Karma Of Brown Folk by Vijay Prashad

Author:Vijay Prashad [Prashad, Vijay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: 2001-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

Bud Dhillon (right) and Daswanda Singh Mann at Gadar Ashram, 5 Wood Street, San Francisco, on the eve of their departure for a Freedom for India mission (1924). Courtesy of Kartar Dhillon.

My darling sons, come to the battlefield

Carrying the power of knowledge in one hand and a sword in the other

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Extinguish the fires of selfishness

By pouring over it the waters of patriotism.50

Her daughters were not to be called to her service until Mahatma Gandhi took leadership of the freedom movement. To gender a colonized nation female is to do two contradictory things: to replicate the patriarchal notion that a community’s men need to protect their women from foreigners, and to produce an image of a fiery and militant woman (“Mother India”) who exhorts her sons to battle (but in other songs, “friends” are called upon to save the “Mother”). The “Mother” image opened up space for activism by women. If the nation was to be saved, women were needed as much as men. Different parts of the nationalist project called upon women in their own characteristic manner: The bourgeois faction called women to ensure the spiritual and political health of the next generation of boys; the Gandhian faction called women to purify the nonviolent movement by what Gandhi saw as their necessarily nonviolent participation; the militant faction called women to act as Durga for the community and as Kali against the British (the anti-British “terrorism” in the early 1930s of Shanti Ghosh, Suniti Chaudhary, Bina Das, Preetilata Wadedar, and Kamala Dasgupta still awaits memorial). The doors to active political work opened via the image of “Mother,” but that image came at a price for the women. The women participated in the struggles, but they carried the burden of national tradition and honor as well. Further, the image of “Mother” reinforced the notion that women, like the nation, must be protected from the will of the colonizer. At its best, the Janus-faced image of “Mother” allowed for contradictory usage, whereas the one-dimensional South Asian American image of the submissive woman as the protector of a conservative tradition allows for only grief and resentment. If desi “culture” is to be relevant in the United States, it must entertain the contradictory notions embedded in South Asian history to ground its own struggles in the heart of whiteness.

Struggle is seen in South Asian American terms as antidesi. Don’t get involved in radical activities, desis are often told, for those are not in keeping with desi traditions. Desi traditions are imagined to be dedicated hard work and cultural conservatism. The ideas of social justice are rarely considered: The global desi bourgeoisie has put Gandhi, the icon of struggle, in mothballs and retired his activities to another time, another place.51 Conservative thought is wedded to the idea that history has ended and that now people must get on with the job of making a living and ensuring a similar future for their children.

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