version remains one of systematized communal dis-
tinctiveness, wherein the issue of loyalty always seems to loom large. This latter
issue is also a powerful motif in accounts of Maharashtrian masculinity against
a fantasized “Muslim other.”

Producing Gender: Mirrors of Masculinity, Anxieties

of Conversion, and Historical Narratives
Although Hindu right-wing groups and parties have reappropriated Shivaji
as the epitome of strong and virile, heroic and triumphant Hindu masculinity
(Hansen 2001; Jasper 2002), his is a far more ambiguous kind of masculinity.
In most of its popular depictions and mass-produced graphic representations,
it is neither muscular nor aggressive but rather stakes claims to imperial gran-
deur and rightful glory.23 The chhatrapati’s coronation lends itself to one of the
most popular depictions of such grandeur, and posters of the scene set within
opulent, gilded decor and colorful brocades can be seen in many public spaces
(shops, restaurants, hotels, bus stands, school classrooms, and so on) in Kol-
hapur and across western Maharashtra. The poster represents Shivaji as a grand
and luxurious lord, although not as an overly muscled fighter.
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 153

It is noteworthy that in contrast to current right-wing representations,

physical prowess and force are never praised in the school textbook; nor were
they by teachers in Kolhapuri schools, for that matter. Rather, they were made
despicable and ridiculed in many accounts. Physical strength was on the side of
the enemy, whether Mughal or Muslim; it could only be countered with wit and
cunning, similar to the Greek metis. Indeed, compensating for lack of physical
force are Shivaji’s mental resources of shrewdness and adroitness. The Maratha
warrior-as-strategizer defeated his enemies in taking them by surprise; he was
where they did not expect him. He knew where and when to alternately strike
and hide along the mountainous ghats of Maharashtra; his was a knowledge of
the soil, his warfare that of a “son of the soil.” This is the true object of praise
in the dominant narratives. Time and again, teachers in the classroom would
explain and pay tribute to Shivaji’s military qualities and especially his war-
fare strategy, subsumed by the term ganimi kawa. This notion literally signifies
“cunning, craft, subtlety, wiliness” toward “the public foe” and was rendered in
the English textbook as “guerrilla tactics,” which it is in effect (lesson 17) (1996:
67–68). The qualities of cunning and deceit in the face of a stronger enemy were
thus repeatedly emphasized in textbooks as well as in classrooms.
Remarkably, what was praised as cunning and skill on the part of Shivaji was
condemned as treachery on the part of the Mughals and other “Muslim foes.”
For example, lesson 12 starts with the following words: “Putting his trust in
Jaising, Shivaji left for Agra to visit the emperor [Aurangzeb]” (50). But ­Shivaji’s
expectations, so the narrative continues, are dashed because the emperor in-
sults him by not giving him the honors due his rank of “king of the sovereign
State of Maharashtra.”24 More generally, depictions of Muslims present them
as cruel, unjust, and, not least of all, stupid and cowardly. Thus set in such di-
chotomous terms are the respective encounters with Afzal Khan and Shahiste
Khan, among the most popular episodes in Shivaji’s narratives. The textbook
depiction opposes praise of Shivaji’s cunning and skill to condemnation of the
Mughals’ treacherous wrongdoings (dagalbaji). Afzal Khan appears as a “giant
of a man” (32) with “unbelievable physical prowess and strength.” He is also
“full of pride and confident of success” and “full of stratagem” (that is, a treach-
erous character, 33) whose word cannot be trusted (34). In contrast, Shivaji is
valiant (“he did not lose courage,” 34), operating upon “strategic moves” and
“tactics” (33), all testifying to his cleverness: “Shivaji proved too clever for [the
Khan]” (34). Their respective sizes are emphasized, as if to further highlight
Shivaji’s valor in defeating his unnaturally huge opponent: as the khan takes
154  Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

Shivaji in his embrace, “[b]efore the giant khan Shivaji looked like a pigmy. He
reached only as far as the khan’s chest” (36).
The episode of the meeting of Shivaji and Afzal Khan was such a favor-
ite among students and teachers that the latter sometimes capitalized on their
portrayal of the “tiny and cunning” Shivaji and the “huge and stupid” Afzal
Khan to reacquire pupils’ attention during lessons. Kamlatai, an experienced
Brahmin teacher at Modern Marathi School, relished in miming the scene,
impersonating both characters with much gusto, to the pupils’ great delight.
One recurrent motif in teachers’ and children’s narratives was that of the “tiger’s
claws” (bichwa) with which Shivaji killed Afzal Khan. Teachers and pupils alike
would mention the Maratha leader’s tearing apart the khan’s stomach with the
claws, per the gory details in the official text. Here again, the Marathi original
is written in a somewhat more alert, vivid, and engaging, and also noticeably
more graphic, style than its English rendering. A literal translation from the
Marathi goes as follows: “With extraordinary agility, [Shivaji] thrust his bichwa
into the khan’s belly, ‘swoosh.’ The khan’s entrails fell out. The khan collapsed.”25
Compare this with the (somewhat) more contained English textbook version:
“Shivaji . . . drove his bichwa into the khan’s stomach and tore apart his guts. The
wounded khan fell down.”
In this and other accounts emerges a Maratha masculinity counterprojected
against a fantasized Muslim other. Such a mirroring production of masculin-
ity also frames another favorite episode among teachers and pupils in Marathi
schools: that of the encounter with Shahiste Khan. Compared with the motif
of treachery dominating the narrative of Afzal Khan, this one is of cowardice,
retreat, and retaliation. In both situations, however, the crudeness of ­Shivaji’s
­action (hiding a weapon beneath his shirt and ripping his opponent’s guts
apart, and cutting off his fingers, respectively) is legitimated by initial wrong-
doing on the enemy’s part: treachery in the first instance and usurpation in the
second. As Shahiste Khan has been occupying Shivaji’s Lal Mahal residence
in Pune, raiding the territory and bringing about misery on the surrounding
countryside and people, destroying the crops and taking away the cattle (44),
Shivaji determines to kill him. The hero enters the palace at night and, once in
the khan’s room, takes out his sword. The khan runs away, and as he is escaping
through a window, Shivaji cuts off three of his fingers (45).
There is an interesting parallel here with the fate met by Afzal Khan. In both
cases, their physical integrity is attacked and successfully undermined. Psy-
choanalytic interpretations seeing in both treatments forms of symbolic rape
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 155

and emasculation, respectively, seem quite justified here. The Marathi wording
of Shivaji’s attack on the khan might be interpreted as symbolic forced pen-
etration, thereby playing on a common analogy in Hindutva rhetoric of male
and female Muslims as enemies to be emasculated and raped, respectively, in a
role reversal of retributive justice against their alleged behavior toward Hindu
women. Similarly, cutting off fingers is suggestive of emasculation, with ref-
erence to the oft-found association of this body part with the Marathi verb
shirkane,” implying “obstruction or opposition, or effort and vehemence”: the
phrase bot [finger] shirkane literally translates as “to penetrate, pierce through
or into with one’s finger.” Furthermore, in addition to strangely rhyming with
each other in Marathi, both body parts—pot (belly) and bot (finger)—may be
associated with symbolic and/or political functions. Thus, pot represents the
stomach, abdomen, or belly; the uterus or womb; the mind or the heart; and
the seat of understanding and affections. To rip somebody’s pot apart therefore
amounts to annihilating that person in the most visceral sense of the term:
negating the person’s right to live and to produce offspring,26 and by extension,
the legitimacy to reproduce socially and politically. Meanwhile, bot is used to
denote power and influence, as in the expression botavar nacvine, meaning “to
have perfect ascendancy over.” Cutting one’s opponent’s fingers off therefore
amounts to destroying the person’s sexual and political power. This contrapun-
tal depiction of degraded Muslim masculinity and virtuous Maratha valor is
posited in a communal, antagonistic framework that seems ever so inescapable
as we get toward the end of the book, despite the numerous ecumenical at-
tempts peppering it. Such an antagonistic framework also crystallizes and rein-
forces anxieties around the issue of conversion to Islam, consequently implying
a loss of manhood.27
The anxieties surrounding the idea of conversion to Islam are also mani-
fest in the manual, wherein attendant narratives abound—followed by success-
ful reconversion to the Hindu fold. Thus, the last lesson emphasizing Shivaji’s
“large-heartedness” and “religious tolerance” is followed by a long exposition
of such instances.28 It is noteworthy that the protagonists of these moments of
conversion and reconversion are among those whom the children remembered
most in their recapitulation: For instance, the famous story of Netaji Palkar,
which was the subject of an entire film. Netaji Palkar is said to have been “one
of the bravest of Shivaji’s captains,” “a second Shivaji.” After being captured by
Aurangzeb’s troops, he was sent to Agra and “forced to become a Muslim. . . .
Ten years later he accompanied Dilerkhan to the South against Shivaji. Netaji,
156  Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

though now a Muslim, had not forgotten Shivaji or Maharashtra. He remem-

bered the past. He was deeply moved. His love for his own country [swaraj] and
religion [swadharma] returned” (73).
Thereupon Netaji begged permission from Shivaji to return to the Hindu
fold, which the latter immediately accepted. So “Netaji became a Hindu again
and served Swaraj for many years afterward” (74). Here, the conflation be-
tween swadharma and swaraj cannot be better expressed; and with it all the
ambiguity regarding Muslims. For even if there were Muslims in Shivaji’s
armies who “still” were loyal to him, the fact is that the exclusive equation
between swaraj and Hindu dharma is irrefragably strengthened with this last
example, almost crowning the entire narrative of Shivaji’s making of swaraj.
This is again made most explicit in the following and last lesson: “He estab-
lished Swaraj. He did this so that everyone would live in peace and follow his
religion without any outside interference, so that the Marathi language, and
the Hindu religion [swadharma] would acquire their due place of honor. He
toiled all his life for the prosperity of his language, his religion, and his coun-
try and succeeded in the end” (76).
Seen in this light, the ambiguity witnessed in statements by teachers and
pupils (and parents), as in Mrs. Dalave’s classroom, is rather unsurprising.
What may at first blush appear so is the predilection for Shivaji’s history
shared by women and girls, given that boys were specific targets in the pro-
duction of a love for Mother-India and that the contemporary figure of the
soldier was particularly valorized and glorified (Chapter 3). Yet it should be
emphasized that such a valorization does not exclusively concern young boys.
Young girls also partook of such a celebratory mode; they, too, were encour-
aged to honor this heroism, even if from the distance of spectator and “cheer-
leader.” For, in this part of India, the trope of war pervaded and informed
gender hierarchies.

Producing Gender: Masculinity,

Femininity, and Empowerment
That masculinity is a relational concept is also true, of course, of femininity.
As mentioned above, more recent work has stressed how both masculinity and
femininity have to be examined concurrently. The two notions are actively con-
structed, disputed, and reinterpreted in relation to one another. In the present
case, what children are invited to acquire or strengthen in their fourth year of
primary schooling is love and devotion toward the foundational hero of Maha-
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 157

rashtra. Both boys and girls learn gender. More important perhaps, what both
boys and girls learn in school are the differential roles expected of them as “good
citizens.” Chapter 3 discussed how the mother trope operates in the production
of senses of belonging to the nation at large, building on an attachment pro-
duced in the intimacy of the family and the home, and how it served as a model
and an ideal for young girls to emulate. It might appear at first blush, then, that
Shivaji does for young boys what Bharat Mata does for young girls. To a certain
extent this is a correct assumption. As we have seen, however, boys and girls
in Maharashtra are the object of martial expectations. Girls, too, partake of
the warrior ethos in that part of India. Most boys interviewed in Class 4 stated
their preference for the history of Shivaji over that of humankind studied the
year before; however, girls, too, vowed their enthusiasm for the chhatrapati’s
persona and narrative. This leads us to examine another crucial character in the
official version of the great Maratha nation’s founder, that of Shivaji’s mother,
who provides an active role model for young girls to emulate.
If Shivaji is the epitome of valor, fortitude, bravery, and cunning, his mother,
Jijabai or Jijamata, represents his enlightening force. She is a guiding thread
throughout, despite not occupying center stage in most of the textbook. Les-
son 4 sets the tone with Shivaji’s childhood, in which formative years Jijabai
appears as the principal figure, instilling in him admiration for bravery and
piety (14). Jijabai is also a teacher, a counselor, and “a source of inspiration” in
time of need. As Shivaji turns into a young man and starts traveling around
Mawal, meeting with its “loyal, hardworking, and quick-footed” inhabitants
“tired of the Sultan’s harassing rule,” he opens his heart to his mother. Appeal-
ing to his divine lineage from both Rama and Krishna as a guarantee of victory,
she exhorts him to “destroy the wicked and make [his] subjects happy” (17).
Jijabai is also the first to learn about her son’s resolve to build Hindavi swaraj.
She reappears in absentia in lesson 8 before the meeting between Shivaji and
Afzal Khan and has an indirect hand in the conduct of political affairs. It is as
an overjoyed mother that she reenters the stage in person toward the end of
lesson 12, to welcome Shivaji back from Aurangzeb’s clutches (52). Lesson 13,
devoted to the recapture of the Kondana fort, again makes clear that Shivaji’s
mother is the one goading him into the building of an independent kingdom
(53). Similarly, after swaraj has been established and the coronation of Shivaji
has taken place in lesson 14, the newly anointed king first pays homage to his
mother. As noted previously, girls especially favored this last scene. Suggesting
the overarching importance of the deep bond uniting mother and son, even the
158  Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

English version remarkably retains a highly emotional tone for each of these
passages, capturing the poignancy of the Marathi text:

[Shivaji] bowed before Jijamata and touched her feet. Jijamata held him in a
close embrace. Her eyes were filled with tears of joy. Her thirty years’ efforts had
at last borne fruit. The dream she had nursed even before Shivaji’s birth had at
last come true. The tears in her eyes were tears of joy and fulfillment. Shivaji
Maharaj was also deeply moved. Glory be to both of them. (58)

The last mention of Jijabai appears in lesson 19, where her son is said to have
“always obeyed his mother [and] fulfilled her every wish,” in a thinly veiled
exhortation for pupils to emulate the Maratha hero (76).
Jijabai is thus represented as a powerful mother whose secret ambition and
aspiration has been fulfilled by her son. Such a representation is not especially
original and reproduces the well-documented gender-role division laying em-
phasis on women as mothers, in particular, bearers of sons for the reproduction
of the nation (see, e.g., Gupta 2001; T. Sarkar 2002; Butalia 2004; Menon 2004).
This reading, however, is insufficient. It does not do justice to the active and
valorized role of Jijabai as the guiding inspiration behind her son’s great deeds.
Her example is also a typical one, not just of furthering a free nation through the
production of male heirs but, more interestingly, of actively molding her child
into the brave, fearless, devoted hero that her son becomes. Jijabai, in other
words, is the archetypal mother (Kakar 1999). She is the mother that nurtures
and supports, and makes demands on, her son, as she entertains great hopes and
ambitions for him in the pursuit of her highest dream, that of political power.
As such, Jijabai is a classic illustration of psychoanalytic conceptions of mother-
hood, the devouring and castrating yet energizing and propelling type that all
great political leaders are supposed to have had (see Forcey 1987 for a refreshing
discussion of this model). It is thus a reading that empowers (and constrains)
young girls as the future producers of sons, in accordance with dominant pa-
triarchal values in Maharashtrian and, more largely, Indian society. These, it
should be noted, are the very same ones upon which female units of Hindu
right-wing parties and organizations have also actively built in recent years.29

Categorical Treachery, Primary

Identities, and National Telos
What are we to make of these largely antagonistic narratives in the construction
of the nation and of attendant senses of belonging? What part do, again, the
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 159

senses play therein? More generally, what can a sensory approach contribute to
an understanding of issues of identity formation? What other heuristic vocabu-
lary can it help deploy as an alternative to that used in political philosophy and
science to analyze political and communal violence? Reflecting on the produc-
tion and eruption of such violence, Appadurai argued that it is a sense of “deep
categorical treachery” and betrayal of intimacy experienced by aggressors that
is responsible for the rage they feel, allowing them to become murderers (1996:
154). This sense of betrayal is linked to “a world in which large-scale identities
forcibly enter the local imagination and become dominant voice-overs for the
traffic of ordinary life” (154–55). The argument might well apply to Maratha,
and more largely to Maharashtrian, conceptions of the archetypal other, that
is, of Muslims. Indeed, local communalized conceptions build on local and re-
gional history, however much the latter is reshaped and rewritten in the pro-
cess. In addition, the progressive communalist reshaping of a long history of
interaction within the South Asian subcontinent has more recently been com-
pounded by international events in which Muslims have increasingly become
demonized. Yet Appadurai’s explanation of ethnic violence does not address
the measure of viscerality that comes with the “sense of treachery,” a viscerality
so powerful that it prompts the most benign and innocuous social agent into
acts of savage brutality. As the author convincingly demonstrates in the preced-
ing pages, a primordialist conception of nationalism is untenable: of little use
is a conception whereby religious or ethnic particularities and ties would be so
profoundly anchored in collective and individual imaginations and experiences
that they could never be superseded by the construction of an attachment to a
larger entity, that, for instance, of the nation. But what is it, then, in the discov-
ery that one’s neighbor is “more Muslim than Serb” (154–55) that triggers such
emotionally disproportionate reactions? Granted, what may be at issue is that
faith in a secular state where religion is kept out of the definition of citizenship
might supersede allegiance to the nation. But why and how this issue generates
such a powerfully visceral sense of betrayed belonging in the first place requires
probing. The dialectic between the two kinds of identities at play remains to be
further explored. And here in fact, we may even want to question these catego-
ries of “primary” and “secondary” ties in relation to educational projects. This
bears some elaboration.
Discussing the notions of primary and secondary identities, Étienne ­Balibar
explained that the task of education “is principally to relativize primary iden-
tities, thus calling into question any essentialist adherence to the notion or
160 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

feeling . . . that by moving away or distancing oneself from them one must
necessarily ipso facto become ‘de-natured’ and radically alienated” (2005: 40).
Balibar’s comment is useful to consider the extent to which the construction of
identities—whether primary or secondary—is always a fragile, volatile, and un-
certain process, despite educationists’ attempts. Further, Balibar specifies that
this relativization of primary identities does not amount to “ruling out any con-
scious, voluntary and implicitly conditional election of such a primary identity
as expressive of a significant element of one’s own nature” (40). Pushing the ar-
gument further, I propose that in the case of dominant ideologies, primary and
secondary identities are concomitantly produced and in fact indiscernible from
each other.30 As shown in Chapter 3, in Maharashtra the experiences of belong-
ing to one’s family, and especially the experience of motherly bonding, feed into
the production of a national sensorium together with a primary sensorium, in
turn reinforcing the ideological strength of the notion of family ties and moth-
erhood in the service of the nation. Consequently, even the terms of “primary”
and “secondary” identities are misnomers. Arguably, one way of getting out
of the loop of primordialism is to develop alternative modes of analysis that
reinstate the primacy of lived sensory experience. Here I want to further work
through the notion of sensorium by focusing on the social and cultural de-
velopment of particular sensoriums shaping experiences of group affinity and
antagonism. In order to do this, I wish to draw you slightly backward in time.

Marathas, Muslims, and the

Production of Sensory Identities
The full presence of the ethnographer’s body in the field also demands a fuller
sensual awareness of the smells, tastes, sounds and textures of life among the
others. It demands . . . that ethnographers open themselves to others and absorb
their worlds. Such is the meaning of embodiment, the realization that . . . we too
are consumed by the sensual world, that ethnographic things capture us through
our bodies.
Paul Stoller, Sensuous Scholarship

For a long time during my first fieldwork in a Maharashtrian village, I was in-
trigued by the seeming aloofness of most Muslim families in relation to their
fellow villagers. This was in the northeast of Pune district, a drought-prone area,
in 1990–91. I then lived in the Teli galli, so named by virtue of the predominance
of members of the Teli (oil-presser) caste settled in the alley, where all the houses
but one belonged to them. The only non-Teli house was a large three-story
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 161

building that stood at one end of the alley, just across from my little partitioned
one-room abode. It belonged to a Momin joint family. During the day, from
dawn to dusk, all its members would go about their business in a way similar to
those around them, the women fetching water from the nearby collective tap at
5 or 6 a.m.; then, crouching by the side of their house, they would assiduously
scratch pots and pans clean from the previous night’s meal while the men stood
or sat on the platform (wata) brushing their teeth in full public view. Such a con-
spicuous performance of quotidian tasks was in keeping with the implicit rules
of village life that form part of social surveillance mechanisms in rural India. In
thus abiding by its tacit norms, the Muslim family reenacted its participation in
the daily forging of a common bond of “villageness.” Throughout the day, they
kept their doors open following village practice, except during lunch hours and
afternoon naps in the hot hours of summer, just as their neighbors did. Yet, come
dusk and my Momin neighbors would retreat into a specificity of their own. At
the socially charged early hours of night when visiting or news exchange would
take place from one house to the other in the entire alley (including with the
Brahmin family’s and my house), with the children often acting as diligent mes-
sengers, all of the Momin household would retire into the privacy of their home
behind locked doors. Their public performance was over for the day.
I was always struck by what I perceived as an almost schizophrenic way of
living on the part of the Momin family because, at first glance, nothing much
differentiated them from their fellow villagers. True, the women wore a dif-
ferent marriage necklace (mangalsutra), and the men sported regular Muslim
caps (as well as beards for the elders among them). Yet the married women
wore saris as any married woman in the village did (though they tied them
differently), and the unmarried girls wore Punjabi suits as any unmarried girl
did. The children attended the local Marathi school, and their educational level
was comparable to that of their Teli neighbors, with whom they spoke Marathi,
although among themselves they would use a Marathized form of Hindi. At
first, then, nothing really singled them out. Yet it was always clear to everyone,
including themselves, that they were somewhat different from everybody else.
To some, the reason was their dietary habits: Momins regularly ate meat and
eggs at a time when a large number of families of Maratha and allied castes—
­especially the women—had adopted vegetarianism (Benei 1996). To others, the
reason was simply that “they were Muslims: they did not go to any temple,
but to the mosque; they did not have the same festivals; theirs were different.”
­Although the Momins and their neighbors in the galli would invite each other
162  Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

to their homes on special festive occasions, it was always with some ostentation,
as if to show some deliberate goodwill on either part. After I no longer lived
in the galli and following my return from Europe in 1992, I often sensed some
slight embarrassment, uneasiness, or at times downright sardonic smiles from
villagers living in other quarters when I was invited to participate in a ritual
taking place at the Momins’ home.
These were the early 1990s, a time when Hindutva politicians made regular
headlines in news bulletins; these bulletins appeared regularly enough for most
villagers to take notice and sometimes talk about both the yatras undertaken
by the BJP throughout the country and the mounting effervescence around the
“Ramjanmabhoomi temple–Babri masjid issue” in Ayodhya. Whether this had
had a definite impact on village life and especially Hindu-Muslim relations is
difficult to say, as there was no known communal record in the area. Moreover,
people were on the whole rather unclear as to the meaning of “all this”: to be
sure, India had been a Hindu land for many centuries, as the famous TV se-
rial Mahabharat, broadcast every Sunday morning, reiterated so successfully
at the time (Rajagopal 2001). During these broadcasts the entire village looked
like a deserted zone, haunted by the sounds of the few TV sets available echo-
ing from within a few privileged homes, and around which would congregate
dozens of less fortunate villagers who commented on the program. What did
it mean to roam around the country parading as fake saddhus like this “Advani
guy”? Besides, the Muslims had been defeated long ago; so what was all this
about? And were we not supposed to live with one another? Yes, but did they
have a right to build this mosque in the first place? Most villagers were unsure
what the answers to these questions were. Yet it is possible that this faraway,
national(ist) issue, just by being increasingly discussed and bestowed visibil-
ity in the media in the year of 1992 had acquired some performative reality in
a region long engaged in rewriting its past as one of glorious Maratha—and
increasingly Hindu—martial heritage. This entanglement of national and re-
gional issues may well have been caught in the daily web of relationships of life
in a small village in western Maharashtra, where local economic competition
and what seemed to be a recent race toward acquisition of consumer goods
were as active as anywhere else.31 The fact is that Momins were rather well-off
by local standards: they owned some land, clothes shops, and large solid-brick
houses, and were among the first ones to possess a TV set as well as a supreme
item of luxury in those days, a videocassette recorder. As such, the Momins’
socioeconomic position was comparable to that of the better off in the village,
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 163

especially the Jains (Gujarati and Marwari), which may have caused some com-
petition and, possibly, resentment. At any rate, Momin families, and the one I
knew best in the Teli galli in particular, seemed to somehow be living as “guests”
in the village, even when they had been there for several generations.
By contrast, the other Muslim caste in the village was of a much lower rank-
ing: they were called Mulanis and considered on a par—and actually lived—
with the (former) Untouchables. However, they were much better integrated
into ritual village life. Many Mulanis worked others’ land, although they were
butchers by calling. As such, they performed ritual functions for the village as
a whole, especially at the time of the annual festival in honor of Yemai Devi,
when they killed the goats to be offered to the goddess. Mulanis also danced
and played music (shenai and small tambourines) with musicians of other lower
castes at weddings and on other ritual occasions, including Hindu festivals. As
important, they were part of the “traditional” system of balutedars and in that
capacity performed their part in the village tutelary deity’s palanquin (palkhi)
procession of her two masks (mukhawte) at each full moon. Compared with
Mulanis’ active involvement in village ritual life, the barely hidden reluctance of
Momins to take part in the monthly procession was unmistakable. The younger
men of the family would sometimes stand outside the house as the palkhi went
through the Teli galli at night; much more rarely would the women of the house
acknowledge its passage.
The one thing Momin families could not prevent their children from at-
tending, however, was the daytime “Maratha” drumming that took place dur-
ing some wedding processions, at the time of the annual village goddess festival
(Yemaici yatra), and on the national celebrations of Republic Day (January 26)
or Independence Day (August 15). Then, the powerful sound of war drumming
would resonate throughout the alleys while the dancing mesmerized the crowd,
young and old. Young men from the Maratha and allied castes would perform
dances, accompanying their movements with small percussive metallic instru-
ments (lejhim) to the rhythm of dhol and dholki drums. These dances offered
most suggestive sensory symbols—visual, auditory, but also haptic because of
the vibration of the drumming—of “Maratha power.” This was a power that
spoke of swaraj, congruent with the Class 4 textbook narrative proffered in a
subheading entitled “The Drums of Swaraj Begin to Sound” (1996: 26). Although
I was not cognizant of the teachings of the primary school syllabus then, I was
always struck by the force and power that seemed to suddenly emerge from
these public performances, together with the unparalleled frenzy of movement,
164  Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

sound, and rhythm erupting and piercing through the fragile, yet on the surface
quiet, tranquillity of village life. Especially striking was that these were in fact
not haphazard moments but carefully crafted ones whose success lay in a savvy
and masterful progressive dosage of speed, intensity, and volume. Accompany-
ing the musicians (shenai, dhol, and dholki), a group of young and middle-aged
men in either village dress and Gandhi caps, or pants and shirts, would gather
in a circle, lejhim in hand. As the music started playing slowly to the beat of
the drums, the men would begin to dance according to precise choreographed
steps, balancing their bodies to and fro in diagonally symmetrical movements
of torso and feet, while accompanying themselves with the rhythmic shaking of
their lejhim. While gathering speed, the dancers raised their lejhim higher and
higher, some of them throwing them up in the air and catching them again in
rhythm. Gradually, as the metallic sound of the lejhim increased together with
the volume and speed of the music, so would that of the dancers’ bodily move-
ments, becoming more and more intense and jerky while their arms stretched
ever so energetically in both directions. Some among the ablest dancers even
touched the ground with their hands on either side before rising again force-
fully up and bending down sideways. As the music and the dancing got faster
and faster, the rhythmic beating dominated the scene to the point of finally
merging into a continuous loud and sustained, powerful and intense sound, the
dancers by then sweating profusely and gesticulating as in a trance. Suddenly,
a few slower yet more powerful beats of the drum would signal the end of a
phase, with the dancers almost coming to a standstill before gradually building
up speed again in the same fashion. The dancing could go on thus for over an
hour, especially during processions throughout the entire village.
These were, truly, reenactments and celebrations of masculinity at war: cul-
tivated displays of strength, of tense bodies reenacting assertion of territorial
and historical legitimacy, as the procession would cover the main streets of
the village once ruled by a raja whose dynasty had long disappeared. It did
not matter that most of the performers were actually rather frail and short.
At that moment, their shirts and faces besmeared with the colored powders
thrown on them by the crowd in the course of their performance, both dancers
and crowd partook of an ecstatic essence of Maratha power unleashed by the
deployment of a unique martial sensorium building upon what Marcel Mauss
termed “montages physio-psycho-sociologiques de séries d’actes” (assemblages
of series of physio-psycho-sociological acts; 1950). To be sure, these may well
have pertained to a relatively recent or reconstructed “tradition.” Yet if there is
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 165

one thing that may have endured in the urban sensorium of Maharashtra today
amid the sounds and fumes of modern vehicles, blasting Bollywood tunes, and
bhajan music, it is this reshaped form of martial display that speaks of an age
long gone by; an age when, to present-day performers and spectators alike, the
Maratha nation showed the rest of the country the way to freedom and to na-
tionhood under the leadership of its founder, Shivaji Maharaj. That this histori-
cal course may have later been thwarted, first in the times of the subsequent
Peshwa rule at the third battle of Panipat (1761) against the Afghan forces of
Ahmad Shah, then in the final defeat by the British in a third battle (1818),
added yet more historical and emotional resonance to this type of contempo-
rary performance. So did the ultimate loss of status for the Marathas from that
of “martial races” in the decades following the events of 1857 (known as the
“Sepoy revolt,” “­Mutiny,” and “First Indian War of Independence” in compet-
ing narratives), when the men from Oudh (close to Maratha territories and
seen as allied to them) were declassified and replaced by the Punjabis to form
a new “martial race” (Enloe 1980: 36–37; Cohen 2002). To this day, each one
of these events has borne its mark on Maratha social memory. The battle of
Panipat, especially, has become a trope of utmost disaster and is the object of
regular, though incidental, reference in the vernacular press. What we are deal-
ing with here, then, is an “embodied cultural memory” (Stoller 1997)—as well
as an embodied colonial memory—that summons all the senses (Howes 1991)
into the production of a politics of gender and identity. Much of this aching
social memory today is encapsulated within this auditory and bodily sensory
reconfiguration and celebration of virility.32 It is through the dance and music
performance that an idealized manhood is realized. Such a “poetics of man-
hood” (Herzfeld 1985) is also given to experience in urban parts of Maharash-
tra, although today predominantly in national celebrations as well as in schools,
in a suggestive illustration of Adorno’s thesis on music.
Even in its most hermetical form, Adorno once professed, music is social.
Yet, he added, it is “threatened by irrelevance as soon as all connecting ties
with the listener are severed” (cited in Seubold 2001). Although the philosopher
and critical theorist here referred to the nefarious gap between the so-called
low and high arts, such a comment appositely brings to light the fundamental
condition for the sustenance of music’s social meaning. The argument might
well extend to other performative activities, such as the dancing accompany-
ing the music. The performative and musical tropes of war, grandeur, and loss
under discussion are also importantly and regularly activated within society at
166  Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

large, and at school in particular. The military Maratha dhol played during the
morning liturgy in schools resonate with the ones used during public perfor-
mances, whether those described previously or those celebrations of Shivaji’s
life, Ranata Raja shows (Jasper 2002), or even on national public celebrations
and ­ politico-religious processions occurring at the time of Shivaji Jayanti or
Ganesh Chaturthi (Cashman 1975; Kaur 2004, 2005). Although the sensorium
of which they form a part has also been enlarged with the harmonium (accom-
panying not just public musical performances but also school liturgies; Chapter
1), the drumming makes them irrevocably identifiable as military, martial, war-
like, and Maratha. Arguably, it is by growing up in such a sensory environment
that both boys and girls also learn to experience what it means to be Maha-
rashtrian. Such a sensorium is reinforced in schools with singing songs such as
“Amhi Marathe khare” (We Are True Marathas). As I saw the latter song being
taught one fine day in February 2000, I was so overwhelmed by the intensity of
the performance and the feverish enthusiasm it elicited among both male and
female students that I wrote in my diary: “Future will tell if the power of the
word sung is greater than that of the word merely uttered. But, judging by Nazi
songs, it seems the past has already demonstrated it.”

Toward an Anthropology of State Heroes and Sensorium

The expressive formation of masculinity documented here is not only a dominant,
regional hegemonic one—however much open to interpretation and reappropria-
tion by various groups—through which both male and female roles are redefined,
reshaped, and legitimized. It is also a pervasive one in the regional processes of
manufacturing nationhood and citizenship; the Maharashtrian subject-citizens
thus envisaged and produced are Indian ones, too. Indeed, if conceptualizations of
the Maharashtrian regional state and the nation-state are both partly predicated
upon shared ideals of Hindu masculinity and femininity, these nonetheless do not
hold comparable status. The relationship of the Maharashtra state to the Indian
one is a peculiar, genealogical one that requires attention. That, at a legislative
level, the regional state is encompassed within the nation-state does not exhaust
its definition; rather, the latter stands in contrast with the ideological conception
dominant in western Maharashtra whereby the notion of a Maratha nation is the
precondition for the possibility of the Indian nation. In other words, the Maratha
nation is the prototype of the Indian one. Because Shivaji stands as the founder of
the Maratha nation and the guarantor of swarajya, swadharma, and swabhasha,
he is also the pioneer of the Indian nation at large.
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 167

I heard this comment from many locutors of all walks of life and of vary-
ing educational backgrounds in western Maharashtra: “After all, does not
‘­Maharashtra’ mean ‘the great nation’ [rashtra]?” Evidence of this ideological
and genealogical claim is proffered in the Class 4 textbook’s depiction of Shivaji’s
skills as an efficient administrator, detailing the eight departments into which
he divided his administration (administration, revenue and accounts, defense,
religious matters, justice, government orders, correspondence, and foreign re-
lations; lesson 15, 59). Ultimately buttressing this claim is the positioning at the
end of the history textbook of the first introduction to civics in the entire school
curriculum: the last four lessons are devoted to “Zilla parishad and Panchayat
samiti,” “our national objectives,” “the rights and duties of citizens,” and “our
national symbols,” respectively. Shivaji thus appears as having paved the way
for efficient administration, thereby ushering in the premises of good gover-
nance in an independent (postcolonial) state. In these late twentieth- and early
twenty-first-century teleological narratives, he is the archetype of the good ad-
ministrator who invented secularism à l’indienne before its time.
Yet, rather than a “tangible reality,” the hero-warrior is a “model of military
masculinity” (Woodward 2000: 644). The hero model provides a crucial refer-
ence point functioning as a fundamental icon in the production of discourses
of masculinity. What is actually produced is a desire for a masculine, virile in-
dividual as much as collective self in which women, too, play a part. Such a
self may never be fully achieved because of the exacting nature of the relation-
ship between Shivaji as ever a son to his demanding mother, Jijabai, and this
unrealizable desire consequently targets the constitutive “Muslim other.”33 This
“impossibility of [masculine] identities” (Hansen 1999: 60–65) also accounts
for the potential appeal of Shiv Sena and other right-wing extremist outlets that
provide reassuringly aggressive masculine narratives and deployments of the
self (Hansen 1996, 2001), in which, as it were, the category of the hero deivat
becomes powerfully all encompassing.
It should also be stressed that the category of deivat as one articulating di-
mension of the sacred—along with the mythical and the historical—in popular
imaginaries is not an anachronistic oddity, contrary to what some historians
might want to think. On the contrary, it is perhaps best understood as the re-
investment of enchantment amid rigid procedures of disciplinary history, as
Sumathi Ramaswamy (2004: chap. 5 in particular) has perceptively argued with
respect to the fabulous cartographies of the lost continent of Lemuria. Fur-
thermore, the use of such a category with reference to heroes is not unique to
168  Historiography, Masculinity, Locality

the Maharashtrian—or Indian, for that matter—context. In a previously men-

tioned volume on the making of heroes, Claudie Voisenat drew attention to
the perceptible link between politics and religion in Europe where Christianity
largely contributed to legitimate political powers: the national hero, sometimes
himself a saint, would ultimately be placed at the core of a state religion, thus
acquiring a legendary and mythical aura.34 Even in Europe, therefore, the rela-
tionship between heroism, sacredness, myth, and history was always a tenuous
one, blending a secularized image and a religious representation of the national
community. This further punctures the unhelpful yet persistent constructions
of radical difference between a “religious, spiritual East” and a “material West”
and draws attention to the important ways in which parallel constructions have
been relayed by state institutions, schooling in particular.
This also calls for further reflection on the notion of sensorium in relation
to this particular state institution’s effects. Many scholars of nationalism (An-
derson 1983; Gellner 1983; Hobsbawm 1992) have noted that education is one
of the most crucial constituents for producing a nationalist sentiment. Most of
their assertions, however, were predicated on a unique top-down institutional
process, persistently overlooking the sensory dimension at play in the affective
production of national senses of belonging. However, these cannot be produced
through a vertical process. They have to draw upon already existing sensory
structures of feeling and their transformative capacity. Nation-states (as well as
regional ones) attempt to harness the potential of these sensory configurations
in order to serve their own purposes. The regional state of Maharashtra effects
a preemptive take on the population’s sensory world, thus putting at its service
the sensorium developed from a recomposed musical tradition fusing devo-
tional abhangas and martial rhythms. Such a recomposed tradition conversely
both emblematizes and undergirds the regional state. Thus, the distinction
between individual and collective sensorium that a dominant, dichotomous
notion of “public/private spaces” would support (Chapter 3) here again col-
lapses as the sensorium developed in the intimacy of home is shot through
with sensory elements pertaining to “public culture,” and is also reworked in
the space of school in accordance with larger social and political, as well as
economic and industrial, processes taking place in wider society. In Maharash-
tra today, many of these processes pertain to the sensory revolution brought
about by new technologies and industrialization: commingled are the sounds
and fumes of trucks and tractors, the music belching out from loudspeakers
outside temples and houses, and visual redeployments of local patriotism and
 Historiography, Masculinity, Locality 169

nationalism (Introduction). It is the recomposition of this sensorium that the

state is attempting to capture and that also makes it so “modern” (Benjamin’s
discussion in Thompson 2000).
It should, however, be emphasized that much of what comes into the daily
production of senses of belonging is not necessarily part of a specific political
agenda, as much of scholarly analysis would have it. To be sure, some teach-
ers were more politically aware and articulate than others. Yet even in cases of
blatant historical distortion on the part of teachers and parents, what surfaces
is, rather than an explicit political project, the complex, fuzzy, and fragmen-
tary nature of social actors’ understandings and representations of their history
and historiography. Such distortion may itself be the product of long-standing
cultural and historical schemata, for instance, anti-Muslim feeling in Maha-
rashtra. But these are always reshaped and rebuilt in the process of knowledge
production and transmission, as well as in light of contemporary developments
taking place on larger scales. Any given situation may therefore give rise to the
resurfacing—and attendant reshaping—of a plurality of meanings and feelings.
These may appear contradictory to the lay and distant “reader” of a “cultural
script,” but only to such a reader who would fail to see that these are not scripts
that social actors perform and play consistently, even in the rather prescriptive
space of school. Teachers relay the state’s project with a measure of appropria-
tion, in productive tension with the higher forces of social and political order
that have been inscribed onto their bodies and senses (as they were tentatively
disciplined into studious students decades before), as shown by what goes on
within a teacher’s classroom. In the following chapter, we pursue this explora-
tion in a contrapuntal context, that of Urdu education among Muslims.
5 From Becoming to Being Muslim
Urdu Education, Affects of Belonging,
and the Indian Nation

I wish for you the knowledge of what it feels like to be a minority. . . .

On one hand, the adventure of having more than one culture to call
mine. . . . And the pain of wishing that . . . I didn’t have to explain my
actions in my own country. And worse, feeling guilty for feeling this pain.
Shahnaz Habib, The Hindu

I am proud of being an Indian. I am part of the indivisible unity that is Indian

nationality. I am indispensable to this noble edifice and without me this
splendid structure of India is incomplete. I am an essential element which has
gone to build India. I can never surrender this claim.
Abul Kalam Azad, quoted in Mushirul Hasan, Islam and Indian Nationalism

Upon my return to Kolhapur in February 1999, municipal corporation officials

of the education bureau invited me on a one-day primary school tour in and
around town. The opportunity was not to be missed. My hosts’ luxurious mode
of transport (car) seemed a welcome respite from my ordinary peregrinations
on foot, rickshaw, or scooter under an already scorching sun. Moreover, this
tour would supplement my explorations of the local educational scene, as I had
not yet ventured out of town in my visits to private, semiprivate, and municipal
schools. So we set off one fine morning to the outskirts of the city where owners
of sugarcane factories had started schools for their employees’ children. On the
way back in midafternoon, we halted in Sachar Bazar, a neighborhood already
encountered in the preceding chapters. The slum area was familiar to me at the
time since I had visited one Marathi school there.
The Urdu-language school of the area, however, had totally escaped my no-
tice. And for good reason: it was tucked away from the main road, hidden be-
hind a mosque, with no other access than by either bluntly walking in through
the mosque—strongly objected to by local devotees—or winding one’s way
down through the next galli into the inside of the block of narrow and densely
connected alleys (mohalla). Thus, apart from parents, teachers, and regular

175
176  From Becoming to Being Muslim

Muslim devotees “spying” on daily schooling activities, no one ever ventured

into this school without a purpose. In more ways than one, its spatial location
epitomized the regional cultural aloofness in which pupils and, to a lesser ex-
tent, their families lived. Like any Urdu school in Maharashtra, this one catered
exclusively to Muslim students.1 As we entered the Urdu-Marathi Municipal
Corporation School on that hot afternoon, little did I know this would become
one of my main comparative sites of research. At the very least, the first en-
counter did not suggest such.
Briskly walking across the mosque, the corporation officials then burst into
the deserted school precincts, only to find the head’s office empty. Followed
a prompt summoning of the four teachers out of their classrooms, who were
ordered to find the headmistress wherever she was. As everybody anxiously
waited for her to materialize (she was either on an errand or at home; nobody
really knew), the tension grew ever so palpable. At last, Leela Sheikh Madam
appeared. The senior education official, Pawar Bai—the highest representative
of state authority in the situation—took charge of the meeting.
Pawar Bai was also the only female among the inspection staff. A stout and
devout Maratha woman then in her late forties, her thundering voice would
often resonate as she issued orders to peons, junior officials, or drivers indis-
criminately. Her determination was compounded by the piercing glances she
would cast about through her gold-rimmed spectacles. Her will was her en-
tourage’s command. Earlier that day, she had insisted on making a detour via
her house in order to impress her anthropologist guest with her newly built
spacious temple room. Now, her pride and enthusiasm were mere memories.
She was clearly unimpressed by the headmistress’s lack of professional commit-
ment within normal school hours. The headmistress and other schoolteach-
ers were blatantly embarrassed and uneasy as they nervously scrutinized the
officials’ every change in behavior. Here was a rather unpleasant intrusion by
Marathi officials upon the tranquillity of daily school life in an Urdu-language
school. What certainly made it worse was the smug arrogance of the said of-
ficials, strutting around with the self-important airs of “VIPs” as they addressed
the teachers rather abruptly. What I had so far only sensed more than explicitly
witnessed in the infancy of this research was suddenly and crudely revealed
before my eyes. To be sure, this encounter could be read as one between rep-
resentatives of higher state authority (corporation officials) descending upon
subaltern state servants (the teachers) without notice. To a certain extent, it
was. Yet, my experience of other visits to Marathi-speaking schools in similar
 From Becoming to Being Muslim 177

circumstances told me that the stake of the encounter was only cosubstantially
one of state authority and power. It was also more than one of Urdu versus
Marathi medium of instruction. More important, the choice of these languages
had social, economic, cultural, religious, political, and ideological implications
that require exploration.

In his volume Questions of Cultural Identity, Stuart Hall insisted that “actually,
identities are about questions of using the resources of history, language and
culture in the process of becoming rather than being; not ‘who we are’ or ‘where
we come from,’ so much as what we might become, how we have been repre-
sented and how that bears on how we might represent ourselves” (1997: 4). The
notion of identity thus framed aptly suggests and evokes its close associate, that
of “community.” By emphasizing the “we” in his formulation, Hall brings into
relief the fact that identities, individual or collective, are always constituted in
relation to a group, real or imagined. In this chapter, I explore how a community
and a sense of belonging thereto are produced, or at least reinforced, through
schooling. Such an exploration is especially relevant in modern ­nation-states
today, as the notion of community lies at the heart of conceptions of plural-
ist political representation. The latter, as is well known, has—albeit controver-
sially—increasingly been envisaged as a trait of “modern societies” and often as
a condition for the viability of democracy (Taylor 1994; Kymlicka 1995). Yet in
these conceptions, the traits associated with the notion of community are fixed
ones, especially so cultural ones. Culturally or ethnically defined communities
are seen as “givens.” In the debates they generate, they are envisaged as social
groups whose fixed sets of characteristics are to be unquestioningly respected
and preserved. No sense of the relativity or, at least, fluidity of the notion of
community is generally perceptible there; any potentiality of “becoming” is
overshadowed by the determinants of “being.” In keeping with the theoreti-
cal and empirical neglect of such potentialities, little research has so far been
conducted on the conditions under which the notion of “community” becomes
a crucial category for the imaginary production of social and political groups
bounded by a commonality of shared features. Such an imaginary produc-
tion obviously yields real effects inasmuch as entire groups of individuals may
come to view themselves as belonging to the community thus imagined.2 How,
then, do individuals and groups, the majority of whom did not necessarily view
themselves as sharing in a group identity become aware of such commonal-
ity? How do social actors reshape and make meaning of it in light of social,
178  From Becoming to Being Muslim

economic, political, and religious events? The question has special relevance in
relation not only to the production of national communities (Anderson 1983)
but also to the notions of “dominant” and “minority” communities, and the
significance these have acquired in many political contexts across nation-states
today (Taylor 1994; Kymlicka 1995; Pandey 2001; Hinton 2002; Taylor 2002; Pan-
dey and Geschiere 2003). It is not the purpose here to critique the problematic
character of these notions as they have increasingly been used in academic and
political circles. Rather, I want to focus on the following issue: What kind of ef-
fects does schooling have on the production of a “minority community,” often
defined against a “majority,” and how do members of either group experience
the sociological reality thus produced?
The case of Muslims in western India provides a crucial vantage point for
exploring these issues: Muslims, as we saw in the previous chapter, represent
the “other” against which a common sense of Maharashtrianness has been
constructed, not least through schooling. In addition, the position of politi-
cal power enjoyed by successive Mughal dynasties and Indo-Muslim sultanates
from the eighth through to the nineteenth centuries stands in stark contrast to
the conversely marginal political position occupied by the “Muslim commu-
nity” today. The latter is, however, a demographically significant one of “major-
ity minority community.”3 The legitimacy of Muslim Indians’ participation in
the political life of the country has been jeopardized by ongoing attempts made
by Hindu right-wing parties to define citizenship along the lines of a mono-
lithically reinvented Hinduism. This has caused great concern among observers
over minorities’ status becoming that of second-class citizens.
To be sure, referring to “Muslims” as a category in this context is problem-
atic, as this is part of the question at issue: the phrasing “Muslims” runs the risk
of freezing and objectifying culture as heritage (van der Veer 1994) by suggest-
ing a clear-cut, well-defined, homogeneous social group whose reality is more
statistical and electoral than sociological. Whether social actors of Muslim faith
in the past considered themselves as “members of a single Muslim community,”
even as recently as in the nineteenth century, is still a moot question.4 Whatever
the case may be, ordinary Muslims, as Hasan has insisted, were not “members
of a monolithic community sitting sullenly apart, but were active participants
in regional cultures whose perspective they shared” (1998: 16). Moreover, even
today the meaning of being Muslim in India is highly variable, also depend-
ing on factors such as class, caste, regional configuration, and so on, as well
as on personal circumstances (Piscatori 1983, 1986). Notwithstanding these
 From Becoming to Being Muslim 179

definitional difficulties and their methodological and theoretical implications,

however, it is also true that the notion of “Muslim community” has acquired an
unprecedented reality to which schooling has contributed. This I hope to show
in what follows.
In this chapter, then, are explored the differential ways in which Muslim
adults and children educated in the Urdu language construct local, national,
and pan-regional senses of belonging in Kolhapur. As mentioned in Chapter 2,
the complex issue of language(s) in India generated much passion among both
ordinary social actors and specialists, with some of the related educational
debates rippling from the nineteenth century through to postindependence
times. Important for our present purpose is that the carving out of regional
states along linguistic divisions after independence further strengthened the
crucial dimension of language as a social and political practice in regard to
state policies as well as to the construction of communal identities. Here I want
to pursue the explorations begun in the previous chapters of the intricate rela-
tionship between language and history as markers and definers of cultural and
religious identification on the one hand and state schooling on the other.
How, through an expanding state apparatus, may both these subjects be-
come powerful means for further anchoring differential senses of belonging
and allegiance while reshaping their attendant narratives? Even though Urdu
was the language of the elite in northern India until the turn of the twentieth
century, Urdu-language mass education is relatively recent, especially in west-
ern India. In Kolhapur, the high school started at the turn of the twentieth cen-
tury under the auspices of the then-ruler Shahu Maharaj was for a long time the
only one available in the district. In keeping with the regional state government’s
implementation, thirty years ago, of an educational policy allowing any child to
study in his or her mother tongue in primary school, Urdu-language facilities
were created throughout Maharashtra. In Kolhapur, the municipal corporation
opened primary schools under the pressure of some Urdu Muslim residents.5
Today, the town is host to six Urdu primary schools catering to about two thou-
sand pupils (out of a general total of sixty-one thousand in 1998). Although the
school in Sachar Bazar dates from 1963, it consisted of four derelict, dark rooms
housing very small numbers of students until recently. As we will see, these
numbers have risen steadily for a number of reasons.
How schooling in differential media of instruction may produce heightened
polarization of identifications is a crucial issue. To be sure, what gets taught at
school is not de facto taken in by passive recipients, and schooling alone does
180 From Becoming to Being Muslim

not determine and create senses of belonging and allegiance. As is by now clear
from the preceding chapters, children, teachers, parents, and other educational
officials play an influential part in life at school, as they negotiate and shape
state injunctions, relating them to ongoing political events, both within and
outside the country. All these negotiated productions may crucially contribute
to the social and political construction of persons and citizens, especially when
they feed upon existing structures of feeling within society. Yet, as previously
noted, the (re)production of these structures of feeling is also relayed and drawn
upon by state institutions, not least of all schooling. How the latter informs or
reshapes these is therefore of prime import, especially in the context of recent
access to public instruction by a majority of people in Maharashtra. When ear-
lier generations of Maharashtrians did have but a modicum of education at
best, schooling played only a marginal role in the everyday (re)production of
symbolic bonds and imaginings of identity, ethnic, religious, or linguistic. By
contrast, in the past twenty years of generalized access to public instruction,
the site of school has come to acquire greater visibility and prominence in or-
dinary people’s lives, operating as a site of identity crystallization. The issue of
language and identity in Maharashtra today has to be envisaged in this light.
Despite its claims to producing a homogeneous patriotic citizen, schooling has
also provided an avenue for sharper differentiation of identifications, especially
linguistic ones, endowing them with further meaning. The fact, for instance,
that primary instruction is permitted in the regional state in seven languages
(Marathi, Urdu, Hindi, English, Gujarati, Sindhi, and Kannada) has enabled
distinct linguistic groups to maintain and reproduce themselves; it has also cre-
ated them and reinforced a sense of unity that did not necessarily exist in such
explicit terms in the collective imaginings of members of that so-called group.
Whereas language was primarily an indicator of difference that could often be
superseded by other characteristics shared with the rest of the regional popula-
tion, it has become a marker of unredeemable otherness, both in the space of
school and within regional society at large. To this extent, it now represents a
crucial mediation for claims of belonging to a particular group other than the
dominant one, demonstrated in the case of Urdu-educated Muslims in western
Maharashtra today.
In Kolhapur, most families sending their children to Urdu school did not
themselves speak a “pure Urdu,” as noted somewhat disparagingly by some
teachers. Rather, they commonly used Hindi, or more often than not, a version
accommodated to local variations and dubbed “Mussalmani.” Furthermore,
 From Becoming to Being Muslim 181

both parents and most teachers were overwhelmingly first-generation literates:

their own parents were either totally illiterate or had acquired only rudiments
of education. In a large number of cases, they had often studied in Marathi, be-
cause few alternative facilities existed in the region until recently.6 By the 1990s,
however, Urdu to them represented “their language,” “the Muslim language,”
one that the girls, in particular, were expected to master so as to perform their
future roles of family pillars. They would pass on this knowledge to their chil-
dren; they would teach them the Quranic inscriptions. As Sheila Bepari, mother
of Mobina, then in her teens, explained: “We need the girls to know Urdu so
they can read the Quran.” To this end, and although several Urdu translations
of the Quran have been circulating in India since the late nineteenth century
(Robinson 1983: 199), some families in Sachar Bazar supplemented public Urdu
instruction with private Arabic lessons from a local Maulana.
Furthermore, rather than the construction of persons and citizens being
predicated on the production of regional bonds as in Marathi schools, here it
was hardly mediated by any comparable notion of regional attachment—at least,
not in the sense nurtured through the official regional history concocted by the
educational department of Maharashtra. Such a contrasted construction was
particularly apparent in the relationship that Urdu-educated ­ Maharashtrians
(all Muslims) entertained with regional history.

Shunning Regional Narratives

One of the greatest differences between Urdu- and Marathi-language education
lay in the contrast between the respective modalities of teaching the history of
Shivaji Maharaj. As we saw in Chapter 4, Shivaji epitomizes two overlapping
conceptions of the “nation”: one regional, Maratha, which is the prototype for
the other, national one, Indian. In a nutshell, Marathi-educated Maharashtri-
ans conceived of their relation to the Indian nation through the regional prism
of the “Maratha nation,” of which Shivaji is said to be the founder. The his-
tory of Shivaji has been taught to Class 4 children in all Marathi schools across
the state of Maharashtra since the latter’s inception in 1960. Throughout the
year, pupils learn about the cunning deeds of the legendary warrior and his
enlightened administrative skills. When asked about this history in Marathi
schools, most children would respond with much enthusiasm, often shouting
for attention to speak first. In Urdu schools, by contrast, and although the cur-
riculum was identical in all subjects (save for language instruction), Shivaji was
not celebrated as the praised hero and glorified founder of the Maratha nation,
182  From Becoming to Being Muslim

nor even of the Indian nation. This was dramatically illustrated by the ensuing
incidents at the time of my first visit to the Urdu Corporation School.
After the embarrassed headmistress had greeted us, she showed us to the
classrooms. Each consisted of a small, dark, stuffy room with a hot corrugated
tin roof. None of them had either windows or any ventilation device other than
the door and a minuscule opening in the back wall (the fans had long broken
down, and no one from the corporation had ever bothered to repair them). To
make matters worse, electricity was cut off in the slum that afternoon. The of-
ficials purposefully stopped in Class 4. As in the other rooms, the whitewashed
walls were bare for the most part, in stark contrast with classrooms in Marathi
schools, where posters of Shivaji or related heroes and heroines adorned the
classroom walls. As we entered the room, the pupils—mostly girls—stood
up to greet us with “Salaam o alaikum,” to which the ordinary answer is “Wa
Alaikum alsalaam.” In the present case, however, the greeting was only grudg-
ingly acknowledged by the officials with a fulminating nod: not only were the
pupils obviously not abiding by the new Maharashtrian regulations (given to
all primary schoolteachers in Maharashtra during special training programs
in the summers of 1997, 1998, and 1999; these regulations included new forms
of greeting). To add insult to injury, the pupils did not even attempt to speak
the regional language! As the atmosphere grew tenser and the corporation
officials made loud sneering comments, the pupils entrenched themselves in
unrelenting muteness, further enraging the officials. Feeling increasingly ill at
ease, I was suddenly “invited” to question the children on the syllabus and their
knowledge of Marathi. The only way I could find to mitigate the command
was to comply in Hindi, the “official” national language. Despite its history of
nationalized Sanskritization since the nineteenth century and its clear asso-
ciation with Hindu speakers in the northern “Hindi belt” (Lelyveld 1978, 1993;
Kumar 1992; King 1996), Hindi in Maharashtra carries overtones of national
integration, to the extent that those Muslims studying in the Marathi language
and better integrated within regional society would often claim to speak Hindi
rather than Mussalmani or Urdu.7 And so I reluctantly started:

“Do you speak Marathi?”

“Yes.” [shy smiles, almost inaudible voices]
“What subjects do you study?”
“Urdu, maths, science, geography, history.”
“What history?” interjected one of the corporation officials.
 From Becoming to Being Muslim 183

Before I could move on to another question, Pawar Bai, the corporation

senior official, lost her temper and, glaring at the pupils, barked in Marathi:
“Aren’t you studying Shivaji’s history?!” [Tumhi Shivaji Maharajancya itihasaca
abhyas karta, na?!] [ reluctant nods from the pupils]
“Well, say so, then!” [Mag, sanga ki!]
[Then, Pawar Bai prompted the schoolmaster to ask them questions. These, in
contrast to those often put to pupils in Class 4 Marathi schools, were of the most
basic kind. The teacher asked them very noncommittally; the pupils answered in
the same way.]
“What is Shivaji’s name? What is Shivaji’s father’s name? What is that of his
mother?”

Here was a situation far removed from those in Marathi schools where I had
witnessed sheer exultation and enthusiasm at the mere mention of the hero’s
name. At this point, my uneasiness had turned into utter discomfort, and I
declined to pursue the question-answer experiment further, much to the edu-
cation officials’ disappointment. We then left the classroom and made for the
office. As we sat there waiting for tea, one of the corporation officials remarked
in an aside to the senior official: “These people are not teaching Shivaji’s history
because it is a problem to them.” Pawar Bai, for her part, looked profoundly
dejected by the blatant neglect of the regional/national hero’s history just wit-
nessed. Later on, back in the car, I asked the officials what the issue was about
teaching Shivaji’s history. The one who had made the earlier comment referred
to the “doubt [in English] Muslim people have about teaching it.” The official, in
turn, explained the reason for their not teaching it was that Shivaji had defeated
the Mughal rule over three centuries earlier. In the same breath, she established
a connection with her consequent distrust toward unpatriotic Muslims and the
need for them to be kept in check by the Shiv Sena Party.

Dominant Regional Narratives and

Experiences of “Muslimness”
This incident captures both non-Muslim officials’ perceptions of Urdu-schooled
Muslims’ unwillingness to embrace regional history as their own, and the real
reluctance among many Maharashtrian Muslims of different generations to-
ward the teaching of this official history. The Urdu teachers in the course of
research later confirmed such reluctance, which was also shared in the other
three Urdu schools that I visited in Kolhapur. What may have contributed to
184  From Becoming to Being Muslim

it was the awareness among some teachers of the way Muslims are portrayed
in the official historical narratives. This was especially the case for those who
had been partly educated in Marathi schools. There, as seen in the previous
chapter, Shivaji’s foes were regularly, although improperly, named “Musalmans”
instead of “Mughals” or “Indo-Muslims” (the latter term is commonly used
by historians to refer to Persian dynasties in southern India, such as that of
­Bijapur). Granted, these rulers were Muslims, but such a phrasing creates a
sense of antagonism premised on faith rather than on political power. The
slippage then becomes easy from a narrative of regional history dominated
by ­Mughal/­Muslim rulers—who, it should be noted, were served by Maratha
Hindu chiefs, or sardars—to general representations of Muslims as hereditary
enemies encapsulated by the label “Muslim enemy” (Musalman shatrun), as
teachers would often be heard saying in classrooms. These comments were
made not just in the classrooms of blatantly pro-Hindu, old-guard teachers
working at Varsity Marathi School, but also in most ordinary classrooms, in-
cluding those of corporation schools, as we saw in Chapter 4.
Such a commonality of views shared by many non-Muslim Maharashtrians
in this part of Maharashtra is noteworthy. For, whether implicitly or explicitly,
regional history is framed in anti-Muslim terms. We saw in Chapter 1 how older
forms of bhakti have been harnessed in the contemporary construction of a
sense of belonging to both the region and the nation in Maharashtra. These
political and religious forms of Hindu piety have also been instrumental in
furthering an anchorage of anti-Muslim feeling since the seventeenth century
(Bayly 1998: 24–25). Consequently, the issue of whether teachers purposefully
transmitted these anti-Muslim views is irrelevant. Teachers’ worldviews largely
determined and filtered the knowledge they passed on to their pupils, regard-
less of any conscious or deliberate “hidden agenda.” The emphasis they placed
in many classrooms on the physical mutilation and annihilation of some of
Shivaji’s most famous enemies (the cutting off of Shahiste Khan’s fingers, the
ripping apart of Afzal Khan’s entrails), together with their regular ridiculing of
these same enemies, was not part of any programmatic ingraining. Rather, they
pertained to forms of popular culture commonly found in Maharashtra over
the past decades, either in the forms of piety or in reenactments and displays
of Shivaji’s grandeur in which Marathi cinema played a crucial part, especially
in the work of Bhalji Pendharkar (Benei 2004). What kind of effect such formal
and informal messages may have had on Muslim students studying in non-
Urdu schools is a serious question.
 From Becoming to Being Muslim 185

At issue here is not so much that Muslim children in non-Urdu schools are
studying in the Marathi language but that they are studying in “Hindu-dominant
schools” and, more generally, within an increasingly Hinduized curriculum de-
spite the autonomy of the textbook bureau in the state of Maharashtra. Indeed,
compared with the previous series of textbooks dating back to the early 1980s,
the shift from a positive appraisal of Muslim/Mughal historical contribution
to an elision thereof in Marathi manuals is most jarring. Whereas the Class 4
Marathi textbook of 1982 incorporated a lesson on Id Mubarak, described as an
occasion for celebrating friendship and amity, its successor no longer makes
any mention of any Muslim festival whatsoever. This stands in deafening con-
trast with the new and overabundant references to Hindu festivals. In the same
manual, even the sites of distinct Muslim heritage have been elided in implicit
attempts at highlighting and reclaiming the pre-Muslim history of the region.
For instance, the only mention of Aurangabad district sets the scene for a visit
to the fort of Daulatabad, designated in the lesson under its pre-Islamic name
of Devgiri and indicated as such on the corresponding map. Thus, the implicit
notion of a historical Hindu continuity wherein Islamic presence is but a minor
accident is reinforced. It is as if all the good work of preaching unity (ekatmata)
and living together with people “with other costumes and dharma” (Chapter 1)
had been gradually relegated to the background, when not bluntly thwarted.
Obviously varying according to institution, teacher, and caste is how the
teaching of this subtly Hinduized curriculum is made explicit and negotiated,
especially in the presence of Muslim students. These account for 6 percent to
10 percent of the student population in the majority of privately run schools,
including the outwardly Hindutwadi Varsity Marathi School.8 Here, some
methodological and theoretical clarification is in order. Much as it has long
been the Faustian fantasy—and even less realistically, the claim—of many an
anthropologist, reaching an understanding of any social actor’s inner thoughts
and feelings is, of course, impossible. Even the expression of these thoughts and
feelings runs the risk of overinterpretation: anthropologists may ascribe extra
meaning to any anodyne incident for the sole reason of its occurring within a
social group that occupies a sensitive position within society (on the dangers
of overinterpretation, see Lahire 1996; Lenclud 1996; Olivier de Sardan 1996;
especially Paul Veyne 1996). In other words, the very constitution of social and
cultural facts on the basis of supposedly objective “indices, signs and traces”
(Ginzburg 1989) is itself an arbitrary process always susceptible to subjective
and distorted construction. However, neither historians nor anthropologists
186  From Becoming to Being Muslim

have found any better method. Consequently, by tracking down the minute de-
tails that appear salient to them, anthropologists and historians can eventually
draw a plausible—even if always impressionistic—picture of the experiences,
feelings, and understandings of individuals and their constitutive interaction
within and among social groups. Clues for such paintings are arguably not ex-
clusively located in exceptional or cyclical events; rather, they are best found in
the daily workings of school life, where most of them either largely go unno-
ticed or appear unproblematic, possibly because of their frequent occurrence.
The labeling of “indices, signs and traces” is particularly apposite here. In
Maharashtra and Kolhapur in particular, overt and explicit manifestations of
attitudes or expressions of thoughts and feelings against Muslims were rare.
Both Muslims and non-Muslims of all castes and classes were usually prompt to
praise the good work achieved at the turn of the twentieth century by the local
ruler Shahu Maharaj toward promoting social and economic welfare as well as
harmony among the diverse sections of the population. These achievements
were often discursively linked to the history of social reform movements that
targeted Brahmins in the area in the late nineteenth century (Kavlekar 1979),
and in which the local raja participated (Copland 1973; Benei 1999). Such a dis-
course in principle negates the possibility of communal violence comparable to
that prevailing in northern India, or even in Mumbai. This local history has be-
come the distinctive feature of Kolhapur, whether to insiders or outsiders, also
operating as a check against public pronouncements of overly ethnic, social,
political, or religious antagonism. In the privacy of homes, however, ordinary
social actors are more likely—either inadvertently or deliberately—to shed their
reserve on the issue of Muslims. Often, this issue came up in a discussion of re-
gional history and of the Maratha nation’s accomplishments enabled by Shivaji.
Thus, one cold evening in December 2000 as I was sitting on the stone floor
of Baba Pankat’s main room together with all the family members (the family
introduced in Chapter 2), the conversation veered toward the “Muslim issue”
for the first time in the several years that I had known them. Perhaps because I
was cognizant of their past experience of social stigmatization as Bhangis (Un-
touchables, scavenger caste), their father’s past affiliation with Marxism and his
late conversion to Buddhism, and their overall tolerance—including of minori-
ties and foreigners—I was rather ill prepared for the exchange that followed.
Earlier that evening we had been talking about Shivaji and the popularity of
historical films about him, especially those of filmmaker Bhalji Pendharkar. As
Mohand, the middle son, had just expressed professional, personal, and politi-
 From Becoming to Being Muslim 187

cal distrust of Muslims, I prompted him further. His younger brother, Ramesh,
stepped in:

“You see, had it not been for Shivaji Maharaj, tonight, we would not be sit-
ting and chatting together.”
I, surprised: “How so?”
Mohand, with aplomb: “First of all, we would not even be speaking Marathi,
but Urdu. And then you see, had the Muslims [sic] continued ruling us, had
Shivaji not vanquished them and established our swaraj, tonight you would be
sitting over there [pointing to the kitchen], with all the women [all of whom were
presently sitting in the main room], and we would not even be able to see each
other as we talk: there would be a curtain [pardah] between here and there;
between you and us [referring to the custom of pardah, the veiling of Muslim
women]. So, suppose we wanted to chat together; well, this would not be pos-
sible. Well, thanks to Shivaji Maharaj, this is not so, and we are free to talk all
together tonight.”

In this and other narratives surfaces a deep sense of otherness in relation to

“Muslim customs and practices.” Muslims in these accounts emerge as the un-
spoken other: always ever present in the shadow of public stages and at the back
of non-Muslim Maharashtrians’ minds, archetypically antagonistic but rarely ac-
knowledged as such in ordinary dealings, save on the platforms of Hindu right-
wing politicians. Even the phrase “non-Muslim Maharashtrian” sounds somewhat
like a pleonasm. As if, on either side of the divide, Muslims could never truly be
Maharashtrians, and conversely, “true Maharashtrians” could never be Muslims.9
Therefore, at the risk of overinterpreting, even the slightest wink of an eye in pub-
lic has to at least be recorded. It is the price to be paid for reaching a more sensi-
tive and nuanced account of intercommunal relations and in order to illuminate
the institutionalized production of difference occurring within schooling.
Examples of daily production and explication of difference abound at school.
They often involve a lot left unsaid but whose undertones are quite perceptible.
Consider, for instance, the small, apparently meaningless incident that occurred
in December 1998 when the headmistress of Varsity Marathi School, Kirari Bai,
took me on a tour of all the classrooms. According to the routine during such
a tour, at each stop she would test the students after briefly introducing me.
The occasion was always a somewhat solemn one for the ­pupils, who would
dutifully welcome the unexpected official guests with formal greetings. Yet the
atmosphere in such circumstances was rather cheerful. As we stopped in one
188  From Becoming to Being Muslim

Class 2, Kirari Bai asked a benign question on the plural form in Marathi. Its
purpose was to emphasize the difference between oral (boli bhasha) and writ-
ten language (pramanit bhasha). Judging by the lack of response the question
elicited, it had clearly failed. Only one alert-looking pupil attempted an answer.
The headmistress then asked him:

“What do you speak at home?”

[The child instantly began to show signs of nervousness.]
Kirari Bai rephrased her question thus: “What does Mummy speak at
home?”
A shadow darkened the little boy’s face as he pleadingly answered: “Now,
now I speak Marathi.”

It turned out that this boy was Muslim and that the language spoken at
home was “Hindi.” I was never able to find out this child’s particular history of
schooling. It is possible that he had already been confronted about his “Mus-
limness” in school, having gone through kindergarten and Class 1, and this may
have influenced his response to the headmistress. Whether it was part of a will-
ingness to integrate, to not be singled out from his classmates as “other” is prob-
able (James 1993). The fact is that during the conversation, a perceptible sense
of uneasiness gradually pervaded the room as pupils and teachers watched the
scene unfold. The atmosphere had become unusually tense. Clearly, this had to
do with more than a mere encounter with archetypal representatives of school
authority. Moreover, the very fact that the headmistress felt a need at the end of
the exchange to reassure the child by saying, “You can speak your language at
home, there is no problem, nothing will happen,” precisely suggested otherwise,
especially in public spaces in this part of Maharashtra. For, apart from large
cosmopolitan cities such as Mumbai—and Pune to a lesser extent—to speak
Hindi in public spaces marks one as “not belonging.” “True” Maharashtrians do
not speak Hindi publicly unless they address “strangers.” Furthermore, in the
present case it was understood that the Hindi spoken was, rather than the of-
ficial language of India, a hybridized form derogatorily dubbed “Mussalmani.”
This exchange must also be envisaged in relation to larger notions of mo-
rality, justice, and rectitude associated with learning to become a good citizen.
As we saw in Chapter 2, the correct mastery of the Marathi language is fun-
damental to the training of proper and fit social and political persons. This
is particularly evidenced in the emphasis laid by teachers upon the notion of
pramanit ­bhasha in opposition to boli bhasha, or “the correct, authoritative lan-
 From Becoming to Being Muslim 189

guage” versus the unruly “oral language” spoken at home or more generally in
everyday life. From this perspective, it is particularly significant that the head-
mistress should have selected these contrasting notions for testing the pupils in
the classroom. Indeed, implicit in the project of schooling is the understanding
that school is the very space where students should internalize pramanit bha-
sha. This also applies to students of lower-caste or non-Hindu backgrounds,
whose spoken idioms are the most likely to be further removed from the ver-
sion acknowledged as “proper and standard” Marathi. In these confrontations
and attempts at “disciplining difference” (Pandey 2001: 152), the stigmatization
teachers operate is nowhere more evident than in the discursive shaming of
home, especially through the mother trope. It is in this light that the Muslim
pupil’s reaction of acute embarrassment to the question of the language spo-
ken at home through the formulation of “What does Mummy speak at home?”
should be envisaged. Such a phrasing encapsulates both the above notions as-
sociated with the authoritative version of the Marathi language and the stigma
attached to difference from it. Explicit acknowledgment that the mother spoke
something “other” was a more general admission of otherness. As we saw in
Chapter 3, Marathi schools cultivated a deeply anchored equation of the virtues
of motherhood with Hinduness and Indianness. Hence, in attracting attention
to linguistic difference, the shaming of the mother operated as the single most
crystallizer of otherness, further illustrating the fact that “[u]ltimately,” as Mi-
chael Herzfeld wrote, “the language of national or ethnic identity is indeed a
language of morality” (1997: 43).
Furthermore, experiences of otherness were not uncommon among Muslim
children studying in Marathi schools, as I later discovered. Unfortunately, I never
dared broach the topic so explicitly with them lest I further reinforce a perceived
sense of discomfort at being singled out as members of a largely antagonized mi-
nority community. The data I was able to collect in this respect predominantly
came from my own observations of school life and from conversations with
adult Muslims. Many of those educated in Marathi across several generations
emphasized the distorted and biased character of the narratives commonly told
in Marathi institutions. These, they claimed, were exploited by Hindu right-wing
parties such as the Shiv Sena. No less important, many Marathi-educated Mus-
lims nonetheless reasserted the official secularist version of Maharashtrian re-
gional history reappropriating for themselves the ecumenical notion of Hindavi
swaraj associated with Shivaji. As seen in the previous chapter, today the term
is contentiously and frequently translated as “self-rule of the Hindus” instead of
190 From Becoming to Being Muslim

“those living in Hind,” which is to say “India” (from the Persian, designating the
part of India above the Indus River). Marathi-educated Muslims would often
point to the all-encompassing dimension of social, cultural, and religious toler-
ance entailed in the phrase, which is in contrast to an oft-encountered version in
Marathi schools today. Thus, Shaheen Hussain, former corporator of the slum
adjacent to Sachar Bazar and Marathi educated, insisted:10

Shivaji has been recuperated by the Shiv Sena, but this does not mean that
Shivaji belongs to Hindu people only, since he created Hindavi swaraj; Shivaji
Maharaj did; therefore, he was against Mughals, and there were more Hindus
on the whole territory of Bharat and Pakistan. But Shivaji’s swarajya included
all religions [sarva dharma]: Hindu, Muslim, etc. Even his bodyguard was a
Muslim.

The easiness with which Marathi-educated Muslim adults spoke about

those matters contrasted greatly with the blatant avoidance displayed by Urdu-
educated teachers. Even those who, because of a lack of Urdu educational fa-
cilities in their villages, had had to study in primary Marathi schools prior to
joining Urdu higher educational institutions were rather reluctant to discuss
official regional history. Whenever I attempted to broach the subject in the later
course of research, they promptly put an end to the conversation. The pupils
themselves sometimes claimed they did not like Shivaji’s history because it was
“written in small prints.” In the end, their experiences, together with the imag-
inings of exclusively Urdu-educated ones, combined into irrefragable rejection
of official regional history. So the Class 4 teacher at Urdu Corporation School
contented himself upon our very first encounter with merely asking the names
of Shivaji’s close kin from his pupils. This was already more than what they
ought to know.

Building Competing Narratives,

Reconstructing Pan-regional Bonds
That Urdu-educated Muslims rejected the official version does not mean they
did not have their own version of regional history. However, rather than delim-
ited by regional boundaries, this history is interregional and follows the lines
of demarcation of former Indo-Muslim kingdoms. This became apparent as I
went with the Urdu Corporation School’s teachers and students on their annual
outing in March 2000. That year, they decided to go to Bijapur in the neighbor-
ing state of Karnataka. The town was founded in the eleventh century by the
 From Becoming to Being Muslim 191

Chalukya dynasty and became the capital of the reputed Indo-Muslim dynasty
of the Adil Shahi in 1489. The Adil Shahi presided over one of the sultanates
in the Deccan region and are renowned for their artistic refinement and so-
phistication (Eaton 1978). As we shall see, this trip represented a key moment
feeding into the teachers’ self-constructions as Muslims, especially through a
reconnection with an architectural past symbolizing former Muslim grandeur.
Commenting upon this kind of symbolization in an essay entitled “The Muslim
Malaise in India,” Akbar S. Ahmed remarked:

[B]y the end of the Mughal period, in the last century, the Muslims had tumbled
down from the top. Their political role was terminated, their language rejected
and their very identity threatened. The trauma of this downfall lies at the heart
of the Muslim problem in India today. The Muslim monuments . . . appear to
mock the Indian Muslims. Their present impotence and lowly status are exag-
gerated by the splendour and scale of the buildings. (1988: 85)

Contrary to what Ahmed further argued, however, “clinging to the past” and
the “fantasy provided by it” (86) do not necessarily elicit “emotional anorexia”
among Muslims. Rather, the process of reconnecting with this architectural her-
itage through the outing to Bijapur allowed the participants to actively render it
as their own. It also enabled them to reinscribe this past within a larger national
narrative, duly reinstating the glorious contribution of Muslim rulers to the In-
dian nation. Arguably, this one-day trip offered an occasion for teachers and
children to relate to, and celebrate, a rather different kind of history from the
Maharashtrian official version imposed on them. Here was a history dominated
by victorious Muslims and ornate mosques wherein visions and imaginings of
former glory and political power blended with ones of architectural and reli-
gious achievements. Throughout the day, students and teachers appropriated
this heritage by various means, ranging from elaborate speeches and lively dis-
cussions to good-hearted comments and photograph-taking sessions; the most
dedicated had brought notebooks and jotted down notes and impressions about
the greatness of Indo-Muslim rule. Let us accompany them on that trip.
The outing begins early in the morning around 7:30 a.m. After a few hours
of driving punctuated by a flat tire, we halt at our first site, the Mulup Maidan
Top. This fort takes its name from the cannon (top) that made it famous.
Next the group goes to see another nearby fort before having lunch in the
gardens of the mausoleum of Muhammad Adil Shah (ruled 1627–56), famous
for its echo chamber inside. Legend has it that the ruler wanted to build a
192  From Becoming to Being Muslim

mausoleum comparable to that of his father, Ibrahim Adil Shah II. Because
his father’s monument, known as Ibrahim Rauza, was considered exceptional
in composition and decoration, the only means of avoiding direct competi-
tion was through size. The Gol Gumbaz (literally, “round dome”), is one of the
largest single-chambered structures in the world, covering an area of 18,225
square feet (1,693 square meters). This monument is clearly among the favorite
sites visited that day. After lunch, teachers and children alike merrily fill the
mausoleum’s imposing structure. In an attempt at verifying what they have
just heard from one of the local guides, they proceed to testing the echoing
quality inside. The round building was erected with such architectural skills,
so the story goes, that anybody whispering at one point of the upstairs gallery
can be heard all around. The students nudge each other in excitement as the
sound circles the walls. The relaxed and cheerful atmosphere starkly contrasts
with that following soon after reaching the Jamma Masjid, the main mosque
in Bijapur. This is the only site in the course of the outing where the mood
suddenly changes into one of concentrated seriousness. It is also the only mo-
ment when the teachers explicitly ask me to take a picture of the pupils sitting
in prayer. The visit is followed with a halt at another attraction, the Taj Bawdi,
a sort of square pond where women can be seen washing clothes. Next is the
mausoleum of Ibrahim Rauza. The architectural site is renowned for its deli-
cately carved windowsills and wooden shutters, as well as the floral motifs and
Quranic inscriptions decorating its painted walls and doors. We rest there for
a while. Two of the teachers, as they have repeatedly done since our arrival into
Bijapur that morning, comment on the beauty and refinement of some details,
again calling my attention to them. Arabic, Persian, and Quranic inscriptions
are also among the motifs invariably evoking delighted wonderment. Finally,
just before taking the road back to Kolhapur, we stop by two Muslim shrines
(dargah), where the (male) teachers disappear to pay homage. By then, every-
body is tired, and all sit listlessly in wait as the day’s exhilaration wanes.
We saw in Chapter 4 how schooling in Maharashtra has furthered a sense
of history among members of a literate public. At the smaller and more spe-
cific scale of communities and family narratives, such a sense of history often
blithely combines scholarly authentication with fantasized processes of recon-
nection. The same observation obtains with respect to Urdu schooling among
Muslim students and teachers. Throughout the annual outing to Bijapur, teach-
ers and students appropriated the history associated with these monuments for
themselves, even at the risk of some factual inaccuracies. For instance, at the
 From Becoming to Being Muslim 193

Mulup Maidan Top, the most senior teacher explained in a scholarly way that
Adil Shah had made the fort and the cannon. This was soon disputed by an
improvised local guide, the postcard seller who diligently enlightened us about
the weapon’s place of origin and maker.11 Arguably, these factual inaccuracies
were part of the identification that teachers and students effected with this past.
Questions of who had made the cannon might have been relevant to historiog-
raphers, but to these pilgrims of one day, they did not contain any intrinsic his-
torical value. They were only meaningful inasmuch as they served the purpose
of celebrating the greatness of Muslim ancestors from Turkey, Arabia, Persia,
and so on. In the process, these objectively factual inaccuracies operated as so
many historical strands of Islamic political rule woven into a tapestry of Muslim
past grandeur. Thus, through this appropriation, pupils and teachers alike did
at the same time construct a relationship to the Muslim world at large. The fact
that they marveled at inscriptions in Persian and in Arabic, drawing their trav-
eling companions’ attention to them, suggested an act of (re)connection with
origins long lost sight of in a now hostile environment. This was also in keeping
with the fact, noted earlier, that a sizable number of children and adults (includ-
ing the headmaster) in the mohalla had recently begun to take evening Arabic

On the way to the “top” during the outing to Bijapur with Urdu Corporation School,
Kolhapur, March 2000.
194  From Becoming to Being Muslim

classes. It is, of course, doubtful whether anybody in the school had any known
family ancestry dating back to Arabia, Turkey, or Persia. Indeed, in Maharash-
tra as in the rest of South Asia, the majority of Muslims were not of immigrant
stock, coming over the centuries as invaders or to serve existing Muslim-ruled
states (Taylor 1983: 182). A conversion process associated with the growth of ag-
ricultural communities began in the fourteenth century through to the Mughal
period (1526–1858), by the end of which converted Indian Muslims had become
a “majority community” in the eastern and western wings of the subcontinent
(Eaton 2000: 36). Consequently, most of the Muslim residents in Maharashtra
today come from autochthonous converted families. Yet these extraneous loca-
tions associated with Muslim rule functioned as topoi for creating links com-
parable to that of the religious Islamic community of believers (umma), even
though the latter notion was not necessarily explicitly mentioned.
That this heritage was to be particularly cherished was made further mani-
fest in the weeks that followed the outing. The next morning, the new head-
master who had succeeded the previously encountered headmistress upon
her retirement, had set up a big polystyrene board with eight of the postcards
bought in Bijapur corresponding to the sites visited. His intention, as he later
explained that morning, was to allow even those students (the younger ones
in particular) who had not been able to go to benefit from the school trip. The
headmaster started the day with one of his inordinately long lectures, this one
lasting even longer. In the weeks to come, pupils would be asked to draw and
write about what they had seen and to deliver small speeches in turn in their
classrooms. One teacher had taken photographs, and these, together with my
photographs, were neatly arranged on a large poster decorated with children’s
drawings and texts. The poster still occupied pride of place in the head’s office
when I last visited the school in the summer of 2003.
The site of Bijapur did not have significance only for Urdu-educated Mus-
lims. It also held a central position in the respective and competing imaginings
of Muslims and Hindus, as further testified soon after the outing. Teachers of
other schools often asked where I had been if they did not see me for more than
a couple of days. Upon returning from Bijapur, I made no mystery to Marathi
schoolteachers of my recent whereabouts. In some institutions, I thought I
could detect a slight sense of dejection from the faces pulled by some teachers,
although no one made explicit comments. Some said somewhat stuffily: “Oh
yes, there are Muslim forts and all over there, yes, Adil Shah, that was his place.”
At times, I perceived a sly, even if fleeting smile on the same faces. Seemingly
 From Becoming to Being Muslim 195

compounding their discomfort at the thought of my deserting Maratha history

were the pains I took to pronounce the place’s name in Hindi, as per the Urdu
teachers’ ways. Each time, the Marathi teachers would correct me, emphasizing
the Marathi pronunciation of “Vijapur.” In so doing, Marathi speakers also gave
prominence to the city’s pre-Muslim past.12 At the same time, they established
a phonetic connection with the neighboring kingdom of Vijayanagar across
the Krishna River from the Bahmani kingdom of the Adil Shah, thus signifi-
cantly reinstating the preeminence of what has come to be seen as a “Hindu
past” today. All this despite the fact that, as Eaton has cogently argued, the
issue was never one of Muslim or Hindu rule when the southern Bahmani and
­Vijayanagar kingdoms united in their fight against northern Delhi ruler Mu-
hammad bin Tughluq (2000: 152–53). Both states emerged as revolutionary re-
gimes evolved out of armed resistance to common, northern, imperial power
alien to Deccan culture (160). Distinctions then were predicated upon regional
linguistic features rather than on religious ones. Today, regional linguistic and
religious traits have become inextricably interwoven with one another, crystal-
lizing polarization of Maratha Hindus and non-Maharashtrian Muslims. The
result is that, while national history has been rewritten in communalist terms
by Hindu right-wing academics occupying positions of power in the BJP-led
coalition central governments of the last decade until May 2004, Muslims in
southern India are also reappropriating this regional history as part of a Mus-
lim rather than a southern Indian one.

Reinscribing National Narratives, Visceral Nationalism,

and the Irony of Display
It is difficult to assess the place that such pan-regional connections to a wider
Muslim history and culture assumed in the imaginations and psyches of Urdu
students and teachers. Obviously, this varied from person to person. Zama-
dar Sir, for instance, was the eldest teacher in the school. He was at the time
among the most assiduous in performing his prayer (namaz) throughout the
day,13 preparing himself for the pilgrimage to Mecca. His own representation
and understanding of these pan-regional connections may have differed from
those of Kashid Sir, the headmaster, who tended to be slightly “forgetful” of
namaz and at times leaned toward downright self-indulgency to the point
of having coffee during the day at the time of Ramzan.14 Kashid Sir was also
an active member of the local Congress Party branch, suggesting a stronger
political involvement in regional matters than his colleague’s. More generally,
196  From Becoming to Being Muslim

then, it is difficult to compare this reconstruction of a wider Muslim world

with the investment some of the teachers constantly displayed in the Indian
nation. For beyond their respective idiosyncrasies, they had in common a
favorite topic for discussion, whether with me or in their morning lectures to
the students: national matters. Indeed, reconnecting with lost Muslim politi-
cal power, as well as with a sense of belonging to an Islamic community of
believers transcending the mere regional or national frontiers of (southern)
India,15 only partially accounts for the processes entailed by the regenerative
trip to the site of past political and religious Muslim splendor.
In effect, Urdu teachers and students were concomitantly staking a claim in
the grand narrative of the Indian nation, willfully demanding participation in
its making. What some of them—for instance, the headmaster more than oth-
ers—did was not only to reappropriate “Muslim history” but also to reinscribe
its valuable contribution into the larger story of Indian accomplishment, from
which it has increasingly become excluded: the so-called Muslim period tends
to be glossed over in textbooks (see previous discussion); so, too, is the role of
Muslim leaders in the struggle for independence. The Hindu/Muslim compet-
ing emphases on the mere pronunciation of Bijapur thus represent a minuscule
tip in the iceberg of the many processes of rewriting history at play since inde-
pendence. Already in British times, the history of India had been carved into a
succession of three watertight sections: the “Hindu,” “Muslim,” and “colonial”
periods (Chatterjee and Ghosh 2002; Thapar 2004). James Mill, in his History of
British India published in the early nineteenth century, was the first to promote
a notion of antagonism between the first two periods, maintaining that Mus-
lims were alien to the subcontinent. To a large extent, the postindependence
sectioning of history is but a continuation of this colonial trend. More recent,
however, are attempts at deleting purely and simply all so-called Muslim his-
tory from the Indian past, as described previously and as has been copiously
documented with reference to secondary education in the course of the latest
controversies over textbook revision in the past few years (Raychaudhuri 2000;
Sahmat 2002; Deb 2003; staff correspondent, The Hindu 2003). Although these
attempts were particularly perceptible until the elections of May 2004, which
saw the defeat of the central Hindutva-led coalition, some of them are still on-
going due to the permanency of Hindutva-appointed officials and scholars in
top educational positions. As a consequence, there remains a long way to go be-
fore redressing and correcting both recent distortions in the national curricu-
lum and attempts at erasing all the contributions of Muslim freedom fighters in
 From Becoming to Being Muslim 197

the struggle for independence. These obliterating attempts amount to a denial

of Muslim citizens’ right to actively share in the nation’s past (Mohammad-Arif
2005), thus undermining the legitimacy of their status as fully fledged Indians.
In such a political context, it is easy to understand how the declaration
quoted at the opening of this chapter had special resonance for the school’s
headmaster, who liked referring to the great Muslim leader Abul Kalam Azad
in so many of his speeches.16 To him, the answer to the question of whether
a Muslim can be an Indian (Pandey 2001: 154) was a resounding “yes.” Azad’s
quoted declaration indeed reinstated the worthy historical and cultural con-
tribution of an increasingly marginalized “community.” To the headmaster, it
was crucial to raise this community’s self-esteem and self-confidence through
the promotion of education. For this reason, he often peppered his morning
speeches with copious references to some of the great Muslim leaders of inde-
pendent India, including the third president, Dr. Zakir Husain, and the current
one, the nuclear physicist and “father of the Indian atomic bomb,” Dr. A. P. J.
Abdul Kalam (see later discussion). All these examples were meant to serve as
role models for children to look up to and emulate.
Arguably, the Urdu school functioned as a special performative space where
teachers and children further constructed both their religious and linguistic
identity and their national identification. Perhaps because the latter, in their
case—unlike in Marathi schools—was not mediated by any notion of tightly
circumscribed regional identification but stood at odds with any attachment
other than pan-Islamic, teachers were well aware of the apparent contradic-
tion that most Maharashtrians might see in such a dual identification. Urdu
also happens to be the national language in archrival Pakistan. So students and
teachers constantly made explicit their love of the Indian nation and their dedi-
cation to impart their love to the younger generations. This love was manifested
through the morning rituals (singing the national anthem, reciting the pledge
and the dua, the Urdu morning prayer, all the rituals being a Muslim equivalent
to the Hindu practice in Marathi schools with Hindu shloks). It also assumed
the form of elaborate and intensive preparations for national celebrations, espe-
cially of Independence Day and Republic Day. On these occasions, the students
would rehearse parades and military drills and prepare patriotic songs. They
also recited paeans to the nation (never conceived of as Mother-India, unlike in
Marathi schools) and speeches on national leaders’ birthdays.17
It should also be noted that Urdu schools are not the exclusive agents of
potentially threatening otherness in Maharashtra. More generally, all minority
198  From Becoming to Being Muslim

communities of non-Marathi speakers are deemed in greater need of ingrain-

ing of national devotion. This idea is suggestively expressed in the usage of
what Gananath Obeyesekere (1981) has called “psychogenetic symbols.” Here,
these include nursery rhymes and other poems and recitations that have pub-
lic, cultural meaning for members of the Hindu Maratha majority in Maha-
rashtra. Consider, for example, the state-produced Marathi textbook for Class 5
children whose native tongue and primary medium of instruction is not the
regional language. These students begin their study of Marathi in Class 5. Scat-
tered throughout the book are injunctions serving as constant reminders to the
pupils. Thus, a popular Marathi nursery rhyme entitled “We Are Soldiers, Brave
and Cunning Heroes and Warriors” (Sainik amhi shur hushar) is reproduced
in lesson 14. The song teaches numbers and is interspersed with admonitions to
show respect for the country, protect the national flag, and so on. It ends with
“Embrace the religion of devotion to the nation” (Chapter 1).18
To return to the case of Urdu instruction, the issue of national allegiance is
obviously further compounded by the fact that it is today the official language
of Pakistan. Non-Urdu and non-Muslim Indians—Maharashtrians in particu-
lar—have increasingly tended to conflate linguistic and religious identification
with national identification. This was particularly perceptible in the events of
the late 1990s. The nurturing of a sense of loyalty to the Indian nation among
Urdu-educated Muslims occurred within a political climate of heightened ten-
sions. As discussed in the Introduction, in May 1998, India proceeded to nu-
clear tests in Pokhran thanks to Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. This was a welcome
event for the Urdu teachers on two counts: it was a matter of great rejoicing
and pride that “one of them” had done such service to the country by produc-
ing nuclear missiles for India. It also promoted a positive image of Muslims as
scientifically minded, progressive, and educated patriots. A few months later,
Pakistan, in turn, proceeded to nuclear tests. In the years that followed, the
tension mounted between the two nation-states over the issue of Kashmir. As
the conflict climaxed in a war in the summer of 1999, the pressure on Muslims
to make public displays of allegiance in the media became more and more
perceptible.
It is unclear to what extent the Muslim residents of Sachar Bazar felt a simi-
lar pressure in their daily lives. Even in ordinary times, comments were frequent
about Indian Muslims accused of supporting the Pakistani cricket team against
their national one. Whatever the case may be, the Urdu teachers always took
great pains to emphasize both to me and to the students how they should fur-
 From Becoming to Being Muslim 199

ther advance their community (Muslim samaj) through education and service
to their country.19 It is important to emphasize that these displays of patriotism
must not be read as ostentatious ones whose purpose was to convince outside
observers (municipal corporation officials, the anthropologist, and so on) of
the teachers’ and students’ devotion to India. Arguably, they were also meant
for themselves and especially for the benefit of the community, with the passing
anthropologist possibly acting as an interface mirror: reenacting their attach-
ment to the Indian nation in my presence and interacting with me on these top-
ics provided them an outside—and possibly more neutral—background upon
which to perform their national devotion. As important, school provided an
intermediary location at the crossroads of various spaces ranging from domes-
tic and familial to religious (the mosque just adjacent to the school), to regional
and national. School was a site where negotiation of state injunctions took place
and where social actors were thus able to give shape to a newly defined sense
of community, one premised on religious and linguistic notions, but one that
could also reconcile unconditional allegiance to the Indian nation. In other
words, school operated as a space that made a new kind of fully fledged Urdu
Muslim Indian citizen possible. At the same time, it further reinforced dichoto-
mies in the very definitions of communities.
Given the constant pressure on Muslims to demonstrate unconditional alle-
giance, it is particularly ironic that Mr. Kashid’s deep-seated sense of belonging
to the Indian nation came out most forcefully on the issue of Kashmir. More
than any other, this one brought out how visceral his anchoring to India was.
Both he and his colleagues often insisted that Kashmir should remain a part
of India. Such a profound conviction was most poignantly expressed one day
in January 2000 over lunch, as we shared a biryani in the school office-turned-
canteen. As we were discussing the recent developments in Kashmir, the head-
master vehemently asserted that “they” should not part with it. I asked why. He
swiftly grabbed the miniature plastic map of India that lay on his desk. Holding
the educational aid in full view, he began pedagogically:

“Look, this is India, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”
“You see, up there, this is Kashmir.” [He pointed to the top of the map.]
“Yes, this is Kashmir.”
“Well, this is like a head [sar].”
“???”
200 From Becoming to Being Muslim

“Yes, Kashmir, you see; it is on top, on top of India, India’s body [sharir].
Well, Kashmir is a part of India, it is a part of our country, it is its head.” [Kash-
mir Bharat ka ek bhag hai, hamare desh ka ek bhag hai, uska sar hai.]
“I see.”
“Now,” the headmaster gravely said, “what do you think will happen if we
cut the person’s head?” [At this point, he successively imitated the gesture of chop-
ping off the plastic map’s upper tip and, lest I had not understood, repeated the
same movement upon his own throat]. “Well, you see, the person will die. Well,
like this, India will become lifeless.” [Baijan ho jaega.] “This is why we cannot
part with Kashmir. Kashmir is ours; we cannot give it.” [Ham de nahi sakte.]

This was probably the most solemn moment I ever experienced in the
company of the Urdu teachers. The other two staff present shared it with acute
intensity, forcefully nodding in approval of the masterly demonstration. Clear-
ly, such a visceral nationalism was as profound as that nurtured through the
idiom of the region in Marathi schools. Interestingly, it was also expressed in
not too dissimilar an idiom. Although Urdu Muslims unequivocally rejected
the idiom of the mother figure incarnating the notion of Bharat Mata so com-
mon in Marathi schools and in wider Maharashtrian society, they nevertheless
embraced the idea of India as fused in the convergence of (here, a masculine)
body and map. Such an organic kind of national identification was unexpected.
It also suggests that the dominant cultural forms of Indianness today had been
incorporated among Muslims, too, possibly because most of the Urdu teachers
did study in the Marathi language at some point.20 In a contrapuntal version
to the brand of regional nationalism produced in Marathi schools, the sen-
sory configuration developed in Urdu schools was one that daily connected
Urdu—as the language of Muslims but also a close associate to the national lan-
guage, Hindi—with Islam (the dua was a staple of the morning liturgy) in the
construction of the body of schoolchildren and India. The sense of nationalist
belonging thus produced and reproduced on a quotidian basis was as visceral
as its Marathi counterpoint, if only differently anchored in regional and na-
tional identifications.
Furthermore, such nationalism did not make any allowances for “fellow
Muslims” on the other side of the Indo-Pakistani border. That the head-
master, like most of his colleagues, hailed from southern India (southern
­Maharashtra and northern Karnataka, Belgaum district) and had no personal
or familial intimate experience of the exodus and the violence that erupted
 From Becoming to Being Muslim 201

in the north following the Partition in 1947 made him more uncompromising
in his position toward Pakistan: no sense of common Muslim brotherhood
forged in ripped-apart flesh and spilled blood could ever unite them beyond
nation-state allegiances. Clearly, the “shadow lines” that were being labori-
ously created in 1947 and that Amitav Ghosh has so brilliantly evoked in an
eponymous novel have now become integral to the contemporary histories
of rival nation building. They have succeeded in leaving their imprint in the
imaginaries and self-representations of Muslims (Hasan 2000), including in
this part of India. Consequently, if a sense of unity to a common umma was
possible among Urdu schoolteachers, it was not so much predicated upon a
hypothetical fraternity with Muslims on the other side of the modern nation-
state’s border as on collected and reconstructed past genealogies of Islamic
imperial splendor.
This sense of umma did not affect the intensity of Urdu Muslim teachers’
visceral loyalty toward the Indian nation-state. Seen in this light, it seems ever
so ironic that Indian Muslims should have been called upon to demonstrate
their allegiance, as they have been since the Partition (Pandey 2001: 152–74).
This, of course, was never fully or explicitly acknowledged by any of the Urdu-
speaking residents of Sachar Bazar, nor, for that matter, by any other Muslim
Indian with whom I interacted. The issue was far too sensitive and shameful
to talk about openly. Yet in an infinity of ways, the eagerness with which elder
students and teachers would get involved in the performance of the morning
liturgy and in national celebratory preparations suggested a converse amount
of pain and suffering at having their patriotism questioned. In the end, Urdu
Muslims in Sachar Bazar asserted and turned their difference into a template
for minority community identity while striving for recognition into the na-
tional fold. In the process, they distanced themselves from any dominant
regional bond, further crystallizing polarization of perceived differences on
either side. Yet such a polarization obfuscated the long-standing social and
cultural proximity existing between Muslims and Marathas in Maharashtra.

(Urdu) Muslim Others, (Hindu) Maratha Brothers:

Of Archetypal Myths, Social Agency, and Economic Constraints
Studies of nationalism and communal violence have highlighted how the con-
struction of nationalism and a sense of belonging to a national community
are predicated upon an exclusivist principle: the definition of an elected group
of members at the exclusion of unworthy “others,” whether fabricated or real
202  From Becoming to Being Muslim

(­Eriksen 1993; Kakar 1996). Nationalist discourses, then, proffer narratives of

difference as a dominant motif. Difference may be spelled positively within the
group thus defined. Conversely, it may become a justification for stigmatizing
and excluding outsiders on the grounds that “they are so different; they are
not like us, in customs, practices, beliefs, and so on.” In the process, the sense
of belonging to the community gets reaffirmed among participant members.
As we saw earlier, the image of Muslims in this part of India has long served
the purpose of further tightening together the larger dominant community of
Marathas and allied castes: despite assertions of communal harmony, whether
in urban or rural areas, Muslims in Maharashtra have increasingly been pre-
sented as the radically different other. Yet this imagined, “hystericized” differ-
ence (Balibar 1991) largely runs contrary to empirical evidence and confirms
the theory that cultivation of heightened difference is often achieved through
targeting an internal enemy very close to oneself (Eriksen 1993; Hayden 2002).
Indeed, in the present case, the mutual enemies share in common an even
greater number of features with one another than with members of social
groups ordinarily deemed in a relation of greater social and cultural proximity.
In western ­Maharashtra, the group Muslims are closest to in social and cultural
practices are Marathas. As noted previously, most Muslims in Maharashtra, as
in Bengal, do not have origins in locations outside India. Rather, they descend
from local families who converted to Islam. Therefore, a number of common
traits exist between them despite repeated claims to the contrary.
In the 1990s, during my first fieldwork in urban Pune and rural areas of the
same district, I found that although the small Muslim community in the village
of Keraone where I lived was relatively well integrated, many villagers regularly
referred to Muslims’ different mores and customs (Chapter 4). Jains and Hin-
dus, including families with known nonvegetarian members, mentioned di-
etary practices as the epitome of difference. In these families, however, women
often claimed they did not eat meat, unlike in Muslim ones. Marriage practices
came second in an enumeration of reasons for difference. On closer inspec-
tion, the marriage practices extant among Muslim communities in this part of
­Maharashtra had much more in common with the non-Brahmin Hindu ones
than would generally be conceded. In particular, Muslims and non-­Brahmin
Hindu communities, especially Maratha and so-called allied castes, shared
the preferential marriage between brother’s daughter and sister’s son, the war-
rior ritual ideology, and lexical usages pertaining to some marriage rituals and
transactions (Benei 1996; Chapter 6). Such findings are by no means excep-
 From Becoming to Being Muslim 203

tional and seriously puncture two oft-encountered myths: that which Hindu
right-wing extremists have been promoting for many years of a fold common
to Hindu, Brahmin, and Jain beliefs and practices; and of utmost political im-
portance, that of radical difference between Muslims and the dominant Hindu
community living in a given region (Marathas in this part of India).
Returning to Stuart Hall’s distinction between “being” and “becoming,”
I hope to have provided a sense of what “learning to be (Urdu) Muslim in
western India” has entailed over the past years for Urdu-educated residents in
Sachar Bazar. Muslims have increasingly sought to reinscribe their existence
within the larger narrative of national history, attending to the social suffer-
ing experienced when their emotional attachment to the nation is questioned
and challenged. Today, this is compounded by—and potentially competing
with—a mounting awareness of belonging to a stigmatized international com-
munity, which may also further strengthen a radicalization of representations.
As shown by the incident that opened this chapter, social actors are increas-
ingly polarizing themselves in their self-perceptions as communities defined
by language and history. The communities thus conceived are steeped in im-
mutable caricaturing: on the one hand, an aggressive Marathi community
celebrating their martial past; on the other, a subdued Muslim one shunning
their victors’ history and keeping aloof from wider Maharashtrian society. A
significant number of Urdu-speaking families definitely isolated themselves
from their regional surroundings by opting for an all-Urdu-medium educa-
tion for their children. Women and girls, in particular, tended to be confined
to homes where Urdu/Hindi is spoken. Remarkably, literate young mothers
had become the targets of religious Quranic education meant to ensure proper
transmission of the features of Islamic community, and were as vocal as men
in their assertion of an Urdu-mediated ­religious-linguistic identity. Some may
find a certain measure of irony in that Urdu in northern India was a mark
of the literary elite. In Maharashtra today, it has become a key identification
marker, linguistic and religious, for a majority of newly literate Muslims who
have turned it into a community symbol.
This is only a partial account of what it means to be Muslim in this region
of India today. For in Sachar Bazar alone, Muslims did not represent a homo-
geneous group, whether in educational choices or in religious affiliations. In
some ways, such defined communities stand at either end of a continuum rang-
ing from sheer aloofness to full integration into dominant Maharashtrian soci-
ety. If not overly frequent, examples are common enough of Marathi-educated
204  From Becoming to Being Muslim

Muslim social activists and educationists (including the founder of a recent

Marathi primary school) that claimed a full integration into regional society.
Furthermore, in between these two extremes lies a proportion of Marathi- and
English-educated Muslims. Some (often better-off) families made choices mo-
tivated by economic opportunities, whereas others followed ideological crite-
ria. Others attempted to reconcile the tensions resulting from either option by
not sending their children to the same schools. Within many families living in
Sachar Bazar, siblings would be sent to different institutions depending on the
family’s socioeconomic position and the views prevailing on gender expecta-
tions. So there would often be at least one male Marathi speaker in the family.
This might at times have been accompanied with perceptible tensions, espe-
cially in the case of joint families making differing choices.
This was the case in Mobina Behari’s family, who lived with her father, his six
brothers, and their respective wives and children. Mobina’s father had a small
paan shop around the corner, while all the other brothers practiced their caste’s
calling of being butchers. Out of the fifteen boys and the sixteen girls, only two
boys attended Marathi school, the semiprivate one in the vicinity. All the other
children went to the Urdu Corporation School. Even though some of the wives
had themselves been educated in Marathi (whether in Kolhapur or in the sur-
rounding areas), they were all vocal about the necessity of sending their children
to Urdu instruction. To be sure, the decision may also have been determined by
financial constraint, as it would clearly have been impossible for all the children
to be sent to the same Marathi semiprivate school. However, this was not the only
choice available: across the road was another corporation institution, a Marathi
school where one of the wives had herself studied. But as Mobina’s mother and
Meena, the wife of the fourth brother, forcefully explained in the course of that
conversation in late October 2000: “The Urdu school is good; it is very good;
Urdu is the language of Muslims.” As the only two Marathi-educated boys in
the family walked into the house, Meena raised her voice, pointing an accusing
finger at them and reproachfully proclaiming: “We, Muslims, should all study in
Urdu medium.” As the two boys walked past, attempting to look unconcerned,
she gathered momentum and added: “This is Muslims’ strength.” Turning to-
ward me, she firmly concluded: “Yes, we, Muslims, we are strong.” Here was
clearly evidenced a connection between not just a community’s strength and the
practice of a language as identity marker; the reference to Urdu functioned as a
symbol of past political power endowed with potential for future generations, in
which official education was to play a constitutive part.
 From Becoming to Being Muslim 205

Such a suggestive combination of language, political icon, and educational

potential was not necessarily shared by all Muslim residents, especially the fol-
lowers of the Tablighi Jama’at, an Islamic missionary and revival movement
that originated in the South Asian subcontinent in the late 1920s (see Metcalf
1996). Although the Tablighi had played an influential part in Urdu increas-
ingly becoming one of the defining elements of “Muslim identity” all over India
(Talib 1998), there was nevertheless a perceived line of fracture in Sachar Bazar
between what the headmaster called “progressist Muslims,” who allowed their
girls to be educated, and “these obscurantist followers” opposed to all formal
education, regardless of gender or medium of instruction. Whether among
other Muslims or non-Muslims, such a view of followers of Tablighi Jama‘at was
rather widespread in the neighborhood, where they accounted for 80 percent of
the Muslim population.21 Whether this view was fully substantiated or not, in
its most covert aspect the perceived opposition between so-called progressist
and obscurantist factions was manifested by the suspicious glances that some
devotees regularly cast from across the mosque gate. The opposition sometimes
led to open clashes between the headmaster and some influential members of
the mohalla.
All the above examples show the range of differential representations and
implications of Urdu schooling in Sachar Bazar: from the pure version of “Mus-
lim language” to be nurtured at all costs, to an obstacle to regional integration
and socioeconomic mobility. The common thread, however, was the notion
that Urdu increasingly stood as a marker of cultural and religious distinctive-
ness for Muslims, however families combined and negotiated it. This, as we
have seen, was not always the case, whether in Maharashtra, where most Mus-
lims spoke Mussalmani, or in northern India, where Urdu was also spoken by
Hindu speakers.

Language, “Community,” and Politics:

Schooling Effects and Impossible Citizens
In more ways than one, becoming an Urdu-educated Muslim in this part of
India today signifies developing a heightened awareness of one’s condition
as a member of an ostracized social group increasingly defined as a minority
community. The three words count here: the a homogenizes extremely varied
perceptions of what it means to be an Indian Muslim, especially a common
awareness of stigmatization. Minority refers not only to demographics but also
conveys a sense of belittlement perceptible in many arenas of quotidian life at
206  From Becoming to Being Muslim

regional and national levels, and which the events in Gujarat certainly rein-
forced. This sense of belittlement also obtained among Muslims in Kolhapur,
who dealt with it in various ways: from a mother’s claims of being strong in
opposition to the sense of weakness or inferiority connoted by the word kam
sometimes used for “minority,” to the headmaster’s constant invocation of the
need for the community to go forward and educate themselves, members of
the Muslim community would either overtly fight social stigma or harness it
into educational projects. Finally and congruently, the notion of “community”
has further defined Indian Muslims as a collective social, cultural, and politi-
cal agent, which they never really were. To be sure, even in the case of rela-
tively well-defined groups, there is no homogeneity of sentiments of belonging.
­Social actors may invest their senses of belonging with various meanings. By
the same token, they may also make this social identification relevant in some
contexts and not in others. For instance, the same Urdu school headmaster who
was so vocal in the building of a “strong Urdu Muslim community” would at
times play the “Marathi-speaking card” in his political dealings with the local
National Congress Party. Conversely, even the ecumenical Marathi school
founder and director, Zamadar Sir, had lately begun strategizing marriage alli-
ances with predominantly Urdu-educated families.
It is to be feared, however, that a radicalized perception has further fed
on the genocidal events that occurred in the spring of 2002 in the neighbor-
ing state of Gujarat. There is little doubt that these events were discussed at
length both within school and homes at the time and that the tensions gener-
ated by the state-orchestrated killings of Muslims in retaliation for a massacre
of Hindu right-wing activists (kar sevaks) will have been felt in Kolhapur. The
Urdu teachers at the corporation school, for instance, were acutely aware of the
RSS’s existence and activities. In the spring of 2000, they were already anxiously
discussing the dangers posed by Gujarat’s sudden move to authorize govern-
ment employees to join the RSS. To be sure, they often added that such risks
were lower in this part of Maharashtra thanks to the social reformist work ac-
complished in the times of Shahu Maharaj. Nevertheless, when I went back to
Kolhapur in the summer of 2003 a few days before the national celebrations of
Independence Day, I found Urdu teachers more than ever feverishly absorbed
in ostentatious displays of national allegiance.
Furthermore, if language may be used to affirm or reaffirm hierarchies of
power (Heath 1972; O’Barr and O’Barr 1976; Eickelman and Piscatori 1996;
Rahman 1996), it may also serve to subvert them. By using Urdu as a primary
 From Becoming to Being Muslim 207

marker of ethnic identity (encompassing language and religion), Muslims in

this part of India are also accomplishing two cathartic processes. First, they are
subverting the contemporary hierarchies of power partly resulting from their
ancestors’ displacement from a position of significant political power to one of
merely tolerated minorities.22 Second, by embracing a language earlier associ-
ated with an elite group whose members could make a claim—however fic-
tive—to a foreign origin, who appreciated Persian culture, owned land, and had
a tradition of service to the government in responsible positions (Taylor 1983),
Muslims in Kolhapur and more generally in Maharashtra today are appropriat-
ing for themselves a glorious past in the building of a positive self-image. In
addition, they may be reclaiming a due denied them over half a century ago:
that of “their” linguistic contribution to the production of the Indian nation.
For when debates took place over the issue of a national language soon after
independence, the qualification of Urdu as a national idiom jointly with Hindi
was a matter of contention. Finally, in the highly charged political atmosphere
of those times and despite Jawaharlal Nehru’s efforts, Urdu was rejected as a
national language (Hasan 1997: 156–60).
These recent developments may signal a new direction in the evolution of
what it means to be Muslim in India today. They also point to more general
trends elsewhere, congruently with the objectification that spread to all parts
of the “Muslim world” by the late 1980s:23 basic questions about the meaning of
being Muslim came to the fore in the consciousness of large numbers of believ-
ers. To be sure, the notion of objectification as applied to South Asia is not new.
Bernard Cohn (1987a) in one of his famous essays had already suggested that
the various modes of representing and categorizing knowledge developed by the
British in collaboration with Indians forced the latter to pose questions about
things and people in ways that they perhaps would not have otherwise done.
What may be more recent, however, is the area and scope of applicability of the
notion. Arguably, today a more systematic process of objectification has been
enabled by mass education. In India, the official learning facilities provided for
Muslim Urdu speakers have contributed to the production of a sense of belong-
ing to a newly linguistically defined community. It is possible that the effects
of mass education are now being felt more strongly among Muslims across the
world, after the initial phase of a decade ago (Eickelman and Piscatori 1996: 39).
At this point it may be useful to ponder again the kinds of effects produced
by schooling. As we saw in the preceding chapters, school operates as an ideal-
ized locus of, and for, the nation (and the region) that seeks to transubstantiate a
208  From Becoming to Being Muslim

heterogeneity of class, caste, and so on into a homogeneity of patriotic devotion.

Yet at the same time that the space of school generates normative performances,
it crystallizes identifications and polarizations. Moreover, such a production
of crystallized identifications must be understood in dialectical relation to a
wide array of cultural and ideological structures of feeling and practices extant
within society at large. Schools, as should by now have become clear, are not
state machineries crushing poor passive subjects to reassemble and manufac-
ture them into dutiful citizens at will. Rather, they are spaces shaped by the
social and cultural agency of various actors, ranging from teachers, parents,
and pupils, to educational officials, inspectors, and so on. Here, then, school-
ing effects partly stem from negotiated reconstructions of language and history
mediating senses of belonging. These effects have a rather paradoxical potential.
On the one hand, they can induce further polarization and isolation of a com-
munity.24 On the other hand, these effects also bear transformative potential for
the elaboration of ideal citizens. Ideal, yet historically impossible. This requires
elaboration.
Arguably, there exists a parallel between the situation of Urdu-educated
Muslims in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Maharashtra and that of Jews
in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany and France. In his book about
French and German citizenship and residence issues, Droit de cité, Étienne
­Balibar elaborated on the historical conditions of nineteenth-century Germany
and France wherein assimilated Jews were alien to regional belonging and root-
ing (étrangers à l’appartenance régionale, à l’enracinement [1998: 51–52]). Ironi-
cally, this very fact made Jews national citizens par excellence. Because they
were devoid of any regionalist and particularistic anchoring, Balibar argues,
Jews were the archetypal figure of the citizen of a new modern nation-state in
which attachments of all kinds were to be transcended in favor of that to the
nation. This point is, of course, debatable. It can be argued, following Michel
Callon, Pierre Lascoumes, and Yannick Barthe (2001) and against idealized
conceptions of citizenship à la Arendt, Habermas, or Rawls, that such a citizen
is precisely impossible. Citizenship needs to be anchored in specificities, local,
ethnic, religious, or other. But it may also be argued that Jews in Germany
were anchored in a kind of urban cosmopolitanism that furthered a sense of
common belonging to a “Jewish community,” however the latter was defined.25
Therein lies the parallel with the case of Urdu-speaking Muslims in Maha-
rashtra today. They may be Indian citizens par excellence, inasmuch as they
are grounded in a wider regional history that transcends a more immediately
 From Becoming to Being Muslim 209

l­ocalized sense of regional and national belonging. Furthermore, they occupy a

potentially privileged linguistic position in view of their proximity with Hindi
(only the script differs), often improperly dubbed “the national language.” Yet
Muslims’ status has increasingly become one of second-class citizens, turning
this tremendous potential into impossible citizenship. Here, the call of history
beckons to us. Perhaps more than ever before, civil vigilance has become cru-
cial. The genocidal history of twentieth-century Europe and the xenophobic
policies toward Jews that progressively stripped them of their full status as
citizens even before the outbreak of World War II and the Holocaust resonate
portentously with the deep-seated antagonism directed against Muslims in
Maharashtra and more generally in India today. Recent events in Gujarat and
institutional attempts elsewhere cannot but alarm us to an ever-unfathomable
potential for human violence. Especially so that the concomitant development
of an umma-like sense of brotherhood among Urdu Muslims may be fueled by
ongoing international events related to what is increasingly being felt as, more
than a war on terrorism, a war on Muslims.
6 Constructing New Citizens
in Military Schools
Gender, Hybridity, and
Modernity in Maharashtra

Soldiers and the people are one family.

Mao Tse-tung, The Little Red Book

Genders can be neither true nor false but are only produced as the truth
effects of a discourse of primary and stable identity.
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble

As you are heading toward the industrial town, gigantic chimneys seem to spring
up from the earth, black clouds billowing around them. These are not made
of alloy residue belching out of metallurgic furnaces but of smoke generated
by sugarcane factories (sakhar karkhana). In this part of India, known as the
“sugar belt area,” the recent industrial, economic, and agricultural history is
intricately linked to sugarcane production. You are now approaching the town
precincts. All around you, the air is charged with wreaths of light soot impreg-
nating your clothes. Large, wide, rectilinear, tree-lined avenues with flower beds
are filled with endless regular alignments of square concrete buildings. Neat
and clean streets methodically branch off these avenues. Everywhere, well-kept
pavements meet the eye; even the traffic lights seem to be working and heeded
by careful drivers, irrespective of their diverse vehicles: cars, scooters, bicycles,
bullock carts, coaches, buses, as well as tractors, vans, and trucks. This is the
city of order, neatness, and progress, the southernmost city of a Nehruvian
dream made reality in Maharashtra. Welcome to Pratinagar, the model indus-
trial town of Kolhapur district, Tashil Panhala. Situated twenty kilometers from
Kolhapur, Pratinagar is the brainchild of Tattyasaheb Kore, a Maratha by caste.
In 1957, Tattya Kore anchored a rural cooperative movement in what was then a
land devoted to market gardening. Today, the founder’s imposing statue stands
at the main crossroads leading to the supermarket, almost overshadowing that
of the icon of hegemonic Maharashtrian identity, Shivaji Maharaj.
According to the local narrative, Tattya Kore was hardly educated (“not even
matriculate”) but a very experienced man deft at seizing political and ­economic
215
 Conclusion

Desire arising through pain or pleasure, hatred or love,

is greater in proportion as the emotion is greater.
Spinoza, Ethics

It has been the argument of this book that the educational processes occurring
right from the beginning of socialization and as early as kindergarten and
primary school are crucial to the production of local, regional, and national
attachments. Parents, teachers, and educational officials play an influential
part in these processes, as they negotiate and shape state injunctions, relat-
ing them to ongoing political events, both within and outside the country.
All these negotiated productions may crucially contribute to the social and
political construction of persons and citizens, feeding on structures of feeling
extant within society. Conversely, the (re)production of these structures of
feeling is also relayed and drawn upon, even crucially informed and reshaped
by state institutions. Schooling plays a particular role in this dispensation,
especially given the recent access to public instruction for a majority of peo-
ple in Maharashtra. When earlier generations of Maharashtrians did have
but a modicum of education at best, schooling played only a marginal role
in the everyday forging of symbolic bonds and imaginings of identity—eth-
nic, religious, or linguistic. By contrast, in the past twenty years of gener-
alized literacy, the site of school has come to acquire greater visibility and
prominence in ordinary people’s lives, operating as another site of identity
crystallization.
In contrast to occasional eruptions of violence heretofore the subject of
most studies of nationalism, documenting these sites of early bonding has
shed light both on the tenuous distinction between religious nationalism,

256
 Conclusion 257

secularism, and patriotism (Chapter 1), and on the constitution of senses of

belonging in the everyday banality of the nation—and of the region—(Chap-
ters 2–5). It is noteworthy that although gender and kinship are clearly embed-
ded within the production of emotions and senses of belonging, inasmuch as
most of the devotional daily production revolves around the gendered figures
of mothers and sons as emblematic of the nurturing nation, which in turn
needs the protection of the nurtured (Chapter 3), some kinds of emotions
are nevertheless similarly cultivated among both boys and girls. The bellicose
emotion attached to the defense of the soil, especially in this part of western
India, has particularly dominated the writing, reshaping, and transmitting
of regional history over almost two centuries. More recently (in the last four
decades), this patriotic affect has been relayed, reproduced, and encouraged
by the modern state institution of schooling (Chapters 4 and 5). Yet, argu-
ably, such institutionalized bellicosity is not specific to India. Rather, it has
become characteristic of the “late modernity” of nation-states (Epilogue).
In this respect, it stands in stark and unexpected contrast with the example
of the military school of Pratinagar recently started at the time of research,
where a sense of reconciled peaceful and genderless patriotism seemed per-
vasive (Chapter 6). Whether this paradox is the quintessence of post- or late
modernity is obviously open to question. What will become of the military
school remains to be seen.
To return to the senses of belonging nurtured in ordinary Marathi schools,
the fact that they are incorporated as sensory and linguistic repertoires (Chap-
ter 2) drawing upon the intimacy of home and family (Chapter 3) also makes
them potentially powerful resources to be activated in times of heightened
conflict. Although schooling draws upon existing structures of feeling and
material constitutive of ordinary social actors’ repertoires of public culture
and popular knowledge, it also operates a crystallization of these repertoires
while reshaping them in tune with dominant narratives and more immediate
concerns about contemporary events occurring within wider society. Thus,
while concomitantly reappropriated by social actors, these crystallized bodies
of knowledge harnessed in the production of regional and national allegiance
become naturalized, authentic, and legitimate. This has implications for the
ways in which notions of modernity, sensory perceptions, and nationalism
intersect.
258  Conclusion

Nationalism, Modernity, and Sensory

Perceptions: Producing Visceral Citizens
C’est ça la modernité. C’est: aujourd’hui. On commence. Tout ce qui a été fait
avant n’est pas important. . . . À chaque fois, c’est toujours: nous commençons une
nouvelle époque. Et dire que nous commençons, c’est dire un rapport au temps qui
est celui d’une promesse de futur.
Jean-François Lyotard, Interview, 1997

It is not the purpose here to conduct a full reflection on the concept and experi-
ence of “modernity.”1 It is a well-known fact among historians that modernity
is a largely fuzzy concept, difficult to situate both in its theoretical and tem-
poral dimensions. Even scholars laying greater emphasis on the role of state
formation in the advent of a so-called modern period continue to significantly
disagree upon its dating: when, let alone where, does the state begin is still a
moot point. The situation appears somewhat easier for those scholars privileg-
ing other factors of modernity, such as the decline of religion and the rise of
secularism. Regardless of this definitional predicament, however, it is now an
accepted fact that the concept of “modernity” is not the sole prerogative of the
West. Recent work has shown that in many other societies and cultures, and at
other points in time than those European ones arbitrarily universalized, there
have been major moments of rupture that ushered in new modes—whether
social, artistic, literary, or political—of operating, producing, understanding,
and categorizing knowledge (Eisenstadt 2000).2
These new modes have often been linked to transformations occurring in
sensory apparatuses, dispositions, and environments. Although these sensory
apparatuses are often more implicitly assumed than explicitly discussed, they
have nevertheless had considerable purchase on current epistemologies—an-
thropological ones in particular—with implications for the validity and defini-
tion of a notion of “Indian modernity.” Let me explain. A sensorium is varyingly
defined according to time, space, and culture. What sense (or senses) becomes
predominant and privileged over others is a matter of cultural, social, histori-
cal, and of course, political circumstances. With respect to the Euro-American
and South Asian contexts, the notion of sight seems of particular relevance.
As discussed earlier (Introduction), sight has acquired predominance in
many appraisals of modernity. In fact, sight—and the change in perspective it
accompanied—has been envisaged as the one sense that came to overshadow
all others with the advent of modernity in Europe (Latour 1986). In the colonial
context, however, this point has only been made in ways more implicit than not.
 Conclusion 259

Walter Ong (1991), for instance, referred to the variegated ways in which sen-
sory perceptions are privileged from one culture to another. Earlier, Paul Stoller
(1989, 1997) had developed a critique of Western epistemology by attacking its
major premise of visual and spatial cognition over any other, the auditory one
in particular. Similarly, Ian Ritchie in his work on African sensorium (2000)
suggestively argued that European cultures gradually came to privilege sight
over any other sense in the nineteenth century, both “at home” and “overseas.”
This colonial sensory redeployment had bearing on the politics of British
representation to the “natives” in which displays of imperial grandeur primarily
involved the sense of sight—both in Africa and in India.3 Such an emphasis on
sight also had repercussions on colonial as well as anthropological epistemes.
Binary sets of categories, though the object of much discussion and dispute,
largely informed modes of understanding “otherness,” from what resembled
most closely Euro-American societies to what stood furthest away. The point
has repeatedly been made that what was being constructed by means of such
dichotomous typologies was a ranking of “other” societies according to their
degree of commonality with European societies. Of particular interest here is
the association of the notion of “societies without writing” with a Weberian no-
tion of stateless, more particularistic, irrational, and emotional political mode
of governance. Its logical extension is that societies tending toward a more
“oral/aural” and “auditory” mode have been implicitly deemed more irrational
and emotional, and hence politically more unstable. Even today, the analysis
of “ethnic conflict” and political violence (especially in African societies) is
often tainted with such an assumption (see Taylor 2002 for a counter position).
Yet sight does not exhaust the constitution and lived experience of a “modern”
sensorium. Following Paul Stoller’s invitations (1989, 1997), an anthropological
perspective needs to acknowledge the importance and meaningfulness of other
senses in a given modern social, cultural, and political context.
The question is obviously complicated in the present case, given the impor-
tance of the notion of sight prevalent in Indian society today. Derived from the
Sanskrit root drsh, “to see,” the term darshan is often translated as either “sight”
(in the sense of an instance of seeing something or somebody) or the act of
“seeing.” The term may also refer to a “vision,” “apparition,” or even a “glimpse.”
One may ask whether the emphasis placed upon the term in Indian/Hindu
culture today—both by popular common sense and by academics—might be a
negotiated outcome of the colonial encounter standing as the closest equivalent
to the sensory aspect central to a European conception of modernity (Pinney
260 Conclusion

2003). Vindicating such a hypothesis is the comparative lack of understanding

and tolerance that the British demonstrated in their fight against what they
considered an assault on other senses, especially the auditory one (as suggested
by Michael Roberts [1990] in his work on noise as a cultural struggle in Sri
Lanka in the 1880s–1930s). Even the fact that one of the most common usages
of darshan is a religious one today may fit with such a hypothesis. The term
often refers to “visions of the divine,” of a god, a holy person, or even an arti-
fact (Eck 1998). One can have darshan of a deity in a temple or experience an
inward awareness. Whether in popular Indian postindependence or Indianist
anthropological conventional wisdom, the term’s religious connotation is most
salient. Given the Orientalist vicissitudes, misunderstandings, and deceptive
reappropriations that other concepts (such as caste, see Dirks 2001) and reli-
gious matters have known in India, however, one may rightly wonder whether
the contemporary religious emphasis is a relatively recent phenomenon stimu-
lated by the colonial encounter. In other words, while simultaneously erecting
darshan as the predominating sensory perception in the modern Indian recon-
figuration of the senses—similar to a Euro-American conception—a spiritual
and religious dimension may have been stressed in accordance with an Orien-
talist mode of understanding “the East,” in fine providing a sensory illustration
of the “but not quite” of Bhabhaian mimicry.
Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that the production of emotions and
sensorium occurs jointly and is not specific to particular cognitive structures.
Neither does a written/oral distinction nor a preliteral/literal one successfully
capture the pervasiveness and universality of the processes taking place right
from infancy. Finally, as has been demonstrated, the role of the state, especially
through schooling, is crucial in the production and reshaping of emotions and
sensorium. Indeed, national projects of self-formation largely rely upon the
constitution of a “national primary sensorium” and, as in the present case of
the state of Maharashtra, that of a regional one. Characterizing the regional
state of Maharashtra today is its preemptive take on the population’s sensory
world, a take putting at its service the sensorium developed from a recomposed
musical tradition fusing devotional abhangas, prayers, yoga, and physical edu-
cation drills as well as martial rhythms. Such a recomposed tradition predi-
cated upon existing sensory structures of feeling conversely both emblematizes
and under­girds the regional state. It also articulates with the sensory transfor-
mations brought about by new technologies and industrialization in various
forms, from the sounds and fumes of trucks and tractors; to the music belch-
 Conclusion 261

ing out from loudspeakers outside temples, houses, theaters, and polling sta-
tions; to the visual redeployments of local patriotism and nationalism (flagged
at the time of the war against Pakistan in Kargil). It is the recomposition of
this sensorium that the state attempts to capture and that makes it so modern.
Thus, through songs glorifying the Marathas, the independence struggle from
the British, as well as other nationalist and postcolonial songs, the notion and
lived experience of love for the mother-nation and its people is (re)produced at
school; not just on the occasion of annual gatherings and school competitions
effecting an acute conflation and telescoping of different historical moments
(redefined in the process as foundational ones) but also in the daily conflation
of different layers of sensory stimulations in the production of regional, na-
tional, and familial allegiance in ordinary school life.
The notion of sensorium elaborated here has further heuristic potential for
understanding the political and ethical implications borne by the emotional
and linguistic structures of feeling (re)produced in everyday life and the natu-
ralization of senses of belonging effected in the process. Indeed, working with
the notion helps bring to light the illusory character of the “public/private”
dichotomy and the untenability of a distinction between the construction of
social persons and that of interiorized selves.4 Political modernity is often char-
acterized by a sharp contrast between a public, democratic space and another,
private one, the true realm of the authentic self. Contrary to such a perspec-
tive, the notion of sensorium (as well as that of embodiment) helps us think
precisely through the all-pervasive nature of all political and socialization pro-
cesses. As a consequence, the risk of fascism threatening most citizenries today,
against which Étienne Balibar cautioned in his writings about the vicissitudes
of identity as a gaze (identité comme regard)—a gaze through which the other
becomes the demonized impossible coresident (1998: 114–20)—is “only” a mat-
ter of amplitude rather than kind. Arguably, the nature of political democracy
today is such that the three distinct levels at which identification is supposed to
take place, namely, the family; the professional, confessional, and other insti-
tutions in which we might include schools; and the “hegemonic” community,
or nation, are not flattened out in the case of fascism only. Rather, the three
levels tend to coalesce in most projects of political modernity, whether frankly
fascistic or not. In Maharashtra, as we saw, school, belonging to the second
level of social organization, has become a very special locus both mediating and
conflating the spaces of family and nation (that is, of the first and third levels).
Rather than demonstrating that the state of Maharashtra is verging on fascism,
262  Conclusion

this suggests the ideological perils inherent in any institutional, and especially
educational, modern nation-state project today. Furthermore, if the mark of
“ultimate modernity” lies in the regional state’s pursuit of a distinctive postco-
lonial project that seeks to both capture and harness citizens’ sensorium into
the making of Indian (Hindu) nationals, the increasingly marked Hinduness of
such a project requires elaboration.

Toward a Hinduization of Structures of Feeling?

The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions—racial
pride, leader worship, religious belief, love of war—which liberal intellectuals
mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed
so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action.
George Orwell, “Wells, Hitler and the World State”

When in 1961 Raymond Williams expanded on his notion of “structures of feel-

ing” (originally proposed in Culture and Society [1958]), he was attempting to
capture the complexity of accounting for and recounting the specificity of social
and cultural processes occurring within given temporal and spatial locations,
what the French call l’air du temps of a particular period. In The Long Revolu-
tion (1961), Williams carried further his perceptive discussion of the difficulties
of documenting what is in its very essence undefinable: a culture snapshot at
a suspended moment in time. Drawing on Williams’s insights I now want to
explore further the apparent Hinduization of “structures of feeling” in western
India, especially in the regional state of Maharashtra.
Elsewhere (Benei, 2004) I touched on the shift in sensibilities that apparently
occurred in relation to Maharashtrian sons-of-the-soil patriotism over the past
decades. Using the example of filmmaker Bhalji Pendharkar’s historical cin-
ema of the emblematic figure of Shivaji (Chapter 4), I showed in particular the
differential ways in which generations related emotionally to this cinema. The
point I want to make here is a larger one. It is that whatever shifts in sensibilities
have been occurring, they have been more gradual and subtle, taking place over
a longer period of time than is usually allowed for in contemporary analyses of
Hindutva movements. The (Hindu) nationalist atmosphere dominating public
culture in most parts of India, and certainly in western ­Maharashtra today, may
partly owe to the power of a recently more vocal nationalist discourse, or even
to the weakness of a counter-discourse in the face of increasing external pres-
sures to “globalize” and the attendant anxieties generated by such pressures.
Yet, as we are reminded by Chetan Bhatt (2001: 209), the relatively recent lin-
 Conclusion 263

eage of the Hindutva movement does not preclude the tremendous purchase
that both “Hindu” and Hindu nationalist political and ideological formations
have had since the nineteenth century.
The extent of Hinduization of the curriculum and the bearing thereof upon
the production of Maharashtrian/Indian citizens is difficult to evaluate for two
reasons. First, a wide consensus seems prevalent in Maharashtra today with
respect to a Hindu cultural and social environment. Even the most secular-
minded teachers—whether neo-Buddhist, Muslim, Maratha, or Brahmin—did
not clearly object to some of these distinctly Hindu songs and prayers being
sung in the space of school. Rather, they envisaged them as part of the domi-
nant culture, “Indian culture” (Bhartiya sanskruti). More “simply,” just as in
a predominantly Christian nation-state the majority culture is informed by
Christian ethics, rituals, and rhetoric—regardless of all multiculturalist asser-
tions, policies, or even lip service conveniently paid to these conceptions of
citizenship—in India, the dominant cultural idiom is that of Hinduism, re-
gardless of the definitional issues involved. In this respect, it is significant that
even the increasing performance of the alternative song “Vande Mataram” at
the end of the school day was rarely commented upon by social actors in Kol-
hapur. Although the song had been a staple of school gatherings since 1964
and a number of teachers and parents in Kolhapur claimed to have sung it
regularly as schoolchildren, it only recently began to replace the long popular
regional “Dnyaneshwari” in Marathi schools (Chapter 1). By the end of 1999,
it had spread widely throughout the schooling network and was performed in
many other (private as well as corporation) schools, either during collective as-
semblies or separately in each classroom. By the same token, some songs (such
as “Guru Brahma Guru Vishnu”) were sung in Kolhapur for the past fifteen
to twenty years only in some Marathi schools (the most Hindu-sympathetic)
but more recently in others. This definitely marked Hinduization is very likely
a product of recent schooling and especially refresher courses systematically
organized for primary schoolteachers throughout Maharashtra in the mid- to
late 1990s under the BJP–Shiv Sena coalition government.
Second, and nevertheless, the changes that occurred under the BJP–Shiv
Sena coalition government were not the exclusively distinctive mark of Hindu
right-wing ideology. Rather, they were in keeping with an already tense ideo-
logical atmosphere in this part of Maharashtra, including within educational
circles. That “SMART PT” training sessions were organized in each and every
state district for several years for all primary education teachers and often run
264  Conclusion

by overzealous officers—at times clearly former RSS recruits—is only part of

the story. The other part is that wider ideological transformations occurring in
the region were reflected in an increasingly Hinduized curriculum that was not
entirely under Hindu right-wing government control. Despite the autonomy of
the textbook bureau in charge of preparing primary school manuals in the state
of Maharashtra, the new syllabus was markedly more Hindu in content (see
Chapter 1, note 31 on textbook preparation). Although not blatantly distorting
history as in the averred case of secondary manuals prepared at the national
level of the NCERT at that time, the primary curriculum in the regional state
more subtly elided positive Muslim and non-mainstream Hindu presence from
public view (Chapter 5).5
Where these recent transformations were potentially harmful was, of course,
in the sense of reassurance they provided for some more Hindu-inclined teach-
ers to celebrate an Indian heritage as distinctly and exclusively Hindu, thus
playing into Hindu right-wing ideology and denying the status of fully fledged
members of the national community to other non-Hindus. This suggests that
the dangers of limited negotiation inherent in the kinds of identities thus pro-
duced are similar in fascistic regimes and in most democratic ones today. A
note of hope should, however, be sounded on two counts. First, it is important
to bear in mind that teachers were not the passive recipients of a state-imposed
project but active social agents. Indeed, they exercised much more autonomy
than might have been expected, even in the performance of the moral education
sessions prescribed by the new program.6 Second, social actors’ understand-
ings and representations are always negotiated products of processes occurring
within a range of locales, from home and domestic space to school and other
“public” spaces, and any negotiation of these processes is always fragmentary:
they do not form part of any coherent whole of a social unit of analysis, be it
that of the state, the so-called public sphere, or elsewhere. Granted, they may
be articulated at various levels encompassing structures of the locality, the re-
gion, and the nation-state, as well as transnational flows and formations. Yet
their apparent encompassing and neat Russian-doll articulation is but a vue de
l’esprit, only just a way of seeing, what is more, from above. Regardless of what
goes on at the pyramidal level of the state, to the social actor on the ground, na-
tion-state or even regional or local realities do not necessarily form part of a co-
herent experience. What most social actors do experience and negotiate is the
ever incompleteness of such projects of self-formation—local and regional as
much as national—by nature always fragmentary and labile while paradoxically
 Conclusion 265

grounded in a historical, cultural, and phenomenological web of structures of

feeling. By the same token, social actors’ senses of belonging are of a fragmentary
and protean nature even in their dialogical construction with the nation-state’s
institutions, the mass media, and other forms of public culture. Incorporation
of senses of belonging is neither an exhaustive nor a final process even though
it may have long-standing consequences in projects of self-­formation. Various
moments of incorporation may be called upon in an infinity of situations and
circumstances, and it is also this changing and fleeting character that makes
any project of nationalism or self-formation ever so unpredictable in its de-
velopments on the ground. Because of this constant tension and incomplete-
ness, because of the “measure of openness onto heterogeneous realities of every
ideological structure, however absolutist” (Massumi 2002: 263), or more simply
what Thomas Hansen has called “the impossibility of identities” (1996: 60–65),
even the most “efficient” state schooling cannot preclude the eruption of the
unpredictable in daily routine, let alone in extraordinary circumstances. By the
same token, it is also this fragmentary and unpredictable dimension that makes
it impossible to paint a picture of 99 percent of Hindu Indians as Hindutva sym-
pathetic, even in averred cases of sharing values with those commonly prof-
fered by right-wing exclusivist organizations. The latter’s proponents, as is well
known, have precisely succeeded in capturing and appropriating for themselves
the semiotics of Hinduism by transposing them onto a visible “public” sphere.
In the end, even carefully crafted state projects attempting to capture citizens’
sensory and phenomenological experiences of lived social, cultural, and politi-
cal realities cannot tame the unpredictable, contingent nature of social action.
 Epilogue

But if nationalism with a human face is not realized, we might

once more abandon the world to oppression and war.
George Mosse, Masses and Man

Because of the necessitiesof narrative exposition, the comparative perspective

advocated at the beginning of this book has largely remained in the back-
ground. It is time to finally foreground this dimension and its heuristic po-
tential for understanding further the formation of popular and political affects
relayed by educational state projects. To this end, I concentrate on how a war
culture has become increasingly integral to our more recent understanding of
“late modernity.”

War Culture and Nationalist Ideologies

In some ways, I have attempted in this book to document the everyday pro-
duction of violence: violence of the pedagogical process, of the formation of
exclusivist sentiments, and more generally of any socialization process. As
important, this account has revealed how the production of violence within
cultural parameters may also naturalize and legitimize its extraordinary erup-
tion in times of war or communal riots. Here I want to conjure the figure of a
German-born historian who from the 1960s onward devoted all his intellectual
energies toward studying the rise of fascism: George L. Mosse. Until Mosse’s pi-
oneering work, right-wing nationalism in Europe had been studied as an intel-
lectual movement with major thinkers such as Hegel, Gobineau, and Nietzsche
enrolled as its potential precursors. Mosse envisaged this approach as funda-
mentally flawed: fascism had less to do with high theories and philosophies, and
more with popular culture, from racist graffiti to pietist legacy to grand archi-
tectural realizations. In many unsuspected ways, fascism was a cultural project
with roots in Christian religious movements and an attendant quest for proper,
266
 Epilogue 267

normalized sexual behavior predicated on a rigorous gender-role division. How-

ever, rather than leading to a civilizing process à la Elias where senses of bodily
comportment and civility are seen as the product of courtly and bourgeois ideas
of dignity and distinction, and cruelty and violence a historical accident in the
civilizing process, Mosse argued that fascism had given rise to a “brutalization
of the masses” whereby the experience and brutality of war became legitimized
and banalized in order to be rendered livable. Mosse’s insights have opened up
wide intellectual horizons, calling for more work on the cultural anchorage of
nationalist movements in Europe and elsewhere. In particular, reflection has
been stimulated on systems of popular representations—on the battlefields and
at the rear—in the two so-called world wars. The Great War (WWI) has since
received a fair amount of academic attention, renewing perspectives heretofore
sunk into the murky sands of uninspiring military history. Jay Winter in the
United States, Jean-Jacques Becker in France, and many others after them have
been inspired by the notion of “war culture.” Although specifically concerned
with Europe, these works have emphasized how a war culture as the “field of
all the representations of the war entertained by its contemporaries” (Audoin-
Rouzeau and Becker 2002a: 252) was crucial in the banalization and inscription
of the tropes of war and violence at the heart of daily life. It is obviously not my
intention here to trivialize the specifics of either the European or the Indian ex-
periences of violence and war in the past century. The two world wars, the 1947
violence of the Partition, and the subsequent wars of 1962 (with China), 1965
(with Pakistan), and 1971 (in support of the creation of Bangladesh) obviously
possess very different histories and bearing upon those who have had a direct
experience of them, as well as on the social and collective memories they have
fed and shaped. The point of such an excursion into the tribulations of nation
building and war in Europe is to highlight potentially fruitful similarities in
both contexts. In a curious round of history, the end of the twentieth century
is somehow resonant with its beginning, as nations are once again perceived as
ethnic, even biological entities (Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker 2002a: 251). Even
if the war culture described throughout this book may be of a less brutal kind
than that extant in the European interwar period of 1919–39, the one that be-
came exacerbated in the late 1990s in the immediate aftermath of the Kargil war
is of the same kind, if only “latent.” This war culture entails gendered, religious,
and almost biological notions of the “nation under attack” and in need of pro-
tection, as well as glorification of heroes drawing upon both recent histories and
earlier regional structures of feeling.
268  Epilogue

The parallel realities referred to by notions of war culture in Europe and

India are important for at least three reasons. First, in addition to confirming
Mosse’s thesis of mass brutalization, they support the argument propounded
by Zygmunt Bauman of rational violence, bureaucracy, and scientificity being
at the heart of political projects characteristic of late modernity, that is, of the
late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Bauman (2000) argued that far
from being a historical accident and a throwback to a “premodern” state of
“savagery” and “barbarism,” genocidal programs such as the Holocaust were
very much products of modernity. Through the rise of the nation-state char-
acteristic of Western modernity, power and means of force became centralized
under state control. In this socially engineered quest for equality and attempted
production of homogeneous citizens, race and ethnicity became new ways of
differentiating human beings. The new hierarchy of “human” and “not fully
human” was further implemented by means of impersonal bureaucracies,
thus substituting technical proficiency for moral responsibility. Bauman uses
the metaphor of the gardener weeding out undesirable plants to illustrate the
­social-­engineering goal of genocide, that is, the creation of a “better and dif-
ferent world” by rationalized means, in which order and homogeneity reign
supreme. Thus, the Eliasian thesis of an overall nonviolent modern civilization
ultimately appears unfounded, an “illusion”: it is an “integral part of its self-
apology and self-­apotheosis, in short, its legitimising myth.” Such legitimizing
myth is also pervasive in Maharashtrian schooling today. This is, of course,
not to say that primary schooling in the state of Maharashtra has deliberately
been reformed toward a genocidal end. Maharashtra is not Gujarat, and one
should not confuse one with the other: the state-orchestrated anti-Muslim po-
groms and rioting that have taken place in the state laboratory of Hindutva
violence since 2002 have not yet occurred on a comparable scale in Maharash-
tra. Nor is the state’s ideology openly Hindu dominated any longer. Yet the
many subtle and nuanced Hindu-inflected transformations that characterize
the “new” curriculum—so far left unchanged under the current non-Hindutva
government—suggest wider and deeper changes occurring within society at
large, whereby the space left for those citizens not conforming to the dominant
ethnic, religious (and in the regional state of Maharashtra, linguistic) idiom of
citizenship are increasingly considered as “not belonging.”
Second, these parallel experiences and notions of war culture point to the
fact that legitimacy of the nation as the product of a popular will is most force-
fully achieved through war. As Mosse (1990) so suggestively demonstrated in
 Epilogue 269

the case of Europe, the “myth of war” constructed in between the two world
wars played a powerful role in promoting the notion of war’s sacredness and
sanctity in a Christian context where “fallen soldiers” were no longer merce-
naries but “sons of the national soil.”1 A similar argument holds with regard to
many modern nation-states—whether dominated by a Christian ideology or
not—where armies consist of national sons of the soil whose deaths in battle
are conceived as sacrifices for the nation’s preservation and regeneration. This
sacredness makes war a potent trope, even in times of peace. Arguably, it is a
sacredness of this sort, although here a Hindu one (however defined), that op-
erated in the post-Kargil events with renewed vigor, daily cultivated in schools
and reenacted through performative displays of male virility and iterations of
allegiance to the divine motherland.
Third, however, these parallel histories also shed new light on discussions
of violence and cultural specificity. Anthropologists (recent examples include
Daniel 1996; Hinton 2002; Scheper-Hughes 2002; Taylor 2002) have disproved
the oft-encountered assumption of a correlation between violence and culture,
and these cases also forcefully bring home that if the modalities of violence are
culturally variable, its production itself is not the prerogative of any given cul-
ture. This is important on two counts: that of schooling’s effects and that of the
conditions of possibility for the eruption of violence in modern nation-states.
I want to reiterate once more: schooling alone does not produce jingoism, so
the supposedly “logical inference” from what I have presented in this book that
unschooled people would be less jingoistic or less predisposed to violence is
an unfounded one (as Pandey’s work published in 1990 amply suggests). One
reason is that what takes place in the space of school may be conducive to both
integration, tolerance, and other much-needed virtues in times of world jingo-
ism, and unprecedented crystallization and polarization of the same “impos-
sible identities” already referenced. These latter processes are not necessarily
part of any overt or even conscious agenda but more often than not pertain
to the “unintended consequences” of institutionalized schooling (­Willis 1977)
as both a cultural and social and economic process. A second reason is that
as in the friend/enemy distinction even within the nation as theorized by Carl
Schmitt, what matters is the possibility of conflict:2 as emphasized by Balakrish-
nan (2000), this potentiality of violent action is always enough for the distinc-
tion to be actuated with real consequences.
Furthermore, Maharashtrian—and Indian—modernity is more than a
product of the state’s attempts, whether at capturing and utilizing its citizens’
270 Epilogue

s­ ensoriums, or at producing bellicose identities. Social actors, whether teach-

ers, parents, or children, are also complicit in these projects, as evidenced by
the unabated war culture that remained in Maharashtra long after celebration of
war veterans had dwindled and become almost nonexistent in 2003. As we saw
throughout this book, very little of the war culture daily produced in its most
banalized forms was actually commissioned by the state.
What space is left for those citizens who do not recognize the dominant
cultural definition of a nation is a poignant and ever so disturbing question.
That Muslims, to name the most targeted and visible of India’s non-Hindu mi-
norities, should regularly be called upon to demonstrate their allegiance to the
nation is proof enough of the potent and deleterious character of modern po-
litical projects of sensory and embodied nationalism. To those citizens whose
historical and cultural contribution to the nation has been erased from public
view and recognition, a paradox seems to apply: in contrast to the deliberate
glossing over of their positive contribution to the formation of the nation, they
are given visibility as members of an undesirable community whose distinct
features are further strengthened in the process. As a consequence, it has be-
come extremely difficult for a Muslim not to be identified and marked as “a
Muslim” in India today, even when he or she is not speaking in that name or
from that location. Conversely, it has become impossible to speak openly about
Islamic faith or claim any identity other than that of a secular Muslim. By the
same token, the secularist view of any markedly Hindu action is de facto a
condemnatory one: a teacher conducting daily puja in her classroom at the
beginning of the school day (Chapter 3) cannot be but a staunch defender of
Hindutva. Thus, the slightest display of Hindu cultural features in public rituals
and performances is interpreted as the ultimate proof of the demonic stamp of
Hindu right-wing ideology.
What bearing the present political developments have on children-citizens
of the twenty-first century as they grow up remains to be seen. Of course, we are
more than the total sum of our national backgrounds. These can hardly exhaust
the fabulous wealth of material of which we as persons are made. Yet to a large
extent, the answer to this question will depend on how children incorporate,
make meaning of, and reconstruct existing structures of feeling and senses of
belonging, a large part of which will have been reproduced and relayed by vari-
ous institutions. In a word, the answer lies in the disposition of these ­citizens-
in-the-making for schooling passion.
Reference Matter
 Notes

Prologue
1. The formulation is Michael Billig’s (1995), echoing Hannah Arendt’s reflection
on the “banality of evil” (1963).
2. This is so despite the phrase being primarily coined with respect to Western
European and North American nations (Billig 1995).
3. The army is another potent source of national integration and stability, as
Hobsbawm (1992) pointed out.
4. Conceptual clarification is in order here. In using the term “Hindu,” I am aware
of the risk of reproducing the categories right-wing nationalists have so actively been
promoting in their construction of a Hindu nation, calling into its fold many varied
religious traditions. (Ironically, these same categories were reinforced, even if not con-
structed, in colonial times.) If the category “Hindu” cannot operate as an analytical
one, its empirical usages must be must reckoned with, given the wide currency it has
gained among ordinary actors.
5. In a pioneering volume published over thirty years ago, Clifford Geertz (1973)
discussed the future of postcolonial democracies and analyzed the politics of the post-
colonial world in terms of two opposing forces: “primordial attachments” and “civil
sentiments.” Primordial attachments were based on “blood, race, language, locality,
religion, or tradition.” Whereas these were understood as disruptive, civil ties were
considered a virtuous prerequisite to a harmonious society premised on Western
principles of good governance. Thus, irrational imperatives of blood and belonging,
ethnicity, language, and race were opposed to the attractions of a sober and ratio-
nal modernity. Decades later, Geertz maintained that independence was more than
a mere transfer of power from colonial structures to “native” ones; it carried with it
potential for deeper transformations, those usually associated with democracy, civil

273
274  Notes to Introduction

society, public sphere, and citizenship. Essentially it entailed “a metamorphosis of

subjects into citizens” (Geertz 2000: chap. 11). However, as noted by Jonathan Spencer,
the insistence Geertz and others following him lay on primordial ties as both a focus
of analysis and a cause of concern has obscured the factitiousness and contingency of
that other, contrapuntal category of “civil ties” (1997: 7). Furthermore, the protracted
use of the categories of “civil” and “primordial” amounts to endorsing their histori-
cal trajectories as universal(ist) ones—a position against which postmodernists, post-
­Enlightenmentists, postcolonialists, and other “postists” have been rightly fighting for
some time now.
6. See Mabel Berezin (1997, 1999) for an exception documenting political emotions
during the Fascist regime.
7. See also Turner (2000) and Fox (2002) for a similar point.
8. Boyer and Lomnitz (2005) discuss the role of intellectuals in the praxis of na-
tionalism.

Introduction
1. This is reminiscent of women’s involvement and participation in flag proces-
sions during the civil disobedience movement in the 1920s; see Virmani (1999) for an
account of the tribulations of the Indian flag and its nationalization of signs of the
empire.
2. One of them, a young teacher living in an extended family, even chose national-
ist clothes for her kin’s offspring. To her sister-in-law, who returned to the maternal
home for her first child’s delivery in November 2000, she gave an infant’s outfit simi-
lar to those found in Western countries and increasingly common among the urban
middle classes of India. The pattern on this particular outfit consisted of a multitude
of little Indian flags and colored balloons.
3. The voices of dissent were few and far between, mostly concentrated in the Eng-
lish press.
4. Interestingly, however, children’s pictorial production showed a conflation of
both events in their interpretations (“Drawing Gender, Drawing War”).
5. There is obviously a difficulty with the term “region,” and it is not my intention
here to dwell on its wide range of meanings (Cohn 1987b). I am aware of the possible
confusion arising from using this term with respect to Maharashtra, since the hom-
onymous state is itself made of what might be called “regions.” Nevertheless, I use the
term throughout to refer to Maharashtra, especially its western part.
6. Kantorowicz (1981) also discusses a similar process occurring over several cen-
turies in Europe.
7. The names of all schools and people have been changed to ensure confidential-
ity in accordance with current codes of ethical conduct.
8. There is a larger argument to be made regarding a full embrace of “modern”
 Notes to Introduction 275

spheres, such as the state apparatus or the industrial world—despite earlier projects
such as those carried out at Manchester—as worthy objects of study. See Gupta (1995);
Herzfeld (1997); Fuller and Benei (2001); Hansen and Stepputat (2001); and Parry on
the Bhilai steel plant (e.g., 1999). Moreover, the initial neglect of formal education by
anthropologists working in the Indian subcontinent may appear especially surpris-
ing given the long tradition of schooling. Formal education there has deep and steep
roots in indigenous systems of knowledge predating the British encounter, as well as
in colonial negotiated practices, as historians have shown (Basu 1982; Viswanathan
1989; Kumar 1991; Crook 1996).
9. Two educational reports (Kothari, 1964–66, 1986) on which NCERT recom-
mendations were subsequently based were published after independence. The Kothari
report is considered to have marked a significant step in the history of education in
post-1947 India. The 1986 report was mostly a follow-up, with greater emphasis laid
on scientific and vocational education and a concern for universal literacy. A slightly
modified version of this report appeared in 1992.
10. In addition to setting national goals, the same schooling pattern should be
adopted throughout India. Familiarly known as “10+2+3,” it dates from the National
Policy of 1966 and is in force in most states today. Students are expected to enter school
at the age of six, and after ten years of schooling (presently, five in the primary section
and five in the lower secondary), they may take their Secondary School Certificate
(SSC). This can be followed by two years of junior college leading to a Higher Second-
ary Certificate (HSC), after which they may aim for a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of
Science, to be completed in three more years. In most states, there are no provisions
for kindergartens.
11. Attempts made by the coalition to take back power in the state have failed. At
the level of local Maharashtra elections, however, the BJP–Shiv Sena coalition has been
oscillating between regular comebacks and subsequent defeats. After suffering serious
reverses in all the assembly by-elections in 2005 and 2006, the coalition achieved elec-
toral victory in the Brihanmumbai municipal corporation elections in February 2007.
12. The textbook bureau was created in 1967 following the Kothari report of 1966.
Aimed at homogenizing primary and lower-secondary education throughout the
state, this autonomous body is in charge of preparing textbooks for Classes 1 to 8 in
all subjects.
13. Raymond Williams defined the notion of “structure of feeling” in Culture and
Society (1958) and expanded on it in The Long Revolution (1961) thus: “[I]t is as firm and
definite as ‘structure’ suggests, yet it operates in the most delicate and least tangible
parts of our activity. In one sense, this structure of feeling is the culture of a period: it is
the particular living result of all the elements in the general organization” (1984: 64).
14. Csordas (1999) reviews some of the founding texts on the topic.
15. See, for instance, Classen (1993) on the importance of other senses across
276  Notes to Introduction

­ istory and cultures. See also Stoller (1989), and, in a somewhat different vein (1997),
h
his suggestive plea for academic sensuousness. Alain Corbin documented the trans-
formations occurring with regard to the other senses in the course of industrialization
and technological modernization in the “long 19th century” in France. From a study
of the sense of smell and the social construction and imagination of odor (1986), he
later analyzed the shifts in the nineteenth-century experiences of auditory landscape
and sensory culture (1998); see Sima Godfrey (2002) for a nuanced overview of Corbin’s
work. The thrust of such a phenomenological history of sensibility was not specifically
political. Yet the retracing and documenting of affects together with sensory percep-
tions opened a suggestive avenue of inquiry. See Christophe Prochasson’s plea for a
social history of political emotions envisaging symbolic and affective aspects in ad-
dition to a cognitive dimension (2002: 431–32); Craig Calhoun’s (2001) advocating the
articulation of a sociology of emotions (also acknowledging their bodily dimension)
with a politics of identity. See also Sophie Wahnich (2002, 2004) for a perceptive argu-
ment about the shift in aesthetic sensibilities associated with the period of La Terreur
during the French Revolution.
16. As I was putting the finishing touches on this manuscript, Prachi Deshpande’s
beautiful work on historical memory and identity in western India, 1700–1960, was
published (2007). My regret is for it not to have been available earlier; my hope is that
of possible future conversations between our two books.
17. Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron (1977) discuss schooling as repro-
ducing and legitimizing the established social order. See also Paul Willis’s classic eth-
nography of schooling among British working-class children (1977); Tim Scrase’s study
of schooling and social inequalities in India (1993); Aurolyn Luykx’s account of limited
subversion of, and resistance to, the nation-state pedagogy among Aymara normal
school students in Bolivia (1999); Gillian Evans’s work on school failure among white
working-class children in Britain (2006); and Sam Kaplan’s work (2006) on the post-
1980s challenges of the Turkish “pedagogical state.”
18. So does the tuition paid for after-class tutoring to which many well-off urban
middle-class families are increasingly resorting. As for the sociological complexities
of the contemporary relationship of Marathi to English as a medium of instruction, I
have partly addressed them in Chapter 2 and in Benei (2005c).
19. I consider political socialization to be integral to socialization, and concomi-
tant to early processes thereof, rather than subdued or subsequent to them (Percheron
1974). Conversely, I do not envisage political socialization as a determinant of all pro-
cesses of socialization.
20. On ethnography as fiction, see Moore (1994).
21. See Dipesh Chakrabarty (2004) for an insightful discussion.
22. This has become a recurrent trope in what is now a diluvian literature on an-
thropological writing (see the landmark works by Clifford and Marcus 1986; Behar
 Notes to Chapter 1 277

and Gordon 1995). Considering there is hardly any way out of this predicament for
anthropologists, ethnography continues to be the main starting point for base mate-
rial. The point, however, is that even when “the ethnography is rich,” as may be com-
mented, it remains secondary to the researcher’s imagination and skills at conveying
such richness.
23. The town numbered around 800,000 inhabitants in greater Kolhapur at the
time of research, spread over the period 1998–2003.
24. Pune Pandits were notoriously engaged in colonial philological endeavors in
the mid-nineteenth century that were instrumental in legitimizing their own version
of Marathi as the standard (see Chapter 2).
25. The grandparent generation was generally illiterate, whereas the parents’ edu-
cation was highly gendered: male small farmers and laborers had often been schooled
for the first four years of primary education (in the older system), with the wealthiest
among them educated up to the first three years of lower secondary schooling (then
Classes 5 to 7). The women were either illiterate or had received a modicum of instruc-
tion, and more rarely so for the entire period of primary schooling.
26. See Chapters 4 and 5. However, more recent works (Kooiman 2002; Copland
2005) have since shed light on my observations.

Chapter 1
1. See Lelyveld (1995) on musical developments in India, especially the novelty of
the harmonium as a European import and its effect on a new harmonic scaling. ­Bakhle
(2005) provides an account of the nationalization of Indian music into “classical mu-
sic” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as well as the importance of
bhajan devotional forms for Hindu proselytizing by “bhakti nationalists” (6).
2. Anthony Smith (1999) thoroughly discusses the modalities and typologies of
nations through the ages; and Benedict Anderson (1983), their cultural dimensions.
3. For good measure, so, too, did Mussolini much later in his endeavors at secur-
ing a Fascist Italian nation (Berezin 1997, 1999).
4. Mosse (e.g., 1975). Since the early nineteenth century, singing and songs have
played a central part in Germany in developing and spreading national culture and
language among children and, indirectly, within the larger population. Ludwig J.
Arnim’s collection of “folklore,” Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Child’s Wonderhorn),
compiled with Clemens Brentano, defined “German singing stock” (deutsches Liedgut)
and became part of a tradition salvaged for the purpose of creating German national
unity (Thiesse 1999: 63).
5. Abidazeh (2005) discusses Fichte’s famous text and its subsequent reception as
an icon of German nationalism in the twentieth century.
6. These songs refer to the Germanic saga of Siegfried, the plot of which is also
found in the Icelandic Edda and the Scandinavian Völsunga saga. Although the saga
278  Notes to Chapter 1

was written in the early thirteenth century in Austria, Johann J. Bodmer popularized
it anew by publishing parts of it in 1757. Richard Wagner partially drew upon it for his
well-known Tetralogie.
7. Some of these were explicitly anti-Muslim powadas celebrating the heroic deeds
of Shivaji against Afzal Khan and other representatives of Mughal and Deccan sultan-
ate rules. For a discussion and up-to-date bibliography, see Laine (2003).
8. In many ways, it can be said that the Indian conception of mantra is a precursor
to contemporary Western theories of performativity (Austin 1962).
9. See Bloch (1975) and Brenneis and Myers (1984) for a discussion relating to other
parts of the world.
10. It may seem ironic that the song was officially adopted as India’s national an-
them (two days before the republic was declared) in 1950, when the British government
held it in high regard, rather than “Vande Mataram,” the singing of which brought
forth accusations of sedition at the time (see Chapter 3 for discussion on a gradual
reintroduction of the song in ordinary schools in Maharashtra).
11. Brunner (1963 1:xxxv–xxxvi), quoted in Reiniche and L’Hernault (1999: 38).
12. This standard version originates from Pune. The “lesser quality” (roughness)
of Kolhapuri Marathi is even acknowledged by Kolhapuri Brahmins, although some-
what reluctantly. In Kolhapur, teachers of all castes tacitly recognize that Brahmins’
claims to better pronunciation are justified. Although such a privilege may be dis-
puted by other castes—including Marathas and former Untouchables—it is still part
of a wider symbolic and ideological “common knowledge” (Chapter 2).
13. Reiniche and L’Hernault (1999: 36, emphasis added). In some ways, the enu-
meration of regions and landscapes in the national anthem is an illustration of the
discursive resolution of “rival ‘national’ identities in the subcontinent . . . through and
on the mother’s body” (Ramaswamy 1998: 88).
14. By contrast, the songs do not pertain to the repertoire written by Tilak. This
bypassing of the Pune Brahmin’s contribution may be specific to Kolhapur.
15. “The obligation alone, functioning as an injunction, of performing strictly and
in the prescribed order what must be done seems to be governing the daily ritual and
ensures its efficiency” (Reiniche and L’Hernault 1999: 36).
16. On Agamic institutionalized learning, see Fuller (2003).
17. Thanks are due to Radhika Singha for pointing this out to me.
18. Rocking to and fro is not specific to this context; rather, it is a pedagogical
technique commonly used for memorization in India.
19. On the importance of mapping as pedagogical practice, and especially the
body of India, see Ramaswamy (2001, 2004).
20. In many ways, the singing of the nation into existence also amounts to “speak-
ing the national public into existence,” thus creating a space for the discursive imagin-
ing of the nation (Warner 2002).
 Notes to Chapter 1 279

21. This occurred even though Tamil non-Brahman Dravidian nationalism was
anti-Congress and tended to be pro-British, with the understanding that swaraj would
amount to Brahman raj.
22. The notion of bhakti was closely associated with that of language in many
ways. Long before any lexicographic endeavor on the part of English and Scottish
missionaries in the nineteenth century, Maharashtrian saints played an essential role
in forging a flexible, popular language, Marathi, from regional vernacular languages
(prakrits) (Bayly 1998: 23).
23. Jayant Lele (1981) discusses bhakti movements, especially the influential Warkari
sect of Pandharpur in Maharashtra.
24. Ramdas is usually associated with deshbhakti in the times of Shivaji and, con-
sequently, has also been reappropriated by Hindu militant organizations in Maha-
rashtra for purposes of rallying ordinary devotees to the cause of Hindutva.
25. Save for a line later removed concerning the good treatment of animals, the
pledge is the exact version of the text proposed for national “emotional integration” in
1961 (Report of the Committee on Emotional Integration; Chapter 2).
26. Lorenzen (1996) distinguishes between saguni and nirguni bhakti—i.e., “with”
or “without qualities”—and claims its ideological relevance. According to Hawley
(­cited in Prentiss 1999: 21–22), however, the distinction saguni/nirguni seems predi-
cated on the very localized tradition of sectarian anthologies of bhakti poetry in Hindi
that were produced in northern India in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In
Maharashtra, this distinction seems irrelevant.
27. The songs people aged fifty and over were made to sing as schoolchildren in the
1950s were exclusively in Marathi. Although they were familiar with the Hindi songs
as they heard them blasting out from loudspeakers in public spaces or on special occa-
sions, these were not taught as part of a common repertoire in Maharashtra.
28. For an in-depth presentation of dharma, see P. V. Kane’s magnum opus, His-
tory of Dharmashastra (1975).
29. Whether the implications in terms of caste ranking associated with the no-
tion are applicable in the schooling context—especially in the use that some Brahmin
teachers make of the notion—is unclear. Even fiercely socially aware Dalit teachers
shared the notion of dharma in its moral meaning and often discriminated between
that meaning and the constraining hierarchical implication inherent in the Brahminic
interpretation.
30. On the definitional issue of the term “Hinduism,” see von Stietencron (1997).
31. Other illustrations pepper the Marathi textbooks, such as Class 3, lesson 2,
which presents a poem/song titled “Little Brothers and Sisters” (Chotese bahinbhau).
The song replicates the pledge of allegiance while praising the values of amity. It also
emphasizes sharing a happy life between sexes, desh (here, can refer to country as
well as province or region), languages, and costumes (vesh). The figure in the school
280 Notes to Chapter 2

manual shows a boy and a girl holding hands, among one other girl and three other
boys, one of whom is wearing a Muslim cap. The implication—confirmed by some
teachers—is that children at this age cannot understand the concept of jat or dharma
but can work on the premise of dress difference. Needless to say, such a premise and
its pictorial consequence crystallize representations of otherness, allowing for much
more confusion in imaginaries, if only because textbook depictions are often at odds
with regional realities. For instance, contrary to textbook representations, married
Muslim women did not wear a salwar-kameez, whether in Kolhapur or in the rest of
Maharashtra. Rather, they wore saris, as other married women did (Chapters 3 and 4,
and “Moments of Suspension”).
32. Kabir was a fifteenth-century Sufi saint, born to a Hindu widow and raised by
Muslim weavers. His poems are revered by Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims alike.
33. Pers. comm., June 2007.

Chapter 2
1. The word jat can refer to both castes and faiths (Chapter 4).
2. Steven Feld (1990 [1982]) is an early exception who paid attention to the physi-
ological aspects of the work of emotions.
3. See also Lyon and Barbalet (1994); Boellstorff and Lindquist (2004); Good (2004);
Wilce (2004). Craig Calhoun (2001: 47) also advocated the integration of a reflection on
emotions into sociological theory.
4. See Leavitt (1996) for a similar position. What we identify as emotion involves
experiences of feeling as much as of meaning, of body as much as of mind. For this
reason, these experiences transcend the divisions still operating in theoretical thought
(516).
5. Butler (1989: 334–35). See also Csordas (1999) for an excellent review of some of
the founding texts on the topic.
6. Margaret Lyon (1995) has also noticed this in her assessment of the anthropol-
ogy of emotions calling for the end of unproductive dichotomizations.
7. The centrality of the body thus conceptualized has theoretical potential ex-
tending beyond anthropological considerations, as can be seen from recent work on
emotion in the neuroscience and cognitive sciences. These disciplines share interest-
ing parallels in their theoretical trajectories. Despite the precursory works of Charles
Darwin, William James, and Sigmund Freud on different aspects of emotion, neuro-
science in the twentieth century until the 1990s tenaciously overlooked the seriousness
of emotion as a topic of rational enquiry (Damasio 1999: 38). As in the social sciences,
the notion of emotion predominantly stood at the opposite end of reason. Since the
mid- to late 1990s, if anthropology has helped thinking about the ways in which emo-
tion is socially constructed, neuroscience and cognitive science have demonstrated the
inseparability of consciousness and emotion (16). Bridging a gap between psychobiol-
 Notes to Chapter 2 281

ogy and social science, Damasio demonstrated how emotion, feeling, and conscious-
ness share the body as an “essence” whose representations they depend upon for their
execution (284). But the view that thought processing and rational decision making are
necessarily undergirded by emotion does not imply a “bypassing of the subject” in an
attempt to get at “what really goes on.” Not only does it forcefully reinscribe the notion
of emotion at the heart of discourses of rationality but it also leaves room for the work
of culture and society in the building of second-order representations “necessary for
core consciousness, [and] representations of relationship between organism and object
[i.e., emotion]” (280). It is this work of culture and society operating in socialization
processes that interests me in the project of emotional incorporation of the nation.
8. This song was written by the iconic Marathi poet and playwright Kusumagraj
(1912–99). Kusumagraj, alias Vishnu Waman Shirwadkar, was a man of letters, a politi-
cal observer, and actor of his times. He took a lead role in the satyagraha movement
launched by Dr. Ambedkar for allowing Dalits into the Kalaram temple in Nashik in
1932 and was also associated with the linguistic Marathi movement of the 1940s and
1950s. The Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti was instrumental in the creation of the state
of Maharashtra in 1960.
9. The quote is worth citing at length, as it explicitly links bodily practices of
regimentation with other types of institutions (1990: 167): “If most organizations—the
Church, the army, political parties, industrial concerns, etc.—give such a big place
to bodily disciplines, this is to a great extent because obedience is belief and belief is
what the body grants even when the mind says no (one could, on the basis of this logic,
reflect on the notion of discipline)” (1990: 167).
10. This is not the place to recapitulate the history of linguistics and the linguistic
turn of the 1960s on either side of the Atlantic. Suffice it to mention two main theoreti-
cal strands. One, drawing in part on a long-forgotten article by Pierre Bourdieu (1975)
in which he took a stand against the then-prevailing theories of Saussure, Chomsky,
Jakobson, and Bloomfield, has in the last ten to fifteen years in the United States
sought to reinstate language as a social praxis shot through with ideological configu-
rations of power (Heath 1983). The other has played on Peircian notions of iconicity
and indexicality to develop the notion of language meta-pragmatics and examine im-
plicit and explicit commentaries on language and its uses (Michael Silverstein’s work
in particular).
11. Silverstein (2000) suggestively argues that the erasure of linguistic variation
within Anderson’s “imagination” is itself an exemplification of a nationalist ideology,
rather than its analysis.
12. McDonald (1968a, 1968b). This is not to say that ideas and values were not
broadly shared before (Chapter 1). But, as David Washbrook has insisted, “their trans-
mission owed little to uniformities of language” (1991: 180). See Talbot (1995), however,
for a refined reevaluation of this claim in the case of Andhra Pradesh.
282  Notes to Chapter 2

13. In contrast with other parts of India (Tamilnadu for instance; Ramaswamy
1997), Maharashtra presents an interesting case of accommodation of Hindi as na-
tional language, concomitantly with the development of Marathi as a regional and na-
tional idiom. Today, both idioms serve as powerful vectors of nationalist ideology and
knowledge within the regional state. In Kolhapur schools, orders pertaining to the
singing of national songs and recitation of the pledge were given in Hindi, whereas the
performance was for the most part carried out in Marathi. Similarly, children learned
many Hindi national songs, and some teachers taught them compositions of their own
for purposes of national celebration (for instance, for Republic Day, January 26). In
this dispensation, however, Hindi was made largely subservient to, and encompassed
by, Marathi in regional conceptualizations.
14. On the reconfiguration of desh in nineteenth-century India, see Goswami
(2004). The triadic conceptualization was further deployed in the Marathi Samyukta
movement of the 1940s and 1950s; it also bears important similarities to that around
the Hindi language ideology in northern India, encapsulated in the famous motto
“Hindi! Hindu! Hindusthan!” in the second half of the nineteenth century (Kumar
1992). See also Lelyveld (1993) on the fate of Hindustani in the project of a national
language.
15. For instance, it may encompass various situations such as “Let’s go and have
tea together” (Apan chaha piuya) to “We left early this morning” (Amhi sakali lavkar
nighalo) narrated to a third party, to “Our family/country is like this” either to a
third party (Amca kutumb / desh asa ahe) or meant inclusively (Apla kutumb / desh
asa ahe).
16. In fact, the emotional resonance of the notion of “mother tongue” is such that
even scholars writing on the topic (Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson 1989) may find
themselves beholden to it in a rather “unscholarly” fashion.
17. See Daniel (1984) for a Peircian approach of language and substance in the
Tamil case.
18. This understanding of “naturalness” is not confined to ordinary levels of dis-
cussion; it also pervades debates between educationists on the respective benefits of
learning in one’s mother tongue and English (Kumar 1994).
19. Literature on digestion in Hindu thought abounds. See in particular, Mala-
moud (1975); Parry (1985); Wadley and Derr (1990). Furthermore, if such semantic ex-
tension of the notion of digestion is also common in European languages, and here
may have come from an English influence, as argued by linguist Ashok Kelkar (pers.
comm., December 1998), its redeployment in the Marathi language ideology is never-
theless meaningful.
20. Tariq Rahman (2004) appraises the debates over instruction in English and
vernacular in Pakistan. On the colonial period, see also Viswanathan (1989); Kumar
(1991); Crook (1996); Zastoupil and Moir (1999); and Kumar (2000), among others. On
 Notes to Chapter 3 283

the issue of authenticity and language politics in contemporary India, see Rashmi
Sadana (2007).
21. The verb watne is not a mere overlay but crucially involved in emotional expe-
rience itself. In everyday speech, it is used in reference both to emotions and to bodily
sensations. The same phenomenon obtains in many other languages, including Eng-
lish (Leavitt 1996: 517). In Marathi, it may also be used for thought, as in “Mala watte,
sat varshe jhali astil” (I think this must have [occurred] seven years ago). In addition,
the verb can convey a moral judgment, as in “He mala barobar nahi watet” (I do not
think this is correct [right]), and also describe emotional, moral, or bodily strangeness
or discomfort: “Mala kasa tari watte” (It feels strange/bizarre/uncomfortable to me).
22. Furthermore, if discourses of emotion equally possess a performative dimen-
sion whereby to verbally express an emotion may also have an auto-persuasive impact
on the speakers themselves (Prochasson 2002: 437), this is arguably the particular case
of discourses of embodied language ideologies.
23. Such a project shares much with its historical antecedent, the codification and
standardization of the Marathi language (see previous discussion, and Benei 1998 on
morality and standardization).
24. Such unruliness is not characteristic of members of particular classes or castes:
neither class nor caste structures determine students’ behaviors and idiosyncrasies,
even though bodily hexis (deportment, speech, etc.) may develop and play out differ-
ently among children as they grow up. All the students, regardless of class and caste
backgrounds, participated in the bedlam. Rather than being clear evidence of dif-
ferential classes and/or castes requiring different kinds of nationalist embodiments,
or of the unruly students acting out an ideal of the nation consisting of the produc-
tion of class-differentiated subjects through the process of schooling, this instance
illustrates human plasticity and resilience to disciplinary projects. Such unruliness,
contrary to that documented by Willis (1977) among working-class “lads,” is unchan-
neled, although it is integral to the sense of citizenship that young pupils developed.
Where the argument of differentiation in the production of citizens is useful, however,
is in the analysis of the negotiation of unruliness: the kind of interpretation teachers
construct of unruliness often are themselves indicators of the (re)production of social
hierarchies within the space of school.
25. That is, if the concept of “self” still has any meaning distinct from that of “per-
son,” as Michelle Rosaldo (1984) has also wondered.

Chapter 3
1. Mehboob Khan’s 1957 film Mother India offers a remarkably suggestive illustra-
tion of this deployment in an era of transition from agrarian to industrial society.
2. One of the most time-consuming chores of women’s daily lives in urban In-
dia even today is cooking. Despite the increasing availability of ready-made products,
284  Notes to Chapter 3

most middle- and lower-middle-class women in Kolhapur spent an average of five

hours per day cooking, preparing chapatis, various vegetables, rice, chutney, etc.,
much of which requires a significant number of stages.
3. See Banerjee and Miller (2003) on various usages of the sari throughout India.
4. Dress code here functions as a field of “symbolization.” I should emphasize
that all of what I am discussing here pertains to Marathi-speaking schools only. Eng-
lish-speaking primary schools exist in very limited numbers in Kolhapur and cater to
a tiny minority of schoolchildren, often from more cosmopolitan backgrounds. The
female teachers working there prided themselves on being freer in their dress code.
Most of them wore Punjabi suits, regardless of their marital status.
5. Later, we shall see how such a conflation also operates in conceptualizations of
the nation, in the association of mother with country. For the moment, the reader may
want to remember the encounter with the highly symbolic dimension of the “flag sari”
(see Introduction) that women and teachers were seen wearing in Kolhapur and other
parts of Maharashtra in 1999 and 2000. Arguably, the symbolism of the flag sari and its
functioning as corporeal envelope accrues the production of meaning for a national
primary sensorium.
6. However, see Julius Lipner’s reconsideration of this issue (2003) in an introduc-
tion to his new English translation of Chatterji’s magnum opus.
7. Ramaswamy (2006) also documents the complex relationship of the map to the
mother in politics of nationalist presentation in the twentieth century.
8. The elderly instructor claimed he had learned the latter in 1970. The date in-
terestingly precedes the war India waged against Pakistan in support of what was to
become Bangladesh in 1971.
9. Harlekar (1983: 15). A more common translation is “Victory to Mother-India,”
but it does not include the vernacular discursive interaction between teachers and
children (discussed later).
10. This exchange seems to have been common for at least the last fifteen years in
some schools and was acknowledged practice at the official level of the DIET College.
11. See The Trauma of Birth (1924).
12. Mitchell describes Klein’s work, especially of the later period, as a “fascinating
instance of the repression of siblings from observation and theory” (2003: 114). Certainly
the sectarian violence between Hindus and Muslims that has shaken the very founda-
tions of the postcolonial Indian nation can be read in terms of competing desires of/for
the nation, even though many Muslims objectively reject the figure of Mother-India.
13. In such instances, the teacher’s role played an important part in my interaction
with the children. I am also aware that my presence and questions may have con-
tributed to heightening awareness of national feelings. Yet the clarification Sonyabai
volunteered illuminates ramifications and associations that would otherwise remain
unverbalized in most everyday situations.
 Notes to Chapter 3 285

14. On the relation of Marathi speakers to the Hindi language and slogans in par-
ticular, see Chapter 2 and Benei (2001b). Although pupils in the state of Maharashtra
do not start learning Hindi until Class 5 (age ten and older), they have numerous oc-
casions to hear the “official language” thanks to the popularity of Hindi movies regu-
larly shown on TV and played in town year-round. Urban middle-class families are
great consumers of these movies, whether at home (on TV or, increasingly, video) or in
cinemas, with the effect of increasing children’s exposure to the Hindi language.
15. “Pahila Namaskar” (literally, “First Salutation”) is remarkably congruent with
Hindutva ideology for its phenomenological incorporation of love of god, family,
teacher, and land of birth combined. I heard it sung only in the privately run schools
whose educational societies were originally founded by Brahmins. There, it was daily
performed in the morning by all pupils from Classes 1 to 4, whether at the time of col-
lective moral education or immediately afterward, in the classroom. “Pahila Namas-
kar” consists of five strophes, each devoted in turn to God, mother, father, teacher, and
motherland, or more precisely, “birthland” (janmabhumi). No one was able to con-
firm its authorship in the schools where it was chanted. According to a college teacher,
the composition, syntax, and lexicon (higher number of Marathi words than Sanskrit
ones) signaled it as “recent,” possibly written fifty or sixty years ago. Although the
fourth strophe points to the poem’s purpose of being sung in schools, Mr. Patil—now
in his midfifties—never had to sing it as a schoolboy. These are the five lines:
Pahila namaskar karito devala The first salutation I do to God
Ghatle janmala jyane maj-jyane maj (1) The one who gave me life
Dusra namaskar aila nemane The second salutation regularly to mother
Vadhavile jine preme maj preme maj (2) The one who brought me up with love
Tisra namaskar pitayace payi The third salutation at my father’s feet
Theuniya doi karin mi, karin mi (3) I shall touch his feet with my head
Chautha namaskar guruji tumhala The fourth salutation to you my teacher/
guru
Shikavita majala avadine, avadine (4) Who teaches me with liking/fondness/
interest
Pacava namaskar janmabhumi tujala The fifth salutation to you land of my birth
Vahin dehala tujhya payi. (5) I will sacrifice my body at your feet.
16. This was most conspicuous in the case of the class held by the elderly instructor
presented earlier. As he narrated and sang, most of the listening trainees’ body lan-
guage was reminiscent of enraptured children’s, with sparkly eyes, tense muscles, and
straightened postures, smiles and head nods being among the most common features.
Such moments seem to trigger a process of “reaching out to one’s inner child” (to bor-
row psychologist Erik Erikson’s phrase) while drawing on the ritualized productions
of infancy.
286  Notes to Chapter 4

17. See Ramaswamy (2003) on imaginaries revolving around India’s geobody.

18. For instance, cleanliness was high on the teachers’ checklist upon the pupils’
arrival at school. They would not hesitate to send the children back home, in an en-
deavor to “teach the parents” a lesson at the same time. In these and other instances,
the child was an obvious recipient as well as transmitter of pedagogical-cum-national
messages.
19. Chodorow (1994) draws attention to the implicit assumption of homogeneous
models of femininity and masculinity that misleadingly reinstate notions of norm and
deviance. If anything, these categories are arbitrary and relative (Foucault 1973).
20. As has been argued by feminist theorists, this repertoire of categories was
organized around the hetero-/homo- divide that included public/private, masculine/
feminine, secrecy/disclosure, ignorance/knowledge, and innocence/initiation (Sedg-
wick 1990, quoted in Epstein and Johnson 1998: 92).
21. See Tanika Sarkar (2002) in the case of North India, Radha Kumar (1993) for
an illustrative overview, and Charu Gupta (2001) for an account of the gendering and
communalizing of spaces and its polarizing effect on Hindu and Muslim “communi-
ties.” Sudipta Kaviraj (2001), too, emphasized the blurring, and at times, overlapping
of private and public spaces.
22. Nita Kumar (2005) makes a similar point with reference to the gendering of the
history and discourse of education in South Asia.

Chapter 4
1. Thus, the name Shivaji Chhatrapati (“he who is worthy of a ceremonial um-
brella,” used for kings and rulers) under the Hindu right-wing BJP–Shiv Sena coali-
tion government was officially conferred in 1995 upon the international and domestic
airports in Mumbai as well as on the main train station (the latter previously called
“Victoria Station,” affectionately “V.T.,” even today). Hansen (2001) and Jasper (2002)
discuss instances of renaming, and their political implications.
2. Prachi Deshpande (2006) also points to the ways in which the Maharashtrian
perspective—and its notable lack of opposition toward national discourse throughout
the colonial period—brings to bear a more nuanced discussion of the region-nation
relationship.
3. Similarly, the state attempts to reach out to parents through their children, and
in this sense the family/school relation may also be conceptually reversed, as we shall
see further.
4. On instances of textbook analyses with regard to communalism and to class
and social inequalities, respectively, see Mohammad-Arif (2005) and Scrase (1993).
5. Since then, the maharaj has been gratified with a third date for his birthday
celebrations, as a result of further dissensions. Thanks are due to Lee Schlesinger for
drawing my attention to this.
 Notes to Chapter 4 287

6. The other two are the privately run progressive All India Marathi School and
an Urdu corporation school; see Chapter 5.
7. It also presented the work of Savitri Bai Phule aimed toward educating girls in
the late nineteenth century, which arguably sheds light on the quasi-automatic litany
of names that many people of all walks of life would often volunteer when discuss-
ing deivat and other important people in Maharashtra and India: “Shivaji Maharaj,
Gandhiji, Nehru Chacha, Shahu Maharaj, Savitribai Phule, Senapati Bapat, Dr. Ba-
basaheb Ambedkar.”
8. See http://www.hillstationsinindia.com/west-india-hill-stations/panhala.html.
The use of the term “redolent” makes for an interesting sensory formulation worth
pursuing.
9. Although she and her husband were Brahmins originating from the Konkan,
they were proud of their Kolhapuri ties of several generations and, with an outsider
like myself, often played on both registers of “Konkanicity” (thus justifying their con-
sumption of fish as part of their “coastal background” and “Kolhapuriness,” taking
great pride in the local—inordinately spicy—cuisine.
10. The fort subsequently came under the control of the Yadava dynasty, then of
the Bahamanis of Bidar in the fifteenth century before being absorbed into the king-
dom of Bijapur at the start of the sixteenth. Long after Shivaji’s rule, Panhala fell to
Aurangzeb before the Marathas recaptured the fort and made it their state capital
until 1782. In 1844, the British took it over.
11. Lesson 9 (1996: 38–42). Unless otherwise stated, the page numbers are those
of the English version, which closely follows the numbering of the original Marathi
edition.
12. God Jyotiba is the brother of Kolhapur’s goddess Mahalakshmi; her husband
is god Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh. Sunday is the day of worship for Jyotiba, and from
dawn to about 4 p.m. devotees flock in from the environs to get the darshan of the
­deity. On any given Sunday, the road to Jyotiba is packed with cars, numerous scoot-
ers, motorbikes, and municipal buses. On the way back to Kolhapur, passengers with-
out a large smear of purple as tikka mark on their foreheads, a sign of one’s visit to the
temple, are few and far between.
13. Of course, an ethnographic study focusing on the manuals’ production would
probably reveal the intricacies of power configurations at play.
14. See Benei (2004) on how influential and yet inconspicuous the “Shivaji cin-
ema” of Bhalji Pendharkar has been in promoting particular versions and portrayals
of Shivaji. It was in fact sitting through history lessons in Kolhapur primary schools
that first made me aware of the importance of Bhalji Pendharkar’s “Shivaji cinema.”
While depicting or clarifying a particular episode, teachers in their forties and fifties
would at times refer to “Bhalji Pendharkarance chitrapat” in an attempt to elicit remi-
niscing of a particular scene among pupils. Yet, interestingly, imaginaries appeared
288  Notes to Chapter 4

so powerfully informed by these films that their usage as a mnemonic resource went
unnoticed, in the textbooks as well as in classrooms, where the same teachers did not
hold Shivaji films influential in their teaching.
15. Pers. comm., Mumbai, summer 2003.
16. The several controversies generated by attempts at revising the textbook in the
subsequent decades are in themselves interesting enough to warrant separate treat-
ment. Suffice it to say that the most recent of these controversies occurred in the 1990s;
the barely revised textbook raised such a hue and cry that its publication was finally
canceled.
17. For ethical reasons, these critics’ names will not be mentioned.
18. By the same token, while taking the oath to construct swaraj, before meeting
with Afzal Khan or before his coronation, Shivaji is portrayed performing pious deeds
toward Hindu gods and goddesses, namely, Shambhu Mahadeo and Bhavani (1996:
34–35).
19. See www.atributetohinduism.com/Glimpses_VIII.htm. What secularist critics
seem to be ignoring, however, is the symbolic dimension of these narratives of warfare
in the phantasmic economy of Shivaji and the Maharashtrian nation. As Laine (1995)
points out, the narrative of Shivaji entails the spilling of blood as a form of sacrifice.
This is worth pondering because sacrifice of blood is one of the main founding acts of
Hindu dynasties (Fuller 1991). Here, not only the enemy’s blood is spilled throughout
so many textbook pages but also that, sanctifying, of Shivaji’s most faithful followers,
as some of the lessons reiterate at length (lessons 13 and 17).
20. “Phituranna tyanni kadak shiksha kelya. Mag to apla aso kinwa parka aso.”
Parka refers to “other, foreign, not among one’s own,” in opposition to apla (see dis-
cussion in Chapter 2 on the importance of the exclusive pronoun apla in a linguistic
economy of Marathi belonging).
21. “Tyancya armardalatil adhikari daulatkhan siddi misari, tasec tyanca vakil
kajhi haidar he musalman hote. Pan he sare swarajyace nishtavant paik hote” (Marathi
1996: 72).
22. According to local scholars, although the nineteenth-century Mali gardener
and eager social reformer has become an icon of progress, his version of Shivaji as the
defender of the downtrodden has had little currency within the population at large,
whether in urban or in rural areas.
23. For that matter, this masculinity is closer to that embodied by Shivaji’s imper-
sonator on the movie screen (Chandrakant Mandare), notably in Bhalji Pendharkar’s
films.
24. The Marathi original is more succinct, emphasizing the theatricality of rank
and stature through bodily positionings. Furthermore, in contrast with the indirect
style used in the English translation, the Marathi text presents the scene as a first-
­person reflection by Shivaji, thus in a more direct and engaging form: “We are the king
 Notes to Chapter 4 289

of Maharashtra; we should be made to sit in the first row. But the emperor is making
us stand in the back row; what is this supposed to mean?” (emphasis added; Apan
Maharashtrace raje, apla man pahilya ranget basnyaca. Pan Badshahane aplyala magil
ranget ubhe karave mhanje kay?).
25. “Swoosh” seeks to render the adverb khaskan, an onomatopoeic imitation of
the sound imagined to indicate a sudden, strategic blow. The entire passage in Marathi
reads thus: “Atyant chapalaine [Shivajinni] bichwa khaskan Khanachya potat khu-
pasla. Khanaci atadi baher padali. Khan kosalla” (36).
26. The expression poti jagne (literally, “to be born in the belly of”) also means “to
spring from,” whether the female parent or the male.
27. Conversion (here, to Islam) has often been interpreted as loss of Hindu man-
hood in the history of the subcontinent; Menon (2002) discusses attendant anxieties
following Partition and during the program of recovery of abducted women.
28. The passage on the ruler’s large-heartedness and religious tolerance is itself
ambiguous even in its English rendering: “Shivaji showed respect for all religions. He
never hated Muslims simply because they were Muslims” (73).
29. The tradition is by no means recent: it harks back to the shift in the late nine-
teenth century from debates between cultural nationalists and social reformists about
age of consent and other issues to assertion of the centrality of the mother-son rela-
tionship, both in family life and as a model and source of patriotic devotion to the
motherland (Kumar 1993; Sarkar 1995, 2001; Setalvad 1995; Goswami 2004), whose re-
construction was intricately interwoven with that of a Muslim other (see Gupta 2001
for a suggestive account).
30. Indiscernibility may exist only in cases of dominant, majoritarian identities
being coproduced. At the level of the region, the dominant hegemonic Maharashtrian
identity is primarily constructed as a Hindu one and is therefore in accordance with
the larger national one whose iconic representation has become the “Hindu Mother-
India Goddess.” By contrast, for Muslim children (Chapter 5), mainstream schooling
itself produces a distinct, “othered” identity that may generate a desire for majoritar-
ian adherence or, more simply, a “hegemonic subject,” as in the case of Aymara (older)
students in Bolivia documented by Aurolyn Luykx (1999). The phrase accounts for
the fact that “the subject positions being created [by the students] are not under stu-
dents’ control and are also ideologically naturalized rather than being made vulner-
able to critique” (304). But this “othered” identity may also further strengthen a sense
of alienation from the national or the regional community.
31. See Benei (1996); Appadurai (1996) on the imbrication of scales at any given
level; Tambiah (1997) on the dynamics of riots articulating local and national issues;
Brass (1997) and Varshney (2002) for contrasted discussions of economic competition
as a crucial dimension of communal riots.
32. On the notion of memoryscape, see Jennifer Cole (2001).
290 Notes to Chapter 5

33. Lesson 18 (70). By contrast, one of his lieutenants, strong and valiant Tanaji, who
loses his life in battle, is referred to as “father” of the Mawlas. Significant here is that
Shivaji does not die in combat, therefore not “living the death” of great hero-warriors
befitting “real fathers” in this sociocosmic order. Interestingly, Shivaji’s androgynous
quality resurfaces in an analogy between him and his beloved subjects, “a mother who
loves her children” (70). Rather than insist on a potential fatherly figure, the narrative
resorts to a motherly bond to define the type of relationship Shivaji entertained with his
subjects. This—if only analogical—androgyny goes against the grain of Hindutva mas-
culine recuperations of the Maratha hero and certainly calls for further exploration.
34. See introduction in Centlivres, Fabre, and Zonabend (1999).

Chapter 5
1. All Urdu institutions are attended only by Muslims, although the converse is
not true. Moreover, Urdu speakers in India number almost 44 million (Census of In-
dia 1991). The largest numbers reside in the state of Uttar Pradesh, followed by Bihar,
Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Karnataka, accounting for 85 percent of the na-
tional Urdu-speaking population. Accurate figures for Muslim children according to
school type and medium of instruction were hard to obtain in Kolhapur since the
collection of this information is not mandatory.
2. See Dhooleka Raj (2003) for a discussion of the notion of “community” in the
case of the South Asia diaspora.
3. Muslims represent 13.4 percent of the total Indian population (per the 2001 cen-
sus), 10.6 percent in Maharashtra, and approximately 6 or 7 percent in Kolhapur.
4. Whereas some historians have focused on the unity inherent in diverse Islamic
reform movements (Metcalf 1982), and the political and literary activities of the Urdu-
educated elite in northern India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Ahmad
1967; Ahmad and Grunebaum 1970), others have paid closer attention to the interaction
with British colonial power and the role of a new educational system in the transfor-
mation of a sense of “Muslimness” from the mid-nineteenth century onward (Lelyveld
1978). Yet others have highlighted the homogeneous perceptions and attendant polar-
izations resulting from colonial encounters (Hasan 1985; Robinson 1985; Pandey 1990).
Much of the discussion in the subcontinent nevertheless tends to center on imaginary
and invented notions of Muslim cultural homogeneity and continuity (Jalal 1997).
Even within the Muslim Urdu-speaking intelligentsia, the entailments of being Mus-
lim were hotly debated. It may be, as Marshall Hodgson argued, that wherever Islam
has spread, there has been a continual pressure to persuade all Muslims to adopt the
same standards and ways of living, accompanied by a keen consciousness of the world
Muslim community and a sense of a common cultural heritage. But, as Robinson re-
marks (1985: 345), “this is a far cry from saying that these fundamental ideas . . . bore
the same meaning for all Muslims.”
 Notes to Chapter 5 291

5. The latest institution was created in 1993 by a locally influential Islamic society,
the Sunnat Jamaat. This society rents out the building for the Urdu school in Sachar
Bazar.
6. In most rural areas of southern Maharashtra, Urdu educational facilities were
not available.
7. See later discussion. Hindi is considered the official language in India and is
dubbed “national” across the northern part of the peninsula (Chapter 2). Although Hindi
and Urdu differ mainly in written form (see Lelyveld 1993), Maharashtrians largely view
them as two radically different languages, two ethnic religious and national markers.
8. The school sometimes employs temporary non-Hindu teachers. In the academ-
ic year 1998–99, for instance, there was one young Muslim teacher out of twenty staff.
9. See Chapter 4 on the anxieties surfacing in a number of accounts of failed or
reprehensible conversion to Islam on the part of Shivaji’s lieutenants.
10. A corporator is a member of a neighborhood who is elected by its residents to
represent them at the level of the municipal corporation.
11. It was in fact cast by a Turkish officer in the regiment of the king of Ahmad-
nagar (en route to Aurangabad) and moved to and refitted in Bijapur after being won
as a war trophy. Material prowess was also a topic of the guide’s marveling: the gun
could fire five 40 kg bullets at a distance of twelve kilometers, hence its name “Lord-of-
the-plains” (Malik-e-maidan). It still retains its character today, with fine casting and
artwork bearing inscriptions in Arabic and Persian.
12. Named Vijayapura (literally “city of victory”) during the Chalukya dynasty
(sixth–ninth centuries), it was the capital of the Yadava dynasty in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries before falling into the hands of the sultan of Delhi, Alaa ud-Diin
Khaljii. It was taken over by the rising Bahmani kings of Bidar in 1347. A century and a
half later, it became the capital of the Indo-Muslim dynasty of the Adil Shahi.
13. In this way, school life was punctuated by the rhythm of daily religious life,
with each muezzin call to prayer coming from the adjacent mosque.
14. Ramzan (Id-Ul-Fitr), celebrated by Muslims all over India, refers to breaking
of the fast of the holy month of Ramadan; alternatively, the term is used to refer to the
fasting period of Ramadan.
15. Some Muslim intellectuals had done the same in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries with the Khilafat movement (Ahmad 1967).
16. Abul Kalam Azad was even averse to the label “Muslim” because this category
took no account of his distinct position and obfuscated the fundamental differences
he had with other Muslim organizations (e.g., the Muslim League, or the Jamaat-e
Islami; Hasan 1992: 5).
17. Among them, Shahu Maharaj and “Chacha Nehru” were clear favorites. More
than the promoter of education for all, Shahu represented to children the king with
animal trophies in his palace. Nehru was favored because of the founding role he
292  Notes to Chapter 6

had played in the building of a secular, socialist, and progressive India. Also, he was
known to get along well with children, so he was more approachable than the daunt-
ing, bespectacled Dr. Ambedkar, however much revered the awe-inspiring “writer of
the Constitution” and Untouchable leader was.
18. Such warnings targeting non-Marathi speakers was in keeping with the rheto-
ric dominant among educational officials, whether in Pune or Kolhapur.
19. The headmaster also made sure that the national news would be read to the
students every morning, in conformity with official instructions and as also observed
in most Marathi schools.
20. They, too, made references to the trope of the mother and, although less explic-
itly establishing a connection between mothers, teachers, and the nation, accompanied
with performance of calisthenics—more than ever scrupulously followed since the new
headmaster’s arrival—thereby created the means for an incorporation of the nation.
21. Furthermore, according to Shaheen Hussain, former corporator in the adja-
cent neighborhood and social worker, the twenty-one mosques existing in Kolhapur
had links with the Tablighi Jama’at in the late 1990s (pers. interview, February 23, 1999).
Some of the families interviewed openly acknowledged their links with the Tablighi
Jama’at, adding that almost every Muslim family in the neighborhood were followers.
Evidence of this, in their views, lay in the large number of local residents attending
the international gatherings in Kolhapur in late 1997 and mid-1998 with followers from
France and the United States, and from Yemen and Thailand, respectively.
22. They do so regardless of how historically inaccurate or methodologically
problematic the notion of “their ancestors” is.
23. The phrase “Muslim world” is borrowed from Eickelman and Piscatori (1996:
37–38), although they do not specify whether it defines a project or a reality.
24. There is a real risk of ghettoization inherent to Urdu-medium schooling in
Maharashtra. For this reason, Marathi-educated Muslim social activists and educa-
tionists tend to favor the creation of Urdu classes within Marathi schools. In this re-
spect, it is no coincidence that permission was given to open 350 more Urdu schools
throughout the state under the BJP–Shiv Sena coalition in power at the regional state
level from 1995 to 1999.
25. Stephan Feuchtwang (pers. comm., July 29, 2004).

Chapter 6
1. Its aim was to serve farmers’ information needs on different cultivation prac-
tices of major crops, pest and disease control, marketing information, and dairy and
sugarcane processing. The Times of India, June 1, 2002; Manage Bulletin, April–May
1999, www.manage.gov.in/managelib/bulletin/Current/aprmay99.htm.
2. An orchestra, created in 1970, searches for members among children from all of
the above-mentioned institutions. It has already traveled to many places outside India.
 Notes to Chapter 6 293

3. It is understood that the local is not a given but a contested field of historical
imaginings and affective reappropriations, as shown in Chapters 4 and 5.
4. See, for instance, Gill (1997) on Bolivia; Addelston and Stirratt (1996) on the
United States.
5. At issue are not oppositional structures of a binary kind: the hybridity I am
referring to is not a cross of two species only, as the use of the term might suggest in
the natural sciences. It is an embrace of several ideologies, regardless of their defini-
tion at a given moment; such a conception obviously acknowledges the transient and
unstable nature of these ideologies.
6. According to the principal, the students who do not pass the National Defense
Academy (NDA) prepare for the Indian Service Union Public Service Commission
and the Maharashtra Public Service Commission. The former is meant for aspiring
Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers, the latter for Tahsildars.
7. In the roll for the year 2000–2001 at the Pratinagar Sainik School, the fathers of
two boys were MLAs, one from the Shiv Sena, the other from the Shetkari Kamagar
Paksha (Farmers’ and Workers’ Party), independent from both the Shiv Sena and the
Congress.
8. I interviewed most of the new military school directors at the time of a meet-
ing held at Pratinagar in December 2000; their political sympathies appeared to range
from Hindutva to former Congress in equal proportions. Moreover, the schools were
allowed to continue after the next new Congress government came into power in 1999,
although, granted, under strenuous financial circumstances hotly discussed in the
course of the above meeting.
9. When, in response to his question, I explained to the chairman that such mili-
tary schools existed in “my country” only for students aged seventeen and older, he
opined that it was too late then: “It has to be developed, the right thing, from an early
age: starting right after Class 4 is a good thing” he went on, because the time is ripe; it is
when they “start to think” and “will develop affection [sic] toward the entire nation.”
10. No member of staff was trained in a military school, either as a child or later in
secondary studies. The common denominator to most of them was the education they
received in one or several of Pratinagar’s institutions.
11. See Enloe (1980: 36–37); Cohen (2002).
12. A discrepancy, however, gradually surfaced between general parental display
of loyalty to the nation and families’ revised positions as national and international
events unfolded and the media reported human losses in Kargil. Over the period
1999–2001, even the most ardent patriots among parents felt increasingly disinclined
to see their sons embrace a military career (only 25 percent remained in favor of the
idea).
13. About 74 percent of the student body was composed of members of the Maratha
or allied castes in 2000–2001. The rest belonged to the following groups: Mahars,
294  Notes to Chapter 6

Mangs, and Chambhars (15 percent); Jains (less than 6 percent); Brahmins (less than
3 percent); Muslims (less than 1.6 percent); and only one Christian.
14. Such a conception of the military as a site where discipline is learned and
taught effectively is not specific to Maharashtrians, or Indians, for that matter. At the
time when I grew up in France, the virtues of discipline were also largely associated
with military pedagogy, and it was not uncommon to hear parents threatening their
sons (more rarely their daughters) with the prospect of sending them to a military
school “to teach them discipline.” This view was similarly shared in the United States
in the 1980s, even among mothers who saw the military as a last resort for their sons’
betterment (Forcey 1987: esp. chap. 7).
15. http://www.princeton.edu/~ferguson/adw/mao.shtml.
16. By contrast, at Pratinagar, each class had an average of forty-five pupils, and
there were eight teachers: one for math and science; another one for math (the only fe-
male teacher); one for English; one for Hindi; one for drawing, history, and geography;
one for computer studies; and two for PT (including the military instructor, sainya).
17. Four houses are allocated, so that each one has an approximately equal number
of Class 5, 6, 7, and 8 students (one-fourth of each class). Every house is assigned a dif-
ferent color (blue, red, yellow, green) to be worn by its respective members. All sports
competitions take place between the houses. Both horizontal (between peers in each
classroom) and vertical (across divisions) solidarity and competition are thus encour-
aged by the formal organization of relations in the school.
18. This is rather unusual: dental hygiene in Maharashtra is more often a morn-
ing-only duty marking the beginning of day.
19. On how representations of time pertain to multiple temporal and social or-
ders, and the extent to which they are negotiable within specific institutional contexts,
see Greenhouse (1996).
20. The gendered body becomes “performative,” according to the notion Judith
Butler developed in her pioneering essay reconceptualizing gender. Performativity
refers to “acts, gestures, and desire produc[ing] the effect of an internal core or sub-
stance, but produc[ing] this on the surface of the body. . . . Such acts, gestures, enact-
ments, generally construed, are performative in the sense that the essence of identity
that they otherwise purport to express becomes a fabrication manufactured and sus-
tained through corporeal signs and other discursive means” (1989: 337). This formula-
tion of “surface” performativity adequately qualifies the stages of daily production of
bodies at the Pratinagar Sainik School, following the “deep” embodiment of the first
four years of primary schooling.
21. Unlike what occurs in most all-English-language institutions, there was no
ban on speaking a vernacular language outside the classroom, and teachers encour-
aged the use of all three idioms.
22. In the school year 1998–99, these included yogasan, superstition (anddha­
 Notes to Chapter 6 295

shradha), students’ health (arogya), the importance of military instruction, sports,

road rules for traffic, valley crossing and trekking, martial arts, moral edification
through stories exemplifying good filial and institutional conduct (goshtirupatun
samskar), the importance of healthy teeth, child psychology (bal manashastra), and
body building.
23. The measurement of weight determined the pupils’ division into three groups
(overweight, normal, and underweight), with special exercises and personalized diets
for members of the first and third groups, respectively.
24. At Pratinagar, the pupils were not forced to engage with “Western food,” un-
like in the elite schools and the military, whether in colonial or postcolonial times
(Cohen 2002; for a suggestive rendering of the extreme physical reaction experienced
by eating the “traditional British eggs and bacon,” see Ghosh 2000).
25. To give an example of how minute the calculations were, considering that two
chapatis weighed 57 grams, out of which there are 5 grams of protein, 5.5 of fat, and 193
calories, the principal had figured out that on Mondays children should absorb 39.435
grams of fat, 50.969 grams of protein, and 1,585.88 calories.
26. Such a project of self-formation also emphasized the concept of brahmacha-
rya, both as a referent to sexual abstinence and spiritual self-discipline reconfiguring
the body in order to serve the nation (to be discussed later).
27. Connell (1993, 1995a, 1995b); Gill (1997); Collier (1998). On the variegated con-
structions of masculinity within different sectors of the U.S. Army, see also Barrett
(1996).
28. This is especially important in the case of Indian masculinity: as Rustom Bha-
rucha observed, “men in India—cutting across class, community, and ideology—have
yet to dismantle the constructions of their own gender and sexuality” (1995: 1613).
29. As we saw, women play a prominent and visible part in those daily spheres,
contrary to the all-male invested one of the military school (Benei 2002b; Chapter 3).
30. The siege of harm was the stomach, which in Marathi is the seat of emotions
and much more (Chapter 4). It is often used metaphorically to refer to a traumatic
event, e.g., the national shame incurred by the loss of a battle that goes “undigest-
ed” (apacavleli). Furthermore, it is a primary site mediating children’s various pains,
whether purely physiological, organic, or psychosomatic (anxiety, fear, and so on).
31. This dispensation of gender roles contrasts greatly with the “division of labor”
at play in other contexts. In Nicaragua, for instance, it is the women who publicly
“cry, and plead, and moan at the prospect of military service,” thereby supplying what
Lancaster calls “the antidote to men’s machismo about these matters” (and apparently
also to men’s own appreciation; 1992: 196–97).
32. The shirking stood along a continuum ranging from sheer compliance to pas-
sive resistance. Such a range of actions and strategies has been observed in other mili-
tary settings (Hockey 1986). Yet it is also characteristic of many other social and power
296  Notes to Conclusion

relations. Here, it is strikingly similar to that deployed by married women in adjusting

to their new marital homes and functions (Benei 2005b).
33. It is significant that even apparently “genderless” discussions of discipline
among social actors in Kolhapur were nevertheless gendered: parents always evoked
military schools and the possibility of sending their children there in relation to boys
alone, despite the existence of one military school for girls.
34. See Gilmore (1990) for a general account, although with the caveat of his posi-
tivist stance: for him, as rightly noted by Cornwall and Lindisfarne (1994: 27), “both
masculinity and men are ‘real,’ ‘out there’ and amenable to ‘scientific’ study.”
35. Furthermore, inflicting pain was not part of the pedagogy. Its emergence was
avoided and its occurrence resolved, rather than cultivated.
36. Whether this rule was systematically observed is, of course, difficult to as-
sess. Yet the students’ respectful behavior toward the women rarely around them was
remarkable. It certainly appeared far removed from the mutual nudging and casting
of concupiscent glances toward any representative of the other sex common among
ordinary schoolboys that age.
37. Nandy (1988), cited in Bharucha (1995). Nandy’s categories may be essentialized
ones, “operating at the level of principles rather than historical difference” (1614). But
as Bharucha acknowledges, “[T]hey offer a grid for possible contentions and specula-
tions on alternative masculinities” (1614).
38. This is so for obvious reasons of fieldwork constraints.
39. It is far from the average 6 percent in ordinary schools in Kolhapur. Further-
more, Adivasis in the directors’ rhetoric were also excluded from the vision of prog-
ress proffered by these new sainik schools. Throughout the board’s meeting, reference
to Adivasis as an embodiment of “pampered minorities” operated as a contrapuntal
leitmotif.

Conclusion
1. Granted, such a reflection would entail questioning the relevance of this con-
cept for anthropologists, who at first blush appeared the best equipped to comment
upon the relative and strategic value of the concept of “modern.” More often than not,
however, they have enthusiastically embraced the notion. Yet, as Spencer pointed out
(1996), the latter suggests rather untenable absolutism in its apprehension of social
change in any given society.
2. All of these new modes might be termed “modern” by contrast to what pre-
ceded in the local longue durée. The difficulty, of course, is to ensure that the historical
lens adopted to envision the longue durée is of a long enough scope. The colonial en-
counter, along with the advent of colonial modernity in South Asia, is a case in point.
On the one hand, one may see in the colonial encounter a radical break from existing
structures of social and political governance. The kind of state effects described by
 Notes to Epilogue 297

Foucault with reference to Europe have also been at play since the nineteenth century
in India, albeit in a less totalizing form for historical reasons related to the limited
expanse of the British Raj, a fact often left in oblivion in discussions of matters colo-
nial in India, as historian Ian Copland (1990) has insisted. On the other hand, some
schemas, especially linguistic and cultural, appear to have been redeployed through
to the present day in postcolonial India, contributing to the shaping of contemporary
political forms of modernity.
3. See Andrew Apter (2002) on imperial assemblages as colonial state spectacles
producing new epistemologies of knowledge (or at least, new redeployments in visual
practices) in Africa; Mary Ann Steggles (1997) on the Bombay presidency in the nine-
teenth century; Chris Pinney (2003), among others. That sight became the primary
mode of acquiring and producing knowledge during colonial times is evidenced in
both colonials’ and the indigenous population’s promoting—at times competing, at
other times colluding—“performative displays” as well as “visions,” “images,” and “vi-
sual practices” that progressively (re)shaped a general episteme. Even newspapers bear
direct relation to this process, not only because of Ben Anderson’s so-oft discussed
argument of print capitalism (whereby a community of readers would imagine itself
as a community of nationals), but also because of publishing being part of a process of
making things visible in order to make them understandable. On another level, map-
ping and charting of all kinds, as Anderson and others (Cohn 1987a in particular) have
noted, were also integral to cognitive operations of “making visible.”
4. Jonas Frykman (1996) makes a similar point in his account of gymnastics as ev-
eryday lived production and sensory experience of modernity in Sweden in the 1930s.
5. Teachers never commented upon this, whether at school or privately. This is not
to say that their silence was always deliberate. What stood out most in their accounts
of the SMART PT training they had undergone was the value of the new pedagogical
approach placing the child at the center of educational attention and promoting inter-
active learning. This, however, was matched with an equal measure of resignation in
the face of such an impractical task in overcrowded classrooms.
6. After the initial few weeks of conscientious application, some schools and
teachers would promptly revert to the old routine; whereas in others, they added a few
elements from the new program. In other institutions, most of the changes took place
in teachers’ classrooms alone, whereas the bulk of the morning liturgies remained
unchanged.

Epilogue
1. Kantorowicz (1981) discusses the Christic aspects of the notion of patria.
2. To be sure, the question arises of the conditions that might give rise to a gener-
alization of friend/enemy distinctions. Here, economic and political conditions cer-
tainly play a crucial part. Yet they do not exhaust the total field of possibilities.
 Glossary

This selective glossary is exclusively devoted to Marathi words, although some

of these are common to other languages (e.g., Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit). The glos-
sary only supplies meanings strictly relevant to this book. It also excludes names
and terms occurring only once or twice in the text. For the transliteration sys-
tem, please see “Note on Transliteration”; listed in parentheses are words whose
common spelling is used when diacritics are removed.
āī (ai): mother
alaṅkāra (alankara): decoration ritual performed during puja, involving the
re-creation of a goddess (devi)
āmce, -ā, -ī: our, our own (exclusive)
āmhī: we (exclusive)
āpaṇ: we (inclusive)
āple, -ā, -ī: our, our own (inclusive)
aswābhāvik: unnatural, alien, improper, contrived
bālawādī: kindergarten
barobar: right, correct, just, good
bhajana: hymn, adoration, singing in praise of a deity
bhakti: deep devotion, worship, attitude of loving devotion to deity; refers to
stream of Hinduism emphasizing such devotion; cf. deśbhakti
Bhārat (Bharat): India

299
300 Glossary

Bhārat Mātā (Bharat Mata): term used to refer to India as a mother-goddess or

“Mother-India”
bhāṣā (bhasha): language; cf. bolī bhāṣā, mātṛ bhāṣā, prāmāṇit bhāṣā, swabhāṣā
bhāū: brother
bhāūbaṇd (bhauband): kinsman, brotherhood
bolī bhāṣā: oral speech, dialect, spoken language
cāngale (cangle), -ā, -ī: good, proper
cukṇe: to make a mistake, to err (also, to miss)
darśana (darshan): sight, vision (of a deity)
deivat: god, deity, object of idolizing, pet, darling; also used affectionately for
Shivaji Maharaj; cf. Śivājī
deś (desh): land, country, nation, region; also smaller unit of territorial
belonging, homeland, patria; cf. deśbhakti, swadeś
deśbhakti (deshbhakti): devotion to the land, loyalty to the homeland,
patriotism
dharma: way of life, ethics, religion; cf. swadharma, Hiṇdū dharma
gāō: village; but also, and by extension, district, region, country
ghar: house, home
gīta (git): song; cf. rāṣṭragīta
Gyāneśwar (Dnyaneshwar): thirteenth-century bhakti saint and poet of
Maharashtra
Gyāneśwarī (Dnyaneshwari): epic poem, Marathi commentary on the
Bhagavad Gita, written by Gyāneśwar; it is considered one of the great
foundational texts of Marathi language and literature
Hiṇdavī swarājya (Hindavi swaraj): own rule or dominion of “those who are
from the Hind”
Hiṇdū dharma (Hindu dharma): Hindu ethics, way of life, religion
Hiṇdutva (Hindutva): “Hinduness,” Hindu nationalism
jāt (jat): caste, group, kind, species, class, tribe; but also faith, in the Marathi
school context
jawān (jawan): soldier
jay: conquest, victory, triumph; also used as exclamation in praise of a god,
 Glossary 301

a hero, etc., as in “Bharat Mata ki Jay” (Victory to Mother India); cf.

jayjaykar karṇe
jayjaykar karṇe: to celebrate the praises of, to extol with acclamations and
shouts
kīrtana (kirtan): celebration of the praises of a god with music and singing
mantra: ritual formula, chant
mātṛ bhāṣā (matru bhasha): mother tongue
nāgarik (nagarik): citizen
naitik śikṣaṇ (naitik shikshan): moral, ethical education
namaskār: salute, salutation
paripāṭha (paripath): habitual action, custom; at school, the routine
performed during morning assembly
pāṭhāñtara (pathantar): recitation, something learned by heart; at school,
it usually includes basic notions learned so far in the year, and it is
performed following the paripāṭha, once in the classroom
pavitra: holy, sacred
prāmāṇit bhāṣā (pramanit bhasha): standard, authoritative language
prārthanā (prarthana): prayer
pratigyā (pratidnya): pledge, promise; at school, the pledge of allegiance to the
Indian nation; it may be recited in English, Hindi (official language), or
Marathi (regional language)
pūjā (puja): worship
rāṣṭra (rashtra): nation; cf. rāṣṭragīta
rāṣṭragīta (rashtragit): national anthem
śāḷā (shala): school
saṃskār (samskar): rite, but also and more commonly purification,
improvement, refinement; also designates a state of being cultured, well
reared, and of refined taste, accomplished
sanātana dharma: eternal religion, term for Hinduism among modern
reformist Hindus
saṃskṛti (sanskruti): civilization, culture: Bhārtīya saṃskṛti (Bhartiya
samskruti): Indian culture
302  Glossary

sāwadhān (sawdhan): “Attention!”; call to attention marking the beginning of

both military and nationalist school drills, as well as ending the first ritual
in wedding ceremonies in Maharashtra
śikṣaṇ (shikshan): education, instruction, teaching; cf. naitik śikṣaṇ
śista (shista): discipline, focus; as adjective, “proper”
Śivājī (Shivaji): seventeenth-century Maratha king, considered the founder of
the Maratha nation
śloka (shlok): strophe, stanza
suvicār (suvichar): good thought, proverb
swabhāṣā (swabhasha): one’s own language; one of three notions central to
the definition of senses of belonging in Maharashtra; see also swadeś and
swadharma
swābhāvik (swabhavik): natural, native, proper, simply, spontaneously; cf.
aswābhāvik
swadeś (swadesh): one’s own country; one of three notions central to the
definition of senses of belonging in Maharashtra; see also swabhāṣā and
swadharma
swadharma: one’s own religion, ethics, way of life; one of three notions central
to the definition of senses of belonging in Maharashtra; see also swadeś
and swabhāṣā
swarājya (swaraj): own rule or dominion; cf. Hiṇdavī swarājya
trās (tras); trās yeṇe, trās deṇe, trās hoṇe: trouble, harm (can be psychological,
emotional, as well as physical); to come to harm, to inflict harm, for harm
to happen
uccār: pronunciation
vīr (vir): hero, warrior, intrepid fighter
wāīṭ (wait): bad, wrong, evil, foul, filthy, dirty, objectionable
yātrā (yatra): pilgrimage, procession; by extension, trip
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 Index

Abdul Kalam, A. P. J., 197, 198 Anzieu, Didier, 108

Abu-Lughod, Lila, 74, 75, 89 Appadurai, Arjun, 23, 135, 159
Addresses to the German People (Reden an die Arabic language, 181, 193–94
deutsche Nation) (Fichte), 42 Arcades Project (Benjamin), 25
Adil Shah, Ibrahim II, 192 Arendt, Hannah, 41, 208
Adil Shah, Muhammad, 191–92 Arfuch, Leonor, 128, 129
Adil Shahi dynasty, 147, 150, 191–92, 195 Arnim, Ludwig J., 277n4
Adorno, Theodor W., 12, 165 auditory sense, 259, 260
Afzal Khan, 150, 153–54, 184, 278n7 Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane, 267
Ahmad, Aziz, 62 Aundh, raja of, 235
Ahmad Shah, 165 Austin, J. L., 92
Ahmed, Akbar S., 191 Avison, Charles, 133
Ahmedabad riots, 152 Ayodhya, 162
Alamkapuri shlok, 53–54 Azad, Abul Kalam, 175, 197, 291n16
alankara, 47
All India Marathi School: Marathi Cor- Babri masjid, 162
poration School competes with, 70; as Baji Prabhu, 144
progressive and ecumenical, 35; teacher Balakrishnan, Gopal, 269
admonishes pupils about TV consump- Balibar, Étienne, 159–60, 208, 261
tion, 122; “war in Kargil” skit at, 121 Barthe, Yannick, 208
Alter, Joe, 247–48 Bauman, Zygmunt, 268
Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji, 291n17 Bayly, C. A., 50, 51, 52, 59, 86, 184
“Amhi Marathe khare” (song), 166 Becker, Jean-Jacques, 267
Ananda Math (Chatterji), 111–12 Bengal: and Bharat Mata, 111; language in
Anderson, Benedict, 40, 48, 54, 80, 89, 96, 178, regional nationalism in, 79; old patrio-
281n11, 297n3 tism in, 50
Antar Bharati, 46, 70 Benjamin, Walter, 11–12, 25–26
anthropology: of the body, 22, 24, 72, 75; Bhabha, Homi, 218, 260
chance and contingency in writing of, Bhagavad Gita, 54, 56
28; discourse on emotion, 74–76; on bhajans, 53, 56, 165
education, 17–18; and the modern, 296n1; bhakti, 56–58; and anti-Muslim attitudes, 62,
phenomenological, 22–27; subjectivity in 184; to Bharat, 52; devotional sensorium
writing in, 31, 276n22 based on, 64; devotional songs

331
332  Index

bhakti (continued) Ponty on phenomenal body, 76; milita-

associated with, 42; and devotion to the rization of, 232–33; in morning rituals
land (deshbhakti), 50, 52, 56, 64; kinship in schools, 75–77; and mother tongue
vocabulary in, 54; language associated construct, 85–86; of the nation, 77; and
with, 56, 279n22; potential for secularism naturalness of language, 88; as phenome-
in, 63; and religious and cultural motifs nological site of feeling and experiencing
of everyday life, 40; and Shivaji, 147; as construction of the nation, 72–73; physi-
theology of embodiment, 56–57 cal education, 43, 260; physical training,
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP): on Babri 227, 235; in production of the political,
masjid issue, 162; educational policy of, 5–6, 22–27; Rashtriya Swayamsevak
18–19; national history rewritten under, Sangh emphasis on bodily discipline, 43;
195; in “saffron coalition” with Shiv Sena schools as unique site for ritual creation
in Maharashtra, 19–20, 113, 123, 220, 263, and embodiment of the nation, 64–65;
275n11, 286n1 sensorium and embodiment producing
Bharat Mata (Mother-India), 102–29; visceral sense of belonging, 24–27; shista
adorning, 47; “Bharat Mata ki Jay,” in disciplining of, 77–78; as socializa-
47, 69, 113, 114, 117, 229, 300; children’s tion medium, 24–25, 72, 75; somatiza-
understanding of songs and chants to, tion of national emotionality, 96; in
116–19; conflation of mother and country spontaneous expression of war culture,
in, 111–16; and national anthem, 44; as 270; women as embodiments of nation,
politically contentious, 112; at Pratinagar 104. See also calisthenics; emotion;
Sainik School, 229; Rashtriya Swayamse- sensorium
vak Sangh sticker of, 99; at Republic Day Bose, Subhas Chandra, 81, 149
celebration, 100, 102–3; school children’s Bourdieu, Pierre, 75, 78, 96, 270, 281n9, 281n10
singing of national anthem and, 67–69; brahmacharya, 248, 295n26
Shivaji compared with, 157; and Urdu- Brahmins: and deshbhakti, 58; feeling of
speaking Muslims, 197, 200; as warrior, superiority of, 35; and Hindu chants
114, 119–21 in schools, 47; Hindu nationalists on
Bharucha, Rustom, 295n28, 296n37 commonality of Hindu, Jain, and, 203;
Bhatt, Chetan, 262 and national anthem as prayer, 44; in
bhauband, 89, 126 Pratinagar Sainik School ethos, 250;
Bijapur: map of India, 34; military school Pune dominated by, 33; and Shahu
at, 225; Muslim architecture at, 190–95, Maharaj’s reforms, 141, 186; and support
291n12 for military schools, 222; Varsity Marathi
Billig, Michael, 2, 15, 41, 96, 273n1 School founded by, 122, 149
birth trauma, 114–15 Brecht, Bertolt, 133
BJP. See Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Butler, Judith, 215, 246, 249, 294n20
body, the: anthropology of, 22, 24, 72, 75;
bhakti and embodiment, 56–57; Bharat Calhoun, Craig, 127
Mata’s embodiment, 103, 104; bodily calisthenics: in morning assemblies in
hexis, 75, 283n24; “body of India,” 13, schools, 47, 77; at Pratinagar Sainik
45, 49, 119; embodied cultural memory, School, 227; and singing in European
165; emotion associated with, 74–75; nationalism, 42, 43
feeling chants and prayers to Bharat Callon, Michel, 208
Mata, 118–19; gymnastics, 77, 235, 297n4; caste: advancement in Kolhapur, 32; and
incorporation of national sentiment, 1, dharma notion, 279n29; and education,
77–78, 96; interplay of bodily and moral 91; and Indian national anthem, 44; in
rectitude, 78–79; iteration in incorpora- production of identity markers, 27–28;
tion process, 114; James on mental life and proper Marathi, 189; and unruliness
and, 76; Klein on child development in classroom, 283n24
and bodily functions, 106; language as Centlivres, Pierre, 138
somatic instantiation, 94–95; Merleau- Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 30
 Index 333

Chand, Tara, 62 cold baths, 228, 235, 236

Chatterji, Bankim Chandra, 111–12 Coles, Robert, 29, 30
Children, socialization of, 4, 21, 34; relevance communal violence: Ahmedabad riots, 152;
to and understanding of political attending to upstream processes, 2;
processes 4–5, 16, 29, 118; moving back Babri masjid issue, 162; cow protection
and forth between home and school, movement and, 62; exclusivist principle
5; in public celebrations, 10; partici- in, 201–2; in Gujarat, 152, 206, 209, 268;
pating in tragedy of nation, 14–15; not Kolhapur’s local history and possibility
passive agents, 16, 22; transformation of of, 186; oral/aural cultures associated
in chanting liturgies, 24; drawings by, with, 259
narratives, and voices of, 30-31. See also community: education in production of,
morning rituals and liturgies 177–78; identity constituted in relation
China, 14, 223, 267 of, 177; injunctions to stay in, 212; Islamic
Chiplunkar, V. K., 138–39 umma, 194, 196, 201, 209; Jewish, 208;
Chodorow, Nancy, 123, 286n19 seen as fixed, 177; Urdu-educated Mus-
Chopra, Radhika, 244 lims as a minority community, 205–6;
Chun, Allen, 250 war in shaping, 12–14. See also commu-
citizenship: brahmacharya model of nal violence
postcolonial, 248; “civilization” seen Congress party, 44, 48, 73, 136
as prerequisite for, 232; differential Connell, Robert W., 29, 217, 238, 247
gender roles in, 157; Hindu nationalist Co-operative Act of Maharashtra, 216, 292n1
redefinition of, 1–2, 178; inclusive versus Copland, Ian, 297n2
exclusive constructions of, 142; language Corbin, Alain, 276n15
and the production of moral citizens, Cornwall, Andrea, 238, 296n34
92–94; Pratinagar Sainik School’s model cow protection movement, 62
of, 236–37; predicated on samskar, 61, 94; Crusades, 63
producing good citizens, 70–98; race and Csordas, Thomas J., 24
ethnicity in production of homoge- culturalism, 135
neous, 268; singing as means of creating currency, 49–50
sense of, 50; specificities required for curriculum, drawing part of, 36; emotional
anchoring, 208; state attempts to build integration as staple of, 71; English,
homogeneous Maharashtrian, 136; uni- 220; and formal education, 17, 19–20;
versalist, 250–51 Hinduized, 185, 196, 263–268; history, 36,
civil, society, 6, 95, 146, 273–274; state, 22; ties, 167, 181; mother ideology suffusing, 107-
5, 274n5; sentiments 273n5 108; portrayal of Shivaji in, 138, 144–145;
civilization, 232, 268 religion as part of, 39; secondary school,
class: advancement of lower classes in 4; yogasan as part of, 227
Kolhapur, 32; embodied dimension of,
24–25; and Indian national anthem, 44; Damasio, Antonio, 280n7
in production of identity markers, 27–28; darshan, 259–60
and unruliness in classroom, 283n24 Davis, Richard, 47
classroom, decor, 49, 70, 182, 229; display de Certeau, Michel, 123
of flags in, 10; experiences of earlier deivat, 138, 167–68
nurturing invoked in, 106, 110; Hindu de Lauretis, Teresa, 249
atmosphere in, 59, 227, 270; posters desh: and inclusive pronoun in Marathi, 83;
about the war in, 15; difficult conditions moving away from Marathi seen as be-
of observation in, 29; mottoes in, 46; trayal of, 90; in pledge of allegiance, 54;
pedagogical techniques used in, 40, 48, in production of devotional sensorium,
49; production of senses of belonging in, 40; as sense of belonging to the soil, 51;
146; stampede walking back to, 96 swadesh, 51, 82, 83, 147, 150; in translation
cleanliness (hygiene), 122, 232, 235–36, 286n18 of “patriotism,” 52. See also devotion to
Cohn, Bernard S., 50, 207 the land (deshbhakti)
334  Index

Deshpande, Prachi, 139, 276n16, 286n2 275n10; Kolhapur’s fabric of, 33; moments
devotion to the land (deshbhakti), 50–56; and of suspension in, 170–74; morning rituals
bhakti, 50, 52, 56, 64; embodied quality in schools, 24, 38–39, 45, 47, 67–69, 75–77,
of, 57; and secularism, 61; taught along 197; mothers referred to in school, 106–8,
with Marathi language, 71–72, 81–82; 109; mother tongue trope in, 84–85; in
teachers’ approach to, 57–58 national integration, 4–5; objectifica-
dharma, 40, 58–60, 90 tion enabled by mass, 207; physicality
diet: at Pratinagar Sainik School, 237, 241, of schools, 21–22; in Pratinagar, 216;
295n24, 295n25; vegetarianism, 161, 202, primary and secondary identities in,
237 159–60; producing Mother-India at
diglossia, 97 school, 102–29; in production of com-
discipline (shista): in the classroom, 77–78; munity, 177–78; in production of identity,
as gendered, 296n33; ordinary schools as 179–80; in production of nationalism,
unable to produce, 225; pain associated 4–5, 168, 256–57; in production of sense
with, 247; parental concern for, 224–25; at of belonging, 177, 180; in production
Pratinagar Sainik School, 225–26, 232–33, of war culture, 269–70; regulations on
246–47 greetings, 182; school as womb, 126–27;
Discovery of India (Nehru), 219 schools as ambiguous spaces, 22, 171;
Dnyaneshwar, 52, 53, 54, 56, 112, 231 schools as icons of state modernity, 22;
“Dnyaneshwari” (“Gyāneśrī”), 48, 112, 231, schools as sites for mediating spaces of
263 family and nation, 261; schools as sites of
domestic chores, 245 language normalization and homogeni-
Doon School (Dehra Dun), 225, 229, 234 zation, 83; schools as sites of negotiation,
drawings, 36–37; and gender, 130–31; in 199; schools as unique site for ritual
moments of suspension, 171–74; rangoli creation and embodiment of the nation,
drawing, 16, 245, 249, 255; of war, 130–31; 64–65; Shivaji’s depiction in textbooks,
as windows into children’s worlds, 29–30 145–58; society and school as connected,
dress code for female teachers, 108, 124–25, 21–22; tension between central and state
284n4 policies in, 19; unruliness in classroom,
drumming, 210; in schools, 77; Maratha, 96–97, 283n24; in Urdu for Muslims,
163–66 175–209. See also military schools;
dua, 197, 200 schoolteachers; textbooks
dualism, 76, 270, 271 Elias, Norbert, 232, 267, 268
embodiment. See body, the
Eaton, Richard M., 195 emotion: the body as phenomenological site
education: anthropological approach to, of feeling and experiencing construction
17–18, 274n8; Bharatiya Janata Party of the nation, 72–73; constructedness of,
policy on, 18–19; BJP-Shiv Sena Party 74–75, 95; education in reshaping of, 260;
“saffron coalition” on, 20, 123; choice of “emotional bubble,” 104, 105; emotional
school, 27; colonial, 136; in crystalliza- integration, 70, 71, 89; “emotionational-
tion of identification, 207–8; difficulty ity,” 96; between fathers and sons, 244;
of observation in schools, 29; discipline Hinduization of structures of feel-
in schools, 99–101; emotional integra- ing, 262–65; in identity formation, 5;
tion in national curriculum, 71; emotion language’s emotional quality, 72, 94–95;
and sensorium reshaped by, 260; flags in neuroscience and cognitive sciences,
displayed in schools, 10; Hindu atmo- 280n7; patriotism’s emotional connota-
sphere pervades Marathi schools, 59–60, tions, 63–64; performative character of
185; Hinduization of curriculum, 4, 185, discursive iteration of emotional attach-
263–64, 268; history in Maharashtrian, ment, 92; popular sovereignty linked to,
136–39; homology between school and 51; in production of the political, 5–6,
temple, 43, 46–50; increasing promi- 22–27; psychologizing politics, 51; public
nence of, 180, 256; Indian structure of, 18, versus private, 74–76, 95; schools as
 Index 335

unique site for production of attachment gender: and Bharat Mata’s embodiment, 104;
to the nation, 64–65; in sense of belong- in children’s response to Kargil war, 16;
ing, 5–6; as social, cultural, and political dichotomized in India, 246; discipline as
practice, 72; somatization of national gendered, 296n33; and drawings, 130–31;
emotionality, 96; stomach seen as seat of, embodied dimension of, 24–25; fascism
295n30. See also sense of belonging and gender-role division, 267; female
English: as colonial language, 90; Congress teachers negotiate cultural norms, 121–
government introduces compulsory, 26; Gandhian models of, 248; genderless
73–74, 87–88; -dominated discussions, citizenship, 250–51; in Indian national
138; lack of morality associated with, anthem, 44; and literacy, 277n25; military
90–91; as language of instruction, 180; at schools as gendered, 217–18; and mother
Pratinagar Sainik School, 220, 229, 234; tongue construct, 85; and national senti-
translation of Marathi textbook, 146–148, ment, 104; at Pratinagar Sainik School,
153–154, 158 238–49; as process, 245; in production
environmental science (parisar vidnyan), 137 of sense of belonging, 257; as regulatory
Epstein, Debbie, 103 construct for Butler, 249; as relational,
Erikson, Erik, 105, 107, 111, 285n16 134, 156, 238; and Shivaji narrative, 156–58;
Errington, Joe, 74 and war, 119–21. See also femininity; mas-
etiquette, 125, 231–32 culinity; women
extra-curricular activities: competitions, Gender Trouble (Butler), 215, 246, 249, 294n20
102, 245, 247; drawing, 170–174, 211–212, genocide, 268
230, 245; festivals, 174; outings, 190–194, Germany: Jews in nineteenth-century, 208;
143–144, 224. See also singing; yatras mother tongue construct in, 84; singing
and nationalism in, 42, 277n4
Fabre, Daniel, 138 Ghosh, Amitav, 201
fascism, 261–62, 264, 266–67 Gill, Lesley, 251
femininity: feminine-ascribed roles at Pra- globalization, 19, 90, 95, 262
tinagar Sainik School, 244–46; Gandhi Goffman, Erving, 21, 245–46
associated with, 248; as relational, 134, Gol Gumbaz, 192, 212, 213
156; Shivaji narrative and construction Goswami, Manu, 112, 115
of, 156–58 Great Britain (United Kingdom): patriotism
Fichte, Johann G., 42 associated with Christianity in, 63, 64;
Firth, Raymond, 11 primary education as women’s space
flags: flag-raising rituals in American in, 104; rituals of publicly worshipping
schools, 39; as metonyms for the nation, the nation in, 39; scouts’s movement,
11; as patriotic icons, 10; in visual shap- 235; sense of sight and representation of
ing of image democracy, 11–12. See also “­natives,” 259; Union Jack, 11
Indian flag Guha, Ranajit, 30–31
“flag saris,” 10, 12, 37, 284n5 Gujarat, 59, 152, 206, 209, 268
food: women associated with, 107, 283n2. See “Guru Brahma Guru Vishnu” (Ramdas),
also diet 110, 263
Foucault, Michel, 24, 75, 104, 296n2 Guruji, Sane, 60, 107, 229
Fraser, Nancy, 127 gymnastics, 77, 235, 297n4

Gandhi, Mohandas K., 11, 81, 216, 235, 236, 237, Habermas, Jürgen, 127, 208
247, 248 Habib, Shahnaz, 175
Ganesh, 36, 46, 47, 49, 137, 149, 212 Hall, Stuart, 177, 203
Ganesh Chaturthi, 166 Hansen, Thomas, 135, 167, 265
“Gayatri mantra,” 229 Hasan, Mushirul, 178
Geertz, Clifford, 5, 22, 273n5 Hawley, John Stratton, 279n26
Geertz, Hildred, 74 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 86
Gellner, Ernest, 38, 66 heroic figures, 138–39, 166–68, 267
336  Index

Herzfeld, Michael, 165, 189 Maharashtrian citizenship, 136. See also

Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC), 275n10 Hindu nationalism (Hindutva)
Hindavi swaraj, 148–49, 151–52, 157, 189–90 Hindutva. See Hindu nationalism (Hindutva)
Hindi: “Hindi belt,” 182; integration associat- historiography, 30, 133–169
ed with, 182; Kolhapur Muslim families history: in Maharashtrian education, 136–39;
speak, 180, 182, 188; in Maharashtra, 81, versus myth, 137–38; periodization of
282n13; in Marathi popular devotion, 57, Indian, 196; regional narratives and ex-
279n27; as national language, 182, 209, periences of Muslimness, 183–95; rewrit-
291n7; at Pratinagar Sainik School, 226; ing Indian, 4, 195, 196–97; sensorium and
study in Maharashtra schools, 285n14; embodiment in production of attach-
Urdu’s relationship to, 200, 209, 291n7 ment to history, 26; yatra to historical
Hindi cinema, 58, 65, 239 sites, 142–45
Hindu nationalism (Hindutva): acquisition History of British India (Mill), 196
of nuclear weapons and, 13; on common- Hockey, John, 231–32
ality of Hindu, Brahmin, and Jain, 203; Hodgson, Marshall, 290n4
conflation of mother and country in, Husain, Zakir, 197
111, 126–27; construction of “Hindu” by, Husserl, Edmund, 76, 104
273n4; educational status and association hybridity, 218, 293n5; as characteristic of
with, 142; on emasculating and raping modernity, 218, 228; of military schools,
Muslims, 155; and Gujarati violence, 217; of Pratinagar Sainik School, 218–19,
206, 268; on Hindavi swaraj, 152; versus 234, 238
Hindu dharma, 59, 61; and Hinduization hygiene (cleanliness), 122, 232, 235–36, 286n18
of structures of feeling, 262–63, 264; in
historiographical debates, 4, 137; hybrid- identification: dual, 197; versus identity, 3;
ity of, 218; masculinist imagery of, 13; levels of, 261; linguistic and religious
and military schools, 220; on mother- conflated, 198; schools in crystallization
hood, 158; national history rewritten of, 207–8; state institutions in, 4; Urdu as
by, 4, 195, 196; and “Pahila Namaskar,” marker of, 203, 205, 206–7
285n15; Pratinagar Sainik School ritual identity: as becoming not being, 177;
contrasted with, 248; as redefining na- education in production of, 179–80,
tion, 1–2, 178; semiotics of Hinduism 265; emotion in formation of, 5; versus
appropriated by, 265; Shivaji appropri- identification, 3; linguistic, 180; primary
ated by, 152; theology of nationalism of, and secondary, 159–60, 289n30; sensory,
39–40; yatra appropriated by, 142, 162. 160–66
See also Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); Id Mubarak, 185
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS); Independence Day, 197, 206
Shiv Sena Party India: “body of India,” 13, 45, 49, 119; dichoto-
Hindus: Bharat Mata as politically con- mized gender in, 246; dominant cultural
tentious between Muslims and, 112; idiom as that of Hinduism, 263; educa-
friendship between Hindu and Muslim tional structure in, 18, 275n10; education
children, 212; Hindu atmosphere per- as arena of dispute in, 4; as a goddess,
vades Marathi schools, 59–60; Hindu- 44–45; Hindi as national language of, 182,
ism in Pratinagar Sainik School ethos, 209, 291n7; Indo-Pakistan wars of 1965
250–51; Hinduization of curriculum, 185, and 1971, 14, 267; Kargil war, 9–10, 16, 21;
263–64, 268; Hinduization of structures Marathi language and “idea of India,”
of feeling, 262–65; Hindu nationalist 81; military schools in, 220; nuclear
redefinition of citizenship in terms of, weapons acquired by, 13, 198; oratory in,
1–2, 178; and Indian national anthem, 44; 43–44; periodization of history of, 196;
Mother-India’s Hinduness, 103, 111; and as secular state with Hindu majority, 18;
Muslims in Shivaji’s swaraj, 147–48, 150– speech, prayers, and chants in, 43–44;
52; secularism as conceived by, 61–62; war in shaping national community in,
in state attempts to build homogeneous 12–14; Western political theory applied
 Index 337

to, 6–7. See also Bharat Mata (Mother- Kaviraj, Sudipta, 146
India); communal violence; Hindu Khan, Mehmoob, 283n1
nationalism (Hindutva); Indian flag; kindergarten: national attachment in-
Indian national anthem; Maharashtra; culcated in, 5, 256; patriotic displays
pledge of allegiance; Republic Day during Kargil war, 15, 119–20; pledge of
Indian flag: in children’s clothing, 274n2; allegiance learned in, 55
in children’s drawings, 36, 37; in civil kinship: nation seen as family, 89, 126, 160;
disobedience movement of 1920s, 274n1; pledge of allegiance and vocabulary
display during Kashmir war, 9–17; draw- of, 54–55, 89; in production of sense of
ing of schoolgirl holding, 101; “flag saris,” belonging, 257; soldier-citizen relation-
10, 12, 37, 284n5; map of India colored as, ship as, 15
69; schools display, 10 Kirtankars, 42–43
Indian national anthem: and bhakti, 56; kirtans, 42, 56
bodily posture during singing of, 68, 77; Klein, Melanie, 30, 105, 106, 107, 111, 116, 284n12
belief in efficacy of, 44, 57; in implemen- Kolhapur, 32–33; educational fabric of, 33;
tation of deshbhakti, 57, 58; in Marathi flag display during Kargil war in, 9–10,
language textbook, 81; moral rectitude 16, 21; Hindi language in schools in,
required while singing, 78; at Pratinagar 282n13; language in attachment to Ma-
Sainik School, 229; as prayer to God, 44; harashtra in, 82; languor of, 32; literacy
pronunciation’s importance in, 45–46, rate in, 34; map of India, 34; Maratha
94; at start of school day, 38–39, 45, 47, 50, culture in, 33; Marathi pronunciation
67–69; text of, 38–39, 43; “Vande mata- in, 278n12; Muslim sense of belittlement
ram” contrasted with, 44, 278n10 in, 206; nationalist bricolage in, 12;
Indian National Congress, 44, 48, 73, 136 overt anti-Muslim feelings rare in, 186;
“India Rocket” (drawing), 37, 130 Panhala visited from, 143–45; population
information technology (IT), 216, 219 of, 277n23; Pratinagar Sainik School for
inner purity, 236 district of, 217; Republic Day celebration
integration: education in national, 4–5; emo- in, 102–3; Urdu primary schools in, 179
tional, 70, 71, 89; Hindi associated with, Kore, Tattyasaheb, 215–16, 239
182; local historical configurations and, Kothari report, 275n9, 275n12
65; of Muslims, 202, 204, 205; national Krishna, 120
physical, 77; Nehruvian ideal of, 142 Kusumagraj (Vishnu Waman Shirwadkar),
281n8
Jahn, Friedrich L., 42
Jains, 202, 203 Laine, James W., 288n19
James, William, 76 Lancaster, Roger N., 295n31
Jamma Masjid (Bijapur), 192 language: Arabic, 181, 193–94; bhakti associ-
Janov, Arthur, 114–15 ated with, 56, 279n22; emotional quality
“Jay Bharta” (song), 77, 281n8 of, 72, 94–95; Hindi as national language
Jews, 208 of India, 182, 209, 291n7; ideologies of,
Jijabai (Jijamata), 150, 157–58, 167 79–80, 83, 87, 97; in imagination of the
jingoism, 269 nation, 79, 84; linguistic and religious
Johnson, Richard, 103 identification conflated, 198; linguistic
Jyotiba temple, 145, 287n12 identity, 180; as marker of otherness, 180,
203; morality associated with, 89–92,
Kabir, 62, 280n32 189; Mussalmani, 180, 182, 188, 205; in
Kakar, Sudhir, 105, 106, 126 nationalism, 79; naturalization of, 87–89;
Karnataka: Bijapur, 190–95; map of India, 34 normalization and homogenization,
Kashmir: flag display during Kargil war, 80–81; one’s own language (swabhasha),
9–10, 16, 21; Indian Muslims on, 199–200; 51, 82–83, 147, 150, 166; and production of
tensions between India and Pakistan moral citizens, 92–94; Sanskrit, 47, 54, 58,
over, 198 182; in sense of belonging, 80, 82, 98; ­
338  Index

language (continued) and nationalist feeling in, 42–43; Mus-

sensorium and embodiment in produc- lims as “other” in, 152, 159, 167, 178, 187; as
tion of attachment to, 26; as social, region, 81, 260, 274n5; regional narratives
cultural, and political practice, 72; and experiences of Muslimness, 183–90;
socialization, 97; as somatic instantia- relationship to Indian state, 166–67,
tion, 94–95; for subversion of power hi- 221–22; Shivaji as nodal point in history
erarchies, 206–7. See also English; Hindi; of, 134–35; Shivaji in education in, 137–39,
Marathi; mother tongue; Urdu 181; state attempts to build homogeneous
Lascoumes, Pierre, 208 citizenship in, 136; Urdu education in,
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 58 175–209. See also Kolhapur; Pune
L’Hernault, Françoise, 48, 278n13, 278n15 Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Pro-
Lindisfarne, Nancy, 238, 296n34 duction and Curriculum Research, 20,
“Little Brothers and Sisters” (“Chotese 145, 185, 264, 275n12
bahinbhau”) (song), 279n30 Maharashtra State Centre for Educational
locality: heroic figures in production of, 138; Research and Training (MSCERT), 20
joint production of nation and, 135; mili- Mandare, Chandrakant, 288n23
tary schools’ appeal and, 221; in social Mangeshkar, Lata, 102–3, 143
actors’ experience, 264 mantras, 43, 44–45, 47, 54, 55, 57, 278n8
Lorenzen, David, 60–61, 279n26 manuals: ethnographic study of production
love of nation: as basis of Pratinagar Sainik of, 287n13; language, 78–81; history and
School, 222; European and North Ameri- Shivaji, 146–149, 221; myth and his-
can schools teach, 64–65; love of mother tory amalgamated in, 137; and political
and love of motherland, 116; military chances, 145, 264; reference to Islam,
schools and, 223; question of how it Muslims 155, 185, 280n31
comes about, 1; schools as sites for pro- Mao Tse-tung, 215, 224
ducing, 41, 64; soldier epitomizes, 15. See maps, 49
also devotion to the land (deshbhakti); Maratha drumming, 163–66
patriotism Marathi: and compulsory English, 73–74,
Lutz, Catherine, 74, 75, 89 87–88; creating Urdu classes within
Lyon, Margaret, 75, 280n6 Marathi schools, 292n24; deictic marker
Lyotard, Jean-François, 95, 127, 258 for distinguishing speakers from non-
speakers of, 82–83; devotion to nation
Mahabharata, 43, 162 taught along with, 71–72, 81–82; and Eng-
Maharashtra: bhakti tradition in, 56; BJP- lish-language instruction at Pratinagar
Shiv Sena Party “saffron coalition” in, Sainik School, 234; Hindu atmosphere
19–20, 113, 123, 220, 263, 275n11, 286n1; pervades Marathi schools, 59–60, 185;
bodily emphasis in physical education in, and “idea of India,” 81; identity associ-
43; devotion to the land (deshbhakti) in, ated with, 87; “Jay Bharta” as lesson in
51–56; dharma, 59; dichotomized gender teaching of, 77; morality associated with,
in, 246; education’s increasing promi- 90–92; as mother tongue, 83–89; mov-
nence in, 180, 256; Hindi language in, ing away from seen as betrayal, 89–90;
81, 282n13; Hindu atmosphere pervades Muslims send children to Marathi
Marathi schools, 59–60; and Hinduiza- schools, 204, 212, 214; Muslims speak, 161;
tion of structures of feeling, 263; histori- “naturalness” of, 87–89; normalization
ography and regional belonging, 133–69; and homogenization of, 80–81; pramanit
Indian flag display during Kashmir war, bhasha versus boli bhasha, 45–46, 93–94,
9–17; language in regional nationalism 97–98, 188–89; Shivaji and, 73, 156; in
in, 79–81; languages of primary instruc- state attempts to build homogeneous
tion in, 180; literacy rate in, 34; Maha- Maharashtrian citizenship, 136; Urdu-
rashtrian patriotism, 50; map of India, speaking teachers study, 200. See also
34; Marathas as warrior race, 138, 157, 221, swabhasha
222; military schools in, 215–51; music Marathi as a Second Language Textbook, 62
 Index 339

Marathi Corporation School: discipline distinction in, 261; transformations

at, 100–101; location of, 35, 70; Marathi in sensorium and rise of, 258–60; war
lesson at, 71–72, 92–93; moments of culture in late, 266–71
suspension in, 170–74; national anthem Modern Marathi School: children’s un-
sung at start of school day at, 56; social derstanding of Bharat Mata at, 116–18;
background of teachers at, 35 Hindu orientation at, 35; Indian national
marriage practices, 202 anthem at start of day, 45, 67–68; primal
masculinity: heroic figures in production scream at, 114
of, 138; Hindu nationalism’s masculinist Momins, 161–63
imagery, 13; historiography in produc- morality: interplay of bodily and moral recti-
tion of, 134; Maratha village dancing as tude, 78–79; language and the produc-
celebration of, 164, 165; Panhala as site tion of moral citizens, 92–94; language
for production of, 144; in physique of associated with, 89–92, 189; loving
Indian wrestler, 247–48; of postcolonial Mother-India and, 113; Marathi associ-
libertine, 248; Pratinagar Sainik School ated with, 90–92; moral education at
in construction of, 238–44; as relational, Pratinagar Sainik School, 229; shista and
134, 156, 238; self-restraint model of, moral rectitude, 78; teacher autonomy in
247–48; Shivaji’s model of, 152–56, 167; moral education, 264
violence associated with hegemonic, Mosse, George L., 266–67, 268–69
217–18 Mother India. See Bharat Mata
Massumi, Brian, 14, 96, 264 (Mother-India)
Mauss, Marcel, 24, 164 Mother India (film), 283n1
media: and banalization of the nation, 96; “Mother-India” (song), 113
Hindi cinema, 58, 65, 239; in produc- mothers: auspiciousness and plenty associ-
tion of sense of nationhood, 9; Shivaji ated with, 104; as bearers of sons for
in cinema, 139–40, 145, 184, 186, 262, reproduction of nation, 158; boys as focus
287n14, 288n23; in “war effort” and “war of maternal love, 120; as crystallizers of
culture,” 13–14 otherness, 189; and father-son relation-
membering, 47 ship, 243–44; and female teachers, 105,
memorization, in school and temple, 48 108–11, 122; the “good mother,” 105–6;
memory, social. See social memory Jijabai as archetypal, 158; as life gurus,
“Mere watan ke logon” (song), 102–3, 174 110–11; longing associated with trope of,
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 70, 76 126; mother-as-nation, 118, 126; Muslims
military schools, 215–51; discipline associ- and trope of, 292n20; as nurturing, 105,
ated with, 224–25, 294n14; as gendered, 107, 115, 120, 158; in Pratinagar Sainik
217–18; in India, 220; project to create in School’s rhetoric, 239–40; Quranic
every district, 20; as sites for observing education as role of Muslim, 181, 203;
crystallization of values and ideals, 217; saris associated with, 108; school-day
support in Maharashtra, 220–25. See also references to, 106–8, 109; war and moth-
Pratinagar Sainik School (Tattyasaheb erhood associated, 118. See also Bharat
Kore Military Academy) Mata (Mother-India); mother tongue
Mill, James, 196 mother tongue, 83–89; imbibing with moth-
Mills, C. Wright, 92 er’s milk, 70, 86; morality associated
minority community, 205–6 with, 91, 92; as never totally realized, 97;
Mitchell, Juliet, 115–16, 284n12 regional identity created by, 84–85, 126
modernity: anthropology and notion of, mottoes, 46
296n1; as fuzzy concept, 258; hybridity as Muhammad bin Tughluq, 195
characteristic of, 218, 228; institutional Mulanis, 163
bellicosity as characteristic of late, 257; Mulup Maidan Top, 191, 193, 193, 291n11
as not sole prerogative of the West, 258, music, 102–103, 118–119, 163–168, 210; musical
296n2; Pratinagar Sainik School and repertoires, 42, 260; as part of national
alternative model of, 251; public-private project, 42, 277n1. See also bhajan, singing
340 Index

Muslims: allegiance to India of, 195–201; “My Mother Is My Guru” (song), 113
aloofness of, 160–63, 203; ancestry of Naik, Usha, 224
Indian, 194, 202; anti-Muslim powadas, Namdev, 56
278n7; attitude of Indian to Pakistani, Nandy, Ashis, 60–61, 296n37
200–201; bhakti eclecticism and anti-
Muslim militancy, 62; and Bharat nation: banalization of, 96; body of the
Mata, 112, 119; BJP-Shiv Sena Party nation, 77; culturalist mobilization
“saffron coalition” “sons of the soil” in, 135; currency as emblem of, 49, 50;
drive against, 20; building competing education in national integration, 4–5;
narratives, 190–95; categorical treachery emotionationality, 96; as family, 89, 126,
attributed to, 159; conversion to Islam, 160; femininity associated with, 13; flags
155–56, 193, 202, 289n27; difference at- as metonyms for, 11; gender and national
tributed to, 202–3; differences among, sentiment, 104; incorporation of national
203–4; dual identification attributed sentiment, 1, 77–78, 96; individual ne-
to, 197; erasing from Indian history, 185, gotiation of national allegiance, 65–66;
196–97; friendship between Hindu and joint production of locality and, 135;
Muslim children, 212; Hindi spoken by, language in imagination of, 79, 84; media
180, 182, 188; and Hindu dharma, 59; and in production of sense of nationhood,
Hinduization of curriculum, 185; and 9; mother-as-nation, 118, 126; national
Hindu nationalist redefinition of nation, physical integration, 77; naturaliza-
1–2, 178; and Indian national anthem, tion of formation of, 95–96; producing
44; international stigmatization of, 203, Mother-India at school, 102–29; schools
209; and Kashmir war, 14; marginality as unique site for ritual creation and em-
of, 178; military schools supported by, bodiment of, 64–65; soldier epitomizes,
222–23; as a minority community, 205–6; 15; war culture in legitimacy of, 268–69;
monolithic character attributed to, war in shaping national community,
178–79, 290n4; national pride after Indian 12–14; women as embodiments of, 104.
victory at Kargil, 21; nineteenth-century See also citizenship; love of nation;
European Jews compared with, 208; nationalism; patriotism
objectification of Muslim world, 207; as national anthem. See Indian national anthem
“other,” 152, 159, 167, 178, 187, 202; overt National Centre for Education, Research and
anti-Muslim feelings as rare, 186; as Training (NCERT), 18, 19, 137, 264, 275n9
percentage of Indian population, 290n3; national curriculum: emotional integra-
in periodization of Indian history, 196; tion in, 71; Hindu right on revising, 19;
at Pratinagar Sainik School, 250, 296n39; historical distortions in, 196
progressist versus obscurantist, 205; nationalism: banal, 2, 41, 50, 58, 72; difference
public displays of allegiance demanded as dominant motif in, 202; education in
of, 198–99, 201, 270; regional narratives production of, 4–5, 168, 256–57; exclusiv-
and experiences of Muslimness, 183–90; ist principle in, 201–2; gymnastics and
religious reform movements emerge sports in, 235; linguistic movements
in opposition to, 62–63; school choices in, 79; Lyotard on, 95, 127; masculine
of, 204, 212, 214; shift from positive ap- physique of Indian wrestler in Indian,
praisal of historical contribution of, 185; 247–48; mass production of symbols and
in Shivaji narrative, 147–48, 150–52, 184, artifacts of, 12; the national versus, 2–3;
186–87; Shivaji’s masculinity contrasted patriotism distinguished from, 41; physi-
with that of, 153–56; umma, 194, 196, 201, cally enacting and embodying, 24–25;
209; Urdu as “Muslim language,” 181; primordialist conception of, 135, 159;
Urdu education for, 175–209; women singing and calisthenics in European,
confined, 187, 203 42; theology of, 39–40; visceral, 1, 21,
Mussalmani, 180, 182, 188, 205 200–201; war culture and national-
Mussolini, Benito, 277n3 ist ideologies, 266–71. See also Hindu
“My Daddy” (“Mere Pappa”) (song), 239, 254 nationalism (Hindutva)
 Index 341

National Socialism (Nazism), 42, 43, 166 relation to teachers, 34, 122, 146, 286n18,
nawari sari, 108, 110 286n3; love for, respect and salutation of,
NCERT (National Centre for Education, 41, 49, 54, 138, 214; and Marathi language,
Research and Training), 18, 19, 137, 264, 82, 86–92; patterns of authority jointly
275n9 produced by, 4, 21; and songs, 113, 263;
Nehru, Jawaharlal: in classroom posters, and views on the nation and national
149; on emotional integration of Indian anthem, 21, 44, 223, 270, 293n12; visits
people, 70, 71, 89; ideal of integration of, from, 239–240
142; on industrialization, 218–19, 248; and Parry, Johnny, 65
Mangeshkar’s rendition of “Mere watan “Pasaydan” (prayer), 48, 112, 226, 231
ke logon,” 102; on military training, 219; pathantar, 229
Muslim regard for, 291n17; and national patriotism: and banal nationalism, 2, 41,
development and female form, 104; text- 50; and Christianity in Europe, 63–64;
books influenced by spirit of, 146; Urdu as embodied emotion, 25; emotional
rejected as national language despite his connotations of, 63–64; flags as icons of,
efforts, 207 10; jingoism, 269; media in, 14; Muslim
Netaji Palkar, 150, 155–56 displays of, 199; nationalism distin-
news reading, 48, 292n19 guished from, 41; regional old, 50, 51–56;
Nibelungenlied, 42, 277n6 religious, 56, 58; in school children’s
nonviolence, Gandhian, 237, 248 response to Kargil war, 16; and secular-
nuclear weapons, 13, 198 ism, 58–64; territory and frontiers in
defining, 13. See also devotion to the land
Obeyesekere, Gananath, 25, 115, 198 (deshbhakti); love of nation
“Omkar” (chant), 226 pedagogy, 29, 45, 49, 98, 111, 119, 217, 230, 233,
“Om Nama Shivay” (prayer), 227, 236 241, 294n14, 296n35; bellicose, 15–16; Gan-
Ong, Walter, 259 dhi’s, 235; Hindu, 229; in Bolivia, 276n17;
Ortner, Sherry, 32 pedagogical discourses and conceptions,
Orwell, George, 262 60–61, 217–218, 232-236, 297n5; pedagogi-
Osella, Caroline, 244 cal practices, resources and techniques
Osella, Filippo, 244 and tools, 40, 46, 48, 78, 83, 104, 107, 108,
113, 120, 124, 137, 146, 199, 220, 238, 241, 244,
“Pahila Namaskar” (chant), 118, 285n15 247, 266, 278n18, 278n19, 286
Pakistan: Indian Muslims’ attitude toward Pendharkar, Bhalji, 145, 184, 186, 262, 287n14,
Muslims of, 200–201; Indo-Pakistan 288n23
wars of 1965 and 1971, 14, 267; Kargil war, performativity: of discursive iteration of
9–10, 16, 21; military schools seen as de- emotional attachment, 92; of national
fense against, 223; rockets seen as defense anthem, 44, 57; of pledge of allegiance,
against, 68; Urdu as national language 54, 55; at Pratinagar Sainik School,
of, 197, 198 232–33, 294n20
Pandey, Gyanendra, 2, 136, 189, 269 phenomenology: body as phenomenological
Panhala: history after Shivaji, 287n10; pil- site of feeling and experiencing con-
grimage to, 142–45 struction of the nation, 72–73; phenome-
Panipat, third battle of, 165 nological anthropology, 22–27; reconcil-
Pappa the Great (film), 239 ing psychoanalytic approach with, 104;
parents, advice to and obedience from chil- in understanding of language, 89
dren, 113; attending events, 102; choices Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-
of schools made by, 27, 224; and disci- Ponty), 76
pline, 224–225, 294n14, 296n33; history of Phule, Mahatma, 139, 149, 288n22
schooling of, 33, 181, 277n25; and history, Phule, Savitri Bai, 287n7
150–151, 156, 169; involved in children’s physical education, 43, 260
education, 130, 133, 141, 175, 180, 208, physical training (PT), 227, 235
241, 256; letter-writing to, 252–253; and pilgrimage (yatra) to Panhala, 142–45
342  Index

pledge of allegiance: bodily posture during cal sympathies of directors of, 293n8;
reciting of, 54, 77; flag display and, 9, proper sense of time at, 232; prophylactic
10; kinship vocabulary in, 54–55, 89; in and dietary vision of nation building at,
morning liturgy in schools, 47, 50; at 234–38, 241, 247; rainbow flag adopted
Pratinagar Sainik School, 229; printed at, 250; range of activities at, 225; rangoli
in schoolbooks, 55; at singing refresher drawing at, 245, 249, 255; religious ritual
course for teachers, 113; on soldiers, 15; at, 226–27; samskar at, 233–34; scientific
word efficacy and, 44 training as objective of, 219–20, 238;
ploughman-soldier, 138 social background of students at, 293n13;
pluralist political representation, 177 sports at, 225, 231, 233, 235, 239; transcen-
politics: all-pervasive nature of processes dence of gender at, 218, 246, 250–51
of, 261; children’s relationship to, 29–30; Pratinagar Shikshan Mandal, 216
emotional and embodied production of Prentiss, Karen, 56–57
the political, 5–6, 22–27; emotion and primal scream, 114–15
psychologizing, 51; pluralist political primary schools: children process knowledge
representation, 177; political socializa- in, 29; cultural artefacts of nationalism
tion, 276n19; and religion in Europe, 58, at, 18; emotional integration as goal at,
168. See also nationalism 71; Hindu praxis at, 46; during Kargil
Pollock, Sheldon, 84 war, 14–17, 21; languages of instruction in
Poona College, 52 Maharashtra, 180; motherly perva-
popular sovereignty, 51 siveness at, 104–5, 122; crucial to the
postmodernity, 95, 127 production of national attachment, 5,
postmodernism, 127–28 256; Republic Day skits at, 102; textbooks
Pratinagar, 215–16 for, 145; Urdu-language, 172. See also
Pratinagar Sainik School (Tattyasaheb schoolteachers
Kore Military Academy): allegiance primordial ties, 135, 159, 274n5
shifts from family to nation at, 240–44; private sphere, 128–29, 168, 261
best student of the year award at, 234; Prochasson, Christophe, 50–51
brahmacharya model of masculinity at, prophylaxis, 236–38, 241, 247
248; career aspirations of students at, psychoanalysis: on birth trauma, 114–15;
253–54; classrooms at, 229, 236; class size drawings analyzed in, 30; on fatherly
at, 294n16; curriculum of, 220; daily life image, 242; on gender categories, 123;
at, 226–31; diet at, 237, 241, 295n24, 295n25; for illuminating national and religious
discipline at, 225–26, 232–33, 246–47; identification, 3; Jijabai and conceptions
dorm rooms at, 236; dress at, 232–33; of motherhood of, 158; on mother-child
elitism of, 224, 233–34; English-language relations, 105–6; reconciling with phe-
instruction at, 229, 234; etiquette at, 232; nomenological approach, 104; Shivaji’s
father-son relationship at, 239, 247; femi- attacks on Afzal Khan and Shahiste
nine-ascribed roles at, 244–46; founding Khan in terms of, 154–55. See also Anzieu,
of, 217; gender and family at, 238–49; Didier; Borneman, John; Erikson, Erik;
Hinduism in ethos of, 250–51; home at- Kakar, Sudhir; Klein, Melanie; Janov,
mosphere created at, 241–42; “houses” of, Arthur; Mitchell, Juliet; Obeyesekere,
227, 294n17; human-scale industrial devel- Gananath; Rank, Otto
opment at, 219; hybridity of, 218–19, 234, public sphere, 127–29, 168, 261, 264
238; industrial environment of, 227–28, Pune: as educational center, 33; in normal-
230, 231, 236; lectures at annual camps of, ization and homogenization of Marathi
236, 294n22; letters home from, 252–53; language, 80, 277n24; as Peshwa Brah-
masculinity as constructed at, 238–44; min-dominated, 33; physical training
morning liturgy at, 229; mother trope school in, 235; Poona College, 52
absent at, 239–40; multilingual instruc- Punjabi suits, 124, 125, 161, 284n4
tion at, 234, 252, 294n21; Muslims at, 250, pupils, 67–69; agency of, 29–32, 130, 137,
296n39; as for the nation, 222, 223; politi- 170–174; disciplining of, 22, 71, 78, 226,
 Index 343

233; and history, 147–151, 154, 156, 181, Republic Day: Bharat Mata representation
190-194, 221; interaction with anthro- at celebration of, 100, 102–3; drawings of
pologist and teachers, 14–16, 29, 34; and flag-raising on, 36; Hindi language on,
moral education, 82, 93, 158; and nation, 282n13; Maratha drumming on, 163; Urdu
77, 120, 122, 127, 223; and routine, 18, 38, school celebrations of, 197
49-55, 81, 106-107, 112, 114, 226-231; and Ritchie, Ian, 259
understanding of songs, 46, 56, 66, 111, Roberts, Michael, 260
116–119; and unruliness, 96–97. See also Robinson, Francis, 290n4
children Rosaldo, Michelle, 74, 76, 283n25
puranpoli, 241 rote learning, in school and temple, 48
routine: disruption of, 240, 265; domestic,
queer theory, 218, 248–49 107; everyday, 2, 18, 22, 35, 89; school, 46,
Quran, 181, 203, 212 48, 50, 71, 75, 103, 225–31, 235, 297n6
RSS. See Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
Rajagopal, Arvind, 126 (RSS)
Rama, 56
Ramananda, 56 samskar, 60, 61, 94, 127, 233–34
Ramaswamy, Sumathi, 84, 85, 167 Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti, 281n8, 282n14
Ramayana, 43, 126 sanatana dharma, 59, 62
Ramdas, 53, 110, 279n24 Sanskrit, 47, 54, 58, 182
Ranade, M. G., 145 Saraswati, 46, 47, 49
Ranata Raja, 166 saris: as compulsory uniform for female
rangoli drawing, 16, 245, 249, 255 students, 108; in dress code for female
Rank, Otto, 114–15 teachers, 108, 124, 284n4; flag saris, 10, 12,
rashtragit. See Indian national anthem 37, 284n5; motherhood associated with,
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS): 108; Muslim women wear, 161
“Bharat Mata” sticker from, 99; civil Sarraute, Nathalie, 252
servants prohibited from affiliation Savarkar, Vinayak D., 19, 219
with, 59; cow protection movement and sawari sari, 108, 110
origins of, 62; educational policy of, 19; Schmitt, Carl, 269
Gujarat authorizes government employ- school prayer, 47, 77
ees to join, 59, 206; National Socialist schools. See education
influence on educational policies of, 43; schoolteachers: discipline by, 99–101; dress
and refresher courses for teachers, 264; code for women, 108, 124–25, 284n4;
and Statewide Massive and Rigorous female teachers and mothers, 105, 108–11,
Training for Primary Teachers, 20; and 122; female teachers negotiate cultural
surya namaskar pose, 235 norms, 121–26; and Hinduization of
Rawls, John, 208 structures of feeling, 263–64; patriotic
Ray, Satyajit, 103 education of, 70–71; refresher courses for,
reason, emotion contrasted with, 74 45, 46, 105, 113, 119, 263; senior staff, 47;
Reddy, William M., 23, 92 social background of Kolhapur’s, 33–35;
Reiniche, Marie-Louise, 48, 278n13, 278n15 and unruliness in classroom, 96–97
religion: as dharma, 59–60; homology scouts’ movement, 235
between school and temple, 43, 46–50; scream therapy, 114–15
linguistic and religious identification Secondary School Certificate (SSC), 275n10
conflated, 198; modernity and rise of, secularism: India as secular state with Hindu
258; and politics in Europe, 58, 168; majority, 18; Indian conception of, 61–62;
theology of nationalism, 39–40. See also on markedly Hindu actions, 270; mo-
bhakti; Hindus; Muslims; secularism dernity and rise of, 258; and patriotism,
Renan, Ernest, 1, 77, 79 58–64; versus religious nationalism, 4,
Report of the Committee on Emotional 40; and Shivaji narrative, 145–49
­Integration, 89 self: decentering of, 127. See also identity
344  Index

sense of belonging: desh in, 51; education in as ploughman-soldier, 138; powadas cel-
production of, 177, 180; emotion in, 5–6; ebrate deeds of, 139, 278n7; and Pratina-
gender and kinship in, 257; historiog- gar Sainik School, 247; in public spaces,
raphy and regional belonging, 133–69; 133, 135, 138, 215; Ranata Raja, 166; as
incorporation of, 265, 271; as integral to recent phenomenon in popular culture,
everyday life, 41; language in, 80, 82, 98; 139–41; relationship with his mother,
Muslim, 179; of Muslim Urdu speakers, 107, 150, 157–58, 167; sacrifice of blood
207; as resource in times of heightened by, 288n19; and Shahiste Khan, 150, 151,
conflict, 257; sensorium and embodiment 154–55, 184; Shivaji Chhatrapati, 286n1;
in producing visceral, 24–27; war culture Shiv Sena Party appropriates, 139, 190;
and spontaneous expression of, 270 in state attempts to build homogeneous
sensorium: and all-pervasive nature of Maharashtrian citizenship, 136; statue in
political and socialization processes, 261; Satara, 133; swaraj of, 135, 147–48, 150–51,
Benjamin’s notion of, 25–26; and Bharat 156, 157, 166, 189–90, 288n18; tolerance for
Mata’s embodiment, 104; devotional, 40, all religions of, 149–52, 155–56; in Urdu-
64, 72; education in reshaping of, 260; language education, 181–83, 212
and embodiment producing visceral Shivaji Jayanti, 140, 166, 174, 212
sense of belonging, 24–27; as entire Shiv Sena Party: education and association
sensory apparatus, 26; feeling chants and with, 142; on Hindavi swaraj, 152; for
prayers to Bharat Mata, 118–19; the “good keeping Muslims in check, 182; Marathi
mother” and production of, 105, 106, narratives exploited by, 189; masculine
134; historiography in, 134, 135; moder- narratives of, 167; and military schools,
nity and transformations in, 258–60; 220; on nuclear tests of 1998, 13; in “saf-
national, 160; national emotional, 73; fron coalition” with BJP in Maharashtra,
primary, 106, 114, 128, 134, 160; revolution 19–20, 113, 123, 220, 263, 275n11, 286n1;
in, 168–69, 260–61; school, 126, 128–29; Shivaji appropriated by, 139, 190
sensory identities, 160–66; songs in Shyam’s Mother (Shyamci ai) (Guruji), 60,
constitution of, 114, 126, 134, 261 107, 229
Shahiste Khan, 150, 151, 154–55, 184 sight, 26, 258–60, 297n3
Shahu Maharaj, 32–33, 137, 141, 179, 186, 206, Silverstein, Michael, 281n10, 281n11
291n17 singing, 38–66; Alamkapuri shlok, 53–54; and
shista. See discipline (shista) calisthenics in European nationalism,
Shivaji, 139–58; as administrator, 147, 167; 42, 43; and calisthenics in school assem-
and Afzal Khan, 150, 153–54, 184, 278n7; blies, 47; in constitution of sensorium,
androgynous character of, 290n33; 114, 126, 134, 261. See also Indian national
Bharat Mata compared with, 157; birth anthem; “Vande mataram”
date of, 140, 286n5; children play at, 210, SMART PT (Statewide Massive and Rigorous
212; children’s drawings of, 172, 173, 174; in Training for Primary Teachers), 20, 263,
cinema, 139–40, 145, 184, 186, 262, 287n14, 297n5
288n23; coronation depicted in posters, socialization: active engagement in, 245;
152; as deivat, 138; divine lineage of, 157; all-pervasive nature of processes of, 261;
ganimi kawa of, 153; gender roles in nar- the body as medium for, 24–25, 72, 75;
rative of, 156–58; institutionalization of, conscious ideology in, 250; education in,
139–42; in Maharashtrian education, 36, 4, 21; everyday violence in, 266; language,
137–39, 181; and Maratha martial display, 97; learning how to feel the nation, 73;
165; and Marathi language, 73; masculin- male, 244, 246; of morality, 89; need to
ity of, 152–56; military schools’ appeal study early, 134; political, 276n19
and sites associated with, 221; Muslims in social memory: in Maratha music and dance,
narrative of, 147–48, 150–52, 184, 186–87; 165; visits to Panhala and, 143, 144; war in
as nodal point in Maharashtrian history, shaping, 12–14
134–35; pilgrimage to Panhala, 143–45; as soldiers: in children’s drawings, 36, 130–31,
pioneer of Indian nation at large, 166, 167; 131, 132; love of nation epitomized by, 15;
 Index 345

­ edia glorification of, 13; the plough-

m on Shahu Maharaj, 141; on Shivaji, 138,
man-soldier, 138; as “sons of national 139, 144, 145–58, 167, 221; standardized
soil,” 269 Marathi in, 97; on swaraj, 163
songs. See bhajans; kirtans; singing; and Thackeray, Bal, 152
names of individual songs “This Is My Country of India” (poem), 81
Spencer, Jonathan, 273n5, 296n1 tikkli, tricolor, 16
Spinoza, 256 Tilak, Bal Gangadhar, 139
sports, 225, 231, 233, 235, 239 Tilak, Lokmanya, 47, 171, 278n14
Srivastava, Sanjay, 218 time, sense of, 231–32
Statewide Massive and Rigorous Training Tocqueville, Alexis de, 9, 50–51
for Primary Teachers (SMART PT), 20, Tukaram, 62
263, 297n5 tutoring, after-class, 276n18
“statist predicament of South Asian history,”
30–31 umma, 194, 201, 209
Stoller, Paul, 160, 165, 259 Union Jack, 11
Strathern, Andrew, 88 United Kingdom. See Great Britain (United
“sugar belt area,” 215–16 Kingdom)
Sunindyo, Saraswati, 240 United States: Christianity in politics of,
surya namaskar pose, 235 64; flag displayed after September 11, 11;
swabhasha, 51, 82–83, 147, 150, 166 flag-raising rituals in schools, 39; lack of
swadesh, 51, 82, 83, 147, 150 morality associated with, 90
swadeshhabhiman, 52 “Unity Song,” 62
swadeshhitkari, 52 Urdu: allegiance to India of Muslim teachers
swadharma, 51, 82, 147, 150, 156, 166 and students, 195–201; creating Urdu
swaraj: Hindavi, 148–49, 151–52, 157, 189–90; classes within Marathi schools, 292n24;
and Maratha drumming, 163; Shivaji’s, education in, 175–209; ghettoization
135, 147–48, 150–51, 156, 157, 166, 189–90, potential for education in, 292n24;
288n18; and swadharma, 156; war and Hindi’s relationship to, 200, 209, 291n7;
remembrance in narrative of establish- as identification marker, 203, 205, 206–7;
ment of, 52 mass-education in as recent phenom-
enon, 179; as a minority community,
Tablighi Jama’at, 205, 292n21 205–6; morning rituals in schools, 197;
Tagg, John, 11–12 as “Muslim language,” 181; Muslims
Tagore, Rabindranath, 30, 44 build competing narratives, 190–95; as
Tamilnadu: bhakti and notion of personhood national language of Pakistan, 197, 198;
in, 56; language in regional nationalism national language status sought for,
in, 79; mother tongue construct in, 84, 207; number of speakers in India, 290n1;
85; old regional patriotism in, 50, 279n21 Quran translations in, 181; regional
teachers. See schoolteachers narratives and experiences of Muslim-
10+2+3, 275n10 ness, 183–90; Shivaji in Urdu-language
textbooks: emotional integration instanti- education, 181–83, 212; speakers as first-
ated in, 71; on idea of India, 81; lack generation literates, 181; as spoken by
of scientific spirit attributed to, 137; Kolhapur Muslim families, 180; Tablighi
Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Jama’at and, 205
Production and Curriculum Research, Urdu Corporation School: Bijapur trip
20, 145, 185, 264, 275n12; mother trope in, of, 190–95; concern about RSS at, 206;
107-8, 109; on Muslim/Mughal historical increase in enrollment at, 179; location
contributions, 185, 196; on national and of, 175–76; Marathi Corporation School
physical integration, 77; nationalist competes with, 70; in Muslim school
and xenophobic bias in new, 20, 62; for choice, 204; physical conditions at, 182;
non-Marathi speakers, 198; pledge of Shivaji as taught in, 182–83; social back-
allegiance in English-language, 54-55; ground of teachers at, 35
346  Index

“Vande mataram” (song): in Chatterji’s 119–21; girls take part in warrior ethos,
Ananda Math, 111–12; children’s under- 157; institutional bellicosity, 257; Kargil
standing of, 118; increasing performance war, 9–10, 16, 21; Maratha village dancing
of, 263; mother-deity-country exempli- as celebration of, 164; motherhood as-
fied in, 111–12; and national anthem, 44, sociated with, 118; nationalist ideologies
278n10; at Pratinagar Sainik School, 231; and war culture, 266–71; nuclear weap-
and primal scream, 114; in schoolgirl’s ons, 13, 198; in shaping social memory,
drawing, 101; in school morning litur- 12–14. See also soldiers
gies, 48, 55, 112–13; in “soldiers of Kargil” Warner, Michael, 278n20
skit, 120 Washbrook, David, 281n12
van der Veer, Peter, 7 “We Are Soldiers, Brave and Cunning Heroes
Vankudre, Shantabai, 70, 86 and Warriors” (nursery rhyme), 198
Varsity Marathi School: classroom drill Weber, Max, 259
in, 48–49; and Congress government’s Williams, Raymond, 22, 262, 275n13
introduction compulsory English, 73–74; Willis, Paul, 283n24
Hindu orientation at, 35, 149, 185, 291n8; Winnicott, Donald, 105, 106
Indian national anthem sung at start of Winter, Jay, 267
school day, 38–39, 68–69; on Muslims as women: confinement of Muslim, 187, 203;
Shivaji’s enemy, 184; Muslim students as dress code for teachers, 108, 124–25,
“other” at, 187–89; religion versus Hindu 284n4; as embodiments of nation, 104;
culture at, 59–60; Shivaji’s tolerance female teachers negotiate cultural
taught at, 149–51; “soldiers of Kargil” skit norms, 121–26; food associated with, 107,
at, 119–20; “Vande mataram” sung at, 55 283n2; in home atmosphere at Pratinagar
vegetarianism, 161, 202, 237 Sainik School, 241; Muslim, 161; at Prati-
vernacular: “dialects”, 97; idioms, 61, 64; nagar Sainik School’s annual gathering,
language ideology, 89; languages, 234, 239–40; in public and private spheres,
279n22, 294n21; necessity of heeding cat- 128; rangoli drawing by, 16, 245, 249;
egories, 138; in Pakistan, 282n20; press, 13, respectful behavior of Pratinagar Sainik
165; print literature, 81; praxis, 61; reali- School students toward, 296n36. See also
ties, notions, 6, 60, 146; speakers, 84 femininity; mothers; saris
vernacularization, 84 Woodward, Rachel, 167
“Victory to Mother-India” (song), 113 Woolard, Kathryn A., 84
violence: and culture, 269; everyday produc- Woolf, Virginia, 102, 129
tion of, 266; Gandhian nonviolence, 237, word efficacy, 44
248; hegemonic masculinity associated “Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
with, 217–18; rational, 268. See also com- ­Reproduction, The” (Benjamin), 11–12
munal violence; war world wars, 267
Vithoba shrine (Pandharpur), 62 writing, societies without, 259
Vocal and Physical Education (Sangit ani
Sharirik shikshan) (textbook), 77 Yano, Christine R., 72, 126
Voisenat, Claudie, 168 Yashoda, 120
yoga, 20, 227, 235, 236, 247, 260, 294n22
war: children play at, 210; culture, 11–17,
266–270; drawings of, 130–31; and gender, Zonabend, Françoise, 138