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Too Hot to Handle: The Cultural Politics of Fire
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DOI: 10.1080/014177800338963
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Too Hot to Handle: The Cultural Politics of “Fire”
Author(s): Ratna Kapur
Source: Feminist Review, No. 64, Feminism 2000: One Step beyond? (Spring, 2000), pp. 53-
64
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L E6
Too Hot to Handle:
The Cultural Politics of Fire
Ratna Kapur
Abstract
z
This essay explores the ways in which the definition of Indian culture has become
a site of contest, and how this contest played out in the controversy that erupted
over the release and screening of Deepa Mehta’s diasporic film, Fire, in India. I
locate this controversy within the broader controversies that are taking place over
culture, particularly when issues of sex and sexuality are involved. The continuous
targeting of representations of sex and sexuality, betrays an underlying fear that
sex is something that is threatening to Indian cultural values, to the Indian way of
life, to the very existence of the Indian nation. I discuss the responses to the release
of the film by the forces of the Hindu Right as well as feminist and lesbian groups
and critique the uncomplicated understandings of culture that informed these positions. Contingent upon these responses rests the story in Fire and the way in which
the lesbian subject, a sexual subaltern, is constructed in the cultural space represented in the film. I challenge the positions that suggest that the women are represented as victims in the film, and draw attention to the cultural, sexual and familial
ruptures brought about by the main protagonists through their desire for one
another. I explore the complicated understandings of agency and desire that are
represented through the assertion of this relationship.
Keywords
sexual subaltern; law and culture; fire; Indian lesbians; homosexuality in India;
Indian feminism; pleasure and desire; agency
Hysteria about culture is sweeping India. Everywhere, cries of Indian cultural values in danger are being heard, and the threat, the risk, the enemy,
time and again, appears to be sex and sexuality. The legal contest in 1994
over the screening of the Bandit Queen in India, convulsions around the
holding of the Miss World beauty pageant in Bangalore in November
1996, outcries over satellite broadcasting and protests over the emerging
visibility of sexual subalterns,1 reflect a growing unease with the increasing publicity of sex and sexuality.
53
Feminist Review ISSN 0141-7789 print/ISSN 1466-4380 online ? Feminist Review Collective
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In November 1998, Deepa Mehta’s diasporic film Fire, a film in which two
z sisters-in-law living in a joint family enter into an intimate and sexual
, relationship with one another, was released in India and became the subject
o of yet another moral and cultural panic (Ghosh, 1999). The ‘henchmen’
z of the Hindu Right, including the Mahila Agadhi, the women’s wing of the
> militant and virulently anti-Muslim Siva Sena, and the Bajrang Dal, a
faction of the Hindu Right that has become the moral policeman of Indian
| culture, directed their ire towards the screening of Fire.2
Despite the fact that the film cleared the Censor Board without any cuts,
their mobs disrupted screenings in a number of major cities in India including Bombay, Delhi, Meerut, Surat and Pune. Their protests took the form
of an alarming destruction to the property of cinema houses where the film
was screened as well as attacks against members of the viewing audiences.
The definition of Indian culture has become highly contested and it is no
coincidence that these contests have intensified with the ascendance of the
Hindu Right. The continuous targeting of representations of sex and sexuality betrays an underlying fear that sex is something that is threatening to
Indian cultural values, to the Indian way of life, to the very existence of
the Indian nation. In this essay, I situate the controversy over the screening of the film Fire in India, within the wider contests over the meaning
and status of Indian culture, being fought out in several arenas, including
the legal domain. I examine the responses to the release of the film by forces
of the Hindu Right, as well as feminist and lesbian groups. The responses
reveal their reliance on an uncomplicated understanding of culture, and I
examine how the meaning of culture is more complicated than either of
I these positions suggest. Contingent upon these debates rests the story in
Fire and the way in which lesbianism is constructed in the cultural space
represented in the film. I challenge the position that reads the film as one
that represents women’s sexual victimization in the Indian family, and
suggest it is open to a reading which reflects a more complicated notion of
agency.
The two stories, of the film and in the film are integral. The story of Fire
is about a film that was forced to undergo the test of public moral scrutiny
and cultural validity. It opened the seam lines of legitimate speech by
pushing the boundaries of sexual speech and expression in and through
the idiom of culture. The story in Fire plays out in celluloid terms the
tension over and between culture and sexuality.
The discussion on the meaning of culture and its relationship to sexual
identity needs to be understood against the backdrop of the historical
relationship between sexuality and culture in India. In the late nineteenth
5 4 century, the Hindu revivalists reconstituted the home – along with sex
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and sexuality – as a ‘pure’ space of Indian culture, uncontaminated by
the colonial encounter (Chatterjee, 1989; Sarkar, 1996; Mani, 1998). The
suturing of culture and sexuality in the fantasy of the nation provides the
discursive stage on which the debates on sex and sexuality have erupted
and are erupting in the contemporary moment (Kapur, 1999, 2000). New
sexual images and sexual subalterns are disrupting the script and challenging the underlying assumptions about sex and sexuality, and in challenging these ideas they are in turn threatening the purity of the Indian
nation.
0
The story of Fire
Fire involves the attraction between two sisters-in-law, Sita (N
and Radha (Shabana Azmi) while married to two brothers, A
bushan Kharbanda) and Jatin (Jaaved Jaaferi). The two men
sented as almost uniformly undesirable and resistible. While
preoccupied with his search for spiritual salvation and raising
his guru’s scrotum operation, Jatin continues to serve as the lap-d
of Julie, an Indian Chinese woman, an affair he refuses to surren
after his marriage. The household is ruled by the bell of the moth
who is unable to speak having suffered a paralytic stroke. The tw
in-law gradually develop an intimate bond that culminat
sequence and are discovered by Ashok. Radha refuses to suppli
her husband for forgiveness and chooses instead to leave the hom
marriage, which has denied her pleasure for thirteen years, an
who awaits her at the Nizammudin tomb, a Sufi shrine, the
another ‘Other’. The film is directed by Deepa Mehta, a Toro
Indian immigrant, and received a number of acting and directo
outside of India.
Prior to the release of the film, Deepa Mehta anticipated an
response to the cultural content in the film and agreed to change
of one of the protagonists, from Sita to Neeta. The move was
to slip into a less confrontational and compliant position on cu
alteration reflects the fears of those concerned about the offence
film could cause to Indian audiences in the representation of a
and sexual bond between Sita and her sister-in-law, Radha. B
are derived from central female characters in Indian epics, wh
utes of virtue, self-sacrifice and devotion to their respective husb
come to represent the hallmarks of Indian womanhood as it is
Mehta’s compromise is a move that stands out as a stark exam
ways in which Indian society is being held ransom to one ve
story, one ‘truth’ about Indian culture. Yet the change is 5
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j given that so much of the film is transgressive, and to tinker with names
is to merely draw attention to its subversive possibilities rather than mitigate a potentially violent reaction to the film. Ultimately, the audiences
were not the ones who were repulsed.
z
Fire played to full houses throughout the country fo
before members of women’s wing of the Shiva Sena
and the Bajrang Dal, led violent protests against the
cinema owners cancelled further screenings of the f
mately sent back to the Censor Board for a second revi
of the Hindu Nationalist’s self-appointed guardians
argued that the film was an assault on Indian cultur
senting the sisters-in-law in a lesbian relationship
litany of cultural rituals such as kharvachuth, a fast ke
the longevity of their husbands, to celebrate the ‘pe
Radha and Sita. They argued that the film was a thr
of the family, and obscene by virtue of its sexual
proclaimed defenders of Indian cultural values, thus
selves to save Indian culture and Indian audiences from the celluloid
contaminant.
The main plank of the Hindu Right’s protest is that Fire, in particular,
the representation of a lesbian relationship, is antithetical to Indian cultural values, that it is a Western contaminant threatening to destroy
Indian culture and the Indian family. The controversy was partly about
the place and status of gay identity within Indian culture. The Shiv Sena
threatened to disrupt the screening in Maharashtra if the film was not
banned, alleging that it was ‘against Indian tradition’.3 The spokesperson for Patit Pavan Sangathan, an extreme right wing organization in
Pune, stated that ‘the movie should be banned to protect “society and
our own daughters, wives and sisters” from the “Western concept of lesbianism”‘.4 The Mahila Agadhi were particularly concerned about the
impact of homosexuality on the Indian marriage and family, the ‘bedrock
of Indian culture’. ‘If women’s physical needs are fulfilled through lesbian
acts, the institution of marriage will collapse.’5 They read the film as an
attempt to convert women to lesbianism, which would lead to the demise
of the Hindu joint family.
The position of these groups is restricted to viewing Indian culture as a
museum piece, as something that is static and immutable, that can be excavated and restored to its pristine purity. The idea that Indian culture is stagnant and unaccommodating was seriously challenged during the course of
the controversy.
56 Gay and lesbian groups, amongst others, contested the position of the
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various segments of the Hindu Right and defended the film as an impor- $z
tant statement of lesbian identity in India. In Delhi, gay
into the public space for the first time to defend th
that ‘Lesbianism is not alien to Indian culture’.6 Les
also argued that homosexuality had always been a p
‘Why do we pretend it doesn’t exist? Homosexua
there’ (as a part of Indian culture).7 Forums such
Lesbian Rights, based in New Delhi, which formed p
controversy, lobbied for the film to be a means for
to sexual identity and to repeal legislation that disc
preferences. Their arguments were also in part base
homosexuality had always been a part of Indian cult
tural narrative that was presented was a simple one
Indian culture included lesbians in contrast to the p
Right. Lesbians sought validation and legitimacy in
moment by excavating stories about the existence of les
Indian culture.
The involvement of the lesbian groups together with
progressive voices supporting the existence of lesbian
Indian cultural space was both new and extremely si
first time lesbians openly came out onto the streets
the claim that homosexuality was alien to Indian cu
stark declarations that lesbians simply did not exist
their presence in a public space. However, their cultu
their claims of lesbian existence in Indian culture di
essentialist story about culture being related by both
This strategy failed to read the more complicated story
emerged through the controversy as well as in the f
troversy over and the story in Fire, reflect how cultur
is constantly negotiated and in the process of constr
process that has been used to create space for the sub
this instance, the sexual subaltern – the lesbian subje
culture is brought out most effectively in the seque
through the test of purity through fire, the agnipariks
Neeta), a departure from the traditional story, as we
that recuperates the ritual of kharvachauth as an act
the two women in validation of their bond. At eve
invoked to counter the dominant cultural tale that i
relation to these two characters, the rituals they en
the joint Hindu family. All of these stories are recu
temporary moment to destabilize the dominant me
Indian cultural values.
57
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?1 Cultural performances
Z The debate on the cultural legitimacy of Fire reveals that the contemporary contests are informed by very different understandings of culture.
o Stuart Hall has discussed at least two different ways of thinking about cul-
3 tural identity. According to Hall, one position on cultural identity is that
it consists of ‘one, shared culture, a sort of collective “one true self”, hiding
inside the many other, more superficial and artificially imposed “selves”,
which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common’ (Hall,
1996a: 211). Cultural identity is based on a common historical experience,
a sense of unity, on an idea that we are ‘one people’. It is a position that
assumes cultural identity is stable and unchanging. Cultural identity consists of an essence that needs to be excavated and brought to light.
The second view of cultural identity is based on the recognition that there
are points of similarity within the context of a culture, but there are also
points of difference, of discontinuity and dispersal. It does not entail an
archaeological search, but a re-telling of the past. As Hall points out
[W]e cannot speak about one identity, one story without acknowledging the
ruptures and discontinuities of the story we tell or re-tell. We cannot speak for
very long, with any exactness, about ‘one experience, one identity,’ without
acknowledging its other side – differences and discontinuities…. Far from
being grounded in a mere ‘recovery’ of the past, which is waiting to be found,
and which, when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into eternity, identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past.
(Hall, 1996a: 212)
This view recognizes the hybridity of culture, that it is a fluid and shifting
concept that cannot be cabined or contained (see also Hall, 1996b).
Keeping in view Hall’s analysis, the reading of culture by the Hindu Right
in relation to the film is based on an essential cultural identity. The lesbian
groups disrupted this construction only in so far as they added themselves
into the picture. But what the controversy as well as the film reveals is that
culture is hybrid and cultural identity is a constantly shifting and fluid category.
Fire and the controversy that engulfed it must be evaluated against these
cultural contests and the broader social antagonisms and contradictions
that are being played out in many of the cultural controversies that are
erupting these days in India (Ghosh, 1999). The representation of a sexual
minority, the inversion of cultural myths and themes, the agency of Hindu
women within the joint family all destablize the dominant understanding
of culture, of Hindu culture, that is being put across by the Hindu Right.
5 It is an ideological struggle about who counts as part of Indian culture and
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who is excluded, and who is an outsider. For the Indian feminist move- |
ment this is a familiar experience having itself been cast as ‘foreign’ and
‘Western’. The cultural controversies that are erupting are setting up Indian
culture in opposition to the outsider, the outsider invariably being the
‘West’. The representation of sex or sexuality either in the form of ,
Hussain’s Saraswati goddess,8 or Madhuri Dixit’s vamp number ‘Choli Ke c
Peechey’, 9 are invariably cast as something decadent and vulgar, as outside
of Indian cultural values. The Hindu Right may not be the only exponents ?
of this position. Feminists and Left groups have also taken a stand in oppo- B
sition to these representations, partly on the grounds that they subordinate O
women as well as on the grounds that they offend Indian cultural values. m
But at this current moment the Right is in power, and it is largely determining the outcome of these cultural controversies.
Fire represents how culture is confused, contradictory and uneven. It is
within the cultural space of the Hindu joint family that the relationship
between the two women in the film develops, where ‘Hindu’ tales and
stories provide Mundu, the servant of the household, with fodder for his
fantasies, in particular, about the possibility of winning Radha’s heart.
Hindi popular culture provides the space for the girls to dance away in
drag before their mute mother-in-law, who is amused by their performance. It is within this very cultural space that Jatin sells porn and also has
an extra-marital relationship. Indeed the only person in the script who
appears to believe that there is one big happy joint Hindu family, that
there exists a uniform static notion of culture, is Ashok. Sitting with his
utterly deviant family in Lodhi gardens he states ‘I’m lucky to have such
a good family’. Recall that it is at this very moment when Sita grasps
Radha’s feet and in her characteristically sensuous manner, begins to
caress them.
There can be no return to a pristine, unalloyed Indian culture. To argue
that there is no pure space of Indian culture is not to argue that Indian
culture does not exist. Rather, it is to argue that the production of culture
is a historical process that is constantly changing and altering that it is
protean never stable, nor fixed. It is to argue that the shape shifting of
culture and an inquiry into its construction are legitimate processes.
Sexual negativity and the victim subject
A closely related issue to the representation of culture in the film, is the
way in which the sexual identity of the main protagonists is represented
within the cultural space. Some commentators contend that the film represents sexuality in a negative way, that is, the women fall into a lesbian
relationship as a consequence of a bad marriage rather than an active 5 i9
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choice and that the spectator is left with an overall sense of sexual victimization (John and Niranjan, 1999). The story of victimization is hardly
a unusual in Indian films, at least in terms of the main narrative. Yet there
are many significant moments of agency in the film that require further
z attention. Sita’s agency is particularly important. When Radha enters Sita’s
L room and sees her crying, comforts her and states that everything will be
all right (between Sita and Jatin) Sita quite clearly states that that is not
the problem. At which point she plants her first kiss on Radha’s lips. If the
film is making an unambiguous statement that the women fall into a
lesbian relationship as a result of bad marriages, then Mundu, who is also
sexually frustrated is there for the taking – he is ready and willing if only
Radha will make the first overture! Neither Sita nor Radha choose Mundu
as a sexual partner, a refusal that may in part be mediated by class as much
as by gender and the lack of desire for Mundu. Instead, they choose one
another. Their relationship is not the consequence of default. Their choices
are partly informed by desire, a desire that Radha passionately asserts
when she leaves Ashok and announces that she desires Sita, ‘her love, her
warmth and her body’. And it is this compelling desire for one another
that ultimately becomes disruptive of existing familial, sexual and cultural
arrangements (see, Valdes, 1997).
The representation of sexual identity as transgressive and imbued with
partial agency is scattered through the film’s subplots. These moments
provide a challenge to the main narrative and the dominant cultural and
sexual cloth in which it is woven. Radha and Sita dance in drag before
their mother-in-law, mimicking popular Hindi film songs and dance
sequences. A cross-dresser plays the hefty Sita in a street performance of
the agnipariksha. There are also some playful moments with food, and
condiments that constitute part of the sexual chemistry between the
women. All of these subversive moments complicate the film’s cultural
script, representing it as malleable and diverse, as well as the location of
the sexual subaltern. The passion between Radha and Sita is located in the
home from which it emerges in its raw nakedness to rupture the cultural
edifices of family and marriage, leaving both institutions as well as the protagonists partly transformed.
Concluding remarks
I would suggest that Fire is a much more complicated film than the positions of the Hindu Right or gay and lesbian groups have suggested. Fire
attempts to situate the love story between Radha and Sita in a specific cultural context and a familial location involving a middle class Hindu joint
family. Whether fantastical or real seems irrelevant. This is the context as
6 o it exists in the imagination of a first generation Indian immigrant to
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Canada. In this complex setting, the film does not make any claim to
simple universal truths or notions about the cause of women’s oppression.
In fact, one of the problems with the film is its effort to address far too
many issues – family, sexuality, culture, tradition, consent, scriptures,
history and more. The film does make an unequivocal statement about
sexual choice. In fact, the film ends ambiguously – we learn of both the
pleasures and persecutions that result from being involved in a lesbian
relationship with one’s sister-in-law in a joint Hindu family. ,
My understanding of the film is informed by what it has to say about nor- o
mative arrangements, sexual and cultural, against the backdrop of the everpresent Hindu Right. I am less concerned with the possible message of the
director, Deepa Mehta, who in any case has disavowed the film as a lesbian
film, and is more interested in examining the tensions set up within a joint
Hindu family household around a broad array of issues, ranging from spiritual salvation to sexual transgression. It is crucial to situate Fire within
the cultural wars that are taking place in the legal domain and elsewhere
around what constitutes Hindu culture. The Hindu Right is a very significant player in the cultural wars and quite often determines (at least these
days) the outcomes of these struggles.
We need to interrogate the different responses to the film, including those
of the Hindu Right, feminists and the lesbian and gay groups. We need to
inquire into the stands of each on the issue of what constitutes Indian
culture, as well as their positions on issues of sexual marginalization and
sexual speech. This involves inquiring into the extent to which lesbian
rights advocates have supported or been seen to visibly support the rights
of other sexually marginalized communities. And to what extent they have
taken a contradictory stand on the right to free expression in the context
of other films/film songs that have been banned or restricted. Feminists,
and I would add, lesbians have often served as barricades to free speech
rather than as its active promoters. Fire’s significance lies not so much in
representing sexual pleasure between women, as it does in representing this
relationship in the context of a joint Hindu family household at the very
moment when the Hindu Right is in power. The representation of a lesbian
relationship in the film as well as the controversy that erupted around its
screening are not fortuitous. Fire needs to be located in the broader cultural wars that have been exploding across the country over the past
several years, all of which involve a contest over culture as well as the
content of speech.
The Hindu Right is engineering a cultural education programme in
schools and colleges, based on an understanding of culture that is static,
fixed and fossilized. It treats culture as immutable, in which the role of 6 1
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women is very clearly defined. Fire, together with the many other cultural
w controversies I have mentioned, need to be read as efforts to destabilize
this static notion of culture, and provide evidence as to the dynamism and
o mutability of culture. The story in Fire and of Fire serve as important chalz lenges to the dominant cultural narrative that is being spun. It reflects a
> subversive moment that creates discomfort and even evokes violence from
= those who are all too willing to crush any threat to their position posed
i by dissent and difference, to ensure the survival of their story and their
truth.
The story of Fire, as well as its plot, challenges the dominant narr
Indian culture and sexuality, and provides a new and unstead
from which to understand both. Fire is not simply about culture,
speech nor about sexual preference. Indeed it involves a complicate
section of all these issues. It is reassuring that Radha endures t
fire and ends up in her lover’s arms. But it is still a cause for conc
their relationship survives only after it is displaced onto the cultu
of another ‘Other’.
Notes
Ratna Kapur is a Co-Director of the Centre for
Delhi, India and is currently holding the Joseph
Professor of Law Endowed Chair, Cleveland-Mar
USA for the Fall 1999 semester.
1 I use the term ‘sexual subaltern’ to refer to th
brings together a range of sexual minorities wi
suggesting that it is either a homogenized or sta
sexual subaltern in postcolonial India is complex
is not invoked exclusively as an identity of res
egories. For a more general critique of the changi
see SARKAR, Sumit (1997) ‘The decline of the s
in Sumit Sarkar editor, Writing Social History,
pp. 82-108.
2 The Hindu Right or the Hindu Nationalists are a nationalist and right wing
political movement devoted to creating a Hindu state in India. It includes the
I Bhartiya Janata Party (the political arm of the Right which is currently in power
at the national level), the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak (the main ideological component of the Right) and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (the exponents of the
Right’s religious doctrine). Other parties include the anti-Muslim Shiv Sena.
These organizations collectively promote the ideology of Hindutva – an ideology that seeks to establish a Hindu state in India. There are several offshoots
6 2 and newer segments of the Hindu Right, which include the Bajrang Dal and
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women’s wings of the main and subsidiary bodies, including the Mahila
z
Aghadi.
3 ‘Fire makes Shiv Sainiks see red’ Times of India, 3 December 1998.
4 ‘Patit Pavan targets Fire in Pune’ Express News Service, 4 December 1998.
5 ‘Ban Fire, says Sena Mahila Aghadi’ Express News Service, 1 December 1998.
6 ‘Deepa Mehta leads candlelit protest’, Asian Age, 8 December 1998.
r
7 Chitra Subramanyam, ‘War over lesbia
December 1998, quoting Pamela Rooks,
8 In September 1996, an obscure Hindi jour
goddess Saraswati in the nude painted by M
renowned Indian artist who lives in Bombay. T
1970s. The article was brought to the attentio
Culture, Pramod Navalkar, who promptly fi
promoting religious enmity and disharmony t
after filed criminal charges against Hussain
Dal attacked one of his exhibitions on disp
Gujarat, a western state in India. They destro
and twenty-eight of his paintings, including
other deities, such as Hanuman and Ganesha
members of the Bajrang Dal attacked his hou
Thackeray of the Siva Sena who stated, ‘If H
can’t we enter his house?’ Frontline, 23 May
9 In 1993, ‘Choli Ke Peechey Kya Hai?’ (‘wha
and dance sequence from the film Khalnayak
Madhuri Dixit, became the focus of public
brought by a BJP supporter. Madhuri’s vo
manoeuvres with co-dancer Neera Gupta, and
the distraught petitioner that the sequence w
and decency’ and against Indian culture and
the trial court, and on appeal, by the High Co
successful in legal terms, it succeeded in sti
controversy.
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