I carry rage when I am told “learn to take a joke, woman”. “Oh, please do not behave like those liberal elite feminists, because I always respect women”.
I carry rage when men doing the ‘bare minimum’ and calling themselves feminists, can get away when they are called out.
Rage when men can joke about women’s bodies, or slap women “jokingly”,
Rage when getting groped in a crowd is easier than getting a job that pays,
Rage when “there is no humanity left” has become an oxymoron and bodies continue to be raped and burnt
I carry rage when my queer-ness remain unseen,
Rage when my body is erased, as other queer bodies get violently hyper visibilized
Rage when we continue to live in and create binaries among the ‘progressive liberals’
Rage when connections formed with so much emotional labor slowly die; in the midst of neoliberal and capitalist aspirations
*
A friend says that she is reminded of Phoolan Devi, the Dalit bandit of the Chambal valley, when I utter the word ‘rage’. “Phoolan turned the tables, took revenge on her rapists,” became the protector, of herself and of other women in her community, became an ‘infamous’ icon.
Was Phoolan living with rage? Was hers a story of rage, living in an unjust, violent world? Was she allowed rage?
Was she killed because women cannot be ‘allowed’ rage?
Phoolan’s life was ‘recorded’ through Shekhar Kapoor’s ‘Bandit Queen’, a film that Phoolan never watched. A film that also gave her the vengeful title of ‘bandit.’
However, she disapproved of how she was represented by this man and by her upper-caste female biographer.
“It is simply not my story, so how can they claim it to be true?”
She said in an interview. The violence on her body and her revenge were the only narratives they put forward of a Dalit woman’s story, while using it as a selling point for women’s empowerment.
She filed a petition in the courts asking for a ban on the film. However, the film still passed and did well in the global circuit.
I only recently learned of her disapproval of ‘Bandit Queen.’ It brought into question the idea of representation, voice and documentation.
How do we ‘record’ the emotion of anger and rage?
What biases persist when a ‘bandit queen’ is represented primarily either as a victim of violence or as a vengeful woman taking revenge for violence committed against her and her community? How can representational narratives move beyond the binary of being either a victim, or the rage of Durga, and also account for contradictions, complexities, ironies?
We live in a world where everyday violence is normalized, whether against a trans person or a hijra on the streets, or a Bhanwari, or a Phoolan or a Hathras or the Badaun. The bodies of women, of marginalized identities, sexualities, communities, often follow a similar trajectory: they carry the burden of representation written by outsiders, while being boxed in by stories of violence.
Perhaps in the well-intentioned attempt to record violence, further violence continually ensues.
In keeping a ‘record’, erasure is often widened, stemming from biased viewpoints, lack of sensitivity, and the exclusion of voice and agency.
The action of revenge is labeled as a beacon of feminist hope, but the emotion of rage only finds itself in gray corners. The normative is named and the erased remains nameless. This trope continues to carry the baton of stories to be told.
Sara Ahmed writes,
“Documentation is a feminist project, a life project” (Ahmed, 2017:26). It is about “sweating” bodily as we record, write, document complexities, emotions, and rage. It is about laboring as we record, in processes, with emotion, with bodies.”
Do we have it in us to ‘record’ the rage that Phoolan left us with? The rage that still percolates and continues to linger, even as we have “managed” to work again with men named in the ‘me-too’ list, because they got away as there was never ‘due process’ that saw the light of the day and they also managed to prove themselves as victims of a homogenizing phenomenon of ‘me-too’.
Perhaps, recording can be a project of continually reminding ourselves of the stories of rage and injustice. Perhaps, it can also be a project towards healing our bodies.
References:
- Phoolan Devi belonged to a Dalit lower caste family from Uttar Pradesh, and joined (or was kidnapped by) a gang of Dacoits to avenge the acts of sexual violence committed on her body by upper caste men.
- https://theprint.in/theprint-profile/bandit-queen-mp-feminist-phoolan-devi-could-never-be-put-in-a-box/267513/
- Bhanwari Devi was a social worker under the WDC in Rajasthan and was gang raped by upper caste men when she had tried to stop a child marriage in her village.
- Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a feminist life. Duke University Press.
