Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 10:30:52 -0600 (MDT)
From: Rinita Mazumdar <rinita-AT-nmt.edu>
Subject: Reply to Soumitra


Soumitra,

First of all I think it was unfair to post in a list in a language
that most people cannot read. Next, to reply to your post that I
am making subaltern women ``sexually passive'', I am not sure what
you mean but the best I can do is represent the subaltern women
through my bourgeois middle-class voice and I agree that in India middle
class women are brought up with lots of values that makes them
sexually passive (at least generates that ideology). Moreover,
my interest was not so much portraying the historical Behula but
the EFFECT such images of women have on popular imagination, as
also SATI, SAVITRI, ect and ``history'' seems not so much important
to me as the EFFECT. Further, i specifically set Behula up against
the natural background for in India women are also ``prakriti''
(the passive element) (the concept of SHAKTI is also there).
In Samkhya and other systems while PURUSA is the active element,
the primordial PRAkRITI is the passive one. Behula's resistance
overcomes that passivity.

There is much more to say. This is just a small attempt which
I am sure would not please a ``left intellectual'' like you,

Rinita