Abstract
This paper re-interprets two Indian short stories — Popati Hiranandani’s “My Granny” and Sanjukta Rout’s “Curfew” — through the philosophical lens of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of “becoming animal” as elaborated in A Thousand Plateaus. Rather than focusing on these texts as conventional partition literature, the paper examines how, at moments of extreme historical and personal crisis, the human figures in both stories traverse boundaries into animality, where the dehumanising conditions of partition and communal violence render “becoming animal” not a degradation but an act of ultimate freedom and dignity.
Keywords: becoming animal, Deleuze, Guattari, Popati Hiranandani, Sanjukta Rout, partition literature, postcolonial, Indian literature
Introduction
The question and relevance of animal has been rather set aside in the discourses of western philosophy for a quite few centuries. Though, undoubtedly it could have been a possible essential as well as inevitable narration in the history of human race and narration with all its wide fields and even unearthed possibilities. In the 1st century C.E, Plutarch was wondering how the human beings could eat animals with clear conscience. In India, various religious sects like the Jains, Buddhists and later the Baishnab saints not only thoroughly denounced the very idea of making meal with animals, but also propounded the idea of ‘ahinsa’ or non-violence, as one of the most influential religious and sociological motifs, later adopted by Gandhi in his structure of the idea of nonviolence as well as consequent deliverance. The two greatest epics of human civilizations, ‘The Ramayana’ and ‘The Mahabharata’, attest numerous examples of man-animal interrelationships and consequences that can be interpreted in various theological as well as sociological aspects. The very image of Hanuman, Lord Ram’s general in fighting with King Ravana and others of his clan testify the possibility of becoming animal, a kind of surreal figure or missing link or like Francis Bacon’s paintings.
For most part, western philosophy has regarded this question as only perhaps a subtopic in the related field of ethics, that is only relevant in deciding about matters related to rights, duties etc., but not to be an essential and independent topic or issue in the sense of the term. On the other hand, they concluded philosophically that human beings are rather alone in this vast universe, but gradually the new comings of ecological and environmental related issues towering gradually in the broad field of humanities and social sciences, have delved a definite part for the question of animal in the field. Michel Foucault in his seminal ‘Madness and Civilization’ points out how in the 17th century onwards, madness came to be associated and designated with animality, the mad “were no longer men whose minds had wandered, but beasts preyed upon by a natural frenzy.”
Deleuze, Guattari and the Philosophy of Becoming
Franz Deleuze (1925-1995) and his philosophy is something which can be deemed in a way both above and different from the line of all the conception of on this subject. He was the part of French post-structuralism movement that consists of figures such as Lyotard, Foucault, Derrida and Lacan. He met Felix Guattari (1930-1992), a psychoanalyst, a political thinker and activist in 1968. The collaboration something like Marx and Engels, that they established and shared was both radical and intensive in the thinking process that certainly established them in the line of great philosophers and thinkers of the century. They published the first part of their series ‘Capitalism and Schizophrenia’, originally called as ‘L’Anti-Oedipe’, (1972) that made both tremor and fame that consequently created a prominent place for them in the circle of intellect quite relevantly. In the publication of the second part, ‘A Thousand Plateaus’, originally called as ‘Mlle Plateaux’, they give an example of becoming citing from a horror film, ‘Willard’ (1972), directed by Daniel Mann, where the protagonist Willard resides with his dog like mother under authoritarian and somewhat oedipal surroundings.
Becoming is not akin to any imitation or become identified in a manner with something or other, neither can it be categorized into any kind of relation establishing or in a matter of fact corresponding in a sense of the term, or any kind of producing or filiations or ‘producing through filiations’. Deleuze in the way also points out in the process several literary examples like ‘Moby Dick’ by Herman Melville, which is according to him the greatest masterpiece as the example of becoming. Captain Ahab has an irresistible urge of becoming whale. Kafka, another author of this process and evolutions of becoming has a significant place in this field; several of his narrations have multiple examples of becoming.
Deleuze considers the term writing and thinking as something which is basically a private affair for the ‘predefined public.’ He had the idea that animals who are thought to be ‘pre-civilized’ and in a way uneducated and ‘idiots’ as per the common general idea do have a kind of ordained intuition to express that is termed as ‘impersonal work’. Thus becoming animal can be assessed as a kind of ‘desubjectification’ and proceeds into ‘human-animal dualism’. Hume said that we, the human beings have no ‘idea of self’ and that we “are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.”
Hiranandani’s “My Granny” and Becoming Animal
India and Indians got freedom and partition in the eve of 1947 and the event of partition becomes a major watershed in the history, sociology, economics, and literature — all the spheres of human tale in the subcontinent. The present essay aims not to dig up the same hole of partition literature, concerning with its sociological aspects, but to point out the possible perspectives of these two short stories which can be re-interpreted in Deleuze-Guattari’s philosophy and concept of becoming animal.
Popati Hiranandani (1924-2005) is one of the leading voice in Sindhi literature, recipient of several awards, including the prestigious Sahitya Academy award for her autobiography ‘The Pages of My Life’, her works are thoroughly replete with the experience and identity of post colonial womanhood and the agonies of partition. Hiranandani’s ‘My Granny’ is a powerful specimen of this concept. The story opens in a very acute mythic-historic manner that denies abruptly the very reasons that could contain it within the space of present but on the other hand the very undecidability of its times does not totally debar the very possibility of its being present, present in the eternal time. The story opens with “I heard a voice. Was it yesterday, or ages ago?” and the first person narrator goes on telling the story of her grandmother who had the habit of losing her way and managed to enter the wrong lane.
The narrator sadly and nostalgically recounts how they surround their grandmother who never tires from spinning the web of story around them. The granny mentions folktales: in the first one, an earthen pitcher abducts a bride while she was sitting in a horse carriage. In the other tale which was the narrator’s ‘favourite’ a small girl had been transformed into a sparrow with a magic wand by her cruel stepmother. These recounting of the stories certainly demand our sincere attention — the first story leads one to something abstract and beyond humanity and the other which is the narrator’s favorite certainly leads one to animality and simultaneously we can ascribe the very image of India which is thought to be the girl turned into a sparrow. Thus in the story Popati obliquely and silently uses several images that links the human, animal and abstract ideas in a simultaneous whole.
The story ends in the year 1947 where this narration of ages, eternal time, and timeless floating history halts in a climatic way. With the rumors of India’s partition and Hindus of Sindh would have to migrate in the midst of thick and suspended air of suspicion and apprehension, all the elders of the community decided to send their unmarried girls to India immediately. So the narrator, who is supposedly a teen age young girl, had to depart now and the story ends in a very symbolic as well as nostalgic last meeting with the granny. Granny asked, “My child! Are you really leaving your own land?” She asked, “Do you know the saying that a corpse needs to be buried in the same dust from which it sprung?” and she suddenly knelt down and “started crawling on the floor.” The narrator presents the human transposed into animal at her most embittered agony as the human in figure becomes helpless who can no longer protect the land, neither able to pick it out, she becomes a veritable animal to take out a little bit of dust of the native land. The transformation is totally complete when she says, “Has it suddenly become dark or have I lost my eyesight? Popati dear daughter of mine! Will you give me your hand and help me to get up.” The narrator records, “I stretched out my hand, but she started to search something on the floor.” It is the space where human is in the way of becoming animal and human can’t understand this process as the narrator admits, “I could not understand the agony of her mind at that time.”
Rout’s “Curfew” and the Human-Animal Boundary
The second story that shall be dealt with is ‘Curfew’ by Sanjukta Rout, who is a leading voice in post independent Oria literature. Her publication includes ‘Mukta Bihanga’ (The Free Bird) ‘Jeunthi Arambha Seithi Sesho’, (Where It Starts There It Ends) ‘Nibuja Ghara’ (The Lightless House) etc. and was awarded with many prestigious awards. The present story is set in the context of riot in the city of Cuttak, Orissa. Nowhere the word partition or its nuances are mentioned but it looms large in the textualisation of structures and discourses of the narration. The very first opening deviates from the humanly way as we are presented with a Muslim family, living in subhuman conditions because of curfew making their livelihood a firm negation as Sattar, the male of the family cannot work because of the curfew that is going on for five days. The picture of Nagma’s baby who is seen, “squirming for a long time, hungry, and now was pulling at the dry skin hanging from her chest with its new-sprouted infant teeth. No milk. But then as if there was some strange delight in nibbling, pulling, suckling at its mother’s flesh …”, is thoroughly verging the borderlands of inhumanity.
The author presents a veritable picture of human-nonhuman-animal structure by the picture of hens who “were calling from inside, once in a while, flapping their wings, they would move around their enclosure.” The story ends with Sattar’s freeing the hens out of their prison: “white and black, grey and brown hens of all colours ruffled their feathers, and spilled out into the hut making clucking noises, on to the veranda, digging the earth in search of food.” Sattar could feel their rapid movements and their pecking all around him. Raising his hands above his head, roaring with laughter, he said, “Go away. Nothing to worry. Roam freely. Peck on the roads, bushes, drains and garbage dumps-peck away and eat worms and grains, eat your fill. What is the curfew to you? It is made by man for man. Religion is only an excuse here. …Go, shoo, go away. I tell you, go away!”
Conclusion
When human beings are fettered in chains of the world, that they are unable to set aside, they can only aspire and think the long-desired freedom through the God’s ordained free creatures. Thus these two short stories can fairly be interpreted in Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming animal, where boundaries seem to be eclipsed and there is no man’s land.
Works Cited
Azad, Maulana Abul Kalam. India Wins Freedom. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1988.
Baker, S. The Postmodern Animal. London: R. Books, 2000.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 2008.
Haraway, D. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
Hiranandani, Popati. The Pages of My Life, Autobiography and Selected Stories, trans. Jyoti Panjwani. New Delhi: OUP, 2010.
Rout, Sanjukta. Curfew, Trans. Priyadarshi Patnaik in Journal Of The Comparative Literature Association Of India, Number 1, February, 2011.
Sarkar, Sumit. Modern India: 1885-1947. New Delhi: Macmillan, 1983.