Sexuality, Obscenity, Community : Women, Muslims And The Hindu Public

Reviews the amendments of the 1868 Indian Act, highlighting the conflicts of superiority of rights to Indian men over women. Discusses the avoidance of violence and discrimination against women within communities and the need for an equal relationship between genders

Notably, McCurry’s neat and predictable photographs of India, taken over the course of 40 years, are more popular than Singh’s more realistic, chaotic and exciting images. Cole argues that this popularity is because of McCurry’s portrayal of places and people due to orientalism, based on conventional preconceptions of historical India. They are our colorful fantasies of old India realized on glossy

To achieve this goal I have organized this paper into 3 main sections, which will each explain the sexual bias, sexual repression, and patriarchy in the Puritanical society and how it ties in

As India’s modernization developed, the entire civilization of India improved remarkably. The country’s improvement of civilization is exemplified through it’s establishment of schools and law. Western education was introduced by Britain and laws were well made with courts that enforce them. (Doc 3). One should take into account the speaker of this document because Romesh Dutt is an Indian like any other, yet he praises the British for what they have done to contribute to the development of India. In addition to these establishments is Britain bringing finer ideals of humanity to India. Infanticide, the killing of female babies, was brought to a halt as well as participation in the slave trade (Doc 5). Without the interference of Britain, these inhumane actions would be prevalent throughout India and the country would suffer from a bad reputation. These

Lisa Sigel’s, urge towards more historiography within the realm of pornography appears to be a vital response to the contestations concerning a comprehensive understanding of such a chaotic topic. To begin with, Sigel explores the discord revolving periodisation and delineation. She particularly looks at debates around the period the genre was formed as well as the challenges to formulate a single universal definition of pornography (pp. 223-224). Subsequently, her article veers towards research that has been conducted by other disciplines in the field, but it does so in correlation to what work historians should initiate in clearing the gaps that are left behind. Here, Sigel talks of the issues power and censorship has imbued on the research of pornography but she, moreover, examines how this could be corrected. She exemplifies the analyses of literary and art scholars, including Bradford Mudge, Sarah Leonard and Alyce Mahon, as a way forward for historians (pp. 227-231). Sigel goes on to argue that the result of historian work would help align pornography to specific socio-political contexts. She goes on to explore some of these contexts and insists that by continuing this contextualisation process a better understanding of pornography will be obtained (pp.231-233).

India was under imperialistic rule by the British Empire or the “Bristish Raj” from 1858 to 1947.The region under British control—commonly called “India” in the British period included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom as well as the “princely states” ruled by individual rulers under the paramount of the British throne. In my recent visit to London precious jewels and Indian made goods are displaced in Windsor castle under high security. Most of the goods accumulated from India were under Queen Victoria’s reign; the other monarchs who were reigning during this imperialistic time were Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, and George VI. W.E.B Dubois writes in “the Souls of White Folks,” “We see Europe’s greatest sin precisely where we found Africa’s and Asia’s,—in human hatred, the despising of men; with this difference, however: Europe has the awful lesson of the past before her, has the splendid results of widened areas of tolerance, sympathy, and love among men, and she faces a greater, an infinitely greater, world of men than any preceding civilization ever faced.” England took advantage of its darker counterparts by showing superiority through color, religion, and technological advances.

Indian men celebrated women’s roles in food providing and child bearing in religious ceremonies (64). Indian women unlike the English women of the seventeenth century had a voice. She was treated more as an equal. Even though there was still gender separation between Indian men and Indian women, in the responsibilities they share, the women were more respected. Indian women still didn’t have easy lives.

This paper attempts to examine the fictional projections of Indian girls, to see how they emerge in ideological terms. Their journeys from self-alienation to self-adjustment, their childhood struggles against the hypocrisies and monstrosities of the grown-up world, eventually demolishing the unjust male constructed citadels of power that hinder their progress- are the highlighted issues. The point of comparison between the two novels focused on here is the journey of Rahel in The God of Small Things and Sai in The Inheritance from a lonely childhood to a tragic adulthood passing through a struggle with the complex forces of patriarchal society. Both the novels portray the imaginativeness, inventiveness, independence, rebelliousness, wide-eyed wonder and innocence associated with these young girls.

Rudolf Gaudio’s Allah Made Us tells the story of how sexual outlaws and Islamic sociocultural norms coexisted and produced a complex sociolinguistic world in Kano and other cities in Northern Nigeria, a Muslim West African region. Once a center of Islamic emirates, interreligious interaction and a cultural hub, the advent of British colonialism and Islamic revivalism facilitated the growth of an intolerant environment in Nigeria, operating as a kind of “modernistic moralism” that disorganized bori (spirit possession) practices and marginalized a once thriving sexual community known as ‘yan daudu (p. 9). The broader argument throughout Gaudio’s book is that sociolinguistic practices— so often framed as insignificant identity markers to shape cultural or sexual citizenships— are integral to both. The result is an intervention to how we understand the relationship between gendered language and non-normative identities in Northern Nigeria, and a narrative of how the political potential of language, often understood as neutral, is deeply embedded as “a medium of social participation and an object of criticism and control” (p. 8). Beyond providing a rich, vivid ethnography of ‘yan daudu, the book also traces how moral purification and subcultures shape possibilities in present-day Nigeria.

“One of the most sacred places I went was a leper colony outside of Calcutta” (Claiborne 71). Spoken from the mouth of Shane Claiborne, an American mission worker raised in a life of suburban privilege. A true paradox that he finds such sanctity in a place surrounded with the grotesque stigma attached to leprosy; this is an opinion unfounded in most of humanity. Outcast from society, about 150 families built their own utopia beside the railroad tracks on a land that had been thrown away just as they had. The only way to describe such a place: Gandhiji Prem Nivas, or “Ghandi’s new world”. Here, they care for one another, are completely self sufficient, and completely full of joy. However, it is not it is not that the joy found here that is

sexually exploiting his grandnieces and many other teenaged girls under the guise of performing 'celibacy' acts." This type of self trial in order to prove his unconditional love for his wife is often seen as unethical and often times oppressive of objective to the woman's movements under a feminist perspective.  This article mentions two other writings on the topic of Ghandi's objectification of woman in comparison to woman of today who face similar situations in the sexual exploitation of woman. The article connects these other writings to the narrative we give images and reference to ideas and symbols which often time represent greater responses then often generally told about people in power the truth or inaccurate depiction of what is true and what is

Indian culture before the transformation of globalization was a male dominated society with very little respect or regard for females. According to India’s constitution, women are legal citizens of the country and have equal rights with men (Indian Parliament), however due to lack of acceptance from the male dominated society; Indian women have suffered immensely prior to globalization (Tripod, n.d.). Indian culture after the transformation of globalization has had an innervation of mass media, most prominent being satellite television bringing images and dialogue from countless other cultures. This global influence has started to turn the tables in the marked sexist roles in Indian culture prior to globalization.

Feminism in India is a set of movements which defining, establishing and defending equal political, economic and social rights and equal opportunities for Indian women. Feminist criticism was not inaugurated until late in the 1960s.Behind it, however lie two centuries of struggle for the recognition of women’s cultural roles and achievements and for women’s social and political rights marked by such books as Mary Wollstone Craft’s A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women (1792), John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection Of Women (1869), and the American Margaret Fuller’s Women in The Nineteenth Century

Bangladesh is a cultural region or an area where certain cultural practices, beliefs, and values are practiced by the majority of its population (Knox and Marston, 2016), where its population practices the Muslim religion. Many of Bangladeshi people are culturally conservative, meaning that they have a very strong set of traditions and values. In the Bangladeshi culture, culture meaning a shared set of meanings that is practiced in everyday lives (Knox and Marston, 2016), sex before marriage is highly looked down upon. The Bangladeshi people have and follow a very strict life of no alcohol, drugs, sex before marriage. Bangladesh is a third-world country that lives in dire poverty and its society has many double standards such as sex and the legalization of prostitution. Because the living conditions in Bangladesh are so poor, the majority of its people are too. There is definitely a gender gap in the Bangladesh society, being that is it mostly patriarchal. It’s not uncommon for women in Bangladesh do not have an education, have the responsibilities of motherhood, having to do domestic chores, to be beaten, and to be coerced into sex (Knox and Marston, 2016). Daulatdia is a village in Bangladesh, where prostitution and sex slavery is amongst the worst and largest brothel in the world, which its inhabitants are there unwillingly.

E.M. Forster’s classic novel “A Passage to India” tells the story of a young doctor, Dr. Aziz, and his interactions with the British citizens who are residing in India during the time of the British Raj. Throughout the novel, the reader gets many different viewpoints on the people and the culture of India during this point in history. The reader sees through the eyes of the Indian people primarily through the character of Dr. Aziz, and the perceptions of the British through the characters of Mr. Fielding, Adela Quested, and Mrs. Moore. Through the different characters, and their differing viewpoints, the reader can see that Forster was creating a work that expressed a criticism that he held of the behavior of the British towards their Indian subjects.