Sikata Banerjee - Muscular Nationalism: Gender, Violence, and Empire in India and Ireland, 1914-2004

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Muscular Nationalism

GENDER AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE SERIES
General Editor: Laura Sjoberg

Muscular Nationalism:
Gender, Violence, and Empire in India and Ireland, 19142004 Sikata Banerjee

Gender, Violence, and Empire in
India and Ireland, 19142004

Sikata Banerjee

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org

2012 by New YorkUniversity
All rights reserved

References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Banerjee, Sikata.
Muscular nationalism : gender, violence, and empire in India and Ireland, 1914-2004 / Sikata Banerjee.
p. cm. (Gender and political violence series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8147-8976-6 (cloth : acid-free paper)
ISBN 0-8147-8976-5 (cloth : acid-free paper)
ISBN 978-0-8147-8977-3 (ebook)
ISBN 0-8147-8977-3 (ebook)
ISBN 978-0-8147-2331-9 (ebook)
ISBN 0-8147-2331-4 (ebook)
1. Women India History. 2. Women Ireland History.
3. Great Britain Colonies. 4. Masculinity Great Britain History.
5. Nationalism History. I. Title.
HQ1742.B3694 2012
305.4209415 dc23 2011043848

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Portions of the research for this book were made possible by a grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, as well as by an internal grant from the University of Victoria. Colleagues and friends listened patiently while I expounded various iterations of the argument presented here. Finally, this book could not have completed without the unfailing support of my husband, Dan. Thank you.

... Now you lie limp,
Face down,
Dumped in a ditch...
O poor adventuress
In the name of virtue
They cut off your flaxen hair,
Defiled your lovely breasts,
Before degutting you....

Gang Bang, Ulster Style, by Linda Anderson

The Bengali alas! is always pathetic,
Eats, dresses, slumbers, and guards his domestic,
Should you give him a mealno matter trash or treat,
That instant hes your slave and falls at your feet!
So why does he worship those red feet with flowers?
Abandon your lion-riding, in these parts O Mother,
Should such a breed worship you, who will then be porters?
Who will be the pen-pushers? And toil in hordes?
For Mother you can never make them unlearn ever:
Bengalis have been slavesforever and forever.

A Poem for Vijaya Dashami (anonymous)

Although these poems are divided by a time span of almost a hundred years and a geographical distance of several thousand miles, the poetic lament they expressed illustrates the complexity and the historical scope of narratives of gendered nationalisms. The broken body of a Northern Irish woman found during the troubles that began in 1969 and a groveling nineteenth-century Bengali man representing collective colonized impotence reveal the location of images of manliness and womanliness within multiple intersections of empire, nation, and race. The opening lines of the Anderson poem identify the adventuress as a Belfast wife, who, worn down by visits to the famous Long Kesh jail, where her husband, a warrior for the Irish Republican Army (IRA), was imprisoned, possibly found some comfort in the arms of a British soldier or Protestant man. But her act of human emotion was seen as national betrayal, and she was punished by the moral guardians of Irish republicanism. The Bengali man also betrayed his nation, represented in the poem by the lion-riding warrior mother. However, this act was expressed not through improper sexuality but rather through physical and moral cowardice.

Motherhood, the virtuous wife, and the cowardly man are all entangled in a particular story of gender and nationmuscular nationalismthe genealogy of which is presented in this book. Briefly put, muscular nationalism is the intersection of a specific vision of masculinity with the political doctrine of nationalism. Examples of muscular nationalism center an adult male body poised to sacrifice and kill for the nation. Usually, this view of masculinity is juxtaposed with a chaste female body that both symbolizes national honor and provides a moral code for the lives of women in the nation. This gendered binary remains stable as long as women do not act to challenge the expectations of chastity. These expectations are seemingly fragile, as political behavior ranging from picking up arms to marching alongside men in protest seems to disrupt this binary and, in doing so, engenders societal suspicion of politicized femininity. Put another way, muscular nationalism generally centers a gendered binarymartial man versus chaste womanand several forms of female activism, especially those associated with facilitating political violence, challenge this cultural dualism to create social dis-ease. Using this social anxiety as a point of departure, this book interrogates the complex ways in which the stories of women and womanhood unfold in the context of muscular nationalism. Specifically, it analyzes ways in which womens bodies intersect this political landscape by focusing on particular examples of muscular nationalism in India and Ireland. The bulk of the analysis focuses on how women political actors negotiate ideals of chaste femininity within this view of nation; this negotiation is further contexualized within a discussion of the social processes that construct womens bodies as the canvas on which muscular nationalism stakes its claim.

Indeed, the process of feminization of (male) bodies on the basis of a complicated interaction among whiteness, manhood, and imperial power is an important component of my analysis.

Like other forms of identity, masculinity is historically, politically, and culturally constituted. However, one form always becomes dominant or hegemonic in setting the norms for male action.

Not until the emergence of feminist analysis was the gendered nature of national identities uncovered and deconstructed. Further, if nationalisms as posited by the work of Enloe and others cited are in part shaped by competing masculinities, then it behooves scholars to trace this competition and its relationship to both femininities and female bodies. This book interrogates examples of muscular nationalismIndian and Irishto reveal this social dynamic.