‘A Love Song to Our Mongrel Selves’: Hybridity, Sexuality and the Law
| Published date | 01 September 1999 |
| Date | 01 September 1999 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466399900800304 |
| Author | Ratna Kapur |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
‘A LOVE SONG TOOUR
MONGREL SELVES’: HYBRIDITY,
SEXUALITY AND THE LAW
RATNA KAPUR
Centre for Feminist Legal Research, New Delhi, India
ABSTRACT
This essay examines some of the cultural wars that are being fought out in India in
the legal domain, cultural wars that all seem to involve sex. The battles taking place
in the legal domain, comprising issues such as a legal challenge to the sodomy laws in
the Indian Penal Code, a legal challenge to satellite broadcasting and the struggle to
decriminalise prostitution, all involve a contest over the meaning of culture. In each
of the controversies, the rallying cry is one of ‘Indian cultural values’ in which it seems
that all sides of the debate stake their claim to being ‘true’ protector and promoter of
Indian cultural traditions.
This essay addresses three concerns which underlie why participating in a conver-
sation about gender, sexuality and law is important in a postcolonial context. First, it
examines the importance of recuperating and theorizing desire and pleasure as an
important political project within postcolonial India, particularly against the back-
drop of the rise to power of the Hindu Right. Second, it examines the problematic
role of cultural essentialism in both promoting and resisting this project in the legal
arena. The final part of this essay re-evaluates the emancipatory potential of the victim
subject in a postcolonial context and explores the possibility of rethinking the nature
of the sexual subject to ensure that the political project remains both liberating and
subversive.
INTRODUCTION
THE TITLE for this essay comes from an oft-quoted passage from
Salman Rushdie’s book, Imaginary Homelands (Rushdie, 1991). It is
his eloquent description of the book that cost him his freedom: Satanic
Verses (Rushdie, 1991). Satanic Verses, he states, ‘celebrates hybridity, im-
purity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected
combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It
rejoices in mongrelisation and fears the absolutism of the Pure’ (Rushdie,
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES 0964 6639 (199909) 8:3 Copyright © 1999
SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi,
Vol. 8(3), 353–368; 009285
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1991: 394). The idea of hybridity and impurity provide the lens through
which the issues addressed in this essay are framed.
This essay is situated in the midst of the cultural wars being fought out in
India, cultural wars that all seem to involve sex (Kapur, 1996, 1997). I am
specifically interested in the battles taking place in the legal domain, includ-
ing a legal challenge to the sodomy laws in the Indian Penal Code, a legal
challenge to satellite broadcasting and the struggle to decriminalise prosti-
tution. In each of the controversies, the rallying cry is one of ‘Indian cultural
values’ in which it seems that all sides of the debate stake their claim to being
the ‘true’ protector and promoter of Indian cultural traditions.
I will focus on why I think the conversation about gender, sexuality and
law is important in a postcolonial context. This essay is focused on three con-
cerns that underlie my interest in this conversation. In the first section, I
examine the importance of recuperating and theorizing desire and pleasure as
an important political project within postcolonial India, particularly against
the backdrop of the rise to power of the Hindu Right. In the second section,
I examine the problematic role of cultural essentialism in both promoting and
resisting this project in the legal arena. In the final part of this essay, I re-
evaluate the emancipatory potential of the victim subject in a postcolonial
context, and explore the possibility of rethinking the nature of the sexual
subject to ensure that the political project I am pursuing remains both liber-
ating and subversive.
RECUPERATING DESIRE IN A POSTCOLONIAL CONTEXT
My project is located on the precipice of desire and subversion. The pursuit
of a politics of pleasure compels me into the conversation on gender, law and
sexuality – more specifically, to explore why a political project of desire is
important and how we can theorize and recuperate desire in a postcolonial
context. Why should we, and how can we, disrupt the script that represents
women in a developing context as victims constantly in need of rescue and
rehabilitation and rewrite a script of women who are also interested in Choli
Ke Peeche Kya Hai? (What lies behind the blouse?) the vastly popular hit
song and dance number of 1993, which depicts a highly eroticised scene by
the heroine, Madhuri Dixit, between herself and her female cohort, Neena
Gupta (Ghosh, 1999; Kapur, 1997); Ismat Chugtai’s 1942 short story, Lihaaf
(The Quilt),under whose shifting surface the tempestuous relations of erotic
pleasures are enacted between a sequestered wife and her female maid-servant
in an upper-class Muslim household (Chugtai, 1996); the relationship
between the two sisters-in-law in the 1996 diasporic production Fire, which
culminates in what one reviewer curiously describes as the ‘Indian’ lesbian
scene; and all three versions of Kama Sutra: the film,1the ancient scriptural
text and the same brand name contemporary condom advertisements.2
Women in India, rich and poor, urban and rural, are interested in what lies
behind Madhuri’s blouse, under Chugtai’s quilt, and between the sheets in
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