Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 07:18:04 -0700
From: Soumitra Bose <soumitra-AT-ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Reply to Soumitra


Rinita Mazumdar wrote:
> 
> 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

"Reprsenting" the sub-altern by a group of the blood-drone exploiters can 
be the worst "gift" to them. The great discourse on Spivak's book have 
brought this issue up many years ago, even decades ago that was solved by 
the strong assertion that one cannot even feel as them if one does not go 
through or are willing to go through the similar experiences. The whole 
movement of the seventies tried that and have been successful to an 
extent, it never bothered to be "represented". Today MAhasweta Devi or 
Srilata Swaminathan et al are still following the track of the seventies 
and have actually contributed than what Spivak could do with all her good 
intentions.



> 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. 

I did not find such an interpretation. This kind of interpretation 
actually is popular among the Shaivite Agama school of Kashmir and the 
invader culture of North India( culture of invaders from Vedic ages). 
BEngal and the East always followed the Shakti religion(differed from 
Dharma). In whose non-duality concept Purush is seen as a catalyst for 
creation on the most active and assertive PRakriti, in addition to that 
Purush itself is considered as a creation of the PRakriti when duality 
was needed from within non-duality for creation of forms as distinct from 
other forms. So in the whole of Shakti school (core literature being Devi 
Bhagavatam) Prakriti is the ONE AND ONLY ONE creative source and 
repository. It is active, every thing else is made active by it to act 
upon it , to manufacture one form and then the next.




Behula's resistance
> overcomes that passivity.IT is not Behula's resistance that came out in that epic. It is her 
redefining of norms and mores. Shakti school redefines the existing norms 
through such anecdotes in the very similar way as the prophet system and 
prophet mechanism of the semites.

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

Labellings come when arguments can not cut ice anymore.
> 
> Rinita