Revolutionary Marriage: On the Politics of Sexual Stories in Naxalbari

Author(s): Srila Roy

Source: Feminist Review, No. 83, Sexual Moralities (2006), pp. 99-118
Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3874385 .
Accessed: 23/01/2011 03:28

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=pal. .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Palgrave Macmillan Journals is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Feminist
Review.

http://www.jstor.org
83 revolutionary marriage: on
the politics of sexual
stories in Naxalbari

Srila Roy

abstract
Marriage practices, the dynamics of interpersonal relationships and the politics of
sexuality are relatively under-researched themes in the study of Bengali communism.
Historical scholarship on the revolutionary politics of the extreme left Naxalbari
andolan of the late 1960s-1970s, the object of this piece of study, is no exception.
The article engages with women and men's narratives on the practice of
'revolutionary' marriage in the movement through the prism of contemporary popular
memory studies and narrative analysis. Drawing on field interviews with middle-class
male and female activists, the article draws attention to the contestatory nature of
marriage in the collective memory of the movement. Narrative contestations over
marriage in the Naxalite movement underscore, I argue, a tension between a utopian
ideal of transgressive interpersonal relations and dominant middle-class codes of
sexual morality. At the same time, individual attempts to 'compose' (in storytelling)
socially recognizable and acceptable subject positions are grounded upon the
silencing and abjection of more risky memories. Given the discrepancies and
contradictions within the narrative repertoire from which individuals construct their
identities, these 'marriage stories' are a tremendous resource for investigating the
politics of love, sexuality and subject-formation in middle-class Bengali society.

keywords
sexuality; identity; narrative; memory; revolutionary movements

feminist review 83 2006 99

(99-118) ) 2006 FeministReview.0141-7789/06$30 www.feminist-review.com

 revolutionary marriage: on the politics of sexual
stories in Naxalbaril 1 A shorter version
of this article was
presented at the
Postgraduate South
Whenin love Asia Seminar Series,
Department of
Do not becomea flower Anthropology,
London School of
If you can, Economics and
Comeas the thunder. Political Science
2004
I'll lift its roarto mybreast
Andsendforththe battle cryto everycorner.2 2 From Bonerjee
(1987)
These lines are part of a poem written by young Bengali Naxalite, Murari
Mukhopadhyay. Inyoungmiddle-class men and women'sdreamsand desires for a
utopianworld, the idiomof love found new usage. Theimageryof love fused new
aspirations and passions for revolutionaryviolence, subverting its erstwhile
'bourgeois'underpinnings.Lovewas (re)imaginedas a form of comradeshipthat
transpired only in the revolutionarycause. What is more significant is that
bhalobasha(love) and desire for 'revolution'formedthe basis for the oneness of
the revolutionarycouple; their love and unity is facilitated by biplab or
'revolution'. The rewritingof the institution of 'marriage' in the Naxalbari
andolan was similarlypremisedon an equality of partnership,forged throughan
isomorphismof biplabwithbhalobasha.Revolutionentailed, it seems, a radically
altered organization of romance and relationships that had significant
implicationsfor the problematicof gender.
The Naxalbariandolan began as a peasant uprisingin northernWest Bengal in
1967, led by a dissident group of the CommunistParty of India (Marxist).
Membersof this groupand their sympathizerscame to be knownas Naxalites.The
Naxalites declared a 'people's war' against the Indianstate structuredon the
Maoist model of protractedarmed struggle. Armedwith a copy of Mao'sLittle
RedBook,middle-class students, whoformeda wide base for the movement,left
the city in orderto 'integrate'with the peasantryand become 'de-classed'.3 The 3 The idea of
'declassing' the self in
political line of khatam or the individualannihilationof 'class enemies', first order to revoke the
instigated against landownersin ruralareas, escalated into what has often been ideological distance
between the 'intellec-
referred to as an orgy of violence. Small guerrilla units primarilyof men tual' and the masses
has o long-standing
indiscriminatelykilled anyone from traffic policemento local schoolteachersas tradition in middle-
representativesof the state. The movementwas finally crushed in 1971 under class Bengali Marxist
politics. Becoming
severe state repressionand partly due to the political misgivingsof the Party. 'de-classed' meant,
for the bhadralok
Stories of young idealist men being brutallytorturedand shot by the police have Marxist, the sacrifice
been the most sustained componentof the Naxalbarilegacy. of customary material
privileges and aspira-
tions, beginning with
AlthoughcontemporaryNaxalite and Maoist groups operate in other parts of the abandonment of
India,Bengalhas neverseen a resurgenceof Naxaliteviolence after the events of domestic life and
responsibilities. See
the 1960s-1970s. yet this movement forms an intricate thread in the lived Dosgupta, 2003.
memoryof the city of Calcutta,and continuesto be one of its dominantlegends.

100 feminist review 83 2006 revolutionary marriage: on the politics of sexual stories in Naxalbari
4 I put marriage in This article explores narrativesof 'marriage'4and the politics of interpersonal
quotation marks gi-
ven that the manner relations and sexuality in Naxalbari,a problematicthat has found little or no
in which it was attention in the movement's historiography(Banerjee, 1984; Ray, 1988). In
practiced by the
Naxalites (or at tracing the contestatory nature and shifting meaningsof 'marriage'in collective
least by a large
number of them) memory,I am particularlyconcernedwiththe narrativeand discursiverepertoires
does not comply with fromwhichstories are told, and the forms of identitythey 'compose'.Thetelling
the conventional
practice of marriage of 'marriage-stories'can thus be understoodas one among a range of 'narrative
(civil or religious).
I also wish to draw practices' (Redman, 1999) in and through which a particularversion of the
attention to the subject is mobilizedin responseto existing powerrelations and forms of social
underlying politics
of this act of nam- recognition. I concentrate on the narrativesof middle-class men and women
ing; most people
chose to use the activists.5
term marriage
('beye') to charac- Myapproachto narrativeis less as a text than as 'social actions' productiveof
terize relationships
of the time even meanings and images of communityand self. To this extent, I draw on Ken
though they existed Plummer's(1995) idea of a 'sociology of stories', an approachthat seeks to go
outside the bounds
of marriage. This is beyond the structural or textual work that narrative performsto the social,
dealt with in greater cultural and political role of stories in everydaylife. I am equally interested in
detail further below.
the discursiverepertoiresfrom which stories are generated, the intersubjective
5 These narratives
were obtained domains in which they are told, and the historical and sociological workthey
through interview-
ing. The study relied
perform.A concomitantarea of interest is that of subjectivity.6HereI focus on a
on a 'narrative ap- very specific problematic, that of 'composure' or the narrative function of
proach' to inter-
viewing informed by producinga coherentsubject-positionthat is recognizableand 'livable'(Dawson,
the principles and
ethics of feminist
1994). The question of recognition (and its intimate relationship with
interviewing prac- subjectivity) goes back to the idea of the 'cultural circuit' (Johnson, 1982)
tices (see Gluck and
Patai, 1991; Sum-
where narratives are understood as located within a feedback loop between
merfield, 1998; personaland public stories (Summerfield,2000).
Hollway and Jeffer-
son, 2000; Lawler, I begin by brieflyhistoricizingthe practice of marriagein the Marxisttradition,
2002). The narrative
approach crucially
differs from the
drawingattention to the anxieties aroundfemale sexualityin radical left politics.
traditional ques- Thenext section lays downthe discursiveframeworkof 'revolutionarymarriage'in
tion-answer inter-
view format in that Naxalbari,and the inherent instabilities of this discourse. I then move to a
it rejects standar- discussion of two narratives that draw on dominant discursive renderingsof
dized questions for
open ended, non- 'revolutionarymarriage'to compose self-identities that are potentiallyfragile.
directive ones in or-
der to encourage the
telling of stories
rather than to ob-
tain a factual re-
port. politicizing marriage
6 The narrative
constitution of the Freechoice marriagesand consensualunionshave been a commoncharacteristic
self has emerged as
a legitimate area of
of most communistmovements.Thistradition can be traced back to the early
scholarship on its Marxist analysis of the 'women's question' that included a critique of
own (see, for in-
stance, Ricoeur monogamousmarriage, the basis of the bourgeois family. Socialism, it was
1991; Somers 1994). believed, wouldlead to a higherform of monogamy,one that was not marredby
Feminists have been
especially attracted property relations.7 'Socialist monogamy' (Evans, 1992) was the ideological
to the possibilities
motivationbehindthe progressiveredefinitionof conjugalityin communistChina.

Srila Roy feminist review 83 2006 101

 The 1950 MarriageLawdefined marriageas one based on mutual love, free will of a narrative ap-
proach for an ex-
and consent, free from concernsof propertyand wealth. At the same time, as ploration of
demonstrated by Evans, this socialist ideal of monogamytransformedinto a gendered subjectiv-
ity. See Passerini
regulative one that reinforced traditional norms of sexual morality, the et al., 1996; Sum-
custodians of whichwere invariablywomen. merfield, 1998,
2000; Lawler, 1999;
Redman, 1999; By-
In revolutionaryMarxist and Maoist groups closer to home (including the rne, 2003.

Naxalites), marriageand sexuality have been dealt with in less structuredways 7 In his Origins of
the Family, Private
but have displayed similar disciplinary mechanisms within a rhetoric of Property and the
State, Engels (1884)
revolutionarychange. Women'snarrativesof the TelanganaPeople'sStruggle, a spelt out the eco-
majorcommunist-ledpeasant insurrection,show howwomencontinuedto be the nomic foundations
of monogamous
bearers of tradition, and were consequently the objects of social policing marriage, and its
(Kannabiranand Lalitha, 1989). A Marxisteconomic determinismrelegated relationship to the
production of capi-
questions of marriage, sexuality and family to the private domain while re- tal and private
property. Bourgeois
establishingculturallyprescriptivepowerdifferentials between men and women. monogamy necessi-
The experience of the Srikakulammovement, a contemporaryof Naxalbari, tates, Engels ar-
gued, the production
displays similar anxieties to questions of interpersonal relationships and of heirs by women in
order to preserve
sexuality.Theleadershipof the movementwas often caught betweenthe ideal of wealth and property
comradeship and pre-existing patriarchal norms that extended disciplinary in the hands of in-
dividual men. The
controlover individuallives (Vindhya,1990;see also Vindhya,2000 on the sexual key to women's lib-
eration was the ter-
politics of contemporaryradical groups). Vindhya'sobservationsthat the Party mination of the
had no coherent policy towards the organizationof interpersonalrelations and bourgeois family to-
that the socialist ideal of gender equality had not been conceived of in clear gether with partici-
pation in social
terms, ringstrue for the Naxalites.Likeher, several of my intervieweesexplained production. This
classical Marxist
this conceptual lack in terms of the temporalstructureof the movement,saying approach to the
that it was too short-livedfor the developmentof any consciouspolicy.Decisions 'women's question'
held a number of
with regardto marriageand divorcewere made, in the case of both Srikakulam relevant insights for
Communist women
and Naxalbari, by local area committees, some of which (in the case of like Alexandra Kol-
lontai who argued
Naxalbari)consisted of nothingmore than three members,usually all male.
beyond economic
considerations to
In the BengaliMarxisttradition, membersof the undividedCommunistPartyof issues of sexual
morality and emo-
India (the CPI) are generally credited with a degree of radicalism in tions in discussions
of women's emanci-
experimentingwith social relationships,althoughthe private is silenced in most pation. However, in
memoirsof the period (see Sen, 2001b; Lahiri,2001). Severalwomenwhojoined general classical
Marxism remained
the Partybetweenthe late 1930sand early 1940swerefromwealthy,conservative limited by its mate-
families, and lived in a communerun by the political activist ManikuntalaSen. rialist basis of ana-
lysis. The other
This commune hosted both male and female activists and is often cited as major trend that
attracted feminists
evidence of the Party's potential to break gender barriers(Ray, 1999, n186).
during the 1830s and
Neither the CPInor the CPM(the CommunistParty of India, Marxist)would 1840s was that of
the utopian socia-
entertain such a possibilitytoday (ibid). Membersof the women'swing of the lists who envisaged
a new world order.
ruling CPM have a contradictoryrelationshipwith the Party. The Party often Utopian movements
occupies the position of familial authorityin arrangingthe marriagesof women have historically
been more open to
activists, and even presidingover issues of divorce. At the same time, women sexual experimenta-
cannot politicize power structures within the family that are still considered tion than revolu-

102 femrninist review 83 2006 revolutionary marriage: on the politics of sexual stories in Naxalbari
tionary movements 'personalmatters' withinthe organization(Ray, 1999: 81). In the case of both
have (Poldervaart,
2000). Like Engels' organizationaland radical politics, the personal is negotiated in contradictory
'scientific theory' of
women's subordina-
ways - relegated, at times, outside the domain of the political while
tion, utopian socia- constituting, at other times, the very object of a disciplinarygaze.
lists located
women's subordina- The bhadralokNaxalites,9one could say, inheritedtheir radicalismfrom their
tion in the sexually
oppressive bourgeois Bengali communist predecessors and their Chinese counterparts in that they
patriarchal family,
with its origins in the rejected the institution of marriage,especially that of arrangedmarriages,for
development of pri- companionatemarriagesbased on love and mutual respect. Yet narrativeson
vate property. Uto-
pian socialists like 'marriage' in Naxalbari reveal similar contradictions and anxieties about
the 19th-century
British Owenites en- sexuality and gender that seem endogenousto radical left politics.
couraged experi-
mentation in
changing the forms
of family, childcare,
and marriage. How- discourses on marriage: dominant and
ever, their efforts to
redefine sexual and
conjugal practices
contradictory
remained limited by
their largely male- 'Marriage'remainsa sticky issue in the historyof the movement.Forsome, the
defined sphere of
vision. The question organizationof marital relations is evidence of the movement'sempoweringand
of women's emanci- progressivepotential. For a small minority,by contrast, it demonstrates the
pation eventually
became margina- Party'sfundamentalconservatismwith regardto issues of sexuality and gender.
lized within the Inthe narrativesthat I considerbelow, we can see the workingsof at least three
contest between
gender and class discourses on marriage- a dominantdiscourse of 'revolutionarymarriage'and
(Taylor, 1983). Else-
where in America two contradictoryrenderingsof it. Whilethere is no Partydocumentationon the
and Germany, early
20th-century socia-
practice of marriage, an 'official' version can be identified in normative
list-feminists faced constructions of revolutionarymarriage in male/female narratives and in
political isolation literatureas well. Inthis discourse,movementparticipantsdefied the institution
and even hostility
for their views on of marriage as they did with all other social institutions, displaying their
sexuality. Even in
the 1970s student revolutionaryzeal and progressivenature. This is a discourse of radical change
movements, a com- and dramatic rupture in the manner in which 'revolutionary'marriage is
mitment to Marxist
politics foreclosed constructed vis-d-vis arranged marriage, the dominant form of marriage in
discussions on fa-
mily alternatives
middle-class Bengalisociety. The rejectionof traditional arrangedmarriagesto
and sexuality (Pol-
dervaart, 2000).
emphasizepartnershipsbased on love, equalityand comradeshipis accompanied
8 The Communist
by a rejectionof both the religiousand civil natureof marriage.In her short her-
Party of India story of Naxalbari,KalpanaSen (2001a), an ex-activist, arguesthat the Naxalite
(Marxist)(CPM)was (re)definitionof interpersonalrelationshipssignaled not only a transgressionof
formed in 1964 after
a split in the Com- societal normsbut the breakingof gender barriersfor women.
munist Party of In-
dia. In West Bengal, Withinthe literary imagination of Naxalbari,love and romantic relations are
the CPM-led Left
Front government infusedwith similarmeanings.Muchof this literatureincludingMahaswetaDevi's
came to power after
the 1977 emergency (1997) acclaimed Motherof 1084 emphasizescomradeshipbetween partners,a
(partly owing to its chief componentof true revolutionarylove of the time. Therelationshipsbetween
success in crushing
the Naxalites) activists Bratiand Nandiniin Motherof 1084, and between Bibiand Antuin Bani
and has never
lost since. Basu'sAntarghat(The EnemyWithin,2002) are characterizedby friendshipand
mutualitythat give meaningto a form of love-as-comradeship.1?However,an

Srila Roy feminist review 83 2006 103

 egalitarianrhetoricof 'comrade'does not mitigate the literaryrepresentationof 9 The term 'bha-
an idealized heroic masculinityand a dependentfemininitythat drawsmeaning dralok' denotes a
polite, civilized and
fromthe romantic(male) other. SaibalMitra'sManabputri(1993), a fictionalized respectable person,
literally a 'gentle-
account of MaryTyler,11representsa formof love that is closerto devotionallove man'. Respectability
than to a form of comradeship.The female protagonist, Katherine,a young for the bhadralok
means a disdain for
Englishwomanwho becomes embroiledin radical left politics throughher love- manual labour (the
preserve of the cho-
interest Dipayon,embodies middle-class virtues of husbanddevotionand shame tolok or the lower
(lajja).12 Romance in revolution, expressed as a form of devotion or as classes), a privile-
ging of education,
friendship, is often governed by normative gender identities and hegemonic access to a modicum
cultural codes. of wealth, and
maintaining a gen-
teel and cultured
How,then, was 'revolutionarymarriage'practiced in the movement?Individuals lifestyle (Ray 1988,
could declare themselves husbandand wife throughan exchange of Mao's Red 2000). The bhadralok
is not, however, a
Book in front of the Party.Morecommonlythough, individualssimply informed homogenous group
of people, and there
the Partythat they were marriedin orderto be recognizedas such. Therejection are marked distinc-
of societal norms was not, however, absolute. Some did have a registered tions within the
group. The Naxalites
marriage.Ironicallyenough, in Mitra'snovel, Katherineand her Naxalitepartner mainly came from
the ranks of the
are marriedin Kolkata'sKalighattemple! lower middle-class
(most of who were
Althoughit appearsthat normsand customs were often brokenor maintainedin refugees from the
accordancewith individualchoice, the Party,I wouldargue, played a significant Bengal Partition)
rather than those
role in the organizationof interpersonalrelations. Individualnarratives are from sahebi back-
grounds who are
contradictoryon this question, some emphasizinghow the Partyremainedaloof anglicized and up-
from privatelives that were secondaryto the 'revolution';others suggestinghow wardly mobile. The
movement, as a
Partydiscoursesregulatedeverydaylives and practices in the movement.Inmany whole, had a
strongly entrenched
ways the Party became, I believe, the social self-conscious of the collective, lower middle-class
substituting for the morality and legality of middle-class society in the character, domi-
nated by a vernacu-
'underground'.The practice of the 'red book marriage'can be perceived as a lar intelligentsia
substitutionof one form of social institution (marriageas a legal contract) for that was antagonis-
tic towards the
another.At the same time, it is importantto rememberthat the priorityafforded English speaking
elite (Ray, 1988).
to class struggle meant that everything else, especially love and sexuality The majority of my
interviewees can be
(considered'bourgeois'concerns), were regardedas secondaryto this essential identified as being
revolutionarytask. As the lines of the poem above suggest, bhalobasha could lower middle-class;
some live in fairly
only be validated for the sake of biplab. This also meant that the wider impoverished condi-
tions partly ascrib-
implicationsof 'marriage'such as the specific vulnerabilityof womenas targets able to political
of sexual violence and domestic abuse were easily lost sight of. choices to do with
lifestyle and career.
The discourse of 'revolutionarymarriage' has to contend with two other 10 Devi's Hajar
Churashir Ma
potentially contradictorydiscourses. As easily as these marital alliances were (Mother of 1084
formed,so did they break.Theshort historyof the Naxalbarimovementspeaks of (1997)) is one of the
a longerhistoryof brokenand betrayedrelationships.Thusthe first contradictory more representative
works on Naxalbari,
discourseis built aroundthe fact that manyrelationshipsformedat the time did and has been trans-
lated into several
not last, a fact that rendersa collective social experimenta large-scale failure. languages. Bani Ba-
In emphasizingthe movement's potential to break societal norms, men and su's Antarghat, also
centered on the
women'sstories struggleto understandand account for the unpleasantfact that movement,has been

104 feminist review 83 2006 revolutionary marriage: on the politics of sexual stories in Naxalbari
recently translated many of these relationshipsdeteriorated (often in ugly ways), and the moral
into English as The
Enemy Within, 2002. implicationsof such separations for bhadralokrevolutionaries.
11 A 26-year old The second discoursethat the dominantone on marriagehas to contend with is
British woman who
was arrested in re- far more threatening to middle-class codes of sexual respectability. The
lation to the famous
Jaduguda Naxalite possibility of rejecting traditional normsthat governedconjugal relations also
Conspiracy case, meant the possibilityof relationshipsexistingoutside the boundsof conjugality.
Mary Tyler was by far
the media's favour- Insubtle and not so subtle ways, womenand men'sdiscussionson marriagetry to
ite Naxalite (and the
only woman to re- negotiate this possibility of pre-marital sexuality and sexual licentiousness,
ceive such enormous which was encoded in the liberal reconstruction of 'marriage'. More than
publicity). She spent
five years in prison, anywhereelse, it is here that we see how these narrativesof dramatic change
which forms the ba- and ruptureare far more continuous with middle-class discourses of sexual
sis of her memoir My
years in an Indian morality.
prison (1997). In his
interview, Saibal Much of the discomfort that ex-activists feel in discussing 'marriage' is
Mitra, a well-known
ex-Naxalite and a attributable to these contestatory discourses that effectively place the entire
fairly established
contemporary writer, polemicof revolutionarymarriageinto question. Intelling (and silencing) stories
revealed to me how of relationshipsin the movement,narratorsoften strive to present a version of
the character of
Katherine and the events that negotiates the contradictions and limitations within a dominant
novel at large is a
fictionalized ac-
discourse of revolutionarymarriage.In the narrativediscussionsthat follow, we
count of Mary Tyler. see howthe subject drawson contendingdiscoursesto presenta coherentversion
12 In Bengali so- of events, and a versionof the self that can elicit social recognition.HereI am
ciety, the bhadra-
mahila or the drawingon Dawson'snotion of 'subjective composure'which suggests that the
gentlewoman is de- narratorconstructs a story from multiple possibilities that best allows her a
fined through mid-
dle-class codes of sense of 'psychiccomfort'through'a subjectiveorientationof the self withinthe
respectability, hon-
our (izzat), passivity
social relations of its world' (1994:22-23). Thomson(1994) similarly uses a
and sexual modesty,
concept of memory as composurethat ties together cultural resources and
expressed in the
acquisition of individualpsychicresponses.Thepractice of 'composing'memoriesthen has both
shame. Lajja - a culturaland a psychologicaldimensionto it. Onthe one hand, it is a thoroughly
shame and mod-
esty, attributes clo- public one implicatedwithinlarger,more dominantversionsof the past. Onthe
sely connected with
virtue and respect- other hand, rememberingis vital to the workof identity, constitutingthe basis
ability' (Ray, for the 'composure'of personal identities. Throughthe practice of composure,
2000:24) is a central
signifier of middle- Thomsonargues, individualsseek to transformrisky,even traumaticmemoryinto
class femininity.
'a safer less painfulsense' (1994:10). Composureis, moreover,achieved through
complex practices of repressionand exclusion that nevertheless threaten its
foundation:
Composure 'based as it is on repression,and exclusion,is neverachieved,
constantlythreatened,undermined [and] disrupted'(ibid).

Although Thomson does not entirely develop his observation, the point is
significant - personal remembranceis based upon patterns of expulsion,
rejection and repressionthat safeguard the coherency of the subject. At the
same time, what is excluded threatens this very coherency; it threatens to
destabilize our sense of self, and to produce not composure but what
Summerfield(2000) calls discomposure.Thethreat of discomposurepointsto the

SrilaRoy feminist review 83 2006 105

 inherent fragility of the constituted subject and to the unstable basis of its
composure.
In the narratives that follow, we see how individuals struggle with a discourse of
revolutionary marriage and its contradictory meanings to 'compose' a coherent
subject position. Yet given the potential instabilities and contradictions that lie
at the heart of these memories, the achievement of composure is all the more
tenuous.

marriage as an abject zone

Kalyani'3 is one of the more prominent women Naxalites mostly because of her 13 Name changed
on request of anon-
present-day political activism. I was introduced to her as to several other women ymity.
through a friend's mother, an ex-activist herself and one who is highly respected
amongst this circuit of women. In our very first conversation over the phone,
Kalyani made her displeasure in talking about this period in her life explicit. She
mentioned her reserve in discussing aspects of her past that she had not even
revealed to her daughter. In fact, the interview began with Kalyani requesting
anonymity, 'otherwise I won't say a lot. Anyway there are things I won't say'.
Kalyani's narrative is significant for the liminal position that it occupies in the
cultural memory of 'marriage' in the movement. As with women's narratives on
marriage in general (and the male narrative that follows), it bears testimony to
the contradictions that underlie a utopian vision of 'revolutionary marriage';
contradictions that, in turn, make the practice of remembering more risky today.

Kalyani's short discussion confirms the dominant discourse of 'revolutionary

marriage' insofar as it emphasizes the radically altered way in which marriage
came to be understood and practiced in the andolan. She cites the case of an
activist couple who, unlike some (but not all) Naxalites chose not to register
their marriage even after the decline of the movement:

Kalpana and Gautam have 'lived together'; they didn't get married. My first
relationship,there was no registrationor red book exchange. 'Wejust started' ...
no problems.[...] you wouldjust have to informthe Partyas a so-called married
couple. We challenged the institution of marriage, like we challenged all other
institutions. [Whatabout the red book marriage?]But how is that 'binding'?There
is nothingbindingin it. Todayif I don't want to stay-lots of men marriedpeasant
womenand then left them and came away. Whatdo you understandby marriage?
Whenan institution 'controls' you in some way. Herethere is no control.14 14 Interviews were
conducted in English
There are two distinct senses of marriage that are at work in Kalyani's oral text. and Bengali. All
translations from
The first refers to the dominant way in which marriage is practiced in bourgeois the original Bengali
are mine. Words in
bhadralok society - civil marriages that are legally registered and socially single quotations
were originally said
recognized. A second sense of marriage refers to the way in which it was in English. I inter-
practiced in the movement and which moreover 'challenged' the nature of viewed Kalyani once
which lasted for
marriage as a legal and social institution. Kalyani equates this second sense of

106 femrninist review 83 2006 revolutionary marriage: on the politics of sexual stories in Naxalbari
roughly 4 hours. The marriage with 'living together' and disassociates it from any form of
interview with the
couple thot I go on institutionalization. She emphasizes that 'Kalpana and Gautam have 'lived
to discuss spanned
over four meetings,
together'; they didn't get married'.Similarly,she speaks of her own relationship
each interview last- within the movement as one where there was no 'registration' or 'red book
ing 3-4 hours.
exchange'. This is revealing since she locates her relationship outside the
contractual nature of the state/civil society and the Party.
Whilealmost all male and female activists use the term 'marriage'in the context
of the movement(irrespectiveof whethersuch marriageswere legally recognized
or not), Kalyaniis one of the few who spells out a distinctionbetween marriage
and 'living together'. Giventhe uneasiness with which the concept of 'living
together' sits on the Bengali middle-class (see, for instance, Basu, 2001),
interpersonalrelationshipsformedat that time are defined as conjugalones even
though individualswere very often livingtogether. As the narrativebelow makes
clear, even within the revolutionarycommunity,'living together' is associated
with sexual licentiousnessand indecency.In Kalyani'sdiscussion,however,'living
together' is positively associated with individual freedom and choice while
marriageis negatively understoodin terms of institutionalcontrol.
At the same time, she conveys the dual sense of rebellionand disenchantment
with the question of 'marriage'in the movement:

Butit also happenedthat peoplehavenot hesitatedto divorce,manyleft. Have

at any time said I'll divorce you ... divorcedjust throughwords [...] It's very
and I don'twantto dissectthem. I just
difficultto see individualrelationships
wantto speakgenerally.you can't captureall the 'equations'of personallife.

By drawingattention to the fact that manyof the alliances formedat the time
did not last (our first contradictorydiscourse), Kalyanipoints to some of the
limitationsof a revolutionarydiscourseof marriage.Giventhe arbitrarynatureof
'divorce'at the time, the freedomto experimentwith interpersonalrelationships
did not always guarantee security, especially for peasant women. In contrast to
other narratives,the concept of 'living together' is not denounced as immoral
licentiousness but neither is it valorized given the heartbreakof divorce and
abandonment.
In recognizingthe subversivepotentials of the practice of 'livingtogether' and its
concomitantfailures, Kalyani'saccount of 'marriage'in the movementdoes not
contradicther contemporaryfeminist politics or her social personaas a women's
rights activist. On the contrary, by critically evaluating 'marriage' in the
movement's history through a contemporaryfeminist lens all of Kalyani's
observations complement our recognition of her as inhabiting a particular
subject-position which she does throughoutthe interview- that of a middle-
class woman,feminist-activist. Herpast and present seem to be fused together
to achieve subjective composure,yet this composurerests on the weight of a
studied silence that pervadesher entire movement-story.

SrilaRoy feminist review 83 2006 107

 Kalyani'sfirst relationshipin the movementto whichshe brieflyalluded in the
fragment above broke. Throughoutthe interview, she fiercely protected her
privacywith regardto it:
[Wereyou married then?] No, in 1978. And then marriage ... there was a
therewasno marriage.
relationship; Thesesocialcustomswerebroken.1975-19761
hada relationship. aboutthat, don'twantto
I actuallydon'twantto say anything
bringin my'personallife'.
WhileKalyanievaluates 'marriage'in the collective historyof the movement,she
chooses not to speak of her own personal history. This story of a relationship
formed and brokenis explicitlyexpelled from her life-story. Kalyani'ssilence is,
however,a powerfulone. Byemphasizing(morethan once) that she does not wish
to disclose certain happenings,Kalyanimakesthis silence part of the interaction
between herselfand her audience, the interviewer.Thesilence is thus inextricably
tied to the kindof social recognitionthat she wishesto elicit from me and is, in
this way, linked to her attempts to achieve subjective composure. Self-
composure,it seems, can only be achieved in the silencingor abjectionof certain
pasts. The abject, in Kristeva(1982), is what is expelled from the self but also
constitutes the self: '[...] I abject myself within the same motion through which
'I' claim to establish myself' (1982: 3). At the same time, the constitutionof the
subject throughabjection rendersit potentially fragile and unstable insofar as
what is repudiatedthreatens to expose the presumptionson whichsubjectivityis
grounded,and to dissolve the subject itself.
I do not knowwhy Kalyanichose to remainsilent about her first relationshipor
what it is that she was unwillingto reveal.Practicesof expulsionand silencingcan
be viewed as strategies for coping with risky, even traumatic memoriesthat
threaten self-composure(Thomson,1994). They can also suggest a dissonance
between personaland public memories.Privatememoriesthat do not 'fit' with
publicnarratives,to recallThomson,often meritactive forgettingand repression.
ForSummerfield(1998, 2000), this lack of fit is particularlytrue for womenwhose
stories are less likelyto be returnedvia the culturalcircuitthan men's.Giventhat
culturaldiscoursesmay not always be responsiveto genderedexperience,women
end up 'muting'their thoughtsand feelings, or alteringtheir stories to makethem
conform to dominant discursiveframeworks.These practices of silencing are
especiallypronouncedwhenwomen'sexperiencesdeviatefromsocietal normsto do
with marriage,motherhood,and sexuality,for instance. Womenconsequentlyfind
it harderto place their memorieswithinpubliclysanctionedculturaldiscoursesand
to expressthemselves in familiarand shared terms. To this extent, certain past
positions become unspeakablefor womensince they threaten social recognition
and acceptabilityin divergingfromnormativeconstructionsof femininity.Theneed
to silence personalstories can be linkedto this relation between memoryand
culture, that is, to the lack of fit between the public narrativerepertoireand
individualmemoriesthat necessitates the silencingor 'forgetting'of certainpasts.

108 feminist review 83 2006 revolutionary marriage: on the politics of sexual stories in Naxalbari
 The discordancebetween female subjectivityand cultural storylines of gender
offers us a provisionalreadingof the genderpolitics of Kalyani'ssilence. Herneed
to silence a personalstoryof 'marriage'is suggestiveof the limitationsof available
discursive repertoires (around 'revolutionarymarriage') to culturallyvalidate
personalexperience.Sucha silence is not Kalyani'salone, and can be located in a
moresharedsilence that structureswomen'sstories on marriagein general.
Women'snarrativesoften voice betrayal,disappointmentand anger at the way in
which everydaylife remainedunchangedeven though they 'married'so-called
political men. Formost of the women I interviewed,marriageto 'political' men
within the movement, as opposed to an arranged marriage, came with the
promiseof a radicallyaltered organizationof gender relations and the domestic
sphere. Idealizedrevolutionarymasculinityincluded,for them, a commitmentto
genderequality. Yet what these women'snarrativesrepeatedlyunderscoreis the
disparity between expectations and reality, between ideals and their
actualization. The contradictionbetween men's public and private lives comes
out forcefullyin their accounts on conjugality.Whilemale activists were urgedto
renouncethe role of the 'householder'for that of the 'revolutionary',womenwere
expected to conformto middle-class normsand expectationsof domesticityand
15 Ex-Naxalite and womanhood.is'Revolutionarymarriage'withinthe movementwas thus a site that
established Bengali
writer, Joya Mitra potentially reproducedmiddle-class ideals of femininity,wifely submission,and
(1994) writes scath- sexual respectabilitythat most women (includingKalyani)had consciouslyleft
ingly of her first
marriage (at the age behind. The next section demonstrates more trenchantly how beneath the
of nineteen) with an
older communist apparent radicalismof the Naxaliteswith regardto the institutionof marriage,
man. She writes of there were manifest continuities with normative codes of sexual morality.
the disparities be-
tween communist Identificationwith regulatoryideals of gender, (hetero)sexualityand class was
ideals and everyday
practices in the
very much implicatedwithinthe radical redefinitionof marriage.
manner in which she
was expected to Whilethese womenmarkthe discursivelimits of 'revolutionarymarriage'in the
fulfill her wifely du-
ties, curb her poli-
movement,their stories are eventuallysilenced in the publicsphere, expressedin
tical involvement, an overwhelmingneed to remainanonymous.Barringone, all of the womenwho
and support her
child in the face of voiced their experienceof conjugalbetrayalexpresseda strong desire to remain
her husband's re-
nunciation of
anonymouslike Kalyaniherself. Kalyani'sindividualsilence has to be located, I
household duties as believe, in this collective silence that structureswomen'sstories on marriageas a
relics of tradition-
alism. Joya's feel- whole; a silence that is suggestive of the difficulties of conformingto a utopic
ings of anguish that vision of 'marriage'that neverthelessdemandedadherenceto hegemonicgender
even led her to
contemplate suicide norms. Forwomen like Kalyaniwho came to the movementfor its promiseof a
resonate with the new egalitarian society (that included gender equality), this incongruence
personal testimonies
of some of my in- between ideals and reality becomes all the more significant. Perhapsit is this
terviewees. These
have yet to be ar- collective betrayal and the inadequacies of our narrativeregisters to give it
ticulated in the
public domain like
meaningthat rendersit unspeakablewithinthe publicdomain.
Joya's. The theme of
betrayal runs Kalyani'ssilence is, in this way, suggestiveof a moregeneralkindof silence - the
through the repre- lack of the culture in whichone lives to provideadequate narrativeresourcesto
sentation of ro-
meaningfullyfigure one's past and the anticipated future (Freeman,2000). A

Srila Roy feminist review 83 2006 109

 dominant discourse of 'revolutionarymarriage' is clearly incongruent with mance and interper-
women'sown experiencesof 'marriage'in the movement.Whilewomenoften tell sonal relationships
in filmic narratives
a different story of 'marriage'that voices this incongruity,they do so underthe of Naxalbari as well.
In Buddhadeb Das-
threat of discomposure, indicated, I have suggested, by their preference to gupta's Dooratwa
remain anonymous. The marginal position that these memories continue to (The Distance,
1978), Anjali marries
occupy within the cultural circuit suggests their inability to constitute an Mandar, a former
revolutionary, to
oppositional narrativethat can embrace (rather than abject) the ambiguities, provide an identity
politics, and traumas of lived experience.(The inabilityto tell a story has to be for the illegitimate
child she is carrying,
located not only in the lack of narrativefit between the movement'sdiscursive and also because
she believes he is
repertoireand personalmemorybut also in the absence of an oppositionalstory 'different'. Unable
that can re-write the past.) to accept her pre-
marital affair, Man-
'Feminism'can be thought of as one such oppositional narrativewithin which dar, however, rejects
her. A recent film by
women can forge new identities and find new voices (Plummer,1995). As a Satarupa Sanyal,
Anu (1998) tells the
women'srightsactivist, Kalyaniis indeed invested in the narrativeidiomsof the story of a woman
(Anu) who awaits
contemporarywoman'smovementin India. Yet her silence is, I have suggested, the release of her
part of her efforts to coherently constitute this very identity. Thus even the Naxalite lover from
prison. On his return,
language of feminism entails, it seems, certain silences, expulsions, and the 'husband' rejects
'forgettings'that markthe boundariesof what can be recollected, and what can her on learning of
her rape by political
be told. Ratherthan enabling hitherto silenced pasts to be spoken, renewed goons, signaling,
once again, the di-
political subjectivityrests on the operationof abjection and repudiation. vergence between
the ideals of gender
Kalyani'sactive silencing of a past relationshipreflects the failure of a shared equality, and en-
discourse of revolutionarymarriage to legitimately frame the dynamics of trenched middle-
class patriarchal
interpersonalrelationships formed at the time. Above and beyond this, her values.
silence demonstrates the fragility of all the subject positions with which we
identify, even those that have only been recently made available by feminism.
Subject positions always entail the loss of alternative identifications that
nevertheless'continueto containthese within,to referto them, and be disrupted
by their liminal presence' (Redman, 1999: 75). This perpetual threat of
discomposureraises the political question of the cost of articulatinga coherent
identity throughabjection, and of who bears this cost, this burdenof silence. In
the narrativethat follows, similar strategies of repudiationground narrative
coherence and identity.

respectable 'revolutionary' sexuality

Saumenwas a middle-rankingactivist of the Naxalbarimovementwhosewife was
a sympathizer.His narrativeis one of the only thoroughgoingmale discussionsof
'marriage',and moresignificantly,the only one that fully developsa problematic
alludedto by Kalyani,whichis the dovetailingof 'marriage'with sexual violence.
In commonwith other narratives(and in the popularmemoryof the movement),
Saumen'snarrativerepresentsthe Naxalite subject as a specifically male one,

110 feminist review 83 2006 revolutionary marriage: on the politics of sexual stories in Naxalbari
 and infuses it with certain qualities. Womenare representedas sympathizerswho
took several 'risks' for their revolutionarypartners. Both Saumenand his wife,
Latika,suggest that womensaw young male Naxalitesas their 'spokesmen'who
could voice their shared sense of oppressionin the face of their own collective
inability to do so. In the Naxalite, the archetypicalwoman-in-love sees the
possibilityof rupture,change and renewalthat she cannot herself affect. In this
imaginingof an idealized revolutionarymasculinity lay a particularvision of
dependentfemininity,not verydifferentfromthe way in whichwomenhave been
represented in elite nationalist politics as the husband's helpmate. This
constructionof revolutionarymasculinityand, correspondingly,of a dependent
femininityechoes literaryrepresentationsof the time. Forinstance, in Antarghat,
the male Naxalite tells the female protagonist, 'Do you want to die with me,
Bibi?'She replies:'If that is my destiny, then yes, I do.' Similarly,in Manabputri,
the revolutionarytells his newlywed wife that even LordRamcould not leave his
wife behindand go into exile. Thusshe too will accompanyhim into the villages
for political work.

In these narrativesromance is representedoverwhelminglyin gendered terms,

with womenpositionedas the receiversand men as the initiatorsof romance.At
the same time, these romantictexts are framedwithinan overridingnarrativeof
rupture- that of revolutionand change. Tothis extent, they seem to erase power
differentialsto emphasizeunionand mutualityin aid of revolution.Thusboth the
man and the woman dream the same dream of a better world, and Bibi (in
Antarghat) is willingto die with Antufor the sake of 'revolution'.Similarly,in
much of the poetry of the movement (like the poem we began with; see also
Jalark, 1998) wherebhalobasha is a dominanttheme, there is an evocation of
'we', suggestive of the unity and equality of the male-female partnershipforged
through a common revolutionarygoal. Framedwithin this larger discourse of
revolution, romantic love does not have one particularfixed meaning. Thus,
althoughfemininityand masculinitycome to acquirefixed essences in Saumen's
narrative,there are moments in his discussion that open up the possibility of
readingromancein revolutiondifferently.Thushe says (on behalf of the woman-
in-love): 'I am not looking for a husband; I am looking for a comrade', to
emphasizea reversalof the gender hierarchythat structurestraditionalconjugal
relations. This is, however, a lost opportunity. The overriding ideology of
Saumen'snarrativeis that of dependentfemininityand heroic masculinitythat,
in fact, bringsinto question the entire rhetoricof 'comrade'.

Latikaand Saumendid have a truly 'revolutionary'marriage.It was neither a

religiousnor a registeredwedding;they come from different familial and caste
16 Kayastha is a backgrounds(he is a Kayasthacaste while she is Brahmin),16 and she is also at
dominant caste
group that has a least ten years olderthan him. Saumencalls their wedding'absurd'since neither
significant degree of his in-laws nor Latikaherself knewhis real name at the time of marriage;they
economic and social
only knewhim by his pet name. It is importantto underscoreat this point that

SrilaRoy feminist review 83 2006 111

 this story of his marriage to Latika was one that I heard more than once, and is capital but perhaps
not as much cultural
one from which Saumen derives (I believe) a certain psychic comfort given his
capital as the Brah-
traumatic life in and after the movement. In many ways, this story is crucial to mins. They comprise
of a large section of
his achievement of narrative composure. In the extract that follows, we see how the Bengali middle-
Saumen negotiates recognition and composure with contradictory constructions class, and are
usually educated,
of revolutionary marriage as sexual licentiousness (our second contestatory affluent, and in
white-collar em-
discourse). Such a discourse on sexual liberalism renders his subject-position less ployment. The mar-
stable and threatens to produce discomposure. It is also in this discussion that riage of an upper-
caste (Brahmin) girl
an overwhelming concern with sexual respectability shapes the revolutionary with a (Kayastha)
discourse on marriage. boy is, however, not
normative, and de-
fies the codes of
Saumen's discussion took a radical turn when I asked him if he thought that the hypergamy.
movement was progressive or liberal in terms of relationships. His response makes
clear his understanding of my question as one of sexual licentiousness in the
Party.
In terms of relationships,if there is any question of 'sexual freedom', they are
certain 'foreignelements' oryou can say 'deviations'.That'showwe saw it. Thiswas
not the usual matter. Some people broughtit in. WhatI am saying as 'liberal' is
somethingelse. A boy likes a girl; the 'variables'that usuallyenter into this liking
were absent here. But now what is being said is being forced on the Naxalite
movement,that 'live together', 'pre-marital'this and that. But even in our time,
these werethere but werethoughtof as outside elements, as 'deviations','liberty'.

Latika interrupts to say that these were not a fallout of the movement and
Saumen continues:

Absolutely.These have been made up. A lot of people have done this. Youwon't
even see this in the literature, what today, what in the name of 'feminism'or
somethingelse, what, you know,varioustypes of 'free mixing'- this didn't exist in
our time. But obviouslysome girls and boys got the opportunityto 'freelylive' and
workin one area, but deviationshappen;there's no pointtheorizingthem. Theyare
just deviations. Forinstance, at Bankurawe saw an 'apparent'closeness betweena
girl and a boy. I mean a real closeness that was acceptableto us. So we all sat and
as a gang told them 'get married'.It was just the opposite actually. Weneverlet
anyone take liberties. It was just the opposite. Wedidn't like it at all. [...] We
would always think that we shouldn'tget a bad name. [...] (Emphasisadded).

Much of the above extract works in order to convince me, the audience, of a
particular definition of the word 'liberal'. Saumen sharply rejects 'liberal' as
implying 'sexual freedom' or 'living together' from his own usage of the word to
describe the privileging of love and companionate marriage in the movement.
While Kalyani differentiates between 'marriage' and 'living together' to assert
that individuals were not married in the Naxalite movement, Saumen vociferously
argues 'just the opposite'. The concept of 'living together' insofar as it is socially
unacceptable to the bhadralok class is rejected as a 'deviation' from the norm

112 feminist review 83 2006 revolutionary marriage: on the politics of sexual stories in Naxalbari
'marriage'. 'Liberal'for him means a rupturein the traditional discourse of
arranged marriage where love is subordinated to other 'variables' such as
economicstatus, social class and caste. yet 'liberal', he repeatedlyremindsus,
did not translate into an acceptance of sexual licentiousnessin the movement.
He condemns any form of sexual liberalism in the strongest of moral terms,
betraying his rootedness in a bhadralokdiscourse of respectability, of which
sexuality is a crucialsignifier.Such a discoursehinges on the sexual modesty of
women, the sacrosanct markersof respectabilityfor the Bengali middle-class.
Interpersonalrelationships in the movement had to fit such an 'acceptable'
standardof sexual morality,and were consequentlysubject to moralcensureand
public policing. In paradoxical ways, Saumen's narratives suggest that while
everythingchanged in terms of conjugal relations in the movement,everything
actually remainedthe same. While'marriage'in the Naxalbarimovementmight
have upset established hierarchiesof caste, class and age, it seems to have been
reticent on issues of gender and sexuality.

Saumen'sdiscussionalso evokes a moreshared, collective discourseon sexuality

that can be recognizedas the Party's code of sexual conduct. He says: 'And
generally, as a rule, if a Party boy was close to a girl then it was taken for
grantedthat that was his wife'. Withinsuch a discourseon sexualityrelationships
could not but end in marriage, and the question of individualconsent often
becomes a trickyone, especiallyfor women.Narrativeson domestic abuse speak
of some of the implicationsof the Party's regulatorystand on sexuality. The
idioms of sexual licentiousnesswithinthe movementwere also genderedinsofar
as it was women who were, as the bearers of public morality,the objects of
policing and slander. Once again, this made 'marriage'mandatoryfor women.

Althoughmuchof Saumen'snarrativeattempts to deny any kindof promiscuityin

the movement, it is less than consistent. The threat of discomposureoccurs
precisely when Saumen is forced to accept the existence of licentious sexual
behaviourthat points, moreover,to the discursivelimitations of 'revolutionary
marriage'. These sexual possibilities are immediately disavowed through
repudiationand expulsion,even as they are identified. Thus,even whenSaumen
does admit the prevalence of 'sexual freedom', he identifies it as a 'foreign
element', a 'deviation', something that was not the norm and certainly not
tolerated. Here Saumen'slanguage worksin particularways to rendersexually
unacceptablebehaviouras somethingthat was not intrinsicto the movement;it
was not a fallout of the movement,as he and his wife repeatedlytold me. Some
of his language is abstract and allusive as the language of sexuality often is in
the narratives of middle-class Indians (see Puri, 1999). The possibility of a
precarioussexual situation is only hintedat by saying 'pre-maritalthis and that',
'loose behaviour'or 'what in the name of feminism'.Whatis more consistent in
Saumen'sspeech is his use of the Englishlanguage to describe a pattern of
behaviourthat is unacceptableto him. Repeatedly,he uses phrases/wordslike

Srila Roy feminist review 83 2006 113

 'free mixing','live together', 'girlfriend','pre-marital', 'liberties' and so on, to
define what 'didn't exist' at the time, or what 'we didn't like at all'. Hisusage of
English(rather than Bengali) to describe such forms of socially unacceptable
behaviour is indicative of the particular position that he takes up in this
discourse of sexuality. The use of Englishcreates the possibility of rejecting
certain patterns of social behaviouras absolutely alien, other and externalto a
specifically Bengalisensibility.Suchformsof behaviourare banishedoutside the
subject's own moral universe and attributed to an external agent. His use of
Englishsuggests that such an externalagent could be 'westernization',a common
culpritof the changingcodes of sexual conduct in India (see Basu, 2001; Kapur,
2005). Saumen, in fact, pointedlyevokes 'feminism'to explainthe existence of
'varioustypes of free-mixing'in contemporarytimes. It wouldbe fair to assume
that feminism,for Saumen, is closely related to the project of 'westernization'
and 'modernization'in general, and not perceived as something rooted in an
Indianculturalcontext. Mypoint here is that it is throughthe use of Englishthat
Saumen disavows certain sexual possibilities, renders them external to and
outside the domains of community.In this way, Saumen composes a certain
sense of what it means to be Bengalithroughhis use of English.
As with Kalyani,potential discomposurein Saumenis negotiated throughacts of
repudiation, disavowal and exteriorization.The possibility of non-normative
sexual practices can be accepted only by discursivelyrenderingthem outside the
'movementcommunity'.Byexteriorizingsuch acts, narrativepractices preservea
certain versionof the communityand the self. Herethe conceptionof community
that most affords Saumenwith psychiccomfort is that of a morallyand socially
acceptable (and respectable) entity. The possibilityof sexual licentiousness in
the movementdoes morethan simplyhurt his moralsensibilities. It disruptsthe
social recognition that his own individual story of a revolutionarymarriage
affords himby questioningits legitimacy.At the same time, it cruciallythreatens
a collective identity that is formed in the (male) image of the self-righteous
revolutionarymartyr,a key icon of Naxalbari.Revolutionarymasculinitycan only
preserve itself through the abjection of those discourses that threaten its
coherency such as those of alternative masculinities, sexual moralities, and
elsewhere, of male sexual power.17 17 The past that is
repudiated is not
As a final point, I turn to Saumen's discussion of the sexual exploitation of only one of sexual
licentiousness. The
peasant womenby middle-class 'revolutionaries'.Bhadralokcomrades, he says, imagining of revolu-
tion and its heroes is
often 'married'peasant womenas testimony to their complete integrationand founded upon a
'de-classed' nature: collective denial of
male sexual vio-
lence. This is evident
TheboyswhocamefromPresidency College(I won'tgiveyouanynamesbutwhat in the collective re-
I'mtellingyou is 'authentic')- manygood, well-known ticence to discuss
PresidencyCollegeboys the problematic of
with'goodresults',whowentto Gopiballavpur, their'methodof integration'was sexual violence in
the movement,
to stay at peasanthomesas manand wife. Andunderthe influenceof some especially the vio-
famous Naxaliteleaders,youngunmarried girls got 'pregnant'there, peasant lence faced by wo-

114 feminist review 83 2006 revolutionary marriage: on the politics of sexual stories in Naxalbari
men comrades with- girls.I can bringyoua witnesswhohas 'helped'one suchgirl.Theywouldgo and
in the revolutionary
domain. The memory
as manandwife,wouldbe withthis girlandthat girl[...] thenat anotherplace,
of sexual violence is,
as a whole, one that
they wouldalso be husband-wife.[...] Thisincident,this 'reckless'behaviour
is repeatedly repu- that I can do anythingandthat it is 'justified'in the nameof revolution[...]
diated for the sake
of preserving the In the case of peasant women, a blurringof the boundariesbetween 'marriage'
cultural identity of
the Naxalite built and sexual abuse occurs withina masculinediscourseof becoming'de-classed'.
around the image of
the revolutionary
Subalternfemale sexuality functions, in this instance, as a metonymfor a truly
martyr. de-classed revolutionarymasculinity.Saumengoes furtherto suggest that the
radicalization of marriage practices that took place under the rubric of a
revolutionarypolitics provideda legitimate frameworkfor sexual violence. Acts
of male sexual violence remainedcouchedwithinthe fantasy of 'revolution'that
promiseda class-based societal transformation.The vulnerabilityof subaltern
women to male sexual power remainedembedded, routinized,and normalized
withinthis vision of a transformativeclass politics.
In implicatingthe 'brilliantstudents' of PresidencyCollege,the premierecollege
of Kolkata, and not all male Naxalites for acts of sexual violence, Saumen's
narrativeis able to preservea coherentself-image (self-righteous, respectable,
revolutionary)in the face of a threateningcounter-memorythat could produce
discomposure.His condemnationof elite PresidencyCollegestudents preserves
true revolutionarysubjectivity in the image of the lower middle-class, lower-
caste (male) political activist. Throughouthis movement-story,Saumenascribes
authentic revolutionarysubjectivityto this communityof male activists (to which
he belongs) rather than to the elite intelligentsia who have been the chief
beneficiaries of public recognition. No doubt, this (re)imagining of the
revolutionarysubject serves to stabilize his own place in history, and to
compose self-identity in its image.

conclusion
Inthe narrativesvisited herethe achievementof 'composure'is that of comingto
grips with contradictoryand competing constructions of the past. Marriage-
stories are also, we have seen, a part of the narrativeconstructionof identity;
individualsinvest in particularsubject-positions that offer them a degree of
psychic comfort. Such 'acceptable' self-images include that of Kalyani'sas a
middle-class feminist-activist, and that of Saumen'sas a middle-class Bengali
man with strong political (and moral) commitments.Theyalso includediscursive
images of revolutionarymasculinityand dependent femininityor even sexually
respectable femininity. Individual imaginings of masculinity/femininityfind
resonance in more popular forms of memory, underscoring the mutual
dependence between stories of the self and the public narrativerepertoireof
a culture (Redman,1999). Kalyaniand Saumendrawon the narrativeresources
of a lived Bengalimiddle-class cultureto offer a particularview on romanceand

SrilaRoy feminist review 83 2006 115

 sexuality that echo the values of the widergroupto whichthey belong. In doing
so, they are able to elicit social recognitionin ways that aid the achievementof
composure.
Yet I have found that 'composure'is founded on an 'abject zone' that threatens
to undo the coherent stories that we tell about ourselves, and the forms of
identity in whichwe take shelter. Kalyani'ssilence is one such momentin her life-
story that consolidates self-identity throughthe repudiationof certain pasts. In
Saumen, the idea of a coherent unified subject, rooted in a discourse of
revolutionarymanhood, is threatened when confronted with a contradictory
discourseof 'liberal'sexuality. In both Kalyaniand Saumen,the achievementof
composure is fragile insofar as what is repudiated and disavowed gets
(re)inscribedon the surface of identity - '[it] lies there, quite close, but it
cannot be assimilated.' (Kristeva, 1982: 1). Kalyani'sprojection of a 'core'
authentic self requires her silence, just as Saumen's appeal to revolutionary
masculinityincorporatesthe repudiationof illicit sexuality.
It is particularlyrevealingthat 'marriage'constitutes such an abject zone, for
womenand men in the historyof Naxalbari.Throughthe narrativesvisited here
we have seen how, as in the case of other revolutionarymovements,a utopian
vision of revolutionarymarriageconformedto the received conventionalitywith
regard to gender and sexuality. It demanded adherence to hegemonicgender
norms and bhadraloksexual moralities that replicated, moreover,the sexual
taboos that existed outside the revolutionarydomain within it. In the final
instance, it is this disparity between the ideal and the actual that makes
'marriage'such a contestatorysite in the culturalmemoryof the movement,and
demands, in turn, the abjection of certain risky memories. Both Saumen and
Kalyani'snarrativeson 'marriage'are composedthrougha repudiationof those
pasts that acquire a liminal status within shared (and hegemonic) norms of
marriageand sexual morality,both withinthe revolutionarydomainand outside
of it. Theirnarrativesare exemplaryfor what they suggest about the difficulties
of conformingto a radicalsocial practicethat neverthelessmirroredthe reality it
attempted to disruptand radicalize.

acknowledgeme nts
I thank the FeministReviewTrustfor its contributiontowardsthe fundingof this
project, and the anonymous referees at Feminist Review for their fruitful
engagementwith this article. Mythanks also to DeborahSteinberg,ParitaMukta,
GauriRajeand RafaelWinkler for their commentson variousversionsof this piece.

author biography
Srila Roy is a doctoral candidate at the Departmentof Sociology, Universityof
Warwick whereshe teaches on gender/sociology.HerPh.D.researchengages with

116 feminist review 83 2006 revolutionary marriage: on the politics of sexual stories in Naxalbari
issues of gender, violence and memoryin relation to the 1970s extreme Left,
Naxalbarimovementof West Bengal.

references
Banerjee, S. (1984) 'India's simmeringrevolution:the Naxalite uprising',London:Zed.
Banerjee, S. (1987) editor, ThemaBook of Naxalite Poetry, Calcutta:Thema.
Basu, B. (2002) TheEnemyWithin,Translatedby Jayanti Datta, Delhi: OrientLongman.
Basu, S. (2001) 'The blunt cutting-edge: the construction of sexuality in the Bengali 'feminist'
magazine Sananda' FeministMediaStudies, Vol. 1, No. 2: 179-196.
Byrne, B. (2003) 'Recitingthe self: narrativerepresentationsof the self in qualitative interviews'
FeministTheory,Vol. 4, No. 1: 29-49.
Dasdhikari,S. (1998) editors, ShotorerShahid LekhokShilpi, Kolkata:AdhunaJalarka Parishad.
Dasgupta, R. (2003) Marxismand the Middle Class Intelligentsia: Cultureand Politics in Bengal
1920s-1950s, UnpublishedD.PhilThesis, OxfordUniversity.
Dawson, G. (1994) Soldier Heroes: British Adventure,Empireand the ImaginingOf Masculinity,
London:Routledge.
Devi, M. (1997) Motherof 1084 Translatedby Samik Bandyopadhyay,Calcutta: Seagull Books.
Engels, F. (1884) TheOriginof the Family,Private Propertyand the State, NewYork:International
Publishers,1972 edition.
Evans, H. (1992) 'Monogamyand female sexuality in the People's Republicof China'in Rai, S.,
Pilkington, H. and Phizacklea, A., editors, Womenin the face of change: the Soviet Union,
EasternEuropeand China, London:Routledge.
Freeman,M. (2000) 'Whenthe story's over: narrativeforeclosureand the possibilityof self-renewal'
in Andrews,M., Day Sclater, S., Squire, C. and Treachers,A. (2000) editors, Linesof Narrative:
Psychosocial Perspectives, London:Routledge.
Gluck,S.B. and Patai, D. (1991) editors, Women'sWords:TheFeministPractice of OralHistory,New
York,London:Routledge.
Hollway, W. and Jefferson, T. (2000) Doing Qualitative Research Differently: Free Association,
Narrativeand the InterviewMethod, London:Sage.
Johnson, Richard(1982) 'Popularmemory:theory, politics, method' in Johnson, R., Sutton, D. and
McLennan,G., editors, Making Histories: Studies in History-writingand Politics, London:
Hutchinson in association with Centre for ContemporaryCultural Studies, University of
Birmingham.
Kannabiran,V. and Lalitha, K. (1989) 'That magic time: women in the Telengana people's
struggle' in Sangari,K.and Vaid, S., editors, RecastingWomen:Essaysin ColonialHistory,Delhi:
Kali.
Kapur,R. (2005) Eroticjustice: Lawand the NewPolitics Of Postcolonialism, London;Portland,OR:
Glass House Press.
Kristeva,J. (1982) Powersof Horror:An Essay on Abjection,Translatedby Roudiez,L.S., NewYork:
ColumbiaUniversityPress.
Lahiri,A. (2001) PostwarRevolt of the RuralPoor in Bengal, Calcutta: Seagull Books.
Lawler,S. (1999) 'Getting out and getting away: women's narratives of class mobility' Feminist
ReviewNo. 63 Autumn:3-24.
Lawler,S. (2002) 'Narrativein social research' in May,T., editor, QualitativeResearchin Action,
London:Sage.
Mitra,J. (1994) 'Choltecholte' in Mandal,P. and Mitra,J., editors, Shei Doshok,Kolkata:Papyrus.

srila Roy feminist review 83 2006 117

 Mitra, S. (1993) Manabputri,Kolkata:Dey's Publishing.
Passerini, L., Selma, L. and Paul, T. (1996) editors, Genderand Memory,Oxford:OxfordUniversity
Press.
Plummer,K. (1995) TellingSexual Stories: Power, Changeand Social Worlds,London:Routledge.
Poldervaart,S. (2000) TheRecurringMovementsof 'FreeLove'Writtenfor the workshop'Free Love
and the LabourMovement',InternationalInstitute of Social History,6 October2000. Online.
http://www.neha.nl/-womhist/polder.pdf.
International Institute of Social History Amsterdamhttp://www.neha.nl/- womhist/polder.pdf,
accessed 6 October2000.
Puri, J. (1999) Woman,Body, Desire in Post-Colonial India: Narrativesof Genderand Sexuality,
London:Routledge.
Ray, R. (1988) TheNaxalites and TheirIdeology, Delhi, Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress.
Ray, R. (1999) Fields of Protest: Women'sMovementsin India, New Delhi: Kalifor Women.
Ray, R. (2000) 'Masculinity,femininity, and servitude: domestic workersin Calcutta in the late
twentieth century' FeministStudies, Vol. 26, No. 3: 691-718.
Redman,P. (1999) Boysin love: narrative,identity and the productionof heterosexualmasculinities
unpublishedPhDThesis, Universityof Birmingham,Birmingham.
Ricoeur, P. (1991) 'Narrative identity' in Wood, D., editor, On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and
Interpretation,London:Routledge.
Sen, K. (2001a) 'Paschim banglar naxal andolan-e meyera' in Chattopadhyay,M., editor, Esho
MuktoKoro:NareerAdhikaro AdhikarAndolanBishayakPrabandhaSankalan, Kolkata:People's
Book Society.
Sen, M. (2001b) In Search of Freedom:An UnfinishedJourneyTranslatedby Stree, Calcutta:Street.
Somers,M. (1994) 'Thenarrativeconstitution of identity: a relational and networkapproach'Theory
and Society, Vol. 23, No. 5: 605-649.
Summerfield,P. (1998) ReconstructingWomen'sWartimeLives:Discourseand Subjectivityin Oral
Histories of the Second WorldWar,Manchester:ManchesterUniversityPress.
Summerfield,P. (2000) 'Dis/composingthe subject: intersubjectivitiesin oral history' in Cosslett,
T., Lury,C. and Summerfield,P., editors, Feminismand Autobiography:Texts,Theories,Methods,
London:Routledge.
Taylor,B. (1983) Eve and the Newjerusalem: Socialism and Feminismin the Nineteenth Century,
London:Virago.
Thomson,A. (1994) Anzac Memories:LivingWithTheLegend, Melbourne,Oxford:OxfordUniversity
Press.
Tyler,M. (1977) Myyears in an Indian Prison, London:Gollancz.
Vindhya,U. (1990) 'TheSrikakulammovement' in Sen, I., editor, A Space Withinthe Struggle, New
Delhi: Kali.
Vindhya,U. (2000) 'Comrades-in-arms:sexuality and identity in the contemporaryrevolutionary
movement in AndhraPradeshand the legacy of Chalam'in John, M.E.and Nair,J., editors, A
Questionof Silence? TheSexual Economiesof ModernIndia, London:Zed.

Filmography:
Anu, Dir. SatarupaSanyal, 1998.
Dooratwa,Dir. BuddhadebDasgupta, 1978.

doi:10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400283

118 feminist review 83 2006 revolutionarymarriage:on the politics of sexual stories in Naxalbari