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Concerns for Feminism in Shivmurti’s Triya Charittar
Umesh Kumar
A group of students from Banaras Hindu University’s Hindi Department were performing a dramatised version of Shivmurti’s recent release Kuchchi Ka Kanoon1 (Kuchchi and her Law) at Faculty of Arts’ annual youth festival Sanskriti on 20th February 2018. While narrating the story of Kuchchi, the student actors were reiterating that Kuchchi IS NOT LIKE Vimli. Incidentally, for all the plays, I was among the jury that day. My spatial position gave me the opportunity to hear these comparisons quite closely. Without narrating what Kuchchi’s law is (for I trust the readers’ curiosity to find it for themselves!) let me dwell on Vimli. After all, it was Vimli from Shivmurti’s Triya Charittar2 who was made to echo predominantly to establish the legitimacy of Kuchchi Ka Kanoon. I call the upcoming discussion as early notes that may present pressing concerns for the Feminist scholarship.
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Shivmurti is one of the prominent voices in contemporary Hindi fiction. As a writer, especially in terms of style and content, he can easily be accommodated with the class of Munshi Premchand and Phanishwar Nath Renu. Like Premchand and Renu, Shivmurti’s writing sensibility is heavily inclined towards the underdog and accommodates the suppressed voices of dalits, adivasis, women and other such marginalized and left out sections of the society. Since his concern is deeply situated in the rural, alike Renu, his language is also inspired by the rural dialects of North India. At the same time, it is difficult to ascertain a specific dialect to his writing(s) since he uses a mixture of assorted language varieties to accommodate different varieties and patterns of plots. Shivmurti is one of those extraordinary writers in Hindi whose writings are few but whenever any of his works came out in public, it managed to get enough popularity and critical acclaim.
The text of Triya Charittar (The Character of Woman), presently under consideration, represents different hues of Shivmurti’s writing at a single place. This long story, or novella - if we call it so, was first published in June 1987 in the renowned Hindi journal Hans. At the same time, there have been numerous dramatic representations of the story both in India and abroad since its publication. A film based on its narrative, with the same name, was also made by Basu Chatterjee in 1994, starring Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah and Rajeshwari Sachdev in lead roles.
As a complex representation of his art and trade, Triya Charittar is Shivmurti’s finest achievement. Inspired by the reality and struggle of rural life in North India, the story maps the trajectory of patriarchy’s ruthlessness and its subtle operation in the village society. Further, the story depicts an anxiety and at the same time, honesty to represent the (true) picture of women’s suppression at the hands of ruling patriarchal power. In the form of Vimli, Shivmurti presents before the readers, a woman protagonist whose beauty, humiliation and cries for help symbolise the plight of women in our society. The story eventually turns the sympathy of readers against the reigning power of brutal male dominance and in the process challenges the same to its core.
The narrative of the story concerns with the life and fate of a young girl named Vimli who suffers under the aegis of brutal patriarchy practised in the private sphere of the home. It reveals a peculiar kind of male dominance that uses the idea of honour to hide its own transgressions and immoral sexual crimes. Vimli is married at the age of 13, to a boy who is ‘born’ absent in the narrative. He is reported to have left his parental home so as to work in Kolkata as a daily wage earner. In the very beginning, the narrative informs us that there is no communication between the boy and his father. His mother is long dead. Further, he does not send any money to his father Visram from Kolkata. Given that Vimli is too young at the time of her marriage, her parents have not yet sent her to her in-law’s home. Vimli is shown to have a perennial hope that one day her husband will be back to take her to her in-laws’ home.
Meanwhile, the narrative continues to reveal Vimli to be a hard-working girl. She works at a local brick factory and single-handedly runs her home with grit and determination. At her workplace, she also cooks food for the guests who come at the factory. One among those important guests is a driver who is addressed as driver babu in the story. He brings coal to the factory. He loves Vimli and wants to get married to her. But she always refuses by saying that her husband would surely return to take her. Vimli works in an exclusively male space and continuously tolerates the male gaze. However, she also learns to have her ways out. Shivmurti depicts her as a woman of substance who is not afraid of hard work and at the same time, she is depicted morally very strong.
Hereafter, the narrative takes the second shift. Visram reaches to Vimli’s home after ‘listening’ that his bahu (daughter-in-law) is working in a male space and ‘hangs around with males’. He comes to take his izzat/honour (Vimli) home. When he is questioned regarding the absence of his son, he informs that he is going to come back soon. Vimli is sent to her in-law’s home with a lot of fanfare. However, Visram has different ideas. He treacherously brings Vimli to his house so that he can use her for his sexual needs. But Vimli does not approve his intentions and fights back. Visram plays a trick. On a chosen day, he goes to the temple and brings opium-induced charnamrit (the holy drink) and cunningly gives the same to Vimli under the guise of prasad. That night, eventually, he rapes her.
The segment of the story that forms the crux of our discussion reveals that in the end, it is Vimli who is punished for Visram’s crime. She is branded immoral and punished for slaying the izzat of her family and village. We shall proceed to bring out the incident from the text in two ways. Firstly, the final scene of the story is produced so as to bring home the cruelty of honour-based violence. The second part will engage with some of the critical insights that one can draw from such depictions. Let us get started with the following passage:
The threads of the story now started to come out from ‘poor’ Visram’s mouth, one by one. But he is confused to tell a single story since she (Vimli) has so many to her credit! In her natal village, every single day there was a story around her. In fact, she has left so many stories behind her that if one attempts to narrate, the same would become bigger than the epic Ramayana. Till this point, Visram kept quite to preserve his izzat. But since his honour is already lost, what is the point in hiding things? There was a truck driver. She had accompanied him many a time to roam across Jharia and Dhanbad. Another man used to take her to fairs. There had been a Mistri too; he would order new ornaments for her, every now and then. Visram turned a blind eye to all this – thinking that one day all this will end. He never imagined ‘her friends’ would ever cross their limits and will not hesitate to come here even after her marriage. God alone knows which among them used to come, and at what time! Had she eloped from her natal village, at least Visram’s face could have been saved. She has stained the izzat of the village.
Izzat of the village! Nobody had thought about it so far. It is impossible that one can violate the honour of the village and go scot-free. (Deliberate emphasis) (57)
The quoted incident demonstrates the treachery a man can stage so as to implicate an innocent woman like Vimli. Using his privileged position of being a male, Visram alleges Vimli to be of loose character and therefore a blot on the honour of her family and the village community. What is more significant is the acceptance of this allegation by the village community which by its acceptance proves that (rural) society is channelized by the patriarchal conscience. Such a biased and gendered approach is able to harden itself because no one attempts to verify Visram’s allegations. On the contrary, it is believed that whatever he says is the ultimate truth.
Visram’s accusations against Vimli’s sexual (im) morality force the villagers to set a Panchayat in order to settle the dispute. What follows is a brutal tale of a woman’s exploitation, humiliation and physical torture at the hands of men for a crime that she never committed. The actual sequence of narrative from the story will aid us at this juncture:
The ‘deliberation’ goes for a long time. In the end, Bodhan Mahto stands up and announces the verdict of the case – “A woman who has cut the nose of the entire village, someone who has dishonoured the izzat of the village - should not be allowed to walk scot-free. Even if there are police and court matter later, we will collect donations and fight the case. But this immoral woman should not be let free without being branded as such. She should carry a stigma of her deeds.
[ ] Such an insult of the Panchayat! First, she slurred the honour of the village and now she spits on its Panchayat. Does she think it to be a village of eunuchs?
Contempt of the entire Panchayat! First, she disrobed the village of its honour and now she spits out at the Panchayat. Has she taken all of us to be emasculated ones? Diesel’s father now commands a lad to bring an iron rod and some cow-dung-cakes. Women start dispersing once they come to know about the nature of the sentence.
DAAGNA (marking with red-hot iron rod) is not new to Visram. He has been doing it to cure the animals when they suffer from oral diseases. But today, it is a new assignment. For the first time, he will be marking a woman. As soon as the iron rod becomes red hot due to the heat of the fire, a band of youth forces Patohu (Vimli) to lie down by pressings her hands, legs and wrists. How she squirms! Force her down strongly. The young men, meanwhile, want to feel her soft and fleshy body. The struggling Patohu, now, resembles like a cow, which is about to be slaughtered…
Visram comes ahead with a red-hot iron rod! The story of Mahabharata is being repeated again. Humiliation and torturing of a woman in the presence of a gathering!
Will she cause another Mahabharata?
Why? Is she a Queen?
The torchbearer lowers the torch on her face. Visram is now somewhat reluctant to burn her. But everyone has to endure the Karma.
Chaannnnna! As soon as the hot iron touches Vimli’s forehead, she screams in an agonising voice. The smell of burning flesh! Hearing her cries, dogs start barking. A few of them started crying.
Patohu loses conscious due to pain! People go aside.
The Panchayat started to disperse. The morning breeze has turned cooler now. The priest pronounces with a heavy heart – It is not an easy task to understand a woman’s character!
Baba Bharathari was not wrong. Tiriya charitram purusasya bhagyamm…
A group of twenty heads nodded in agreement. (62-71)
The description above, which also channels the culmination of the story, manages to raise multiple questions. At the first place, we must debate the staging of the Panchayat within the narrative. The writer clearly mentions that this is not a caste Panchayat but a community Panchayat – the all-caste Panchayat. This all-caste congregation usually represents a major crisis within the domain of (rural) society, potentially felt by all castes. Such urgency provides much-needed impetus to the issue that is being dealt. Vimli represents, in the scheme of the narrative, the category of the woman sans caste who is to be controlled and punished for the upkeep of patriarchal ethos.
Further, like any other social-indigenous Panchayat, this Panchayat does not accommodate any woman in its deliberations. In that sense, it cannot be accorded the status of impartial and non-discriminatory that it assumes to represent. At the same time, the selection of Bodhan Mahto as the presiding judge is highly contentious. In the course of the story, it is revealed that he had a sexual liaison with his own widow sister-in-law which forced her to commit suicide by drowning herself in the well. The story represents an ironical situation where the victim anticipates justice from her perpetrators.
The charges of Visram, who appears as an appellant before the Panchayat, follow a two-fold trajectory. At one level, he narrates his personal tragedy where he is forced to endure the life of shame and dishonour because of his daughter-in-laws' sexually loose behaviour. But gradually he connects his personal tragedy to the political of the community. His contention that she has put a blot not only on him but also on the honour of the village serves as the ‘invocation’ to raise the communal passion of the people, before the actual beginning of the community Panchayat. This strategic utterance of Visram makes Vimli a culprit instantly without even the first signs of the probe into her ‘criminality’.
However, notwithstanding any preconceived notions of criminality imposed on Vimli, she still dares to resist and challenge the patriarchy based brutal male power. Despite her short-lived resistance, one cannot deny the significance of her defiance when she stands in front of the Panchayat, putting her head high and that too without showing any compliance towards the perennial symbols of female suppression such as ghungat and aanchal. Her resistance is further recorded when she refuses to adhere to the verdict pronounced by the Panchayat. She symbolically spits on the verdict.
One observes that people support a rural Panchayat’s decision either due to the hegemonic consent or by the threat of forceful coercion. The case under study also shows that the Panchayat’s decision is fully endorsed by the people. Mantoria’s mother was the only exception. She intervenes twice and gives her voice to the injustice meted out to Vimli. But during her second intervention, in which she questions the quantum of punishment being given to Vimli, her husband becomes extremely angry and drags her out of the Panchayat by holding her hair. Silencing the resistance of Mantoria’s mother is also silently supported by the collective male presence in the Panchayat, which in turn also highlights the hold of patriarchal power over the instrument of justice. On the other hand, the episode brings to the surface, the gendered nature of rural justice mechanism. The Panchayat, at each and every stage, attempts to shield Visram and falsely fabricate Vimli as a repeat offender. At an observational level, one also notices that Visram is provided ample time to frame his charges against Vimli. He speaks in the middle of the proceedings as and when he feels. On the contrary, the time allotted to Vimli for her defence is too short and she is not allowed to make any interventions after her sole chance to defend herself gets over.
It is strange to note that the Panchayat announces its verdict on the aspect of ‘probability’ and without trying to find out the facts. One sees that the decision of the Panchayat is pre-determined. Hence, in its final verdict, the panchayat lacks objectivity and its actions cannot be justified on the basis of logical arguments.
The scene also hints towards patriarchy’s strict vigilance over the sexuality of a woman. A case like Vimli’s is an opportunity for the males to enjoy the free sexual labour of a woman in distress. The hints of this can be traced in the statement of the temple priest who advises the jury to put Vimli in the temple ‘to serve’ him as a penance for her deeds. Likewise, the sexual intentions of young men are revealed when they catch Vimli during the final outburst of the verdict. The writer’s description that these men wanted to feel Vimli’s fleshy body serves as a message in itself.
The final scene of the story starkly pinpoints the brutal nexus of honour-based violence and the mediating patriarchal power. The Panchayat’s verdict is a verdict of revenge that has nothing to do with the proposed justice. It has a preconceived notion that Vimli has stained the collective honour of the village and therefore, she be not set free ‘unstained’ testifies to our statement. The violence that is administered on Vimli’s body is not only brutal but also strategic. Very selectively, the Panchayat members choose to pierce through her head, especially the part of the body where the symbolic presence of husband is marked with a Bindi. Since Vimli is supposed to have sullied the social contract of marriage and dishonoured the collective izzat of the village and her family, she must not escape without becoming a ‘permanent marker’ of that violation. Her violation and ‘infidelity’ must be engraved on her forehead so that the onlookers must get a lesson of ‘appropriate’ social behaviour. By marking her in such a way, the Panchayat relegates her to a position where she is forced to live death in life, a perennial social death.
The narrative reveals that after being punished, Vimli is left to her lot. She becomes unconscious after the brutal piercing is cruelly engraved on her forehead. We are not informed what happens to her after that episode. In a way, the ending of the story is open-ended, inviting the readers to ponder over the grave situation of women’s suffering in our society. The story intimates that the honour of the family, village and wider community is deposited in the sexualised body of the female. Visram takes advantage of that deposition and charges Vimli to conceal his own sexual violations. The concluding lines of the story: Tiriya charitram purusasya bhagyamm, which means that it is impossible to comprehend the character of a woman, is again filled with gender-biased consciousness. The nodding of the heads, in the end, is in fact – the affirmation of patriarchy to perennially engage in violence against women.
Notes
1. Shivmurti, Kuchchi Ka Kanoon (Kuchchi and her Law), 2017, New Delhi: Rajkamal Paperbacks.
2. Shivmurti, Triya Charittar (The Character of Woman), 2010, New Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers, pp. 57, 62 - 71. The subsequent references to this edition in the essay are translated by me into English. However, for a complete translation of this story by Ghanshyam Sharma see: http://shivmurti.blogspot.in/2009/09/story-tiriya-charittar-shivmurti.html
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