Images of Modern Indian Family (In the times of intolerance and censorship)

An institution that exists between the private and the public, family becomes an important marker in the analysis of a society or a nation. Artists and writers have always watched family curiously as it holds many elements that feed their creativity and ideologies. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, Khushwant Singh’s The Company of Women and Vivan Sundaram’s digital photomontages dealing with the Shergils re/construct some real/fictional modern Indian families. The assortment of families as presented in these texts gives one a picture of the nuances and complications of life, which are an integral part of a modern society.

     The two literary works in question have faced severe criticism and even lawsuits on the grounds of obscenity and moral corruption. In an age of freely accessible video pornography obscenity charges appear slightly anachronistic. However, such incidents make one think, what is considered as an appropriate representation? Where should the artists and writers draw a line when they create images of people and institutions, and the society at large? Do Roy and Singh really offend our sensibilities that are rooted in family values? Keeping these issues in mind, too, the two novels make an interesting case-study for the family theme.

     In his 2001/2 series of photomontages titled Re-take of Amrita Sundaram attempts to create a spectacle (which assumes a life of its own) by collecting and re-arranging the myriad images of the Shergil family in the form of photographs and paintings. Guy Debord’s statement about the spectacles holds true in this case, “all life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.”[1] In this sense the photomontage titled ‘Dancing in the Life-Class’ stands for the entire series. Here, Amrita’s paintings, her social life and her apartment- everything moves away into a representation. The various aspects of the artist’s life are brought together and presented as a spectacle. Debord further states, “The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.” Sundaram attempts precisely this through his re-workings of the images of the Shergil family: realization of social relations.

     The paintings and the photographs by the Shergil father and daughter provide Sundaram with a starting point, which is a must according to Ernst Gombrich “to begin that process of making and matching and remaking.”[2] The reality that presents itself through Sundaram’s series is not only often disturbing, it sets the beholder reconsidering his/her notions about the Shergil family in particular and about families in general. The very fact that Sundaram chooses to make his aunt the subject of this series and some of his other works makes Re-take an interesting case while examining the modern Indian family.

     Dealing with the family theme in their works Roy, Singh and Sundaram explore every aspect of it. On one hand family is shown as a necessity and a desirable state, on the other hand it is also seen as impinging upon the individual will. Voicing a similar concern, Barrett and McIntosh observe that family is “a central institution for the suppression of the women and the maintenance of gender inequality; it is ‘anti-social’, encouraging a narrow focus on a small set of inter-personal relationships at the expense of wider commitments to citizenship or to the public sphere; it is a major institution in the reproduction of class inequalities.”[3] While the Shergil family is shown as providing conducive environment to Amrita’s art, the families in The God of Small Things and The Company of Women are shown as stifling the individual. 

     The families in the works of both the writers and Sundaram are multicultural: the important characters are shown in relationship with people belonging to different cultures. Roy, Singh and Sundaram acknowledge that the modern Indian family is an amalgamation of myriad cultural experiences. Their respective works suggest that all three of them consider the cross-cultural transactions within the family as desirable. Nevertheless, they are conscious of the socio-cultural problems that arise due to such liaisons.

     While Roy and Sundaram deal with multicultural families directly, Singh does it in a slightly oblique manner. Roy gives us a big unhappy family where cross-cultural alliances are looked down upon and are held responsible for the family’s misery. Mammachi and Baby Kochamma do not approve of the marriages of Ammu and Chacko outside their community. Here, quite interestingly, Roy slips in the fact that Mammachi’s socially approved marriage, too, has not brought her any happiness. Baby Kochamma, on the other hand, is shown as deprived of marital joys: in her youth she failed to marry her Irish Jesuit lover. Roy, thus, detaches familial happiness and multiculturalism and seems to suggest that it is the individuals and not the cultures that are responsible for the happy or otherwise status of a family.

     Sundaram’s Retake can be seen as a celebration of multiculturalism. The European influence on the Shergil family and their ‘Indian-ness’ are frequently called to attention. Amrita is shown as a perfect product of her twin heritage: Sikh father and Hungarian mother. As her art is seen as a fusion of the best elements of the East and the West, her personality too, as it comes out in Sundaram’s photomontages, represents this hybridity. Multiple cultural influences become an advantage for Amrita and she puts them to good use just like her contemporary Frida Kahlo. Sundaram’s ‘Doppleganger’ best captures Amrita’s twin heritage and her ease with her mixed identity. In this photomontage we see Amrita looking into a mirror and finding two reflections of herself. Of the two Amritas in the mirror, one is dressed as a traditional Indian woman in a saree and the other in a European outfit. There is no hint of discomfort in her expressions which suggests her ease.   

     Roy, Singh and Sundaram surprise the reader/beholder with their unconventional constructions of family. In Sundaram’s photomontage titled ‘Lovers,’ we come across three persons- Umrao Singh Shergil, Amrita Shergil and Boris Tazlitsky. The title shocks the beholder as s/he observes Umrao Singh in the pose of a lover: languorously standing in an almost naked state. Umrao Singh appears in the similar semi-naked state alongside his wife in another photomontage titled ‘Preening’. Sundaram has managed to sensationalize the father-daughter relationship through his re-workings.

     In Amrita’s photographs taken by her father, there is an unmistakable sexual energy. The gaze of the photographer appears far from being that of the father. The person behind the lens captures the posed womanliness and stylized sexuality of Amrita. Laura Mulvey states, “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly.”[4] On one hand Sundaram’s series appears as a collection of stories that the family members tell about each other, while on the other both Umrao Singh Shergil and Sundaram make Amrita an object of their gaze and see her not as a daughter or aunt but as a woman.

Roy, too, offers an unconventional family in The God of Small Things. There are constant reminders that the family in question is far from being normal. In the beginning of the novel the grown up Estha is shown as not being able to fit in the ‘normal’ set-up of his father’s family. “Instead, much to the initial embarrassment of his father and step-mother, he began to do the housework. As though in his own way he was trying to earn his keep” (Roy 11). During their childhood the twins and their mother are reminded of the fact that it is not normal for them to stay at the Ayemenem house. They have no claim on the comforts of the Indian joint family as they refuse to abide by its rules. “Perhaps Ammu, Estha and she were the worst transgressors...They all tampered with the laws that laid down who should be loved and how. And how much. The laws that make grandmothers grandmothers, uncles uncles, mothers mothers, cousins cousins, jam jam, and jelly jelly” (Roy 31).

     Ammu teaches her children early on in life that “you can’t trust anybody. Mother, father, brother, husband, bestfriend. No body” (Roy 83). It turns out to be true after all as in the course of the novel we see mothers turning into seductresses, fathers returning and re-returning children, brothers demanding the sisters to pack off and leave, and husbands turning into pimps. With skeletons in their cupboards, almost all the members, and not just Chacko, appear fit for “biographical blackmail.” “Chacko claimed to be writing a Family Biography that the Family would have to pay him not to publish. Ammu said that there was only one person in the family who was a fit candidate for biographical blackmail and that was Chacko himself” (Roy 38).

     Roy creates a family which is far from being the ideal Indian family where grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters and children love and support each other. Instead, it is a family where Baby Kochamma is happy about outliving everybody as she has inherited all the material possessions of the family. In this family Mammachi, a mother, tries to commodify the relationship between her son and his ex-wife by stealthily putting money in her pockets as the price for her suspected sexual favours.

     Singh’s The Company of Women, a novel that claims to be a biography, is shown to be born out of the breakdown of a family. Mohan Kumar ends his tumultuous married life with divorce and embarks on a libidinal journey. The house at Maharani Bagh, which was once home to his family comprising his father, wife and children, begins to accommodate his live-in partners. The women who responded to his advertisement become his alternate family and satisfy his physical and emotional needs. Interestingly, people are tricked, wittingly and unwittingly, into perceiving both Sarojini Bharadwaj and Molly Gomes in familial terms: the former as a cousin and the latter as a prospective wife.

     Dealing with the family themes in their respective works, Roy, Singh and Sundaram have chosen to represent marriage in their own way. Talking about marriages DHJ Morgan states, “To treat marriage as an institution implies that the main points of reference for what constitutes appropriate marital stasuses and roles comes from outside and “above”; to call it a ‘relationship’ implies that the main points of reference come from within, from the parties themselves.” (Morgan 25) In Singh’s novel we come across marriage as an institution and witness its breakdown. Roy also deals with breakdowns of marriages both at the level of relationship and institution. Sundaram, in his turn, treats marriage as an arbitrary event. While the marriage of Umrao Singh Shergil and Marie Antoinette is shown as facilitating Amrita’s biological birth and her birth as a modern artist, Amrita and Victor Egan’s marriage does not have any such strings attached.  

     Sundaram decision to treat marriage as such allows him to defend Amrita’s unabashed promiscuity and bisexuality. In the photomontages he focuses mainly on Amrita’s art, the father-daughter relationship, often problematized, and the issues of identity. In Amrita’s case, marriage hardly has a bearing upon her identity; if any it is only in the sense that she refuses to consider it as a paradigmatic form of relationships.

     DHJ Morgan observes that marital breakdown can be treated as a “nodal point of a set of hitherto unconnected institution and processes” (Morgan 25). In both The God of Small Things and The Company of Women marital breakdown is closely linked to the issues related to class, caste, ethnicity and sexual libertinism. Focusing on the marital breakdown, both the writers get an opportunity to address these issues as well. In Roy’s novel all the cross-cultural marriages collapse which may lead one to question the desirability of such alliances. Singh, on the other hand, shows the failure of a traditionally arranged marriage wherein due attention was paid to class, caste and ethnicity. Mohan Kumar’s decision to get back to India and marrying a girl chosen by his father also proves to be flawed.

      Any discussion on family and marriage remains incomplete without probing into the issues related to sex. DHJ Morgan finds Foucault’s idea of the “artificial unity” of sex very useful as it facilitates the yoking together of a number of themes, practices and concerns. Morgan clearly states, “This idea of providing for the unity of a process or institution as part of its social construction is a valuable one, and clearly has relevance when we come to talk of marriage and marital, family and familial” (Morgan 55). Singh’s novel revolves around sex and it is made clear as early as in the ‘Author’s Note’. One of the major reasons for the breakdown of the Mohan Kumar-Sonu marriage is the absence of gratifying marital sex. The conservative and ill-tempered wife uses sex as a tool and the entire family faces the consequences. While studying in the USA, sex becomes a binding factor between Mohan Kumar and his fellow students belonging to different races and nationalities. Not only women, even men ‘respect’ him for his sexual prowess of which his large phallus is an indicator. When it comes to sex, all the boundaries seem to vanish as happens in the case of the Pakistani, Yasmeen Wanchoo and the lower-caste maid, Dhanno.

     In The God of Small Things, sex is an integral part of Chacko’s Marxism. The female workers in his factory double as his comrades in the day and sexual partners at night. His Marxist ideology appears to be at loggerheads with this kind of sexual capitalism. While Mammachi realizes the ‘needs’ of his divorced son and silently approves of his sexual relations with these lowly women, her attitude towards Ammu is just the opposite. A Syrian Christian woman’s copulation with a Pravan is nothing less than the Original Sin and deserves a similar punishment. Ammu is driven out of the Ayemenem house and is left alone to face disease and death. Her children, too, are doomed to lead their lives in misery. Sexual freedom is closely linked with gender here.

     Sundaram’s selection of photographs and paintings for the photomontages obliquely indicates his acceptance of Amrita’s controversial sex life. Her unapologetic bisexuality and polyamory seem to have roots in narcissism. Sundaram has successfully captured this narcissism, which appears to have been gifted to her by her father. Umrao Singh’s penchant for photography and his keen interest in taking Amrita’s pictures is likely to have trained her in exhibiting herself. It is quite likely that the photographs taken by her father led her to perceive herself as an object of desire which made her confident. David Knox and Caroline Schacht acknowledge high self esteem as an important psychological condition for the development of love and sex relationship. “Feeling good about yourself allows you to believe that others are capable of loving you. Individuals with low self esteem doubt that someone else can love and accept them” (Knox 86).

     Family is often seen as the first set-up where an individual imbibes sexual values like absolutism or relativism. Kornreich, Hern, Rodriguez and O’Sullivan observe that girls with older brothers are likely to possess more conservative sexual values as they “may be socialized more strongly to adhere to these traditional standards in line with the power dynamics believed to shape and reinforce more submissive gender roles for girls and women.” [5]This apparently holds true for both Sonu and Amrita Shergil- the two extremes. Brought up in a noveue-rich male dominated household Sonu appears to be an absolutist who disapproves of her husband’s sexual adventures even though they get separated. Sundaram, on the other hand, manages to present Shergil as the polyamorous artist who believes in relativism. Her sexual values are likely to be an outcome of the bohemian nature of the Shergil family.

     Ammu’s case is slightly different. The power dynamics work towards her embracing a submissive gender role, which more or less happens. However, this submissiveness can only be sustained up to a particular point. Not an outright rebel like Shergil, Ammu asserts herself while making sexual choices. In her case, as the degree of family oppression rises, the more outrageous her sexual choices become. First she chooses to marry a Bengali and later starts an affair with an untouchable handyman. 

     One of the most disturbing elements in The God of Small Things is the incestuous sex between the twins. Roy shows that the strongest relationship in the novel is between Rahel and Estha “Because whatever She was, He was too” (Roy 86). There are multiple references to their sameness and oneness despite the biological fact that they are not monozygotic twins. “Rahel never wrote to him. There are things you can’t do- like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart” (Roy 163-4). However, when Rahel and Estha meet each other as grown-ups after a lapse of few years, they meet almost as strangers. Estha does not recognize Rahel, as was pre-empted by Baby Kochamma. Roy reminds the reader just before the act, “They were strangers who had met in a chance encounter” (Roy 327). Although once again the “Love Laws” are broken, this unpremeditated copulation appears tragic as “what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief” (Roy 328). Growing up in a less than ideal family and under strange circumstances, the twins end up as strangers and now the collapse of the ‘family’ is absolute.

     Health, physical and mental, is often seen as an important indicator of happy and normal families. In the works of Roy, Singh and Sundaram, too, health becomes an important issue for the most important characters. Mohan Kumar’s sexual adventures end up in his being detected as HIV positive. In this quasi-moralistic tale Mohan Kumar’s ailment is shown as the deserving punishment for his transgressions. However, since the writer refuses to vilify him throughout the text, in the end, too, Mohan Kumar is given a ‘respectable’ death. He has the ‘luxury’ of hiding his disease from the society and his end is chosen by himself.

     Ammu, in The God of Small Things, gets no such privilege. Neither is her death respectable, nor does the writer put it in the end of the novel: her end is not the end of the narrative and thus less significant. Ammu, too, is a transgressor like Mohan Kumar, not believing in the laws laid down by her family and society. Roy has attempted to show the pariah status of the transgressing woman in a parochial society and her desolation during illness becomes a marker for the same. 

     In Roy’s novel there are further links between health and morality and decency. Since both Chacko and Ammu marry outside their communities, their children do not suffer from the genetic diseases which in-breeding causes. Chacko observes the fact with his characteristic cynicism. “Chacko said that Estha and Rahel were indecently healthy. And so was Sophie Mol” (Roy 61). The good physical health of the children becomes a sign of their parents’ moral lapses.

     Sundaram’s Amrita Shergil is an icon who is beyond moral and social censures. Thus, in the series there is no allusion to her sexually transmitted diseases and the tragic death allegedly owing to her promiscuity. Sundaram consciously distances himself from Shergil’s physical problems. Despite his seemingly perfect ease with Shergil’s bohemian lifestyle, one can discern a slight discomfort when it comes to these issues as he passes over them silently.

     The process of imaging the family has undeniable links with voyeurism. The artist/writer not only follows the lives of the characters s/he lays them bare for others as well. Roy’s The God of Small Things is slightly different from the works of Singh and Sundaram as she intends it to be taken as fiction. The interest in The Company of Women and Re-take of Amrita partially lies in their biographical nature. Thus, the issue of voyeurism is more pertinent in the cases of these two. Although in an interview Singh proclaimed, “It's total fantasy. It's not voyeurism,” his statement cannot be taken on the face value.[6] Similarly, when Amrita paints herself naked as a Tahitian, it can be called the artistic narcissism but when Sundaram creates ‘Self as Tahitian,’ he, like a voyeur, probes into Amrita’s personal life and foregrounds it. In this photomontage Amrita’s painting is used as a background to a semi-naked photo of hers taken by her husband. Re-take of Amrita is voyeurism at its best. Sundaram not only follows and exposes the ‘images’ of the Shergil family, he conjures the stories behind these images as well.

     Laura Mulvey suggests, “Voyeurism has associations with sadism: pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt, asserting control and subjugating the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness.” Sundaram and Singh appear to have derived a similar pleasure from their re/creations. The “guilty” – Amrita and Mohan Kumar- are forgiven in both the cases. In Sundaram’s case there is a quasi celebration (not just forgiveness) of Amrita’s so called guilt. Mulvey further says, “This sadistic side fits in well with narrative. Sadism demands a story, depends on, forcing a change in another person...”[7] Sundaram, Singh and even Roy do the same: making something happen. The controversy surrounding Roy’s novel suggests that exposing even fictional characters can be sensational. Roy, the voyeur, has seen and exposed her characters while they indulge in socially abhorred practices, and this has resulted in outraging the moral sensibilities of some people. The lawsuit faced by her is an outcome of the same.

     Interpreting Nietzsche, Sunil Manghani, Arthur Piper and Jon Simons observe that the thinker “urges us to acknowledge and take responsibility of the human role in imaging or constructing reality rather than accepting sedimented interpretations of the world as the truth” (Manghani 43). This is exactly what Roy, Singh and Sundaram have attempted to do in their respective works. Their representations of the modern Indian family sometimes conform to and sometimes run contrary to the notions of the reader/beholder.     

     Hobbes declares in Leviathan, “And from hence it is manifest that there neither is nor can bee any Image made of a thing invisible.”[8] Therefore, no matter how shocking certain elements in the works of some writers and artists appear to be, it is judicious to acknowledge that the works are rooted in the ideas that exist, even if lying dormant or unacknowledged. As discussed so far, the works of Roy, Singh and Sundaram have managed to open up new ways of representing the family life in modern India. All three of them have dared to bring to forefront those aspects of family life that were hitherto lying concealed from the public eye.  

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[1] Guy Debord from Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red, 1983, Parts 1-5 and 215.

[2] Ernst Gombrich, from ‘Invention and discovery’, in Art and Illusion Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ Press, 2000 pp. 320-4.

[3] See Barrett and McIntosh, The Anti-social Family, Verso, London. 1982.

[4] Laura Mulvey, from Visual and Other Pleasures. London: Macmillan, 1989, pp 19-26.

[5] Kornreich JL, K D Hern, G Rodriguez and L F O’Sullivan. ‘Sibling influence, gender roles, and the sexual socialization of urban early adolescent girls.’ Journals of Sex Research 2003.

[6] http://indiatodaygroup.com/itoday/19990830/cover.html

INTERVIEW: KHUSHWANT SINGH
Interview with Senior Editor Madhu Jain.

[7] Laura Mulvey, from Visual and Other Pleasures. London: Macmillan, 1989, pp 19-26.

[8] Hobbes, Thomas. ‘Of the kingdome of darknesse’, in Leviathan, Part IV, Chap 45. London: Penguin Classics, 1985 pp 668-75.