by Parvin Sultana
[Political Studies in School of Social Scienceswith the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India (Published in the Meridian Critic, Vol 20 No 1, 2013 with ISSN 2069-6787, pp. 31-43) ]
Women’s agency has often been questioned. Being marginalised in almost every sphere of life, when oppressed they had to resist in their own creative unique ways. Female bodies which are inherently linked to idea of honour in most societies have been the site of humiliation at many levels. How they responded to such humiliation has also been diverse. Because of prior marginalisation their protests have at times been non-confrontationist and unconventional. One such mode has been naked protests especially in societies where nudity is a taboo. Women resorted to such protests time and again to make a point. Generating controversy and questioning mainstream values have been the aim of such protests. But what such protests do apart from giving a cultural shock needs to be accounted for. To understand this, the article looks into two naked protests played out in different socio-cultural contexts. One was in a small state in eastern India, against the rape and murder of a woman by the Armed Forces and the other to oppose imposition of Hijab on women. What these two protests state about the agency of women concerned is worth noticing. Apart from it such protests should be taken into account along with all the complexity they come with, like the slippery ground between assertion and voyeurism that such protest treads on. This paper tries to do that.
Resistance has taken various forms. From organised class action, agitation, strikes on a massive scale to interesting variations like songs and dances of protest, to individual and rather mundane activities that Gandhiji supported, such as using hand spun cloth. Depending on such variances in terms of scale, methodology, many of them have been called short of movements and merely isolated incidents. Another interesting form of resistance was taken up by the homosexual activists led by Kurt Krickler in Austria (Bunzl, 1997). In the face of homosexuality being condemned by the Christian Church, he took to exposing the clandestine homosexuality of a quarter of Austria’s catholic bishops. Here outing was a dramatic and performative act and its aim was to firstly rob those who condemned the act of the moral high ground of doing the same, and secondly, to drive home the point that homosexuality was not a sinful, abnormal activity as even those who condemned it in public indulged in it in private. Thus, gossip maligning one’s public image is also an important method of resistance feasible in acts of hypocrisy, especially in cases where there is a possibility of the adversary indulging in the same acts while putting up a public image of opposing it. This article talks about two incidents where naked bodies have been used as sites of resistance. The first one is the naked parade of women that took place at Kangla Fort in Manipur, a small state in the eastern part of India which is under heavy military presence, to oppose the rape and murder of Thangjam Manorama who was suspected to have been with the insurgents in July, 2004.
The second one is the topless jihad of Ukranian-based radical feminist group FEMEN, which tried to question Hijab, which they believe is essentially imposed, by baring their bodies. The aim of the paper is to try to situate the incidents in the larger discourse of how body has been used time and again as the site of humiliation, exploitation and resistance. I will start with talking about rape.
Rape as a weapon of humiliation:
Rape in general discourse is crucial to the construction of a feminine body as numerically mostly women have been at the receiving end of the said atrocity. Rape cannot be equated with other physical assaults. Feminists have in fact made a case for understanding rape as a sexual crime. This was in response to Foucault’s advocacy of rape to be desexualized and reduced only to its violent manifestations. His comments were expressed in a Round Table Conference held in 1977 discussing his book Discipline and Punish. For him, rape was something a man did rather than something a woman experienced. And it revolved around penile penetration. As it revolves around male physiology it leaves out a number of other ways in which a woman’s body might be violated. But once the tables are turned and women are no longer mere objects of rape but subjects, rape can be dehumanizing. In fact, it is something a social man does to a social woman and hence is intrinsic to the creation of a social woman.The significance of the violent act of rape also changes with the context. There have been cases of rape on mass scale against women belonging to the opposite community during partition. Urvashi Butalia in her "The Other Side of Silence" has documented the tormenting stories of women who are victims of partition related rape. Even after independence any communal riot in India was often accompanied by rapes of women of the opposing communities. Another way in which rape at a large scale takes place is during wars. Miranda Alison talks about wartime sexual violence (Sutton,2007).The military is the ultimate exemplar of masculinity as they are the saviours and protectors of the nation and also of the population residing within. Gang rape which was a common occurrence during war was declared as a war crime as late as in 2008
.
Civil war ripped countries also provide evidence of women of vanquished side being taken as sex slaves and raped over and over. The rape as a war crime is a mode of bonding amongst male soldiers along with a reassertion of their masculinity. The trajectory of wartime rape shows how women of the vanquished enemy first considered as booty of war and hence available to the soldiers, were later often used as a message sent to the defeated. Raping women and murdering them was like sending a message to other women with the aim of terrorising and hence taming them. While martial rape or the use of rape as a weapon is an ancient practice, it has acquired recent attention owing to HIV-related panic. Thus the concern for rape on such a scale came within the health discourse and concern for public health and failed to respond to the questions of dignity and human rights.
In the case of a few recent events, studies consisting of interviews with soldiers who indulged in wartime sexual violence show that soldiers who were initially reluctant, took alcohol and committed the rape. It had more to do with the camaraderie. Martial rape is a weapon yielded by the soldiers of a country or a dominant political, cultural group against unarmed women of other groups. In the case of the ethno national conflicts in an era of the nation state, rape is committed against specific women often belonging to ethnic minority groups. Binaries are crystallised—Our Women and Their Women. The violation of their women is inevitable to the protection of our women. It is a spillover of a highly militarised society where society is not insulated from such violence. Rape in such cases serves more than one purpose. It can be used to domesticate women in the civilian case,while in the situation of a war it can be used to tame an ethnic community, which dares to question the sovereignty of the nation state.
Rape of enemy women is the symbolic victory over their men who failed to protect their women folk from utmost humiliation. Such women are the token of humiliation for their socially connected men. Rape is a cross cultural language of male domination and the vanquished communities are rendered as effeminate. As pointed out by feminist scholars writing on women caught in conflict areas, the female body is the symbolic body politic and is often equated with the nation or motherland, which should not be violated. Women as reproducers are reinforcers of national boundaries and need protection on account of national pride. They are the breeders of future citizens whose purity of lineage should be maintained. This fact determines abuse that leads to the impregnation of enemy women, which is perceived as being of crucial importance. Imperial rape is aimed at genetic imperialism by causing realignments in the loyalty of their future generations. Their citizenry is put under question. It undermines family solidarity which is closely linked with the chastity of their women folk which in itself is a patriarchal construct. Raped women are a cause of shame even after the war is over. Forced impregnation of the enemy women undermines family which still enjoys the legal sanction of being the unit of the state. It also destroys a group’s identity which is paramount to genocide. This cultural decimation manipulates the group’s identity and plays into the fact that ethnic cleansing has replaced ideas of enslavement. Hence imperial rape can be seen as a political institution. To take apt example, this was done in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the wars of 1992-1995 where enemy women were impregnated by Serbian soldiers and let go only when it was too late for abortion. Forced impregnation was a part of systematic program of Serbian soldiers. Systematic mass rape isused as an instrument of genocidal campaigns. Therefore, this is humiliating a nation by humiliating and violating a woman’s body.
Body as a site of Humiliation:
Michel Foucault in his works also placed the body as a site of humiliation and hence potential resistance. Apart from rape, he talked of another way in which the body can be dominated, subordinated and hence humiliated. As Foucault and Bordieau would have us believe, this is – by the construction of a docile body – transformed and even improved. It is ruled completely by its dominant other which however it has internalised as its own. The dominant other is not separate from the self. Power manifests itself in a non intrusive and subtle way and hence domination occurs through the unconscious manipulation of the body. There is a constant self disciplining of the body to conform to certain dominant ideas. Bourdieu also uses concepts like Habitus and Symbolic Violence
(Cahill,2000). While habitus points to habituating oneself in such a way that one perceives as one is meant to, symbolic violence points to the imposition of certain values as the legitimate ones on others. One’s perception of the self as well as of the others is manipulated. Women conducting themselves in a particular way in terms of talking and walking, or the way good girls are expected to behave can be apt examples of such internalisation. However, it is this very power relation that gives space for resistance. For Foucault power and resistance are co extensive. Power can never ensnare us. But he has also been critiqued for undermining the potential of transformation that resistance has. Foucault in fact talked of resistance only after power had emerged as a central concept in his work. He is credited with giving a positive connotation to power. But does he celebrate any and every form of subversion and sanctions it as resistance? For Foucault resistance cannot be understood as the anti matter of power, it is rather the odd element in power. It eludes power and hence power targets it as an adversary. Power is diffused and by its very nature it creates multiple nodes of resistance. Resistance to a diffused power must also be diffused. As opposed to the beliefs that Foucault paralyzes resistance by portraying the adversary as an all encompassing and all powerful one, he frees resistance from any limits and gives it immense potential. Such struggles of resistance find their expression at the level of the body. Most prison disciplining and revolts have been around the body which is perceived as the object of power. Even in modern prisons make use of tranquilizers, force disolation, etc., which regulate the body. For Foucault the use of the language of rights is not subversive, as it implies an acceptance of the principles against which the resistance is aimed. He does not however lay down how struggles should take place as that might also impose limitations. For Foucault engagement provides possibilities of change as well as of self creation, which is essential if one has to resist internalisation. Both Foucault and Bourdieu state that the main mechanism of domination operates through the manipulation of the body and the resistance should address it. Some other ways in which the body becomes the site of humiliation is through the
portrayal of a canonical body and the compulsion to conform to a standardised, ideal body which is normalised through media, films, etc. The canonical bodies of women are often sexually objectified. The point of reference of the construction of such bodies is the male gaze. An hour glass figure or a zero size excludes and hence humiliates. Bodies are often equated with dirt, filth e.g., in the case of people of particular social location. The discourse of hygiene also humiliates when it essentialises the linkage of filthiness to particular groups employed in a specific work field. Here the example of Dalits in India being engaged in the task of scavenging can be stated. Bodies are often marked as
criminal and tattooed without the consent of the person and at times with derogatory remarks. Prisoners are often tattooed with their prison numbers. Tattoos ensure that bodies are marked for life.
Bodies as a site of resistance:
Because bodies can be humiliated they can also be resignified to humiliate the humiliator. Hence bodies can also be the site of resistance through resignification, which means subverting the meaning that is imposed on a humiliated body and investing newer meanings in the same body which renders it more powerful. This resignification can take place in a number of ways. One way of resignification of the bodies is through subversion during carnivals. As understood by Bhaktin carnivals do not acknowledge any distinction between actors and spectators. The carnival is not merely a spectacle seen and admired by others. Rather people live in it. It has an equalising effect. The unattainable equality between subjects which is so lamented by Sartre becomes the cornerstone of
Bhaktin’s carnival. Hence carnivals create an order of human relations different from those constructed by and associated with representation. A destitute can dress up like a king. There is a collapse between the self and the Other or the segregation is never complete. In fact there is continuity. Bhaktin’s carnival body or the body of grotesque realism loses its individual definition and is collectivised at atrans individual level through the epitomisation of the body in terms of events and activities in which the boundaries between bodies are obscured and eroded. Also, the woman’s evaluation was completely transformed. As opposed to the ascetic tradition of medieval Christianity which saw the woman as an ‘incarnation of the sin, the temptation of the flesh’, here she is portrayed as the incarnation of the ‘materially bodily lower stratum’ which degrades and regenerates simultaneously. Similarly, the degradation, which characterises carnivals, brings joy rather than dreadful humiliation at the same time challenging the dominant social relations through resignification. Hierarchies do not hold good during carnivals (Lachmann, 1988-89).
Naked bodies as the site of resistance:
Another equally strong way of resignification of the body is through baring it. Barbara Sutton(Sutton,2007) talked about a paradox in western societies where, while human bodies and specially female bodies are turned into sexually objectified commodities, naked bodies of resistance can lead to social outrage and violent punishment.
Nakedness is filled with multiple, context bound, historicallyspecific meanings. Nakedness can be a pleasurable experience, a mundane activity or a humiliating event, depending on the situation, on who is shedding the clothes, on whether there is a spectator and, in that case, on the spectator’s relationship to the naked person . Nakedness carries gendered connotations that are embedded in history and in the cultural baggage of different societies, being intertwined with the ideologies of racism, sexism, classism, colonialism, homophobia and other types of oppression. In the case of the women of colour in the USA, raped bodies which were paraded as spectacle became fuel for colonialist fascination and white men’s desires. Black female bodies are often portrayed within the context of patriarchal, pornographic, racialised sexualisation. In the era of capitalism nudity in western society is nothing unnatural. It turns women into sexualized objects which can be consumed by an implicit male spectator. According to John Berger’s conceptualisation,while nakedness simply refers to the body without clothes, nudity entails a level of sexual objectification. He argues that nudity presupposes display. While a nude body is to fulfil desires of consumption of a
male gaze, a naked body asserts its agency in the shedding of clothes. Coming to the body as a site of resistance, Sutton goes on to say that the body (clothed and unclothed) is the tool of protest par excellence. Most political protests are enacted through the body—from marches, to political theatre, to the act of chaining of a body to a tree or a building. The body is a key vehicle of protest. The body also serves as a symbol, a text that conveys political meaning. She gives an example of an incident that happened in World Social Forum in 2003 in Porto Alegre in Brazil. On the site of the forum which itself represented a platform for resisting atrocities, a young woman was hassled by the police for bathing without clothes in the open. While the woman protested by taking off her clothes a number of men sympathised with her and supported her. They showed their solidarity by stripping their clothes. A particular woman who caught Sutton’s attention made a statement that under our skin we are all equal. This woman with her naked action perhaps strove to reclaim a position as an active subject and reconfigure nakedness on her own terms away from objectification in order to convey a broader political message. This was a performance, but was it effective? Her performance might challenge the popular imagining of women’s body without clothes which is voyeuristic. But at the same time does it subvert patriarchy? Men supporting them might recreate and reinforce the dominant notions of exotic, vulnerable women who need to be rescued. As prevailing norms in most contemporary societies prescribe the use of clothing in public spaces, naked bodies can be used in quite sensational ways to call the public’s attention to a social problem. Naked protests dramatically enact protestors’ willingness to put their bodies on the line to advance a political cause, such as opposition to powerful capitalist and military interests, especially in a context where this kind of protest might trigger violent responses against activists. For example, women in Niger Delta used the ‘curse of nakedness’. Niger Delta, located between mid-western and eastern parts of Nigeria, is a crude oil producing area which caters to the need of a number of Trans National Oil Corporations. The oil companies’ disregard for any form of good oil field practices hasled to the destruction of the environment. While the locals often peacefully protested, a militarised state retorted violently. The women of Niger Delta pushed against the wall resorted to a variety of protests like dancing, singing, demonstration, strikes, testimonies, silence and the extreme act of stripping themselves. In the cultural context of Nigeria, the naked protest enjoyed a social sanction. It is used under extreme provocation and hence has remained a powerful weapon of women’s collective resistance. It is effective also because stripping by married and elderly women is a way of shaming men and some of them believe that if they see the naked bodies they will go mad or suffer great harm.
However, because of their very nature, these protests are often on slippery grounds. For Sutton, the message sent by the naked protesting women might be reduced to something sexual.Nudity might be imposed on their nakedness, and thus robbing them of agency. In similar ways the western media sidelined the exploitation in Niger Delta and feasted on the threat of nude protests. Such a protest should be understood neither as an event of flaunting their nudity nor as practicing communal prostitution. Nude protest was not specific to black women who were sexually immodestand employed their sexuality for anything. There was a tendency to give it a primitive touch, which would rob the protest of its conscious assertion by right bearing citizens.
The Manipur Incident:
Hence taking cue of the slippery ground on which such protests are played out and having laid down the broad outline of the way a naked body can be the site of humiliation and also a site of resignification, now I will move on to situate the specific incident of the Naked Protest in the former Royal Palace of Kangla Fort in Manipur, following the brutal rape and murder of Thangjam Manorama by the personnel of Assam Rifles. She was picked up on suspicion of belonging to a terrorist outfit under the Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA). And her bullet ridden body was found in the wee hours of July 11, 2004 at Laipharok Maring village in Imphal east. She was believed to be a victim of custodial death. Here Manorama’s body was the body politic of Manipur. And raping her would tame and dominate the state which challenged the sovereignty and supreme authority of the Indian nation state. Manipur always claimed to be independent and blamed the Indian government of making the Manipur king sign an ‘Accord of Accession’ under duress. The Manipur Merger Agreement is seen to be an instrument of an illegal annexation. In the gruesome act mentioned above, Manorama was‘their woman’ and hence even killing her was justified as being done in the name of the Indian nation. The army had the backing of the state because of the impunity that it enjoyed under AFSPA. This gruesome act was followed by a number of protests but the most noteworthy was the nude protest of 12 Manipuri women who paraded to Kangla Fort where the Assam Rifles was stationed. They carried banners asking the Indian Army to rape them and kill them too. This protest sent a strong message overshadowing, in fact the other kind of demonstrations going on at the same time and compelled the government to think of a humane alternative to AFSPA. Although the act is still in place, this protest was successful in sending a crucial message across.
Now I would like to take a closer look at the incident. AFSPA, which has been in place in Manipur for the past four decades, gives tremendous power to the Army. The prevailing attitude is that the military is protecting the common Manipuris and hence giving them the legitimate right to control them. The people of this small state in the far east of the country comprises both tribal non-Hindu people and Imphal valley’s Meiteis, who are mostly Hindus. These people were seen as a community in dire need of protection. Hence there is 1 Indian soldier for every 15 Manipuris. Human rights abuse under this act has been rampant in Manipur Anybody, even a woman suspected of being a sympathiser of insurgents will be branded as an enemy woman.
The enemy man can be humiliated and hence subjugated by raping their woman. In this case, Manorama’s raped, mutilated, bullet-riddled body became the carrier of the message from the army to the insurgents, as well as the Manipuri community at large. She was used as an example for the others.Such a heinous act of the so called protectors (Indian Army) shook the community. It was not acceptable in a community where women traditionally played a strong role. Imphal’s Ima Keithel or Mother’s Market shows women’s dominant role in the economy of the state. The historical Nupi Lan, which literally meant female warfare showed that historically in case of any injustice women would appeal to the ruler as a delegate. Two famous cases of Nupi Lan—firstly, in 1904 women stopped the extraction of materials from Kabow Valley necessary to rebuild the house of the British Political Agent which had caught fire. The women broke in the house of the British Political Agent in their thousands and revoked a curfew. Secondly, in 1939, to address the issue of shortage of food grains,they protested for banning the export of rice outside the state. More than 15000 women demonstrated in front of the Darbar Hall. They ensured that the Khwairamband Bazaar was closed by boycotting it.This impacted the economy and the government had to give in to the demands of the women. These incidents of Manipur lay down a legacy of dominant women activists. The protest was unique. The twelve women who bared their bodies in the protest are politically active and lead groups working against the misuse of AFSPA and are closely associated with Meira Paibi. They exercised their agency in deciding to undertake the parade. Hence they were the actors. These were middle aged women and they emphasised the fact that they were mothers. This is important because when mothers strip, it signifies that they are pointing to the origin of the people or to their birthplace, that is the mother’s womb, and such a protest signifies their stand by showing we revoke your birth
and, hence condemning the very birth of men. This also ensured that the sight was not reduced to something merely voyeuristic.Their banners asking the Indian military to come and rape them sends a strong message by showing that something as brutal as rape has become the obvious and normal way in which they confront the Indian Army. The interface between the Indian state and the civilians is rape which is being normalised as an everyday crisis. The counter insurgency operations have turned Manipur into a highly militarised society. But interestingly in this incident, the humiliation of the Indian Army was greater because the humiliator (in this case, the naked women) were not on the same footing with the Army. They were the weaker sex of a community which was to be regulated in the name of the Indian government. Hence humiliation increased manifold because of the status of the humiliators. These women resignified the raped mutilated body of Manorama which was stripped of clothing, by shedding their own rob.
This act of protest, in fact, made the government rethink the feasibility of AFSPA and the possibility of replacing it with a more humane alternative. However, even now, there is contention as to whether the jurisdiction of the state government can cover this case. The findings of JusticeUpendra Singh Commission remain to be looked into and Manorama’s family is still to get justice. Hence this mode of protest is much stronger than the traditional weapons of the weak because, despite of not being confrontationist in a violent sense, it was rather upfront. Manorama’s body was attempted to be made into the vessel of shaming the community. And the bare bodies of these twelve women were successful in shaming the Indian state because these bodies became much more powerful, with resignified meanings being attributed to them.
The topless jihad
Coming to the second incident, women belonging to the Ukranian-based radical feminist group FEMEN staged a topless jihad whereby they bared their bodies to show solidarity with Amina Tyler, a FEMEN activist based in Tunisia, who was targeted after posting a naked photo of herself. This show of protest was aimed at questioning the Islamists and at asserting the right of Muslim women on their bodies. The aim of this movement was also to question the essentialist way of linking honour to a woman’s body. While this movement turned quite a few heads, it also made a lot of Muslim women, whom FEMEN claimed to be liberating, hit back with their own Muslimah Pride Day. The discourse of this counter-protest was nothing new. It goes back to the protests related to the veil (when Muslim women questioned the problematic assertion that the veil was essentially imposed). And Muslim women need to be saved by others.Such protests start from a belief that veiled women are devoid of agency and they have internalised subjugation. And hence their liberation should be initiated from outside. So, when Muslim women stated that being naked did not necessarily make them liberated, the FEMEN activists hit back saying this was what socialisation into such subjugation had done to these women, for longtime. Such an understanding of FEMEN, which starts a homogenous category called women, fails to take into account the specificity of conditions for different women. The veil, which has more to do with culture as a part of attire, is reduced to a religious symbol. Lila Abu Lughod points out that under the Taliban rule, the traditional attire of Pashtun women (the Burqa) was imposed on other too, but after the regime was ousted, women did not throw off the veil. In fact, the veil has grown as a marker of modesty. She goes on to point at how the imagery of a veiled woman was used to portray Afghani women needing to be saved by Western men. This was used as a justification of the American intervention in the country.While FEMEN did try to talk about the exploitation of women, their protest had the tendencyto fall in the trap of reductionist binaries that people who critiqued their method of protest had no respect for liberty and freedom of expression. They should have been more accommodative of Muslim women who live the exploitation that they are protesting against. Such an exclusivist protest might re-entrench the notorious notions of the religious fanatics that women who give up the veil will eventually dress up in a derogatory fashion.
Conclusion:
Such protests need to be contextualised keeping in mind the specific conditions under which they were staged. There is a need to situate the naked protest in Manipur in the larger context of the society’s reaction to it. Although there were students’ movements which supported it but the society did not come out in large numbers to back such a movement. Also there was no encouragement to carry forward similar protests. This can be explained because the very nature of the protest places it on slippery ground. It may end up being mere celebratory rather than being motivating. Although since Manipuri society, its politics and social codes of conduct are determined through patriarchal norms, women’s voices for concrete solutions have received marginal attention. And despite being giving women a better position in society, such mode of protest does not exactly enjoy a cultural sanction. Especially after Hinduisation, which started in the early part of 1700s, there was a level of
sanskritisation and the social location of women was not insulated from this phenomenon. Insubstantive way the women may not be powerful if they do not have the scope of making decisions along with men and authority. Their power reduces to symbolism. However one also cannot negate the fact that women’s organisation have been leading the protest in Manipur. Coming to the second type of protest by FEMEN, there was an assumption of restoring agency to women who were supposedly suppressed, hence denying any subject status to these women. They were rendered incapable of any decision. So while the first kind of protest acknowledged women’s lead, the second one became spokesperson for other women. The agency is manifested separately, while in the first case there is a strong assertion by politically active women, in the second case women on whose behalf the protests were staged were pushed to the margins leading to some kind of dilution of their agency. Hence when do such unique protests actually stop serving the purpose should be a matter of concern. Enveloped in voyeurism, such protests run the risk of slipping into something not merely subversive but living up to male fantasies. All these considerations brings to mind the question whether these twelve women are powerfully bare or barely powerful.
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