Writing from a state –Karnataka – that has of late ‘detected’ and exposed the criminal operation of both dynastic power on the one hand and virulent masculinity on the other, do we have an opportunity to rethink both terms?
The Deve Gowda family has revealed that economic, political and inherited social (caste) power was the basis on which a Prajwal Revanna could ‘claim’ the bodies of ‘hundreds’ of women of Holenarispur in Hassan. Not before his father (and his mother) paved the way, earning the reputation of exploiting, humiliating and browbeating the people, including women, of the region.
Now, another son has joined the ranks of those who criminally assaulted people against their will. Yet the people of Hassan believe, and perhaps even tacitly support, the family that rules like a ‘palegar’ or feudal chieftain. The humiliation of women and men was folded into non-consensual access to women’s bodies, their labour, and their sexuality in the name of caste and dynastic privilege, a privilege that Prajwal and his brother exercised as a birth right.
And now we have the actor Darshan, Prisoner number 6106, in jail in Bengaluru for allegedly participating in beating a fan, Renukaswamy from Chitradurga, to death! He had earlier spent 14 days in the cooler for having beaten his wife, and was quickly exonerated by the intervention of his producers and film world friends.
This time, he is joined behind bars by his female partner, Pavithra Gowda, who allegedly attacked the fan. The All India Challenging Star Darshan Fan’s association, meanwhile, has sprung to his aid, showing their solidarity by sporting ‘Khaidi 6106’ on their bikes, arranging photo-shoots with that number, sending up prayers that he may be exonerated as easily as the last time. The fandom has now embraced the very babes and sucklings, who have been dressed up by over eager fathers, to sport prisoner gear in solidarity. All of them male, of course.
Darshan too is an inheritor, but his father ‘Thoogudeepa’ Srinivas, a well-known filmic villain of the 1970s/80s, may not have expected the son to betray his reputation as a softy in real life. His son has inverted the inheritance, rising to stardom as a muscular, invincible hero, while elevating intolerance and violence in personal life to a badge of honour.
The explosion of events around the ‘first’ family of Hassan brought what feminists have been arguing (alas, in vain) for several decades to the forefront. A series of violent attacks on women who spurned what was proffered as ‘love’ also emerged at this time, as enraged men staged in public their claim on women’s bodies.
Women were hacked, beheaded, and snuffed out for simply having said ‘no’. Feminists have long and loudly argued, that sexual assault, molestation and rape are usually more about power, than about sex. That ‘access’ to all women or vulnerable men is also linked to ideas of masculinity that are charged with ideas of possession, and precludes entirely the concept of consent, or the right to say no. That it is the perpetrator and not the survivor who must feel the sense of shame, guilt, or remorse.
Fortunately, we have also had a glimpse of other possible ways of thinking masculinity and dynastic power. We know that the attack on ‘dynastic politics’ by the party in power was a red herring: in South Asia, whether in business, politics or filmdom, where are chains of inherited privilege absent? Rahul Gandhi for one has striven to demonstrate that not all dynasts are alike and that another kind of non-dominant masculinity is possible.
His unashamed and fearless display of respect and love for his sibling and mother, and as a lovable non-threatening mascot, is mocked as ‘not quite grown up’ by those who sport ‘56-inch chests’. But he was among the first to recognize that the women ravaged by Prajwal needed urgent healing. He has demonstrated that touch and proximity and warmth can be communicated publicly, without fear of eroding one’s identity.
He has confidently shown that touch need not be always, everywhere, sexually coded. He has breathed new life into civility and humanity in public life, in a decade that had been brutalized by a guttural masculinity that showed no love, respect or compassion. No wonder he is ever gathering praise from many feminists.
In Karnataka, other kinds of dynasts attracted a different kind of adulation, even gratitude, from women. There is a tacit yearning for kinder, gentler, men. The sudden and untimely death of Puneeth Rajkumar brought a new element into this corrosive masculinized space.
Why, otherwise, was Puneeth Rajkumar, a dynast from the film world, mourned by the legions of women and men who travelled from different parts of Karnataka to his funeral? Why has he been not allowed to ‘die’, three years later, as people worship his ever-smiling portrait and busts? Autorickshaws remind us that Puneeth must be hailed as the ‘Naguvina Odeya’ , the King of Smiles, and not a whip-wielding palegar.
Puneet’s image looms large on many street corners, a smiling, and endearing presence, reassuring, unthreatening, one might say even healing. Soon after his death, portraits were sold for individual possession – and perhaps even worship, as countless statues spring up to commemorate his life. ‘Appu’ as he was known has simply not been allowed to rest in peace, remaining alive on flexi-boards that variously link him to his father, to the symbols of peace (a dove) and to BR Ambedkar.
He was incorporated into the most important civic festival in Bengaluru, the counterpart in Halasuru, a Tamil dominated area, of Karaga in the Old City. When flower decked floats of the ‘utsava murthis’ from subaltern temples in the area come out onto the streets, amiable crowds of women, children, and men participated in the carnival.
From Annamma to Plagueamma, the female divinities of the city journeyed out of their cloisters to the frenzied drumming of ‘parais’ and kettle drums by young men sporting stylish haircuts, and dancing to these beats during the ‘poo pallaki’ or ‘hoovina pallaki’. Like the transwomen who provided devotees with neem-leaf ‘cooling’, Puneeth’s image was a reassuring reminder of other gender identities. And other ways of deploying dynastic power.
This was not the cowardly masculinity of those who attacked women celebrating in a Shimoga hotel on Women’s Day last year. Nor the enraged masculinity of the men who cannot bear to hear a woman who says ‘no’. Nor the entitled masculinity of the dynasts who claimed their caste privileges as their ancestors did for centuries, and then some.
There is a popular yearning for a salve, an alternative to the menacing masculinity of the bloodthirsty mob, a field also crowded by venal politicians, corrupt administrators, and greedy gobblers of Karnataka’s resources. Local politicians have not missed a beat in hanging on to Puneeth’s ephemeral presence. Like Rahul Gandhi, his remembered or invented ‘goodness’ also revives what has been thoroughly evicted from public and private life of late – civility.
Janaki Nair taught at the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU.
