Khap Panchayat Hegemony Specter of Hegel

[Rinita Mazumdar]

Hey All,

Semester just got over and so did my grading of over 100 essays!!!!!!!!!

This is the thread that I shall bring to the public forum, but just some observations:

1. Now Kishwar's main objection to State involvement with a "community" is that it is poking its nose in a "community value?" Kishwar needs to do some studying! Since when did "incest" taboo (in some form) become a "community value?" Both Levi-Strauss as well as Gayle Rubin showed through extensive research that what establishes pre-market societies are "exchange of women" till in the 16th and 17th century Europpe the market expanded (this is also my critique of Marx of his base and superstructure, where Marx makes the mode of production the "base" in all pre-Capitalist soieties, whereas kinship ought to the proper base).

2. Further, as I said before, Kishwar is definitely essentalizing the dominant voice of the community as the "community value"!!!!
Identities hange over time; identities that have evolved and assimilated due over time due to people interacting with other communities then are not part of the "authentic community" that Kishwar is so interested in preserving (similar to the anit-globalizers logical fallacy of the binary distinction between the "pure local" and "pre global" at the cost of hybridity.

3. As I mentioned before, we cannot take away how colonialism and the hegemonic India elite bourgeois is implicit in all of these; since the Indian Nation State has identitifed itself with the Westernized secular English speaking bourgeois, the subaltern's crisis is definitely one of identity... In the case of the Khap Panchayat, the way the dominant voices have tried to handle this identity crisis is by dividing space into "public" and "private" and while the Nationalist bourgeois control the private sphere, the private is "their own sphere" in which they can claim an "authentic culture" and construct this space as "their own" (this also disproves Kishwar's idead of the "authentic" value of a community.

4 What then is the solution to this fragmented and isolated "others?" There are people in the dominant Nationalist elites who are also fighting against hegemonic sexual taboos and oppressions.

Here the need to bring communities with similar interest (though not in similar social position) together and what binds them is the notion of hegemony; and the creation of this will lead to the formation of a synthetic space. I am specifically and throughly opposed to the Hegelian notion of the Universal, a synthetic space is not a Hegelian universal bringing in the resisters from the Panchayats and the elite movements together... I am thinking of a Lacanian symbolic space, and a Butlerian performivity of all as if they belong because their interests are similar...

With quilting diverse interest into via hegemony and performing solidarity there can be hope for a united front of resistance.......

Later...

Rinita

On 13 May 2010 21:01, Rinita Mazumdar <revfem...@gmail.com> wrote:

We dont have to throw away identity politics totally;

Some further observations; it is also possible that the so called spokespersons or the "voice" of the Khap Panchayat who seem to "own" the community as "theirs", because they cannot relate to the India Nation State, which again in "owned" by Elite Nationalist bourgeois, and hence has excluded these voices from the Panchayat; so to assert their identity, the "voices" of the Khap Panchayat have again split their identity into Public and Private, and while they have been defeated in the Public by the elite Nationalist, in the private they are asserting it by holding onto where they only have power; so in this whole drama, the elites do have an oppressive role to play, as identities evolve relationally. One solution is for those who are fighting for their sexual liberation of all classes to come together and say that cross cousing marriage is a human rights issue, just as alternaitve sexuality is; unfortunately the alternative sexuality movement is so wrapped by in its colonial urban based agenda in India, that it is not possible......the personal is thus de-politicized at every level.

Once I get some more feedback from Venu about Kishwar's actual argument, I shall write a longer letter....

Rinita

On 13 May 2010 20:32, Rinita Mazumdar <revfem...@gmail.com> wrote:

Venu,
could you please forward me the entire thing, I shall write a reply; very overworked now with grading and family issues.

Now, let me get this this, the premises of her argument is that "Panchayat's" = one monolithic "Hindu Law", is this something she is quoting from the constitution; it seems that these are her premises (I am going to write details on this):
1. All communities have their own laws
2 "Khap Panchayat" is a community
Hence, ought to be left with their laws.

Here there is an ambiguity with the word "Community" I think two fallacies may be going on; a fallay of amphiboly, "one community" in the first premise is then substittuted as monolithic, is this the law of the community? Or as an outsider she is behaving like an orientalist and substituting incest or cross cousin marraige for the custom of an entire community? Then there is also ambiguity in the word "democracy"; the dictionary defines "democracy" as the will of ALL, if so, then if this taboo or same gotra pohibition is undemocratic for a couple, then surely it is not "democratic", except for the "majority voice", here also she falls into the fallacy of ambiguity I believe a problem with "metonymy"
substitting part for whole...Taking the dominant voice of the community as the entire community is the problem and issue I have with the so called "liberal culturalism" of USA's recent "oreintalism"....

I wish to write along these lines an entire reply to Kishwar..., yes I did meet her and thought her (as Sutapa will vouch for me arrogant and rude (but that is more personal, I wish to expose the fallacies in her rebuttal)

Venu I need to get her actual argument for a rebuttal...
Thanks,
Rinita

--
Rinita Mazumdar,
Women Studies and Philosophy,
University of New Mexico

--
Rinita Mazumdar,
Women Studies and Philosophy,
University of New Mexico

--
Rinita Mazumdar,
Women Studies and Philosophy,
University of New Mexico