Dialectic of Public and Private

Representation

of

Women

in

Bhoomika

and

Mirch

Masala

Ranjani Mazumdar
The post emergency period in India witnessed the production of a number of films dealing with women's issues
particularly by those who came under the category of New Wave directors. This article attempts a textual and
contextual reading of two New Wave films, with the objective of proving or disproving the argument that cinema
on women within this category is constrained by dominant ideological discourses on women and falls prey to
the liberal epistemology of mainstream feminism which has always tried to perceive the women's question as only
a gender war
A N Y genuine attempt to understand and
analyse the representation of women in artistic practice must insist upon the social
character of all practices. Cinematic practice like any other form of artistic practice
is also shaped by concrete social relations
and works within and on socially produced
ideologies. Cinema is a complex structure
which brings together various elements in
a dialectical unity, ideas, themes, compositions language, etc' Therefore the relationship between the formaJ mechanism of film
to ideology must be considered seriously.
The representation of women in cinema has
been a major issue of debate amongst
feminist film theorists. In India the postemergency period witnessed the production
of a number of films dealing with women's
issues, particularly by those who came under
the category of the 'New Wave' directors.
This essay is an attempt towards a textual
and contextual reading of two New Wave
films, Bhoomika (The Role) and Mirch
Masala (Spices). The primary objective is
to prove or disprove the arguments we are
trying to raise that the cinema on women
within what is considered the Indian New
Wave is constrained by dominant ideological
discourses on women and, that in spite of
their feminist aspirations they fall prey to
the liberal epistemology of mainstream
feminism which has always tried to perceive
the women's question as only a gender war.
(Mirth Masala is possibly one of the few
exceptions.) While recognising the contributions of the liberal feminist movement in
focusing on the specificity of gender oppression, a Marxist feminist analysis operates
within a wider notion of the 'social* where
gender oppression overlaps and is informed
by that of caste and class.
As we proceed, we will try to show how
in Bhoomika, the 'act of liberation' is not
ony distorted but reduced to the struggle of
the individual. The process of self-liberation
involves simultaneously both individuals and
groups. It is absolutely central to political
analysis to understand that while the struggle for women's emancipation also takes
place at the level of individuals, this struggle is one which cannot successfully be completed by individual women in isolation since
it is the identity as members of social groups
which are under attack. Bourgeois feminism
has successfully managed to ignore this by
creating a dichotomy between the 'public'
and the 'private' : the public domain being
the world of waged work, industry, production for the market, politics, warfare, etc, and
the private domain as the domestic world
of the family and self. A study of the use
Economic and Political Weekly

of public and private space both in terms of

style and content in the lives of the protagonists will show us if such a dichotomy
is created consciously or unconsciously. Such
analyses will enable us to grasp in the fullest
sense, the importance of what Partha
Chatterjee says:
politics necessarily operates in an ideological
world in which, words rarely have unambiguous meanings, where notions are inexact
and have political value precisely because
they are inexact and hence capable of suggesting a range of possible interpretations,
where intentions themselves are contradictory
and consequences very often unintended,
where movements follow winding and unpredictable paths, where choices are strategic
and relative, not univocal and absolute. A n d
still this inexact world of ambiguity and halft r u t h , of manipulation and deception, of
dreams and illusions is not wholly patternless, for here too objectives are realised,
rules established, values asserted, revolutions
accomplished and states founded. 2

Bhoomika is the story of the Marat hi actress Hansa Wadkar. The film was acclaimed as one of the major feminist films of its
time. Using the traditional narrative format,
Benegat traces the life of Hansa from her
childhood to her acting days. The main
focus of the film centres on her relationships
with different men and through each of
these relationships, he tries to show the
psychological conflicts that Hansa undergoes, between her role as breadwinner, her
sexuality, her image as an actress, her
cultural and traditional background, etc
Sexual difference and female subjectivity are
the pillars around which Benegal situates his
analysis of women's subjugation. He moves
from an exploration of the self to an exploration of subjectivity. The relationship between
self and society seems to get deliberately
subverted and here lies his failure to comprehend the complexities and the essence of
women's problems and see only the phenomenal level of what appears to be the issue
at stake. What Benegal fails to realise is how
a woman's gender identity has to be viewed
and understood through an array of social
categories, the most important of these being
class (and in the Indian context caste). In
Malini Bhattacharya's words
Class is a category which enables us to
historicise 'gender' to trace the development
in time of the concept. The evolution of the
man-woman relationship in society or of
gender politics, while it has its own internal
logic and seems at times to operate i n dependently of class differentiations can
nevertheless only be understood in the con-

October 26, 1991

text of the organisation of production relations w i t h i n a particular social structure.

Such a perspective enables us to specify
gender relations. It also opens out continually to include the complex interplay of gender
relationships with other social relationships. 3

hansa Wadkar came from a caste or community whose cultural tradition totally differentiated their women from the women of
the rest of Hindu caste society, and certainly from the Muslims and Christians. By the
traditions of this caste, the women were not
supposed to marry because their caste occupation was a totally public one. This community produced the singers, the musicions
and dancers. This was their caste occupation and the practice of this occupation
meant constant contact with a primarily
male audience. The traditions of marriage,
chastity, etc, were in their case irrelevant. The
women of this caste had their sexual lives
but this was through temporary relationships
with different men who occasionally set
them up with properly. But being the
mistress of a man was a secondary aspect
of their lives, the primary one being their
art which was a public occupation and yet
they were a part of Hindu caste society,
shared their religion and some of the other
cultural norms. 'Akhand saubhagyavati' (the
bearer of indestructible fortune) was the title
given to the women of this caste because
since they never married, they could never
be widows. 4 The children belonged to the
women and so this was a woman-centred,
mother-centred community. The women
were also the main source of earning.
What Senegal tries to show as unconventional (Hansa's relationships with men) was
in reality totally traditional by Hansa's caste
norms. The tension begins in her life with
her increasing entry and acceptance as part
of the rising new middle class.5 The implicit
acceptance of her public career being the
most important thing in her life and every
thing else as secondary begins to clash when
she starts comparing herself with other
middle class women. If Hansa faced conflicts in her personal life, they were a result
of the social expectations and value system
of a particular class that she was becoming
a part of.
Benegal fails to grasp this point and
through a systematic manipulation of the
link between the public and private space of
the protagonist removes her and the
audience from relating her experiences with
the enormous web of many different social
relationships. However, he prevents himself
from entirely ignoring the public spaceissues of what is considered the public arena
WS-81

are introduced in many places but their

breezy appearance and disappearance make
it clear that they are introduced only to give
the backdrop to the narrative of the film.
Bhoomika's claims to representing images
of women then becomes highly ambiguous,
because representation of women is always
linked in varied ways to a broader chain or
system of signification and to historically
constituted real relations. Michelle Barrett
explains lucidly and convincingly how the
means of representation become equally important in the area of cultural production.
She explains for example how forms of
representation are influenced by genres, conventions, the presence of established modes
of communication and so on. 6 This takes
us into the uneasy and controversial terrain
of'realism'. Bhoomika's form can easily be
categorised into a broadly realist framework,
however weak it may be. But even in this effort it fails miserably. Lukacs, possibly the
greatest promoter of realism, said:
True great realism thus depicts man and
society as complete entities instead of showing merely one or the other of their aspects.
Measured by this criterion, artistic trends
determined by either exclusive introspection
or exclusive extroversion equally impoverish
and distort reality. Thus realism means a
three-dimensionality, an all roundness that
endows w i t h independent life characters and
human relationship. 7

From this understanding of an, it follows

that the essence of man is destroyed if the
human personality is divided into a public
and private sector.8 But in Bhoomika
Senegal does not even try to situate Hansa's
life in the context of her situation. This lack
of an overall, holistic representation of the
public and private spheres of her life is the
most limiting aspect of the film.
Bhoomika opens with shots of dancing
feet, the camera tilts and zooms out to
introduce Hansa (acted by Smita) dancing
provocatively, singing a lusty song. These
shots of dancing feet appear several times
in the film and a close look at the camera
angles and movements (eg several top angle
shots) makes it obvious that Benegal certainly has a weakness for the image of woman
as spectacle. The audience is given ample
time to watch Smita dancing extremely well,
wriggling her hips, shifting her eyes provocatively. Even in these dance sequences
where for a moment we are led to believe
that one is outside the domain of her personal space and out in the public space, the
images only help to reinforce the centrality
of sexual difference and the woman as
'other".9
In purely cinematic terms Benegal uses
various methods to individualise Hansa's
story. The split between the personal and the
public is successfully depicted through the
use of carefully thought out sets, shot compositions (camera angles) and certain techniques used primarily to advance the narrative.
For example, exactly seven times, he uses the
image of Smita looking at herself in the mirror as a device to either reflect back on her
past or to draw strength for her future
actions. The first time he uses this method
is when she enters her house at the beginning of the film. As she climbs the stairs,
she meets A m o l (husband) at the door who
WS-82

makes his displeasure obvious (he knows

that Rajan, her co-actor has given her a lift
home). In the drawing room,- Sushrna
(daughter,) is sitting with a worried look on
her face and Sulabha (mother) is near the
kitchen door with a grim expression. The
tension in the room is obvious to the
audience. Smita goes straight to her room
and is followed by Amol with a question:
"Why have you come late? Who dropped
you?" Smita's shown looking at herself in
the mirror ami then suddenly turns to snap
at him. The look in the mirror is very significant here, because Benegal wants to show
Smita's reaction and courage to leave the
house following the argument to be a result
of her inner strength and development. It is
her very 'being' which is driving her to take
such bold steps and only by looking at her
own image can she realise and understand
her situation. The use of this imagery in
many other parts of the film establishes its
conscious use.
In a flashback sequence after her marriage
with Amol, Smita is again in front of the
mirror before she accuses him of using her
grandmother and mother as an excuse to
persuade her to continue working in films.
Later in a hotel room after her exit from her
house, she is shown looking at her mirror
reflection. From this shot Benegal cuts to
some of her film clips. Here the act of looking into the mirror develops another
meaninga reflective look at her roles in
different films, where the most conservative
traditions of the Indian social elite are seen
as the greatest values a woman can possess
(Agnipariksha, Savitri Satyavan, Pativrata,
etc).10 This conflict and contradiction between her real life actions and the roles she
plays in films is again realised by her after
she sees her own image.
In another sequence Smita has an argument with Rajan (her co-actor). Here again,
her attack on him starts after she has seen
herself in the mirror. Even when she wants
to commit suicide (when she is with Naseer)
she takes the pills standing in front of the
mirror. Here the act of taking the pills is
clearly shown as a courageous act by
Benegal and hence the effort again requires
self-introspection by her. Almost at the end
of the film Benegal uses this device again.
In Amrish's (the landlord's) house, Smita
spots Amol arriving with the police. She
knows that her parting with the family is
inevitable. Walking up to the dressing table
she sits down in front of the mirror and
again looking at her image starts removing
all the jewellery she is wearing, the jewellery
that was given to her by Amrish. This purposeful act symbolises her complete rejection of him.
The result of this conscious use of a particular kind of imagery seven times in the
film to be precise is ultimately the distortion
of the relationship between self and society.
Benegal's mirror sequences initially appear
as an expression of self-reflection at different
vantage points of her life. We agree that selfreflection (that is the capacity to periodically
subject one's own views to a process of
critical questioning) is vital for any critical
practice. Nevertheless the crucial point that
Benegal misses is that self-reflection takes
place in the context of a social world, a

world which is increasingly marginal as the

film progresses.
Splitting the connection between the
public and private is also achieved through
Benegal's clever use and placement of the
radio news which'is heard four times during the course of the film. But again, here
the news items, e g, the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbour, the death of Joseph Stalin,
the Five-Year Plan, etc, seem to bear no relationship with the story of Hansa. Instead of
relating the experiences of Hansa to the
social milieu and context of the period,
Benegal places the news items only to advance the narrative of the film period-wise,
to merely give the backdrop to the narrative
in the foreground.
The depiction of Smita''s relationship with
Amrish Puri is in many ways very important to the story of Hansa's life. It is also
the section in which Benegal tries to critique both the caste and class background of
Amrish, who is not only a rich landowner
but also a brahmin. When Smita enters the
house, a long shot reveals the vastness of the
palatial home of Amrish. Huge pillar-like
structures, winding staircases, etc, loom large
on the screen. Immediately one gets the feeling of being trapped. Benegal's creative use
of the internal space of the house gives it
an almost ominous quality and the vacant
anonymous reaches of distance are converted
into meaning for the audience," However,
the following sequences dislocate this emphasis on class and power and shift to the
usual opposition between the three women
of the house and the man. When Smita's
conflict with Amrish begins the sympathy
she gets from the wife and mother-in-law is
quite implicit. Amrish's house becomes the
site where Smita is torn between the freedom
she enjoyed as an artist and the middle class
urge to become a good housewife. In fact
until the conflict starts she does all the things
that are experted of a good housewife. By
creating only an essentialised man/woman
opposition here, which could have been
avoided if Benegal had tried to venture into
the public space of Amrish's life, he avoids
attacking the value system and culture
generated by upper caste and class domination prevalent in India even today,
Benegal succeeds in his project of
individualising Hansa's story by the skilful
use of internal space throughout the narrative. Barring a few exceptions, the entire
story is depicted within the four walls of a
room or a house (to be precise, we are always
indoors). This becomes particularly jarring
because Hansa's life time was a period of
tumultuous change and struggle, lb never
see even a glimpse of it during the course
of the film suggests only one intentionto
isolate Hansa's story from the context of her
time and present a universal, timeless female
subject devoid of any class or caste identity. The danger in such an analysis is that it
unconsciously produces the ideology of
mass market romance. Cora Kaplan states
this point very sharply in her book, Culture
and Feminism:
In that fictional landscape, the other structuring relations of society fade and disappear,
leaving us w i t h the naked drama of sexual
difference as the only scenario that matters.
Mass market romance tends to represent sex-

Economic and Political Weekly

October 26, 1991

ual difference at natural and fixeda constant trans-historical femininity in libidinised

struggle w i t h an equally 'given' universal
masculinity. 1 2

Like Kaplan and many other feminists we

feel that an analysis that privileges gender
in isolation from other forms of social determinations presents us with a biased reading
devoid of the most troubling and contradictory meanings. Concepts of natural, essential and unified identities, a static femininity
and masculinity prevent us from getting to
the core of the issue. Masculinity and
femininity are not pure binary forms but
arranged, organised and situated through
various social, cultural and political
categories. To quote Kaplan again:
Class and race ideologies are conversely
steeped and spoken through the language of
sexual differentiation. Class and race meanings are not metaphors for the sexual or vice
versa. It is better though not exact to see them
as reciprocally constituting each other
through a k i n d of narrative invocation, a set
o f associative terms i n a ' c h a i n o f
meaning'. 13
A T T A C K I N G ON A V A L U E SYSTEM

In this context Mirch Masala proves to be

extremely interesting because of the multidimensional critique that it attempts. Mirch
Masala is the story of Sonbai and her struggle against the village 'subedar' (tax collector) in a small village in colonial India.
Through this conflict the film identifies the
complexities of women's perceptions and attempts to establish the relationship between
women's subjugation to wider social and
historical processes. Ketan Mehta clearly
does not view women's subjugation as inherently a male drive to dominate women
Sonbai, the main character in the film who
defies the sexual advances of the subedar
does not limit her attack on just one man
but hits out at a whole value system and
ideology which legitimises the subordinate
position of women. The subedar and the
village 'mukhi' represent much more than
just their male identity. The subedar is a
symbol of colonial rule, the tax collector
who works for the Britishers and the mukhi
is the village chief, the head of their hierarchical order. Mehta maintains his steady
connection between the public and the
private and radically differs from Benegal
in his understanding of women's issues.
Where Benegal sees the feminist aspiration
as a very personal and individual process,
Mehta situates it in a much broader context
of different social, political and economic
factors without losing sight of the gender
question. Mirch Masala is much more a film
raising women's issues than Bhoomika
which ultimately remains only a narrative
description of an individual actress.
Through Sonbai's struggle against the
subedar, Mehta reveals the complex interplay
of power relations in a small village in colonial India. Sonbai works in a spice making factory with other women. When she
escapes from the subedar's soldiers and runs
into the factory for shelter she receives the
sympathy of most of the other women
workers. Subsequently however, her refusal
Economic and Political Weekly

to succumb to the pressures of the village

people puts her in a position where she encounters the anger of the other women. The
initial sympathy of the women, followed by
their anger and finally the revoltthrough
each of these stages we are introduced to the
complexities of women's consciousness. The
realisation that they suffer is very clear, but
there is no faith in their ability to fight back.
The reference to the gang rape some years
ago highlights what the older women have
been through, yet fear of what the future has
in store for them holds them back. A combination of the ideology of dependence and
the acceptance of their powerlessness produces the change in their reactions to
Sonbai's situation.
Ketan Mehta also counters the notion of
the homogeneous female subject. The
women in the factory have an identity other
than their gender identityi e, their labour.
This aspect is presented rather creatively in
the sequence where all of them are working
together. With some music in the background, Mehta portrays them at worklow
angle shots against the sun of women working with the pestle and the mortar, close-up
shots of hands working on the grinding
stone. He rejects an individual identification
and presents the self in terms of a group
(class, caste, etc). The importance of such
a presentation is explained well by Christine
Gledhill:
.. .a feminist theory and cultural practice
that seeks practical political effectivity must
be able to take account of the intersection
of gender w i t h class and racial differences
amongst others. In political terms it would
seem essential to have recourse to some form
of recognition through which women can
identify with themselves as women and as an
oppressed group, yet at the same time relate
this to their class experience. 14

In Mirch Masala, the mukhi's reaction to

his own wife is very different from his reaction to Sonbai's plight. He is clearly
possessive about his wife but does not
hesitate in persuading Sonbai to give in to
the subedar. The fact that Sonbai can be
sacrificed very easily is because of the class
she belongs to. The plight of one woman,
her very 'personal' crisis is constantly turned
into a political fight which involves many
others.
In Bhoomika we saw a lack of any kind
of spatial tension with the surroundings. 15
The only point where there is some expression of energy is when Smita is dancing. But
again because of the sexual innuendoes of
the song and the provocative nature of the
dance, she is ultimately a spectacle for the
director's (male) gaze whose point of view
merges with that of the audience.16 Mirch
Masala stands in sharp contrast to this
there are sharp movements of energythe
dance sequence, the chase, the work in the
factory, the symbolic protest of the village
women, the villagers march to the subedar,
the tussle of the three prisoners with a pole,
the final revolt, etc. Secondly, barring a few
exceptions most of the action is conducted
in the public arena. The most brilliant
exposition of the connection between the
public and the private is done through

October 26, 1991

Saraswati's character.
Saraswati's initial conflict with her
husband (mukhi) is because he has a mistress
and very often does not return home,
However, the conflict takes on a different
expression when she comes into contact with
'master sahib' (the Swaraj activist) and
influenced by him admits her daughter to
the village school. Saraswati's daughter is the
only girl going to school. Mehta relates
Saraswati's subordination at home to the
overall subjugation of women. When the
mukhi gets to hear of this, he is furious and
drags his daughter back home. The panchayat meeting at her house to discuss
Sonbai's plight seems to be Saraswati's final
undoing. Mehta visualises this brilliantly.
Since only the men are allowed to attend
the meeting, Saraswati watches through the
heavily gril'ed window. The impotency of the
panchayat forces her out of her house to
organise the other village women. She is able
to feel a sense of solidarity with the women
trapped in the factory. The symbolic protest
of the women making a noise with (he
rolling pin and steel plates is evidence of
their utter contempt for their husbands, who
drag them back home. The mukhi throws
Saraswati into the house and locks it from
outside. But the protest remains a
courageous act. When the men are leaving
the village to talk to the subedar, Saraswati
hits the grilled window in anger and frustration. With dramatic lighting, Mehta shows
her profile in the foreground and the men
walking past in the background, she is inside
the house and they are outside. This focus
on her aggressive action reveals Saraswati's
final realisation that as long as she is locked
in the house literally or figuratively there will
be no change in her situation. Only by
relating and associating her experiences with
those of others can she have any hope of
changing her life,
Mirch Masala also introduces several
techniques to draw the attention of the
audience to the cinematic apparatus. Mehta
uses effective distancing devices to make the
spectators conscious that they are watching
a film. When Sonbai is at the river washing
clothes, the subedar comes on his horse and
looks at her through a telescope. Mehta cuts
from a shot of the subedar to a shot of the
telescopic view of Sonbai focused on her
back. The subedar's gaze which sees her only
as a sexual object is obvious, but Mehta also
makes another point about the gaze of the
cinematic apparatus itself.17 By doing this
he tries to keep the narrator of the text alive
so that the audience is never confronted with
images that give the impression of 'reality'
or 'truth'. The illusion of reality is created
when the narrative or the film which should
act as the mediator between the audience
and reality seems to disappear. This creates
a transparent style which diverts the attention of the spectator from the 'mediating
narrative' and produces the effect of the
spectator being directly confronted with
reality.18 Mehta successfully avoids falling
into this trap. He uses slow motion and
dissolves as specific techniques in cinema to
foreground the cinematic specificity of the
film. Theatrical acting, unreal pretty clothes,
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stylistic editing are some of the other

methods used to break the illusion of reality.
In his own words:
. . . speed, rhythm, colour, flash. I have used
these deliberately, at the same time taking
care to short circuit them before they become
benumbing 1 9

Even the makeup of Abbu Miyahis beard

and general appearanceseems quite odd.
When he is shot at the end of the film,
the blood from the bullet wounds is a
strange mixture of red and orange. We immediately notice this 'unreal' element and
are made conscious of the whole process of
film-making.
In Bhoomika on the other hand, Benegal
had the golden opportunity to critique the
gaze of the cinematic apparatus, but chose
not to. As an actress, Hansa was continuously dancing and acting for a camera, yet we
only see her dancing and acting on screen
for the audience; at no point does Benegal
present a view of her through the lens.
Having confined himself to a rigidly realist
framework, Benegal refuses to draw any attention to the construction of Hansa's personality and character by the cinematic apparatus, for fear of breaking the illusion of
'reality'.
In Bhoomika, the space provided to
Hansa and the space given to the audience
are both restricted and limited. Just as
Hansa is deprived of her interaction with her
public space, similarly Benegal applies the
same conception in the technique he uses in
the film. Bhoomika has a sense of closure,
that gives it an illusion of wholeness, a kind
of complete entity. 20 This arouses a passive
reaction from the audience because it
becomes a very individual process of identification and leaves no scope for interaction,
participation or alternative action, Mirch
Masala on the other hand deals with both
the public and the private space not only in
the film but also introduces alienation
techniques (drawing the audiences' attention
to the filmic process) to move away from the
concept of 'closure' and 'wholeness'. Mehta's
style is an open-ended form attacking the
illusionist tradition so that the audience is
moved towards creative participation. 21 The
audience in that sense is the public, so the
public/private interaction is never negated,
on the contrary it is consciously established
The last part of the film highlights this
method most explicitly.
The subedar comes with his soldiers to
break the gates of the factory Sonbai and
the other women are locked inside When the
factory gates are opened, the women run for
shelter and Abbu Miya is shot. Mehta cuts
from the killing to a shot of Radha (Supriya
Pathak) screaming in anguish at his brutal
murder. Abbu Miya's murder becomes the
turning point. It arouses the anger of the
women against the subedar and also makes
them realise that their last shred of
dependence was no longer there. Now the
factory which is the work place and therefore
the public space of the women is turned into
the site of struggle and it is no longer Sonbai
alone but also the others who decide to fight.
The 'masala' (spice) that they make, the
commodity that is produced for the owner
of the factory is used as a weapon in their
WS-84

final attack on the subedar (he is blinded by

the stinging from the spices that the women
throw at him). Mehta uses slow motion and
dissolves to show the pain he is going
through and also to foreground a particular
film technique. As the subedar collapses,
screaming in agony Mehta cuts to a closeup shot of Sonbai looking straight at the audience, with a slight smile on her face. The
audience at this point wants to know what
happens after thisdo the soldiers attack?
What do the village people do? What happens to Sonbai? But Mehta consciously
breaks the narrative, to leave it open-ended
so that the audience is able to participate and
reflect on the issues being raised.
To conclude, while Bhoomika is unable to
transcend the phenomenal reality of its
object' Mehta consciously engages the
audience in the construction of a new
'reality'. Bhoomika's 'reality' alienates the
audience, Mirch Masala involves the audience. In Bhoomika the public/private
dichotomy tends to leave the women's issue
as a virtually unresolvable problem, as a conflict which tears the woman and others apart
in the process of its development, Mirch
Masala 22 on the other hand links women's
issues to far deeper and broader issues of
social conflict, throwing out possibilities of
solutions in which the audience can also
participate

Notes
1 Karel Kosik, The Dialectics of the Concrete
Reidel Publishing Company, Boston, 1982,
p 78.
2 Part ha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and
the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse
(see Preface), Oxford University Press,
Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, 1986.
3 Malini Bhattacharya, 'Women's Studies and
Textual Evidence: Some Preliminary Notes'
in Samya Shakti: A Journal of Women's
Studies, Vols IV and V, 1989-90, C W D S ,
p 277.
4 The word 'saubhagya' literally means good
fortune. In common parlance saubhagyavati
is used to describe women whose husbands
are alive, since widowhood under patriarchal dispensation is equated w i t h the toss
of all fortune. Ironically even a community
which attached no significance to the
institution of marriage sought to flaunt the
status of its women as those who could
never be widowed. One may read a symbolic
defiance of the patriarchal norms of caste
and class society in the adoptation of this
title by a group considered to be on the
margins of Indian society
5 The common tendency of upwardly mobile
groups to imitate the social norms and
values of the upper classes to which the
former is seeking entry, in the Indian context is compounded by the wide differences
in social norms relating to women's roles
in different castes. Domestication is a luxury
and a norm that was imposed only on upper
caste and upper class women, expected to
be emulated by upwardly mobile caste or
class groups.
6 Michelc Barrett Womens Oppression Today:
Problems in Marxist feminist Analysis,
Verso Editions, London, 1980, p 9).
7 Lukacs, Georgy, Studies in European
Realism: A Sociological Survey of the
Writings of Balzac, Stendhal, Zola, Tolstoy,
Gorki and others, M e r l i n Press, London,
1972.
8 Toril Mod Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist

Literary Theory, Routledge, London and

New York, 1988, p 5.
9 Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex
translated and edited by H M Parshley;
Penguin Books, 1972, p 16.
10 These legendsof Sita going through a trial
by fire to prove her chastity, of Savitri
defying the laws of death to reclaim her
dead husband Satyavan and Pativrata, the
ideal woman whose life is dedicated to obeying her husband represent the most common forms of patriarchal values which
emanated from the upper sections of caste
society. According to current historical i n terpretation these were adopted when social
stratification and the decline in the status
of women were fairly advanced. They never
represented the customs or attitudes of the
overwhelming majority of the population
of the sub-continent.
11 Edward W Said Orientalism, Vintage
Books, a division of Random House N Y,
1979, p 55.
12 Cora Kaplan Sea Changes: Culture and
Feminism, Verso Publications, London,
1986, p 148.
13 Ibid, 149.
14 Christine, GledhiII, "Developments in
Feminist Film Criticism' in Revision: Essays
in Feminist Film Criticism (ed) M a r y A n n
Doane, Patricia Mellen C a m p and Linda
W i l l i a m s ; University Publications o f
America I n c 1984, p 35.
15 John Berger, About Looking, Pantheon
Books, New York, 1980, p 180. Referring
to the tack of spatial tension in Rodin's
sculptures, Berger says " A l l writers on
Rodin's sculpture have noticed its sensuous
or sexual character; but many of them treat
this sexuality only as an ingredient. It seems
to me that it was the prime motivation of
his artand not merely in the Freudian
sense of a sublimation" (p 180). One can
draw an analogy with the construction of
Hansa's personality in Bhoomika not just
by Benegal but all those w h o wished to see
her in a particular way.
16 E A n n Kaplan, Women and Film: Both
Sides of the Camera, Methuen N Y and
London, 1987, See Chapter I, 'Is the Gaze
Male'?
17 The understanding of the cinematic apparatus mentioned here should not be
equated w i t h the projections of the Structuralists, e g, C o m o l l i , Baudry, etc, with
their Althuserian definition of ideology.
Class structure and a historical overview are
the poles around which any theory of the
cinematic apparatus must be grounded. It
is not what films tell us about society that
is important but also what an understanding of society can tell us about films and
the nature of their representations. The
cinematic apparatus must be interpreted in
terms of the groups and viewpoints with
which they arc connected.
18 Margit Koves and Shaswati Mazumdar,
'Utopia and Despair', review article in Social
Scientist Vol 18, Nos 6-7, June-July 1990.
19 M i r a Reym Binford, T h e Two Cinemas of
India', in Film and Politics in the Third
World (ed) John D H Downing, Automedia
Books 1987; p 155.
20 M a r t i n W a l i h , The Brechtian Aspect of
Radical Cinema (ed) Keith M G r i f f i t h ' ; BFI
Publishing, 1981, p 18.
21 I b i d .
22 There has been a lot of criticism about why
Mehta uses Mirch Masala as a title since it
carries sexist overtones. In my opinion it has
been deliberately used because he manages
to subvert and crush its other connotations
by turning it into a weapon for the revolt
at the end of the film.

Economic and Political Weekly

October 26, 1991