Windows, Pariahs, and Bayadères

India as Spectacle

Binita Mehta

2002
282 pages
ISBN 0838754554

Land of spirituality, or land of widow burning? Land of fabulous wealth, or land of dire poverty, the caste system, and untouchability? Western literature has reflected stereotypical and contradictory images of India since antiquity. For centuries, French writers have reproduced images such as the widow immolating herself according to the custom of sati, the pariah or untouchable, and the bayadère or temple dancer, in various forms of theatrical representations - tragedies, ballets, operas, and exhibits in world's fairs. The examination of such recurrent images of India in four French plays and one ballet written from the eighteenth through the twentieth century demonstrates how these dramatic representations intervene politically in French society as well as further the aesthetic agendas of the dramatists themselves. India becomes a spectacle, both literally and figuratively, on the French stage.

Raising questions of Orientalism, the book argues that it was precisely because the French lost their Indian colonies to the British in the eighteenth century that India became part of the French literary imagination. The introduction provides a historical and theoretical overview of the representation of India in European, specifically French, literature. Chapter 1 studies "displays" on India and other British and French colonies in nineteenth-century world's fairs, as well as images of India in several Orientalist ballets and operas. Chapter 2 analyzes Antoine-Marin Lemierre's eighteenth-century play La Veuve du Malabar (1770). In the tragedy an enlightened French General "saves" an Indian widow from the cruel custom of sati, which a corrupt Brahmin head-priest wishes to enforce. In chapter 3, the protagonist of Etienne de Jouy's Tippo-Saëb (1813) is the eighteenth-century Indian Muslim king of Mysore, Tipu Sultan. Tipu, with the help of his French allies, who fail to deliver on their promises of aid, fiercely resists British attempts to colonize India, but is eventually defeated and killed by them. Casimir Delavigne's Le Paria (1821), the subject of chapter 4, condemns the inequalities of the Indian caste system and the excessive powers of Brahmin priests, elevating the status of the lowly untouchable, or pariah, to that of a hero. Chapter 5 examines Théophile Gautier's ballet Sacountala (1858), adapted from the classical Indian playwright Kalidasa's Sanskrit play Shakuntala. Gautier changes the plot of the original, transforming it into a spectacle for the nineteenth-century Paris stage with the addition of bayadères, nymphs, funeral pyres, and other special effects. Chapter 6 provides an analysis of the reception of Peter Brook's and Jean-Claude Carrière's 1985 production of the Indian epic The Mahabharata, followed by a close reading of Hélène Cixous's L'Indiade ou l'Inde de leurs rêves (1987) and a discussion of Ariane Mnouchkine's production of the play. Cixous's play shows how the unfolding drama of Indian independence and Partition affects both the leaders of India's nationalist movement as well as ordinary people. Both dramatic adaptations are proof that, even in the twentieth century, India I sused as a vehicle for the playwrights' theatrical experiments.

In the conclusion the book demonstrates how the various "stagings" of India are linked to France's internal concerns and how the reinforce images that are associated with India. A study of newspaper and magazine articles on the "Festival de l'Inde" held in France in 1985, and others written in 1997, prove that for the French India still embodies the spectacular. In the final pages, the book addresses broader questions of intercultural performance and artistic collaborations between non-Western cultures and the West.

About the author:

Binita Mehta has a Ph.D. in French literature from the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, and has most recently taught French at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. She received her B.A. in Economics and Political Science from St. Xavier's College, Bombay, and an M.A. in French from the University of Georgia. She has published articles in Medieval Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs and the Dictionary of Literary Biography, volume 192: French Dramatists, 1789-1914. Her essay on Mira Nair's film Mississippi Masala appeared in Between the Lines: South Asians and Postcoloniality, and has recently been reprinted in Screening Asian Americans. Dr. Mehta is currently working on a book-length project that examines how India's material culture helped shape representations of India in French literature and painting.