Kanika Sharma on Rukhmabai

It is one thing for foreigners to hold absurd ideas about India. It is another entirely when an Indian educated at JNU teaches these absurd lies to foreigners. Kanika Sharma, the subject of my previous post, has a book chapter titled 

Restitution of conjugal rights and the dissenting female body: The Rukhmabai Case

 Rukhmabai was not a 'dissenting female body''. She did what her step-father- Dr. Sakharam Arjun- wanted her to do. Sadly, her husband was less keen on blindly obeying his kinsman, Dr. Arjun, who never ceased to pile humiliations upon his head and wouldn't even let him consummate the marriage.

Sudhir Chandra in 'Enslaved Daughters' writes- 'Offering the public his view of the case in April 1887, the husband, who estimating his wife's property’s value to be ‘upwards of Rs. 25,000’,  maintained: ‘In this little history of property lies the whole secret of the world-wide case of Dadaji vs. Rakhmabai.’ 

' ‘If the name of the maternal grandfather is substituted for the name Rakhmabai in this case, its realities will be better understood but its poetry will be gone’.'

 Put simply, the fact is that the petitioner was making a property claim and 'restitution of conjugal rights' was merely the convenient doorway provided by law towards this end. This did not mean he desperately wanted to fuck Rukhmabai or genuinely desired to maintain her in his own house. He wanted money and after Dr. Arjun died, that is what he got. It wasn't a lot of money but it was some compensation for what Dr. Arjun had put him through when he was a 'ghar-jamail' (i.e. a son-in-law maintained by the father-in-law). There was reason to suspect that Dr. Arjun had arranged the marriage with a view to benefitting his own family. He chose a blockhead as a groom because he hoped to control him. Later a maternal uncle of the blockhead took him under his wing, perhaps with a similar view. 

Since the Rukhmabai's maternal grand-father was a man of substance who had served the Government and been granted a title, the sensible thing to do was settle the matter with a couple of thousand rupees in cash. Once the property angle became clear, the 'poetry', or political aspect, was gone. At the same time, the Anglophone public were becoming aware that, in the caste to which Rukhmabai belonged it was quite usual for a wife to put a notice in the vernacular press dissolving a marriage with an errant husband. This was in accordance with customary usage. The fact that Rukhmabai had a Bank account and property which could be attached by a Court order is what had led to litigation. 'Restitution' in England and India was always only about money. The fairest thing to say is 'though the wife, who gained no benefit from the husband may feel it is unfair that the husband gets a penny of her Estate, still, the sensible thing to do is pay him off and put an end to vexatious litigation. After all, he was induced to enter a marriage which did a yield a benefit to the wife and her family- viz. the pretence of upholding orthodox Hindu religion. By contrast, the husband received no benefit to offset his legal claim. Given him some money and let him get on with his life. You and your people have dragged his name through the mud for long enough.' 

Did Rukhmabai act autonomously when she spewed contumely on her husband? Did he did so to please her step-father? She may have genuinely wanted to emulate him by training as a Doctor. But this does not mean she wanted to undergo child marriage, yet nevertheless, remain celibate and childless. Yet, since such was her step-father's will, such was her fate. Pandita Ramabai, being a free agent, could defy convention and get married to a Kayastha (she was Brahmin). Sadly, her husband died but she had the consolation of having a daughter. She travelled abroad, converted to Christianity, and ensured her daughter graduated from an American College. Still, it is notable that she did not re-marry- which, as an evangelical Christian at that time, she was welcome to do. Rukhmabai, it is said, acted as an orthodox Hindu wife, and later a Hindu widow, though her husband had remarried. It may be mentioned, that there was considerable financial support for Rukhmabai and this enabled her to study in England. However, the case had no wider import. India was and is very fucking poor. Court judgments don't matter in the slightest unless a large Estate is involved. Moreover, it has never been the case that Courts have forced people to have sex. 'Restitution' was just a device for a money claim and a gateway to divorce. There is no sinister 'biopolitical' aspect to this whatsoever. 

 In Moonshee Buzloor Ruheem v Shumsoonnissa Begum, decided some years previously, a Muslim husband who had defrauded his wife brought such a suit so as to offset damages he would be obliged to pay her. The plain fact is 'Restitution of conjugal rights' was just a legal artifice or fiction, similar to the old tort of trespass vie et armis (i.e. by 'force and arms'), and not actually involving any rape or the flourishing of spears or bows and arrows. It could be claimed by both men and women. Kanika Sharma is pretending that evil White judges were forcing Hindu women to have sex with their husbands. Rukhmabai was a dissenter. She requested Queen Victoria to order evil White Judges in India to stop holding down Hindu women so they could be beaten and raped by evil Hindu husbands. Sadly, under evil dictatorial reign of Narendra Modi (real name, Nicholas Maugham) this hideous procedure is being used. However, I may point out that this also happened when Rajiv Gandhi came to power. My then wife threatened my parents with such a suit. My mother was terrified. Dad, an enthusiast for the law who, I suspect was wholly ignorant of it, painted a vivid picture of female police constables laying rough hands on me and dragging me out of the house to some hideous prison cell where my wife could sate her insensate lust upon my frail and quivering form. Since my wife was Italian, my mother jumped to the conclusion that Indira had lost Rajiv to Sonia by some similar rape under colour of law. She bowed to the majesty of the law and yielded me up to my wife's tender mercies. 

However, like Dr. Sharma, my mother's conception of the Indian law re. 'restitution of conjugal rights' was wholly mistaken. It has always been just the legal doorway to a financial settlement and divorce. Nobody was or is actually forced to have sex. Bodies, even if Hindu and dickless, were not sexual objects which the law disposed off as it pleased. 

Colonial laws in late-nineteenth century India often reduced the native female to her corporeal body,

No law has ever done so to any type of person- even a slave. The 'native female' could own property and discharge various religious, legal and other obligations.  Similarly, even a slave could be held accountable for actions of his mind, not his body. 

and this was especially the case with laws regarding marriage and a woman’s rights within that marriage.

The case of Rukmabai shows the opposite was the case. A wife who could not be returned to the matrimonial home by brute force could not be returned by the force of law. Why? Custom did not permit it. It was against public policy. 'Restitution of conjugal rights' was merely a legal device preparatory to divorce and a financial settlement. It didn't actually mean that anybody was forced to submit to sex. 

In India, it often happened- and still happens- that a bride from a powerful local family would refuse to stay with her in-laws. The groom would be obliged to become a servant of his in-laws if he wanted to enjoy married life. Indeed, some grooms brought to England from the Punjab are beaten by the brothers-in-law and used as slave labour. A shelter for such battered husbands was mooted but they were afraid of being beaten up by the 'Black Sisters of Southall'- or so I have heard. 

It must be said, it was Lord Denning- in Bendall v McWhirter- who introduced the notion that women, in the eyes of the law prior to 1882, were a type of furniture, or other such insensate object. He said the English wife was “more like a piece of her husband’s furniture than anything else. The husband could not sue her in ejectment or trespass, but neither could he sue a piece of furniture. He could bundle his furniture out into the street, and so he could his wife.” What Denning did not say, is that the husband could fuck this piece of furniture- just as America's next Vice President fucks his sofa- and have babies with it. No doubt, he also believed that sofas and ottomans could approach the court for restitution of conjugal rights or maintenance from absconded husbands. 

My point is that though the Law is an ass- it may be a useful enough ass. Bendall v McWhirter led to statute law which gives the deserted wife occupying a home belonging to her delinquent husband's trustee in bankruptcy a one year grace period to find alternative accommodation. However, legal scholarship which assumes that the Law's asinine ratios reflect, or otherwise sustain, some power relation of dominance and submission is not an ass. It is what emerges from the anus of the ass. 

This essay closely examines the Rukhmabai case where intertwined laws on age of consent as well as restitution of conjugal rights focused on the body of the Hindu woman

as opposed to her similarity to a sofa or an ottoman- probably because sofas and ottomans come from Muslim countries and Rukhmabai was Hindu. 

while ignoring her thoughts and desires,

initially, the case was decided in her favour 

thus seeking to render her a mute spectator in her own life.

Yet the outcome of the case showed that Rukhmabai was not mute and that she prevailed. The plain fact is the plaintiff was appealing to an English law re. restitution of conjugal rights which had no support in Hindu law or Indian case law. Nevertheless, the initial decision in Rukhmabai's favour was wrong in law. There is no difference between 'institution' and 'restitution'. What decided the case was whether her husband could support her. The Court decided he could.

I should mention, the penalty of six months imprisonment for failure to provide conjugal rights had been abolished in England around the time the case was brought. Still, since the orthodox Hindus created a furore, the plaintiff got what he really wanted- viz a pay out. Truth be told, he had been dealt with in a high handed fashion by his wife's step-father. Still, this was a storm in a teacup to do with an ongoing fight between 'reformists' and the orthodox party- who, however, weren't really orthodox at all. They just wanted to pretend that English education was dangerous to Hindu womanhood or some such shite.  From the British point of view, the Courts had upheld 'orthodox' Hindu law while leaving the question of enforcement to one side. Similarly, a court could say 'such and such marriage is 'svagotra' and illegal'. Those involved could reply 'go fuck yourself you svagotra cunts.' There the matter would end. The law is merely a service industry when it isn't too busy being an ass. 

This attempt at muting women in their own lives is replicated in mainstream historiography which remains a deeply patriarchal enterprise and largely ignores ‘what the women were saying’.

Not in this case. Rukhmabai's letter to the Queen Empress gained wide publicity. But then Pandita Ramabai too had gained a lot of publicity. Indian women, then as now, had no difficulty making themselves heard. On the other hand, it is true that Colonial law did succeed in turning the Rani of Jhansi into just a corporeal body. Viceroy Sahib did voodoo compelling her to surrender to British forces. Evil Hindoooo men are propagating the myth that she died of wounds received on the battlefield.  

Even when focusing on age of consent women are repeatedly framed as objects rather than subjects, despite the fact that many contemporary women were speaking and writing about these issues.

It is this silly bint who is 'framing' women as objects. This is because evil Rishi Sunak is using Voodoo to control her body.  

The woman as subaltern is not allowed to speak for herself,

Spivak said this of the Guleri Rani of Sirmur. Sadly, the Golden Book of the Indian Princes mentions her great role in expanding her kingdom despite the best efforts of her idiot of a husband.  

instead many influential tracts on the history of age of consent in India focus on the male voices prevalent at the time, with particular emphasis on men such as Behramji Malabari

a Parsi journalist sucking up to the Brits.  

or BG Tilak.

Who actually mattered. But so did Annie Besant and Madam Cama. Still, it was Rani Rashmoni, Indian women wanted to emulate. She was an excellent business woman and left a great name for philanthropy and temple construction.  

For the purpose of this essay, I seek to posit Rukhmabai as a subaltern subject

why? She qualified as a Doctor in London and held senior positions in the Medical Service. She wasn't 'subaltern' in any way.  

and attempt to recover her voice by tracing the defence that was articulated on her behalf in the courtroom and examining the letters that she wrote to The Times of India within the country and The Times in England.

Wonderful! Sharma will recover the voice of a woman from her letters which voiced whatever she wanted to say. Hopefully, Sharma will next recover the voice of Mamta and Mayawati and Liz Truss and Kamala Harris by watching YouTube videos of their speeches. 

Her first-hand accounts of the plight of the child wife married to a man she would have never chosen for herself lent a strident voice against the institution of child marriage and the idea that a Hindu woman must always acquiesce to conjugal relations with her husband even against her own wishes.

No. Had her garbadhan ceremony been followed by consummation, then she would be able to give a 'first hand' account of the plight of the child wife. Since she was 22 years old when the court case began, she could do no such thing.  

Rukhmabai’s rigorous public intervention

passionate not rigorous. 

reveals that for brief moments, though always closely circumscribed by the patriarchal norms determined by the elite in the society,

elite Marathas were 'sanadi' and did not permit widow remarriage. Rukhmabai's mother married a reformist Doctor. As such, this meant that 'elite' Hindu rules did not apply to her. However, her husband was related to her father and thus the real issue here is whether the family was 'sanadi' or 'kunbi' Maratha. Indians understand these things though they may not say so in clear terms. Sharma probably understands all this better than I do. But it is her job to pretend that women can't talk or act for themselves because they are utterly shit.  

the subaltern woman can attempt to have her dissent registered.

No she can't. Some nice Professor should pretend to be registering her dissent on her behalf because, since she didn't have a dick, she obviously could not have had a mind or a voice or a will of her own.  

The problem with the Rukhmabai case is that we don't really know whether she disliked her husband or didn't want to consummate the marriage after puberty. Whatever she said or wrote may have been dictated by her step-father or other such authority figures. The problem was, they were all men. They didn't really know what was best for her. 

As for 'age of consent' or the ban on Brahmin girls marrying non-Brahmins and other such provisions of law, they simply didn't matter at all though no doubt, a Court Case could end with one party or the other getting paid off. However, it was cheaper and more satisfying to just get the fellow beaten or killed. Alternatively, if you were into 'Ahimsa', you just defied any and every court order. The law is merely a service industry. If people won't pay to enforce its judgments, it is ineffective or is disintermediated.