Modern Asian Studies 36, 1 (2002), pp. 195–221.

 2002 Cambridge University Press

Printed in the United Kingdom

(Im)possible Love and Sexual Pleasure in

Late-Colonial North India
C HA R U G U PT A

This paper explores how unconventional love was written about and
expressed in late colonial north India, with special emphasis on Uttar
Pradesh (then known as the United Provinces, hereafter UP), in lit-
erary genres, print media and in actual practices. It focuses on male–
male sexual bondings in an urban climate, relationships between
the younger brother-in-law and elder sister-in-law and inter-religious
love. Historians of colonial India have emphasized the moral and
sexual worries of the British and the aspiring indigenous middle
classes, coupled with a coercive and symbolic regulation of women,
which helped in replenishing colonial authority, updating indigenous
patriarchy, and proclaiming a collective identity1 In UP too, endeav-
ours were made particularly by the Hindu publicists to redefine liter-
ature, entertainment and the domestic arena, especially pertaining
to women, and to forge a respectable, civilized and distinct Hindu
cultural and political identity. Less, however, has been said on how
a rich variety of literary practices and complexities of cultural ima-
gination were at the same time placing limits upon projections of
respectability and homogeneity. As a result, I will argue, there was
no single code of Hindu middle-class morality and no final triumph
of sexual conservatism in this period. The efficacy of disciplinary
power was considerably diluted.2 Feminists have also pointed out that
though women are often victims of violent crimes and aggressive
patriarchal displays, the persistent fore-grounding of pain and polit-
ical correctness marginalizes women’s sexual pleasures and desires.3
1
Influential here has been Michel Foucault’s work, which argues that there was
a propagation of disciplinary regimes, an intensification in the management and
policing of sexuality in the modern period, leading to distinctions of bourgeois iden-
tity. See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert
Hurley (New York, 1978), pp. 24–5, 145–6.
2
In the European context too, historians, while questioning Foucault, have poin-
ted this out. See Lynda Nead, Myths of Sexuality: Representations of Women in Victorian
Britain (Oxford, 1988), p. 5; Jeffery Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of
Sexuality since 1800 (London, 1981), pp. 19–21.
3
Carole S. Vance (ed.), Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (London,
1984).
0026–749X/02/$7.50+$0.10
195

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 196 CHARU GUPTA

This is not to suggest that the control over women’s (and men’s)
sexuality was not brought under greater prominence, alongside mod-
ernity and colonialism. However, this was also a period when caste
hierarchies and Hindu patriarchies were being questioned. Reforms,
the national movement, education, and women’s presence in public
arena signalled new opportunities for women, however limited they
proved to be. Sexuality, pleasure and love were expressed in diverse
ways. Cheaply produced popular literature provided new mass enter-
tainment. Women and men found ways to undermine implicit
assumptions about gender systems and to negotiate codified sexual
relations. All this suggested a rich variety of experiences and prac-
tices, indifferent to (and sometimes even subverting) the tyrannies
of respectability and standardization. A central endeavour of this
paper is to explore the individual voices and acts of transgression
and love, which precluded the crafting of a master narrative, and
how disorder crept into the moral order. Once set in motion, the
very same vocabulary and processes employed to control women
acquired their own dynamics in literature, popular culture, educa-
tion, health and communal divisions.
Love is not just a practice, a physical and emotional relationship
between two people; the history of love is also the history of literary
genres, of accepted norms and their transgressions. In colonial north
India, arranged, monogamous, heterosexual, same-community mar-
riages and relationships were the predominant ideal. Same-sex
attractions or inter-religious love represented a dangerous breach to
nationalist ideals and Hindu community assertions. Deviance from
‘normal’ codes of behaviour revealed the possibility of diversion from
the accepted and the expected. At the same time, there were limita-
tions to these processes.
This paper also explores how representation, performance and
events fed into each other, whereby on the one hand there were
possibilities of writing directly about taboo subjects and at the same
time their condemnation. It probes the portrayal, by Hindu publicists
mainly, of unconventional love, inter-religious romance, elopements
and conversions in the newspapers and some popular novels of the
period. A few Hindu women, especially from lower castes, widows
and prostitutes, to an extent undercut communal constructions and
boundaries through their actions. In their confined ways, they
refused to be ‘civilized’ and rejected conformity through conversions,
elopements, love or sexual pleasure, even amidst new regulation of
their behaviour.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 (IM)POSSIBLE LOVE AND SEXUAL PLEASURE 197
The first part of the paper explores same-sex relationships and
then moves on to attractions within the family. The second part is
devoted to the ways in which attractions between Muslim women
and Hindu men and vice versa came to be viewed, with divergent
readings by the Hindu publicists, and a few bold actions by some
women.

Male–Male Sexual Bonding

It has been remarked that from the late nineteenth century onwards,
endeavours were made at linguistic standardization of Hindi, com-
bined with attacks on any hints of eroticism and obscenity in Hindi
literature, seen as hallmarks of a decadent, feminine and uncivilized
culture. There was a growing fear of romance, of sexual and bodily
pleasure, seen as a transgression of the ideals of the nation itself.
Aesthetics became an exercise in ethics. At the same time, the
‘canon’ of Hindi literature had not been entirely defined yet. There
was a variety of aspirations, motivations and contexts of literary pro-
duction, and popular tastes and reading practices resisted and rein-
terpreted the high Hindi literary norm. Print facilitated the wide-
spread production of ashlil (obscene) material as a commodity, and
erotic consumerism became a part of the publishing boom in UP,
surreptitiously disturbing the dominance of ‘clean’ literature. The
commercial press developed slowly but steadily in UP, coinciding
with the rise of printed vernacular languages. It became a means of
disseminating and mediating Hindi literature, independently of the
official channels, sites and practices sanctioned by universities, gov-
ernment publications and elite literary circles. The number of
presses in UP had risen from 177 in 1878–79 to 568 in 1901–02
and 743 in 1925–26. The concentration in UP had initially been on
the publication of vernacular newspapers. Thus, 591 such papers
were published in 1878–79 in UP in comparison to just 26 in Bengal.
Bengal had dominated in the production of vernacular books, but by
1925–26, UP had surpassed it. There were 2,777 such books pub-
lished in UP that year, in comparison to 2,543 in Bengal.4 By 1868,
publications in the Devanagri script began to rise, and by 1925 Hindi
4
Statistics of British India for the Judicial and Administrative Departments (Calcutta,
1879), pp. 48–9; Judicial and Administrative Statistics of British India for 1901–02 and
Preceding Years (Calcutta, 1903), p. 255; Statistical Abstracts for British India from 1916–
17 to 1925–26 (Calcutta, 1927), p. 323.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 198 CHARU GUPTA

newspapers, books, journals and periodicals far exceeded and sur-

passed those in Urdu.5 By the early twentieth century, wide-ranging
pulp and popular literature—semi-pornographic sex manuals and
romances in colloquial Hindi, thin tracts and small formats of songs
and poems in Braj, flooded the market in UP.
Such popular literature came under increasing attack, especially
with charges of obscenity levelled against it.6 The strongest was the
case of Pandey Becan Sharma ‘Ugra’’s book Chaklet published in
1927, which dealt with issues of sodomy, sexual acts between adult
males and adolescent boys, and other aspects of male homosexual-
ity.7 Chaklet was a collection of eight short stories, variously titled
‘He Sukumar’ (Oh, Beautiful Youth), ‘Vyabhichari Pyar’ (Adulterous
Love), ‘Jail Mein’ (In Jail), ‘Hum Fidaye Lakhnau’ (I am a Fan of
Lucknow), ‘Kamariya Nagin si Bal Khaye’ (The Waist Twists like a
Female Snake), etc. Written in a titillating fashion, these stories
were ostensibly against sodomy and homosexuality and claimed to
draw inspiration from real-life incidents. However, through the pro-
cess of condemnation, they also acknowledged the wide prevalence
of such practices, especially in UP, where the beautiful young boys
were called ‘chocolate’, ‘pocket-book’ and ‘money-order’. Chaklet
claimed that men were becoming more feminine. It hinted at homo-
sexual tendencies between cultural heroes Krishna and Arjun, Ram
and Tulsidas and Krishna and Surdas.8 Chaklet proved to be a com-
mercial sensation and within six weeks of its publication, two editions
of it were sold out.9
The guardians of morality launched militant criticism against the
book, and through it, against many writings like Ugra’s Dilli ka Dalal
(Delhi’s Broker) and also books like Vyabhichari Mandir (Adulterous
Temple) and Abalaon ka Insaf.10 Such works were referred to as ‘ghasleti

5
Report on the Administration of UP, 1923–24 (Allahabad, 1924), p. 91.
6
For further details, see Charu Gupta, ‘Obscenity, Sexuality and the ‘‘Other’’:
Gender and Hindu Identity in Uttar Pradesh, 1880s–1930s’, unpublished PhD
thesis (SOAS, University of London, 2000), pp. 29–39.
7
Pandey Becan Sharma ‘Ugra’, Chaklet [Chocolate] (Calcutta, 1953, 3rd edn, pub-
lished after 25 years).
8
Ibid., pp. 56, 76, 101–2, 117, 125–35, 156.
9
Ibid., cover.
10
Sphurna Devi, Abalaon ka Insaf [Eight Stories and a Dialogue, Illustrating the
Disabilities of Women and the Justice Needed] (Chand Press, Allahabad, 1936, 3rd
edn). The book explicitly stated that it was an attack on the high caste Hindu men,
especially of the Brahmin and Vaishya castes. It needs separate treatment, which I
hope to take up at a later stage of my work. In brief, the book stressed the impact
of the magazine Chand on the writer, where various women had confessed their

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 (IM)POSSIBLE LOVE AND SEXUAL PLEASURE 199
sahitya’, and a movement against it was sustained for 12 years.11
Banarsidas Chaturvedi, the editor of the Calcutta Hindi monthly
Vishal Bharat, took the lead, and was largely backed by the new Hindi
loci of authority—university departments, literary associations and
important journals. In UP, the magazines Chand and Sudha published
material against such literature, and associations like Hindi Sahitya
Sammelan and Kashi Nagari Pracharini Sabha adopted resolutions
against these books.12 Gandhi initially wrote against Chaklet without
having read it, but later after going through it he did not find it
obscene. He wrote to Banarsidas Chaturvedi a letter to this effect
which, however, was brought to light only in 1951.13
The point is, why did a book like Chaklet, which actually attacked
sodomy and homosexuality, lead to such a hysterical reaction? The
campaign against it was at once paternalistic and moralistic,
deployed to ‘protect’ the public from ‘unhealthy’ influences. How-
ever, its reach hints that here there was something more volatile at
stake than the mere offending of ideas of purity and respectability.
Ugra wrote on a taboo subject, an unmentionable act, and spoke the
unspeakable.14 The critics claimed that the actual effect of Ugra’s
writings was to titillate and excite his readers and thus to encourage,
not discourage, homosexual desire.15 Colonial presence, the growing
nationalist movement, emerging high literary trends and their links

tragic stories, and which encouraged her to write this novel. It had confessions by
eight women, exposing the sexual misdeeds of upper caste men and making a case
for widow remarriage. It was repeatedly emphasized that the stories were based on
true incidents, and that attempts had been made to keep them away from obscenity,
though some of it could not be avoided due to the subject matter. While offering a
strong indictment of the upper caste Hindu male society, belying myths of ideal
Hindu families, it also highlighted women’s sexuality, desires and needs. At the
same time, the book is written in a titillating fashion and at times, it is diffucult to
gauge its political and social location.
11
Ghaslet literally refers to kerosene oil, widely used as cooking fuel in India,
and metaphorically to inflammatory, that is sensational and obscene literature. Rat-
nakar Pandey, Ugra aur Unka Sahitya (Varanasi, 1969), pp. 255–73; Ugra, Chaklet,
pp. 1–12.
12
Pandey, Ugra, pp. 260–6.
13
Ugra, Chaklet, p. 1; Pandey, Ugra pp. 271–2.
14
Sodomy and homosexuality have aroused hysterical reactions in various other
cultures and in different historical moments. See Stephen O. Murray and Will
Roscoe (eds), Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History and Literature (New York, 1997);
Christopher Craft, Another Kind of Love: Male Homosexual Desire in English Discourse,
1850–1920 (Berkeley, 1994).
15
Ruth Vanita, ‘The New Homophobia: Ugra’s Chocolate’, in Ruth Vanita and
Saleem Kidwai (eds), Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History (New
York, 2000), pp. 246–52.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 200 CHARU GUPTA

with Hindu identity gave the campaign a specific colour in north

India at this time. The attack on Chaklet was also part of a nationalist
critique, as the de-gendered male was one stereotype of colonial
domination. Chaklet threw into doubt the stability of the heterosexual
regime, procreative imperatives and modern monogamous ideals of
marriage. It was a stigma and a disgrace of effeminacy and sexual
inversion in male behaviour, which was at best unmentioned.
Ancient texts and medieval courtly customs reveal a history of
homosexual relationships.16 However, Chaklet highlighted that there
were new institutions and sites for increasing male–male bondings
like schools, colleges, hostels, cinemas, theatres, social service organ-
izations, parks, clubs, fairs and jails.17 Roughly at the same time, we
find the Jails Inquiry Committee of UP expressing its worries over
general association barracks; besides fears of plots and escapes, there
were increasing concerns of male sexual activities:
Closely connected with the improvements proposed is the question of sep-
aration by night. In order to improve conditions it is to be considered how
far separation by night should be enforced to provide a suitable guard
against moral contamination. There is further a very unsavoury side to the
general association barrack. We refer to offences punishable under Section
377 of the Indian Penal Code. We have evidence which we accept that such
offences are committed frequently inside the jails. While collecting evidence
with regard to a certain incident in which reprehensible conduct was proved
to have been committed inside a general association barrack, one of the
convicts, who admitted his complicity in this conduct stated to the Commit-
tee: ‘As to night rounds they give no trouble. We always know when they
are coming and are back on our berths before they arrive’.18
We also get stray references to the formation of local clubs (a Jigri
Club in Moradabad) exclusively for men, organized by ‘a band of
pleasure-seeking loose young men’.19 The growth of public libraries
as meeting places for men and male migration may have aided male
friendships. Migration did not just disrupt household patterns of
women but of men as well. Housing in the city was scarce and rents
were high. Men on lower wages found it difficult to take their wives
with them and were forced to live in distant industrial locations for

16
Gita Thadani, Sakhiyani: Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India (London,
1996); Vanita and Kidwai (eds), Same-Sex.
17
Ugra, Chaklet, pp. 53–4, 87–95, 102, 125, 137.
18
UP Jails Inquiry (Stuart) Committee, 1928–29, Report (Allahabad, 1929),
pp. 126–31.
19
Naiyar-i-Azam, 12 Jan. 1907, Native Newspaper Reports of UP (henceforth NNR),
19 Jan. 1907, p. 90.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 (IM)POSSIBLE LOVE AND SEXUAL PLEASURE 201
long periods. Thus, in many industrial towns, there was a huge
numerical disparity between the sexes, especially from the 1920s
onwards.20 In a city like Kanpur, where about half the population
consisted of immigrants, there were just 670 females per 1,000
males. Corresponding figures were 778 in Allahabad, 784 in Agra
and 722 in Saharanpur.21 This may have helped same-sex subcul-
tures. The Director of Public Health in UP remarked increasing
cases of venereal diseases among workers, due to ‘adult relations of
either sex’ and pervasive sexual immorality in bastis.22 It was
remarked:
The workman who has left his family behind often clubs together with other
workers, generally preferring relations, caste men, friends or men from his
own village or town. Denied the comforts of a regular family life, the temp-
tation to him to seek diversion after the day’s work by resorting to drink or
drugs or to the bazaar is greater. His life becomes monotonous and unat-
tractive; the effect on family due to these lengthy separations quite undesir-
able and harmful.23
Chaklet brought into public view emergent urban male attachments
and alternate sexualities, posing a danger to civilization, at a time
when the imagery of a strong, masculine Hindu male was a concern
of the nation. It opened an epistemological gap, a void in maleness
itself.
The consequences of this conflict, which pitted critics against pop-
ular literature, and by extension against entertaining fiction, was a
long-lasting rift between popular fiction and Hindi literature
enshrined in the canon. Reading such books was considered a crime
for students, and critics made sure that they were never included in
the syllabus, indeed in the history of Hindi literature. But this liter-
ature survived, thanks to its popularity. The conflict continued well
over the coming period and saw many debates in the 1940s as well—
over Jainendra Kumar’s novel Sunita (1935), Yashpal’s Dada Comrade,
and Ismat Chugtai’s story ‘Lihaf’ (The Quilt).24
Print had thus opened vast avenues, with contradictory messages
and meanings. It was not easy to make sexual pleasure a mere victim

20
Census of India, 1931, UP, vol. XVIII, part I (Allahabad, 1933), pp. 138–9.
21
Royal (Whitley) Commission of Labour in India, Evidence, vol. III, part I
(London, 1931), pp. 140–1, 155.
22
Ibid., p. 156.
23
Ibid., p. 144.
24
See Madhulika Pathak, Yashpal ke Katha Sahitya mein Kam Prem aur Parivar [Sex,
Love and Family in Yashpal’s Literature] (Bombay, 1992). For the case launched against

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 202 CHARU GUPTA

of the moral panic. While Chaklet brought to the forefront same-sex

love and sexual attraction between men and boys, there were other
avenues as well where unconventional love was expressed. Moving
beyond the literary domain, the next section looks at the familial
structures and possibilities of sexual attraction within them by espe-
cially focusing on the relationship between devar (younger
brother-in-law) and bhabhi (elder sister-in-law).

Devar–Bhabhi Relationship

In UP, as elsewhere, devar–bhabhi relationships have provoked many

responses and meanings and have been a subject of stories, songs,
proverbs and jokes.25 The newly-married woman, a new entrant to a
joint family household, finds in her devar one person with whom she
is not in an unequal power relationship. The devar’s status as
brother/son makes him the ‘natural’ recipient of the bhabhi’s phys-
ical and emotional affections. He is the one male member of the
household with whom she can talk freely. There were many proverbs
in eastern UP, like Abra ki joru, sab ki bhaujai (The poor man’s wife is
everyone’s sister-in-law) or, Burbak ki joru, sab ki bhaujai (A fool’s wife
is everyone’s sister-in-law).26 They reveal the way a bhabhi was seen
as someone with whom one could easily flirt. Many folk songs ostens-
ibly uphold family values, but implicit in them also are the pleasures
of illicit liaisons between devar and bhabhi. Undercurrents of such
relationships led to exaggerated fears and a condemnation of any
hint of extra-marital inclinations.
The Hindu joint family considerably restricted the social interac-
tion between husband and wife. It has been argued that this has
been a traditional operating principle to preserve the extended

it, see Ismat Chugtai, ‘Ek Mukadme ki Dastan’ [The Story of a Case], trans. Javed
Iqbal, Hans, 11, 4 (Nov. 1996), pp. 29–34.
25
The ideal in most of north India has been the relationship between Sita and
Lakshman, where Lakshman when asked to recognize Sita’s ring when she is
abducted, is unable to do so, as he had only looked at his bhabhi’s feet. However,
there are strong undercurrents in this relationship which have also been much high-
lighted. Tagore wrote on this theme, suggesting the eroticism inherent in the for-
bidden crossing of boundaries, where the woman often becomes attracted towards
her brother-in-law. In Haryana, a widow often was made to marry her younger
brother-in-law, Prem Chowdhry, The Veiled Women: Shifting Gender Equations in Rural
Haryana, 1880–1990 (Delhi, 1994).
26
S. W. Fallon, A Dictionary of Hindustani Proverbs (Banaras, 1886), pp. 1, 48.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 (IM)POSSIBLE LOVE AND SEXUAL PLEASURE 203
Hindu family.27 Increasing male migration at this time, especially in
eastern UP, widened the spatial gaps in local families and house-
holds, leading to new kinds of crises. The resulting separations
caused emotional stress and hardship for women. The joint family
was ruptured and women were increasingly forced to live in usually
oppressive households, without their husbands. Male migration
increased the responsibilities of women. Many folk songs of UP in
this period talk of the migration of male members, and women’s
loneliness. The poet Bihari Thakur’s ‘Bidesiya’, a lament for the
loved one who has gone ‘abroad’, became very popular throughout
the region.28 Thus a folk-song in eastern UP ran:
Ser gohunva baras din khaibain, baras din khaibain,
piya ke jaye na debayin ho.
Rakhaiben ankhiyan ke hajuravan,
piya ke jaye na debayin ho.
(One seer of wheat I will eat for one year, but I will not allow my husband
to go. I will keep him before my eyes and will not let him go.)29
Another phagun song runs as follows:
Sakhi phagun ki nisi aye pritam,
pardesva mein chaye hamen bisraye.
(Friend, the night of festival has come, but my dear husband is hovering in
foreign land and forgetting me.)30
Or went a saying by women:
Basi phulon men bas nahin,
pardesi balam teri as nahin.
(As no fragrance in a withered flower, so no hope of aid from a husband in
a foreign land.)31
Growing loneliness probably led many women to seek solace in other
relationships, and the chances of their getting close to their younger
brother-in-law multiplied. In urban areas, education and reformist
rhetoric increased some opportunities for women to move around in
the household. Women may have found in such extra-marital rela-
tionships a degree of solace and escape from everyday drudgery.

27
Neera Desai, Woman in Modern India (Bombay, 1957).
28
Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India
(Delhi, 1990), pp. 78–9.
29
Sahab Lal Srivastava, Folk Culture and Oral Tradition: A Comparative Study of
Regions in Rajasthan and Eastern UP (New Delhi, 1974), p. 28. Also see Fallon, Diction-
ary, p. 34.
30
Ibid., pp. 29–30.
31
Fallon, Dictionary, p. 34.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 204 CHARU GUPTA

The attraction between devar–bhabhi seems to have been fairly

common and it was one of the ways in which women undercut their
stated pativrata (loyal wife) images. Preservers of a straight-laced
Hindu family particularly wanted to put a stop to this. Munshi Jiva-
ram Kapur Khatri, with the aid of the Khatri Hitkari Sabha of Agra,
wrote a book, delineating ‘correct’ spaces and relations for women,
asking them to avoid in particular talking with their devar as far as
possible. If it was an absolute necessity, only the bare minimum was
to be asked, with no laughter and with eyes downcast.32 Since migra-
tion led to long intervals when the woman was away from the hus-
band, it was imperative to regulate the way she lived while left
behind. She was not to wear beautiful clothes, not to eat hot food
and not to talk to, laugh with or touch any other man even by chance.
A woman who looked admiringly at another man when her husband
was away was seen as ‘ugly’ and ‘dark’ with a ‘twisted face’.33
Chand, the most celebrated magazine of UP, as well as an estab-
lished press, brought out a collection of cartoons and caricatures, in
which it launched a moral crusade against current ‘misdeeds’ of
devar–bhabhi relationships and illicit sexualities. On the one hand
was depicted the ideal relationship of the past between Lakshman
and Sita, stating:
Though his heart is pure, still Lakshman walks with his eyes downcast!
Every particle of his heart is filled with worship of his elder brother and
sister-in-law!!
He is very careful that he does not step over the feet of Sita!
Great is such a younger brother, great is his respect for elders!!
Simultaneously, great worry was expressed about the present state
of affairs. It was remarked:
Why does the devar show such a dirty picture to his bhabhi?
The aim is to arouse evil thoughts, as otherwise it would be an insult!
As soon as the elder brother’s face is turned, a nice scheme is worked out!
What better use of such a good opportunity?
In today’s society, this is the story in every household!
The devar keeps combing and counting the hairs on his bhabhi’s head!!
Do not spread amorous desires by keeping such traditions!
Otherwise this vast society will never walk on the path of progress!!34

32
Jivaram Kapur Khatri, Stri Dharma Sar [Essence of Women’s Duties] (Mathura,
1892). Kannomal, Mahila Sudhar [Reforms for Women] (Agra, 1923), p. 33 opposes the
interaction of women with any male other than husband. Also see Ramtej Pandey,
Nari Dharma Shastra [Treatise on Women’s Duties] (Kashi, 1931), pp. 375–6.
33
Yashoda Devi, Pati Bhakti ki Shakti Arthat Pati ki Maryada [Power of Devotion to
Husband, meaning Husband’s Honour] (Allahabad, 1925), pp. 31–8.
34
Vyangya Chitravali [Collection of Cartoons and Caricatures] (Allahabad, 1930).

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 (IM)POSSIBLE LOVE AND SEXUAL PLEASURE 205
That such relationships were common may be assumed from the
insistence upon their prohibition.
More than anything else, in the relationship between devar and
bhabhi there was an element of light-hearted exchange and fun, an
exhilarated and unrestrained sense of joy and a certain emotional
dependence. This was different from the restrained relationship the
woman shared with her husband. It was lamented that Hindu women
were defying the shastras and were openly flirting with their devars.
They were sharing filthy jokes with them and during Holi constantly
touching their faces. These practices had led to secret love affairs in
the present times.35
While such liaisons were clearly condemned, the same material
can be read in other ways. It hints at how women were sometimes
subverting expected behaviours and the dominance of husbands over
them and how they were creating their own spaces of leisure and
pleasure. Some were forced to recognize this women’s need for more
space for themselves, resulting in the acceptance of certain relation-
ships. A book called Striyon ke Rishte had a chapter on ‘Striyon ke
Purush Mitra’ (Men-Friends of Women), which said that husband
and wife were friends first of all. And just as women had girlfriends,
they could have boyfriends as well, though of course with ‘pure’
intentions.36 But the very acceptance of this was a dramatic step
forward.
Shifting the focus somewhat, the next part of the paper probes
inter-religious sexual relationships and their portrayal in literature
and the print media. There appeared a marked difference in the way
sexual relationships and love between Muslim women and Hindu
men and vice versa were portrayed by the Hindu publicists. I shall
take each case one by one.

Muslim Woman, Hindu Man

Any Hindu male who managed to attract the love of a Muslim

woman was glorified as the ultimate hero. Novels written or trans-

35
Lakshmi Narayan ‘Saroj’, Nari Shiksha Darpan [Mirror of Woman’s Education], pp.
26–7; Devi, Pati Bhakti, pp. 32, 36.
36
Vishwa Prakash, Striyon ke Rishte [Relations of Women] (Prayag, 1935), pp. 73–4,
pp. 112–13. Also see Keshavkumar Thakur, Vivah aur Prem [Marriage and Love]
(Allahabad, 1930, 2nd edn), p. 112, who argues that it is necessary to give women
some space to meet and laugh with other men, as it functions as a safety valve in
the preservation of the family structure.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 206 CHARU GUPTA

lated in Hindi at this time upheld this view. The most famous was
Shivaji va Roshanara, a supposed historical story from an unspecified
source reproducing the Maratha tradition according to which Shivaji
waylaid Roshanara, the daughter of Aurangzeb, and eventually mar-
ried her, and that Sambhaji was the issue of this union.37 The novel
reads like a passionate love story, where the body of Shivaji, the
central figure in the Hindu communalist construction of medieval
Indian history, is described in vivid detail. His dramatic entry in front
of seventeen-year-old Roshanara, reveals a handsome specimen of
manhood, with a well-built body, fair complexion and bright eyes,
and she slowly falls in love with him. At one point the novel states:
‘Roshanara started preferring and was happier being called the
queen of the small king than being called the daughter of the
emperor’.38 Hindu men were exhorted to follow Shivaji’s example.39
In another earlier work, Razia Begum was likewise portrayed as
having bestowed her affection on a Hindu of low position.40
In 1926, Pandey Becan Sharma ‘Ugra’ wrote Chand Hasinon ke
Khutut, a sensational romance between a Hindu boy and a Muslim
girl.41 It proved to be one of the best-sellers of 1927 in Hindi, and it
was said that every college student had a copy of it amidst her or his
course books. The novel appeared when stories about abduction were
afloat. In such times a tale of love between a Hindu man and a
Muslim woman could reveal the strength of the Hindu male. The
novel ends with Nargis, the Muslim girl, becoming a Hindu, and
deciding to campaign against Muslim culture.
Stories of love and romance between a Hindu man and a Muslim
woman must have provided titillation and a sense of elation to the

37
Kalicharan Sharma (trans.), Shivaji va Roshanara [Shivaji and Roshanara]
(Bareilly, 1926, 3rd edn), 2nd edn mentioned in Statement of Particulars regarding
Books and Periodical published in UP (hereafter SPBP), Sept. 1917, 4th edn mentioned
in SPBP, Dec. 1928.
38
Sharma, Shivaji, pp. 9–18, p. 21.
39
Another incident reflecting the attitude of Shivaji towards Muslim women,
however, was severely condemned by no less than Savarkar—when Shivaji and
Chinaji Appa honourably sent back the daughter-in-law of the Muslim governor of
Kalyan. Savarkar stated that the plaintive screams of millions of molested Hindu
women did not seem to have reached the ears of Shivaji. For details, see Purushot-
tam Agarwal, ‘Savarkar, Surat and Draupadi: Legitimising Rape as a Political
Weapon’, in Tanika Sarkar and Urvashi Butalia (eds), Women and the Hindu Right: A
Collection of Essays (New Delhi, 1995), pp. 48–52.
40
Riyaz-ul-Akhbar, 4 Nov. 1904, NNR, 12 Nov. 1904, p. 386.
41
Pandey Becan Sharma ‘Ugra’, Chand Hasinon ke Khutut [A Love Story, told in a
Series of Letters] (Calcutta, 1927). See Francesca Orsini, ‘Reading a Social

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 (IM)POSSIBLE LOVE AND SEXUAL PLEASURE 207
Hindu male. There was a thrill in seeing the Muslim heroine fall at
the feet of the Hindu hero. It endorsed images of heroism without
villainy, bravery without cowardice, and romance without abduction,
for the Hindu male. It signified control, subjugation and victory over
Muslim women, made all the more potent because it did not involve
the use of force, coercion or suppression. An article published in
1931 stated that Akbar was prepared to give girls of his clan to the
Rajputs in marriage, but Hindus, with their limited vision at that
time, would not accept them. This was a matter of deep regret
because if this had happened, India would have been a huge nation
of Hindu religion, feelings and culture, a true Hindustan indeed.42
Conversion of Muslim women was encouraged. During his visit to
Allahabad, Shiam Lal of Mathura announced that there were
instances on record of the conversion of wives of maulvis (Muslim
religious teachers).43 At the anniversary meeting of the local Arya
Samaj at Rai Bareilly, Pandit Dharam Bhikshit of Lucknow said that
Hindus should abduct Muslim women not for adultery but for shuddhi
(Hindu movement in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries to
reclaim those who had converted from Hinduism to other religions).
On 16 April, at one of the annual meetings of the UP Hindu Sabha
held at Lucknow, Kedar Nath said that Muslim women should be
kept in Hindu houses in order to attract other Muslim women.44 In
reality, there seem to have been very few cases in which Muslim
women actually converted.45 The difference was that while Hindu
males were ‘recovering’ Muslim women for something better,
Muslim abductors did so forcibly and created more misery for Hindu

Romance: Cand Hasinom ke Khutut’, in V. Dalmia and T. Damsteegt (eds), Narrat-

ive Strategies: Essays on South Asian Literature and Film (Leiden, 1998).
42
Rai Krishnadas, ‘Akbar Kal ka Hindu Pehnawa aur Uski Parampara’ [The
Hindu Dressing during Akbar’s Period and its Tradition], Hindustani (April 1931),
pp. 227–9.
43
Secret Police Abstracts of Intelligence of UP Government (henceforth PAI), no. 13, 3
April 1926, para. 342, p. 195.
44
PAI, no. 15, 24 April 1926, para. 371, p. 219; Ibid., no. 16, 1 May 1926, para.
397, p. 227.
45
I came across just one case where in March 1926 a Muslim woman in Gonda
converted on her own and married a Hindu, PAI, no. 12, 27 March 1926, para. 294,
p. 171. This may signify that they did not find conversion to Hinduism to be elevat-
ing their position in any way, or that the Hindu family structure was no better than
the Muslim patriarchal one. In cases in which males converted, like some Malkana
Rajputs, women followed, though here also there were tensions. Some conversions
through shuddhi were reported in Meerut in March 1924, but the question of the
womenfolk of those converted caused some difficulty. PAI, no. 13, 29 March 1924,
para. 107, p. 116.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 208 CHARU GUPTA

women. The woman here was a medium, to produce progeny and to

increase the numbers of Hindus by simply coming into the Hindu
fold.

Hindu Woman, Muslim Man

We find a complete reversal in the portrayal of relations between

Hindu women and Muslim men. Here romance, elopements and con-
versions easily slipped into the rhetoric of abduction. In the 1920s
especially, there was a proliferation of popular inflammatory and
demagogic appeals, as never before, based on stories of atrocities
against Hindu women, ranging from allegations of rape, aggression
and abduction, to luring, conversion and forced marriage by Muslim
males.46 Lechery, abduction and conversion were no longer limited
to rulers, the Prophet and villains, were not just extraordinary
events, or a thing of the ‘bad’ medieval past. Now average Muslims
were depicted as being involved in these acts in present times.47
Thus, relations between Hindu women and Muslim men became a
way to strengthen the image of the violent and virile Muslim, and
for the justification of shuddhi and sangathan (Hindu organization in
defence of ‘Hindu’ interests).48
In 1923, Madan Mohan Malaviya, in a speech delivered as the
President of the Hindu Mahasabha at Banaras, made one of the first
attempts to create a history of present-day abductions.49 An article
headed ‘Kidnapping’ wrote:
Hardly a day passes without our noticing a case or two of kidnapping of
Hindu women and children by not only Muslim badmashes and goondas,
46
Kalpana Kannabiran, ‘Rape and Construction of Communal Identity’, in
Kumari Jayawardena and Malathi de Alwis (eds), Embodied Violence: Communalising
Women’s Sexuality in South Asia (Delhi, 1996), pp. 32–41.
47
Editorial thoughts, ‘Muslim–Manovritti ka Vyapak Swarup’ [Widespread
Nature of Muslim Mentality], Chand, 6, 3 (Jan. 1928), pp. 315–21.
48
In case of riots, Muslims were usually depicted as the originators and
aggressors, a point I will not elaborate here. See Jagdishprasad Tiwari, Kanpur ka
Vikat Sangram [Massive Battle of Kanpur] (Kanpur, 1931), pp. 5–9; Anon. (A Home
Ruler), Dussehra mein Muharram [Being the Hindu Version of the Moslem–Hindu
Fracas of Allahabad] (Allahabad, 1917), pp. 1–6; Anon, Hindu–Muslim Ekta ka Sawal
[A Dialogue Between Shri Bhagwandass and Maulana Azad Sobhani on Hindu
Muslim Unity] (Kashi, 1923), p. 49. For a contemporary perspective see P. K.
Datta, ‘ ‘‘Dying Hindus’’: Production of Hindu Communal Sense in Early Twentieth
Century Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, 28, 25 (19 June 1993), p. 1314.
49
File 66/VI/1924, Home Political (National Archives of India) (henceforth
NAI).

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 (IM)POSSIBLE LOVE AND SEXUAL PLEASURE 209
but also by men of standing and means, who are supposed to be very highly
connected. The worst feature of this evil is that the Hindus do not stir
themselves over the daylight robbery of their national stock . . . . We are
convinced that a regular propaganda is being carried on by the interested
party for kidnapping Hindu women and children at different centres
throughout the country. It is an open secret that Juma Masjids at Delhi
and Lahore are being used as headquarters of these propagandists. . . . We
must do away with this mischievous Muslim propaganda of kidnapping
women and children. There must be no mincing of matters or winking at
hard facts in this matter of vital importance to the Hindu community.
(emphasis mine).50
In 1924 there was a case in which Raza Ali, the Deputy Collector
of Kanpur, was accused of abducting and then seducing a Hindu girl.
He was blamed for having forcefully converted her. The vernacular
Hindi press launched a virulent campaign against him, using the
case to argue that abduction acitivities were not just confined to low
caste or loutish Muslims.51 A meeting called by the Hindu Sabha in
Kanpur on 28 June was attended by some 2000 persons and
demanded severe action against Raza Ali. At Unnao, a Hindu Sabha
meeting advocated the recovery of the Hindu woman from the house
of Raza Ali.52
Abduction campaigns demonstrated the ‘lack of character’ of
Muslim men, who showed scant respect for Hindu women. Muslim
virility was deemed uncontrollable, and therefore censured. Muslims
were depicted as waylaying Hindu women at wells, hospitals and
neighbourhoods.53 Orthodox Hindu organizations participated in
such accusations as much as the Arya Samaj, revealing a certain
unity around abduction campaigns.54 In August 1924 anti-Muslim
leaflets were posted at Pratapgarh, with allegations that Muslims in
the disguise of sadhus (ascetic) were moving about to abduct Hindu
women.55 A newspaper referred to an incident in Bareilly in which a
50
Patriot, NNR, 24 Oct. 1924.
51
Hindi newspapers of the time were full of it: Pratap condemned the action of
Raza Ali and remarked that this incident strengthened the belief among Hindus
that Muslims could not be trusted, especially regarding women. Azad also deplored
the incident. Abhyudaya remarked that Raza Ali’s actions were a clear example that
such activities extended to all Muslims. Arya Patra warned Hindus to draw a lesson
from this incident. All in NNR, 12 July 1924.
52
PAI, no. 27, 12 July 1924, p. 220.
53
File C-6/1934–35, Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha Papers (Nehru Memorial
Museum and Library).
54
Bharat Dharma, for example, a Hindi weekly published from Banaras, and a
supporter of Sanatan Dharma, constantly accused Muslim males of seducing
women, See 29 July 1924, p. 1; 5 Aug. 1924, p. 12.
55
PAI, no. 34, 30 Aug. 1924, p. 276.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 210 CHARU GUPTA

Muslim youth disguised as a Hindu mendicant was caught taking

photos of Hindu women bathing in a river. The writer suspected
some conspiracy behind the matter and stated that Muslims were
trying to convert Hindu women by strange and inhuman practices.56
A poem written at the time, and later banned, called ‘Chand Musal-
manon ki Harkaten’, stated:
Ai aryon kyon so rahe ho pai pasare,
Muslim yeh nahin hoyege humrah tumhare . . . .
Shuddhi va sangathan kiya tabhi se dil jala . . . .
Tadad badhane ke liye chal chalai
Muslim banane ke liye scheme banayi . . . .
Ekkon ko gali gaon mein lekar ghumate hain,
parde ko dal muslim aurat baithate hain.
(Dear Aryans, why are you sleeping calmly? Muslims will never be your
companions. Since we have launched shuddhi and sangathan, they have
been jealous of us. They are making new schemes to increase their popula-
tion and to make people Muslims. They roam with carts in cities and vil-
lages and take away women, who are put under the veil and made
Muslim.)57
Stories of rape and abduction highlighted the vulnerability and the
moral plight of Hindu women, who often appeared as passive victims
at the hands of inscrutable Muslims. Sympathy for the downtrodden
and victimized Hindu women was constantly evoked, and Hinduism
and Hindu society were urged to change their ways and accept them.
However, in the process, the responsibility for public/sexual violence
shifted onto Muslims (and sometimes Christians), ready to convert
and absorb such women. The portrayal of women as victims could
also prove to be a way to control them by restricting their move-
ments, as various public places were declared unsafe for them.
The abducted Hindu woman was metamorphosed into a symbol of
both sacredness and humiliation, and hence of the victimization of
the Hindu community. Tracts appeared which were written exclus-
ively around the Hindu female victim and the Muslim male abductor.
They had extremely provocative titles. One was called Hindu Auraton
ki Loot and denounced Muslim propaganda for preying upon female
victims. Yet another, named Hindu Striyon ki Loot ke Karan, was an

56
Vartman, NNR., 23 May 1925.
57
Raghuvar Dayalu, Chand Musalmanon ki Harkaten [Deeds of Some Muslims]
(Kanpur, 1928), pp. 2–9. Also see Arya Patra, NNR, 12 July 1924; Mahatma Pre-
manand (Hindu Dharma Rakshak), Musalmani Andher Khata [The Dark Deeds of Mus-
lims] (Awadh, 1928).

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 (IM)POSSIBLE LOVE AND SEXUAL PLEASURE 211
Arya Samajist tract which showed how to save ‘our’ ladies from
becoming Christian or Muslim.58 The abducted woman was a poten-
tial site of outrage against family order and religious sentiment, car-
rying the fear of the Muslim into every Hindu home, and
strengthening the drive for mobilization.
This concern with female chastity and purity allowed a further
justification for Hindu male prowess. The virility of the community
came to hinge upon defending women’s honour.59 The Hindu woman
was after all the exclusive preserve of Hindu men. Safeguarding the
virtue of Hindu women thus became identified as a prerogative of
the Hindu male. In 1925, the Hindu Sabha tried to organize volun-
teer corps in Banaras to prevent women and children at railway sta-
tions from falling into the hands of Muslims. Subscriptions were col-
lected for this purpose.60 In the same year, notices warning Hindu
men of the kidnapping of women and children by Muslims were in
circulation at Hamirpur. In Jaunpur, notices advising the protection
of Hindu women and children against Muslim goondas were received
which had come from Allahabad and were distributed by one Babu
Ram goldsmith in March 1926.61 When branches of the Mahabir
Dal (Group of the Brave) were set up in UP, the name was thus
explained:
An organization of Hindu youth can be called by many names like Samaj
Sewak Dal, Hindu Yuvak Dal etc., but Mahabir Dal sounds most appropri-
ate. It has its own attraction as it reminds one of Hanuman and the way
he aided in Sita’s release who was abducted by Ravan. Same way we have
to aid in the release of our women from the present day abductors.62
58
Suraj Prasad Mishra, Hindu Auraton ki Loot [The Loot of Hindu Women] (Lucknow,
1924). Also mentioned in SPBR, March 1924. Ganga Prasad Upadhyaya (ed.),
Hindu Striyon ki Loot ke Karan [The Causes of the Plunder of Hindu Women] (Allahabad,
1927). Also mentioned in SPBR, June 1927. Also see Suraj Prasad Mishra, Musalman
Gundon ke Hinduon par Ghor Atyachar, part I [The Extreme Excesses Committed by Muslim
Scoundrels on Hindus. A Collection of Excerpts from the Public Press] (Kanpur,
1924). Also mentioned in SPBR, March 1924.
59
It has been argued that when confronted with the phenomenon of conversion
from Hinduism, whether in eighteenth-century Kerala or in contemporary India, a
certain kind of Hindu loses her/his logical faculties. The politics of cultural virginity
is inevitably shadowed by a myth of innocence, combined with a ranting of violation,
invasion, seduction and rape. See Alok Rai, ‘Religious Conversions and the Crisis of
Brahminical Hinduism’, in Gyanendra Pandey (ed.), Hindus and Others: The Question
of Identity in India Today (New Delhi, 1993), pp. 225–37.
60
PAI, no. 25, 4 July 1925, para. 207, p. 271, and para. 208, p. 273.
61
PAI, no. 31, 15 Aug. 1925, para. 250, p. 329; ibid., no. 12, 27 March 1926,
para. 311, p. 177.
62
Thakur Rajkishore Singh, Hindu Sangathan (Ballia, 1924), p. 75.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 212 CHARU GUPTA

There were repeated calls for Hindus to come forward to protect

their women. A whole series of meetings was addressed to Hindu
males. In order to protect ‘our’ women, Hindu communal organiza-
tions argued, any steps were justified. After construing the image of
the ferociously intolerant, sexually predatory Muslim male and of
vulnerable Hindu women, Hindu males were now invited to become
equally ferocious. What was produced here was the self-image of a
community at war. Allegations of abductions caused a number of
localized affrays, and even occasional riots, where Hindus united
against Muslims. In Kanpur in June 1924, a group of Hindu speakers
were responsible for causing serious apprehensions regarding kid-
napping of women, and some Muslims were as a consequence forcibly
ejected from a bathing festival at one of the city ghats on the Ganges.
In the same year at Unnao, Hindus beat up Muslim fakirs
(mendicants) because of kidnapping scare stories.63 A serious com-
munal riot occurred on 7 March 1928 at Ol, a large village in the
Mathura district on the Bharatpur border and just north of the Agra
border after some Hindus from Dharampura marched on Ol and
attacked Muslims in the village because one of the latter had eloped
with a Hindu woman.64
These abduction stories illustrate the remarkable aptitude shown
by Hindu communalists to propagate, through a range of media, the
image of the sexually charged, lustful Muslim male who violated
the pure body the the Hindu woman. The role of Hindu and Hindi
newspapers was especially marked in this campaign. Many became
more communal in tone. From 1923, a growing number of supposed
cases of abduction of Hindu women were reported in the local news-
papers.65 The reports were usually brief but they appeared regularly
and sometimes even became headlines. More and more space was
given to such stories. One prominent news item categorically stated
that a Lalita Devi had been kidnapped by a Muslim. Ten days later,
a much smaller item appeared, saying that the words ‘alleged to have
been’ had been left out in the report by mistake!66 What suited the
dominant pattern became significant news; what was uncomfortable
was either not stated or relegated to the inside pages. Headlines
served the purpose of dramatizing the various abduction stories and
63
File 25/June 1924, Home Poll (NAI); PAI, no. 26, 5 July 1924, p. 211.
64
File 177–P/1928, Foreign and Political Dept (NAI).
65
I noticed this while looking at the NNR and some local newspapers during the
period of my study.
66
Leader, 17 Nov. 1938, p. 14; ibid., 27 Nov. 1938, p. 6.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 (IM)POSSIBLE LOVE AND SEXUAL PLEASURE 213
played a further inflammatory role, aimed at rousing Hindu senti-
ments. The headlines ignored contrary evidence, and presented
‘facts’ boldly, singularly and uniformly. They often ran counter to
the contents of the report. Their repetitiveness provided a continu-
ous stream of stories of abductions, the particular details of which
would be far too complicated for the reader to remember. They col-
laborated with the limitations of human memory to produce a master
story of Muslim aggression and Hindu woman’s seizure. Common
headlines included: ‘Communal Tension in Court Compound:
Alleged Conversion of Hindu Girl’, ‘Azamgarh: Lalita Devi’s Kidnap-
ping Case’, ‘Unprecedented Communal Interest’, ‘Miyanji ki Kartut’
(Sinful Act of a Muslim), ‘Musalman Utha le Gaya Hindu Yuvati Ko’
(Muslim Abducted a Hindu Woman).67 It was not just a question of
particular cases: reports moved readily from the particular to the
general and abstract. Reckless and venomous generalizations were
made, and almost every day the Hindi vernacular press published
statements of abductions without concrete proof.68
Hindu-owned newspapers not only started giving more space to
abduction stories but built up a range of communal stereotypes
which to some extent provided the basic grammar of the abduction
of Hindu women. The fact that generalizations about abductions and
kidnapping of Hindu women and children could now be made openly,
legitimized their public expression and increased the threshold of
public acceptance for them; this also made them ‘true’. Propagating
stories of abductions, both in the newspaper and in everyday conver-
sation fed by them, sustained abductions as an active cultural, and
therefore political, issue.
Lawyers and courts provided additional public space in which
abduction spectacles could be produced. The newspapers also showed
a lively interest in court proceedings. The Leader carried two pages
every fortnight, devoted exclusively to court proceedings. Thus news-
papers and legal institutions operated in tandem. The courts and
local kachehris (public office) became major sites for panic about
abductions. Communal tension ran high in the court compound of
Lucknow when one Abdulla made an application before the city
magistrate that he should be given custody of Rasul Bandi, a Hindu
67
Leader, 30 Sept. 1938, p. 12; ibid., 17 Nov. 1938, p. 14, and 16 Sept. 1938, p.
6. Bharat Dharma, 5 Aug. 1924, p. 12; Abhyudaya, 3 Feb. 1923, p. 5.
68
For example, Prem stated that abduction has become a feature of the times in
almost all the provinces. Hindu Sabha must raise Hindu volunteers to put an end
to such atrocities, NNR, 31 May 1924.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 214 CHARU GUPTA

girl who had embraced Islam. It was reported that Draupadi, the girl
concerned, had become a Muslim. As the guardian of the girl dis-
puted the story of conversion, the police took the girl in custody and
lodged her in Mahila Ashram (Women’s Home).69
One case, in which the courts and lawyers played the central role,
shook Kanpur in 1938. There was a major scandal and great tension
when one Bimla Devi eloped with a Muslim boy. The case acquires
special significance because of the amount of interest it generated.
Its importance can be judged by the fact that H. G. Haig, the then
Governor of UP, thought it fit to mention it at least twice in the
secret letters he exchanged with the Viceroy at this time. Thus a
letter said:
Another matter affecting a High Court has come up recently. There was a
sensational incident in Cawnpore. The daughter of a well known Hindu
vakil (lawyer) eloped with the son of a prominent Muslim merchant, and
apparently the girl embraced Islam and was duly married to the boy. A
charge of abduction was brought against the boy. After some weeks the girl
was discovered and pending the trial of the criminal case, her father made
a claim to custody of the girl under the civil law. The High Court were
moved to intervene and transferred the civil proceedings to themselves.
Meanwhile the girl and her father disappeared and have not yet been found.
The whole matter has given rise to acute communal feeling both in Cawn-
pore and Allahabad, and allegations were made against the impartiality of
one of the Muslim judges of the High Court. An application was made to
the Provincial Government to transfer the case to another High Court
under the amended form of section 327 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
The grounds advanced were that there was danger of a breach of peace
owing to acute communal feeling and that on the same ground they could
not expect a fair hearing in the province. The Minister for Justice, Dr.
Katju, who is perhaps naturally inclined to accept the Hindu version, has
taken a perfectly proper line. He asked the High Court for their comments
and inquired from the District Magistrates of Cawnpore and Allahabad
whether they anticipated any difficulty in maintaining order if the case
continued as at present. Armed with the replies of these various authorities
which were on the lines to be expected he has rejected the application for
transfer.70
The sensational case rocked the UP press for many months. Many
of the leading papers followed it graphically and gave lengthy details

69
Leader, 30 Sept. 1938, p. 12.
70
Letter dated 8 Nov. 1938, written by Haig to Linlithgow, Haig Papers, Eur.
Mss. F. 115/2A (India Office Library). I am grateful to Nandini Gooptu for initially
mentioning this case to me, which I was then able to follow up.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 (IM)POSSIBLE LOVE AND SEXUAL PLEASURE 215
of the court proceedings.71 Many such cases dragged on for years and
the newspapers gave dramatic power to the proceedings in court and
bestowed an aura of public acclaim on the prosecuting lawyers. In
this case it was Bijendra Swarup, a leading lawyer of Kanpur and
one of the stalwarts of the UP Arya Samaj, who was the hero. In a
brilliant legal performance, he secured custody of the girl on behalf
of her parents. She was reconverted to Hinduism through shuddhi
at the Arya Samaj temple in Kanpur, and Swarup even managed to
arrange her wedding to a ‘suitable’ Hindu man! It is interesting to
note that Bimla Devi herself was never allowed to appear in the
court. Both lawyers and journalists, it should be added, were highly
vulnerable to communal influence in this period. Many of the leading
personalities of the Hindu Mahasabha were lawyers by profession.
Gossip and rumours added spice to this uproar. Rumours and kid-
napping scare stories were widely reported from many places like
Agra, Pilibhit, Meerut and Unnao in 1924. Sometimes there was
immediate evidence to prove the depth of fallacy and fantasy
involved. Thus for example, on 13 April 1927, Hindus spread a
rumour in Muzaffarnagar that a Hindu girl had been forcibly con-
verted to Islam and was being married to a Muhammadan. They
proceeded in crowds to inspect the alleged pervert and found that
the girl had always been a Muslim. The girl’s brother was forced to
lodge complaints against certain Hindus, including the prosecuting
inspector and District Intelligence staff sub-inspector.72 In Kanpur
in 1939, in a statement given to the police, a Hindu youth accused
Muslim volunteers of kidnapping Hindu women. This led to a search
of the Muslim League office to find the kidnapped women, which
yielded no trace of them. Muslims closed shops and the Muslim
League organized a protest meeting.73 The spread of rumours did
not require massive organization or capital, and rumours became a
major source of abduction stories.
Abductions became one of the main determinants of Hindu iden-
tity and consciousness and can be regarded as one of the key factors
polarizing Hindu/Muslim politics in the 1920s. Abductions provided
an explanatory system that held Muslims as the central target.
71
See Leader, Pioneer, Vartman, Aaj, Pratap between Sept. 1938 and Feb. 1939. As
to specific dates for example, see Leader, 21 and 23 Sep. 1938, p. 6; 8 Oct. 1938,
p. 5.
72
PAI, no. 17, 7 May 1927, p. 169.
73
PAI, no. 20, 20 May 1939.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 216 CHARU GUPTA

Hindu publicists deployed abductions in multiple propaganda sites.

Drawing on diverse sources like newspapers, pamphlets, meetings,
novels, myths, rumours and gossip, these publicists were able to oper-
ate in a public domain, and to monopolize the field of everyday rep-
resentation. Communication, more than direct experience, created
a systematic Hindu communalism, an ideology of abductions. At the
same time, there were attempts to link such ‘discursive performat-
ives’ to material realities and events like the Moplah rebellion.
Abductions were also portrayed as factual and real (though often
constructed). Representation, performances and events thus fed into
each other.74
Hate speech is always repeatable speech, drawing its strength
from stereotypes and rhetoric.75 Here too, abduction was represented
as a general phenomenon of the period, and became a recurrent
central proposition of Hindu publicists. Different events were made
to appear to follow a similar pattern in a narrative of Muslim male
aggression and Hindu female victimhood. In repetition lay strength,
and one of the primary sources of communal power: its ability per-
petually to renew itself through reiteration, and its authority as sup-
posed truth and ‘common sense’.76
The abduction of women provided an emotive basis for arguments
in favour of Hindu patriarchy and communal homegeneity. However,
the discourse around abductions also reveals that sometimes Hindu
women defied community homogeneity through inter-religious love.
Though women, especially of the upper castes but not exclusively so,
were often complicit in practices that repressed their sexuality and
desires, and were equally censorious of Muslims, some of them seem
to have simultaneously accepted and rejected caste-bound hierarchies
and boundaries. They both appropriated and questioned homogeneous
Hindu identities, assimilated and distrusted religious symbols and rit-
uals, acquiesced in the social order and yet sought to disrupt it. Publi-
cists’ efforts did not only mean constraints or increasing oppression,
but also created avenues for potential possibilities for women, as
reforms often had double-edged implications. Sometimes reformist
agendas or literary canons too were not clear-cut, and had fluctuating
predilections. Moreover, representations or motivations did not imply
actual implementation or omnipotent success. Certain commercial
74
I have borrowed this term from Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the
Performative (New York, 1997), pp. 71–102.
75
Butler, Excitable, p. 102.
76
Datta, ‘Dying’, p. 1305.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 (IM)POSSIBLE LOVE AND SEXUAL PLEASURE 217
publications and women’s movements revealed either an indifference
to ‘proper’ norms or moulded and derided them according to their own
needs. Women thus addressed their entertainment and sexuality mit-
igated their burden through songs, ‘dirty’ literature, ambiguous rela-
tionships and public movements.
At critical moments, the individual voices and actions of some
women questioned the Hindu rhetoric and posited an alternative
world. These hint at an incompleteness in any neat model of a singu-
lar identity.77 At times, there were cultural reversals of the abduction
discourses, fracturing the myth of the saintly Hindu and lascivious
Muslim. In Allahabad, a Kirloskar Sangit Company staged a play
entitled ‘Bharatvarsh’, on Hindu–Muslim unity. The play depicted
the readiness of Muslims to protect the chastity of a Hindu woman,
whereas a Brahmin was ready to rape her.78 Some Hindu women
chose to speak against the vicious anti-Muslim campaign. There was
a great communal antagonism in Allahabad as it was alleged that
two Muslims had raped a Hindu woman. The Malaviya family did
their best to exaggerate the affair and Abhyudaya published alarmist
reports regarding it. However, Hindu ardour was seriously dampened
by the statement on oath of the woman, a Pasin, who declared that
she had not been raped and that the whole story originated in a
dispute over the price of some vegetables which she had brought to
market.79 Women at times chose to defend their conversion as well.
Thus in Basti, a Khatik woman who had been converted to Islam was
taken to the Arya Samaj office with a view to reconversion. She
refused to listen to the arguments used, and one of the Aryas,
annoyed at this, boxed the ears of a Muslim boy who was whistling

77
This can also be seen by the development of other movements in this period,
and there was a radical content in non-Brahmin and untouchable movements. The
most important example of this in UP was the emergence of Adi Hinduism. R. S.
Khare, The Untouchable as Himself: Ideology, Identity and Pragmatism Among the Lucknow
Chamars (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 79–92; Nandini Gooptu, ‘Caste and Labour:
Untouchable Social Movements in Urban UP in the Early Twentieth Century’, in
Peter Robb (ed.), Dalit Movements and the Meanings of Labour in India (Delhi, 1993),
pp. 285–98. Other regions witnessed even stronger movements, Gail Omvedt, Cul-
tural Revolt in a Colonial Society: The Non-Brahmin Movement in Western India, 1873–
1930 (Bombay, 1976); Mark Juergensmeyer, Religion as Social Vision: The Movement
Against Untouchability in Twentieth Century Punjab (Berkeley, 1982); Rosalind O’Han-
lon, Caste, Conflict and Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low Caste Protest in Nineteenth
Century Western India (Cambridge, 1985); Saurabh Dube, Untouchable Pasts: Religion,
Identity and Power among a Central Indian Community, 1780–1950 (Albany, 1998).
78
PAI, 24 March 1923, no. 12, para. 247, p. 186.
79
PAI, 16 Jan. 1926, no. 2, para. 61, p. 36.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 218 CHARU GUPTA

as he passed the building. He alleged that the boy was trying to

entice the woman away.80
Scattered incidents thus show some women, especially those on
the peripheries of Hindu society, forming alliances that undercut
stable communal boundaries. Some widows eloped with Muslim men.
In 1927, a Hindu widow of Pratapgarh eloped with a Muslim, whom
she married.81 When three widows arrived at Etawah in February
1928 proposing to live on their own in the town, the Hindu Sabha
who wished to reclaim them frustrated their plans. One of them then
sought the protection of some Muslims.82 Gurukul Samachar lamented:
It is known to all that the Hindu community had to pay a heavy price for
stopping the remarriage of child widows. Recently two Brahmin, one Baniya
and one Bhatnagar Kayastha widows adopted Islam. The first Gaur Brah-
min widow read nikah (marriage) with Tazzukhan in Badaun. The second
Brahmin widow became a Muslim at Mirzapur; the third settled down in
the house of a Julaha of Moradabad and the fourth Bhatnagar widow read
nikah with a bhishti. This news is heartbreaking and agonising.83
Some lower caste women too resorted to elopement and conver-
sion. In Banaras, a Chamar woman left her husband in March 1924
in favour of a Muslim, by whom she was converted. This caused a lot
of alarm in Arya Samajist circles. A Jat woman married a Muslim in
Agra after being converted, on 5 February 1926. A sweeper woman
of Purwah, Unnao married a Muslim and converted. A Kori woman,
kept by a Muslim contractor at Banda, converted, and this caused a
sensation among the Hindus of Attara.84 Even certain prostitutes
took to conversion. Quite a storm was raised in Jhansi in April 1927
over the keeping by a Muslim of a prostitute, originally a Hindu, who
later embraced Islam. Zahurran, a Kanjarin of Bareilly, converted
and took her place among the local Muslim prostitutes of Pilibhit.85
These unnamed women in their own way broke the set norms of
society, and put a question mark against the Hindu patriarchal order
and myths of community homogeneity.

80
PAI, 6 March 1926, no. 9, p. 127.
81
PAI, 15 Sep. 1928, no. 36, para. 744, p. 372.
82
PAI, 25 Feb. 1928, no. 8, para. 159, p. 80.
83
Anon., ‘Bal Vidhwa Vivah’ (Child Widow’s Marriage), in Gurukul Samachar, 2,
7–8 (Feb–March 1910), p. 4.
84
PAI, 29 March 1924, no. 13, para. 107, p. 118; 27 Feb. 1926, no. 8, para. 19,
p. 114; 1 Dec. 1928, no. 46, para. 1021, p. 522; and 1 May 1926, no. 16, para. 415,
p. 235.
85
PAI, 30 April 1927, no. 16, para. 409, p. 161; 11 June 1927, no. 22, para. 550,
p. 218.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 (IM)POSSIBLE LOVE AND SEXUAL PLEASURE 219
These incidents together weave a narrative thread, which illumin-
ates certain ruptures in the Hindu logic. Firstly, these cases belied
the ideal of the Hindu family and drew attention to the sexuality,
needs and desires of women. There had always been elements of
defiant love and sexual pleasure in the face of a culture that continu-
ally sought to restrict them. And elopements and conversions hint at
love and romance.86 The women mentioned here ‘used’ the instru-
ments of conversion and elopement as a mode of coping with, chal-
lenging and, within limits, transgressing an oppressive social order.
They were claiming a limited arena of independent action. Also, and
this is the second point, such alliances and conversions suggest that
sometimes identities were recast to disrupt the logic of communal
boundaries. The actions of these women signalled moments of vul-
nerability in the dominant discourse and upset the relentless com-
munal polarization. Particularly in a communally charged atmo-
sphere, when abductions and the maligning of the Muslim male
acquired increasing importance, inter-religious marriages, elope-
ments and conversions due to love or material and emotional needs
posited a different world. They highlighted the messy complexities
of reality and the inchoate ways of life, suggesting a different order
of rationality against all efforts to categorize, classify and project a
homogenized community identity.87 The same women who were
often perceived as victims by the Hindu communalists in their dis-
course on abduction, may well have been active agents (from a fem-
inist perspective), choosing elopement and conversion.
Such transgressive alliances were perhaps more observable or
necessary in this period because social and cultural boundaries were
being hardened, both deliberately and inadvertently. In a different
time they would have probably had quite a different resonance for
both participants and observers. Transgressions were also more pos-
sible in this period because a new womanhood was emerging in
domestic and public spheres, as women participated more and more
in public activities, both in the national movement and in the print
world. This was an ambivalent trend: on the one hand, rules limiting
female conduct and narrowing their employment and independence
became more extensive; greater seclusion for women was a con-
86
Gauri Viswanathan, Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity and Belief (Princeton,
1998), p. 163, remarks that in the cases of conversions in Bengal, reported in the
1901 census, the cause of the vast majority was neither proselytism nor doctrinal
conviction but romance.
87
Viswanathan, Outside, p. xiv.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 220 CHARU GUPTA

sequence of the search for higher status and also of higher incomes.
Moreover, property laws continued to favour men, professions were
run by men, and so on. On the other hand, simultaneously, new
laws and opportunities gave greater spaces for women within these
changes, be it in education, employment, or laws of marriage or
property.
Finally, one could argue that the subversive activities of some
women helped patriarchal chauvinism and helped underplay caste
exploitation in favour of Hindu solidarity. As in the case of widows,
anxieties about alliances between lower-caste Hindu women and
Muslims could be effectively used to win over the lower-caste men
to the cause of Hindu unity. Caste orthodoxy here converged with
communal boundaries. When a bhangi (sweeper) woman married a
Muslim in Aligarh in March 1926, communal feelings were largely
embittered. The city bhangis struck work. Many shops in the city
were shut down.88 Trouble arose in Kanpur between the sweepers
and the Muslims of Patkapur mohalla when it became known that a
Muslim had a female sweeper as his mistress. The Arya Samajists
seized upon it as a pretext for anti-Muslim propaganda. They suc-
ceeded in bringing about a strike of sweepers who for one day refused
to work for Muslims.89 Relations between Hindus and Muslims in
Jianpur village of Azamgarh became strained as a result of a conver-
sion of a Barin (leaf-plate seller) to Islam and her subsequent mar-
riage to a fakir.90 Following the elopement of a sweeper woman with
a Muslim in Dehradun in 1938 and her subsequent conversion to
Islam, the sweeper community threatened to boycott all Muslim
houses.91 Here, then, lower caste men colluded in the production of
the sense of reality that stigmatized them. While they questioned
the dominant order, they could also at times identify with it. I sug-
gest that the projection of anxieties of lower caste Hindu males
around women vis-à-vis the ‘other’ was in some senses a more potent
weapon than the cow-protection movements or the movement to
establish Hindi as the national language. Both these movements had
only very limited appeal for lower castes, but discourses of elope-
ments and conversions could transcend this limitation and draw
these castes more closely in a projected homogeneous identity. Any
transgression by women denoted a failure not only of women, but
88
PAI, 27 March 1926, no. 12, para. 311, p. 176.
89
PAI, 3 April 1926, no. 13, para. 342, p. 195.
90
PAI, 29 Sept. 1934, no. 38, para. 534, p. 556.
91
PAI, 21 May 1938, no. 20, para. 183, p. 124.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

 (IM)POSSIBLE LOVE AND SEXUAL PLEASURE 221
more so of patriarchy, of all Hindu men, of the family and the entire
community.
Inter-religious love offered a potential model of cultural syncret-
ism, but was not able to hold its own against the irreversible loss
of community caused by romantic attachments. The Hindu widow
proscribed by the Hindu patriarchy in general, and the lower-caste
Hindus ostracized by the upper castes, both came to be slowly co-
opted in the discourse of homogeneous Hindu identity, without signi-
ficantly disturbing the existing power equations within the
community.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jan 2009 IP address: 130.132.120.22