I would like to begin by giving a little context of my research and my family and possibly how they overlapped over the course of my fieldwork. My research looks at char areas in Assam, India. Chars are river islands and are extremely unstable, undergoing constant erosion. In Assam, the chars are largely inhabited by Bengali Muslims whose ancestors were encouraged to come during colonial times to increase productivity from such fertile riverine lands. However, as more and more entered the then colonial Assam from East Bengal, the ‘native’ Assamese people became worried of losing out their lands and becoming a minority in their own land. Today, the char-dwellers though have lived in Assam for decades, they still continue to face the brunt of ‘anti-immigrant’ hatred. The ‘anti-immigrant’ Assam Movement in the late 1970s spearheaded by the upper-caste Hindu Assamese men also exposed not just the xenophobic nature of the movement, but also the Islamophobia circulating in the caste Hindu Assamese households. The ‘illegal Bangladeshi’ is always imagined as Muslim or ‘Miya’, a derogatory term to denote Bengali speaking Assamese Muslims. Amidst all this, my research focuses on how the State gets imagined and experienced by them.

Image 1: A char in Assam. Courtesy: Author.

I come from an upper caste Hindu Assamese household. Both my parents took part in the ‘anti-immigrant’ Assam Movement and are ardent believers of Assamese nationalism or jatiyotabaad. My family believe that Assam continues to face an onslaught of ‘illegal immigrants,’ and the ‘native’ Assamese are soon turning into a minority and will lose their culture and language. My father was a member of the right-wing party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) before switching to the Assamese nationalist party Asom Gana Parishad (AGP). As with many caste Hindu Assamese households, the mockery and subtle hatred towards Muslims in general and Bengali Muslims in particular is normalized through jokes, myths, and everyday stories. By now it must be clear that my families’ political ideology leans towards the right and it gave them sleepless nights when I first discussed with them my research project. My parents were dismissive about my plans of staying in the chars amongst the ‘Miyas’. After tumultuous negotiations it was decided that I would stay with my grandmother in my ancestral village which was 3 hours away from my field-site. My father even moved in with me and my mother would do the occasional visits. So, I already began my fieldwork in a mesh of emotions: excitement, anger, and guilt. Guilty for not being enough of a ‘good’ daughter (Who wants to upset one’s parents?) while also guilty for being not enough of a ‘good’ researcher (Did I concede too soon? Living so far away from my field will definitely impact my rapport building and of course research findings, probably).

On September 2020, seven months after I had stopped fieldwork due to COVID, I began fieldwork again. Around 25 days later, my driver who accompanied me to my field first showed symptoms of COVID and later the entire household. Except me, everyone had tested positive, including my 95-year-old grandmother and my father. This incident washed me with tremendous guilt. But looking back, I now understand that manifestation of that guilt was a result of all the incidents over the months where I did encounter guilt in some degree. When repeatedly it was underlined that I do have time for “research” but no time for family, or as a caste Hindu Assamese woman I do not show “collective disgust” for the “other”, that I have not been the devoted caregiver of the family, or how I have shown care and empathy for the ‘wrong people’ in their eyes, I did feel guilty in some degree. Sara Ahmed in her book, ‘Cultural Politics of Emotion’, talks about how emotional responses and bodily sensations demarcate “others” from “us”. My care and empathy for the ‘Muslim other’, instead of my own family was seen as breaking these boundaries of ‘othering’ and was repeatedly conveyed to me, resulting in me developing a third kind of emotional response – guilt – in varied amounts over time. Ahmed borrows from Marx to argue that emotions accumulate over time, as a form of affective value. I understand that the guilt when I experienced after my entire family contracted COVID was a manifestation of such accumulated guilt.

However, I understand this guilt as political. I am arguing that what I felt was by the virtue of my positionality in the social structure – that is 1. Being a woman and 2. Being an unmarried upper-caste Hindu Assamese. Ahmed talks about feelings of structure, meaning that what we feel are related to structural inequities and power differentials. She goes on to talk about how emotions should not be understood as ‘subject-centered’ as emotions are not bound or located in an individual subject but that the subject arrives into a world where emotions are already circulating in very particular ways. Hence, how an upper-caste Hindu Assamese women ‘must’ be feeling for certain collectives – family and the Muslim ‘charuas’ are already defined. I just arrived in this world of already defined emotions. It is this sociality of emotions that also keeps alive the “us” versus “them”.

But the idea of guilt also means the acceptance at certain level the moral standards defined by these collectives. It meant me accepting to some extent how an unmarried, upper-caste Hindu Assamese woman ‘ought’ to behave towards her family, the societal roles and responsibilities as well as to the ‘Miya other’. Me taking up caring responsibilities and ultimately halting my fieldwork completely can be seen as a way to take responsibility for my ‘failures’ to adhere to societal roles and emotional boundaries.

I borrow Ahmed and Cala Coats’ use of the term ‘stickiness’ to understand my guilt – such that I, as a subject, became more invested in particular structures than others. The movement of emotions as imagined by Massumi, Deleuze-Guattari, and Ahmed is also accompanied by ‘stickiness’ wherein often some objects get accumulated with particular emotions. My emotional stickiness to certain positionalities structures being a daughter or an unmarried upper-caste Hindu Assamese woman over and above being an anthropologist or a researcher, which produced continued emotions of guilt. And this stickiness was engendered by repetition of my position’s roles and responsibilities. But from what I understand and argue is emotions can spill over too and it is this spillage of emotions where I find possibilities for ethnography, for creatively using emotions as a methodological intervention.

Emotionality is messy. Hence, I understand that when experienced two field sites – the home with family and the river islands (though this sharp distinction can also be critiqued as this is purely analytical), instead of flow of emotions, I argue that emotions spill into one another. As opposed to flow, spilling is involuntary or accidental movement such that there is a possibility that it can go in different directions, hence there is an unpredictability attached to it. And such movement can bring in transformation, change or what Ahmed wrote as ‘unstuckness’. What I argue here is of spillage of guilt from one field-site to another and what transformations and possibilities that can open up for an anthropologist ‘stuck’ in particular investments of certain social positionalities and structures.

I understand that my two field sites with its own politics and social relations would not just spill sometimes physically – let’s say, when my father accompanied me to my field in the first few months or when my participants visited me at times in my village, but also emotionally. It is in this emotional spilling, particularly guilt, from one world to another, that I am more interested in.  This was particularly evident in the act of eating. My caste Hindu grandmother had strict reservations about me eating in Muslim households as Muslims were understood to be impure for their consumption of beef. And every time would insist on me getting a purification bath. After the initial months, I created an elaborate façade of weekly new narratives of invented road-side restaurant names and the food that I ate in each. The lying however did make me feel partly guilty. Post-COVID however when I began fieldwork in September, I carried my own food and was more reserved at sharing food. This struck as odd to them and often my participants would quip in saying “Baideo, nowadays does not eat with us!” I felt guilty then of not eating with them. But I say emotionality is messy because I do realise that a part of me was also escaping from the guilt of lying to my grandmother.

But the fascinating thing about spilling is the unpredictability, allowing the existence of newer possibilities. One does not know where the emotions can go, get stuck and reveal newer corners. And does the possibility of opening up unpredictable, ugly fractures mean the researcher closes down emotionally? Absolutely not. Hence, after all the messiness of emotions I still go on to explore the importance of the figure of the vulnerable researcher.

It is critical to understand that one cannot and should not escape or try to master one’s emotions, including guilt. Only a vulnerable researcher opens up possibilities to find moments of surprise and shock to not just understand the topic better but to constantly review methods and ethics of fieldwork. I ask how can vulnerability be used as a methodology for a researcher? For a life-world where the researcher dives in, that world is messy, where concepts, boundaries, values, identities overlap, clash and spill and not defined in neat categories and I understand that possibly only the figure of a vulnerable researcher brings him/her as Ahmed says closer to that world.

It was my feeling and working around guilt that helped me understand how deeply rooted I myself was in Assamese nationalism, a concept I examine in my research and critique in my political writings. It also helped me understand better the everyday mundane workings of that ideology and how family as an institution has tremendously contributed in it being supported and nourished.

Finally, I did feel guilty in the process of writing this, about my family. Almost like I am trading off numerous dining table family discussions, maybe intimate family opinions and secrets in front of complete strangers. So, why do I still do it? For more fractures and possibilities to open up. When I let my stories of guilt spill here today with the prospect that it will get stuck to newer corners, I am looking for newer fractures and possibilities of making sense of the world, of methods, of fieldwork and of doing Anthropology better. For as Kant says, to know something is always to spill over the concept. Hence, maybe concepts of emotions, guilt, fieldwork, and anthropology will gain fresh meanings and discussions when I let my guilt from the two field-sites spill into now a third space – this, right here with newer participants, its own politics and relations.

Bhargabi Das: I like to call myself a raging potato, a part-time anthropologist and a poet. Currently a PhD Candidate of Anthropology at National University of Ireland, Maynooth, my doctoral research is based on the riverine ecologies called chars in Assam, India. This ethnographic study looks at char-dwellers’ experiences with the state. I am largely interested in the politics and poetics of water, citizenship, state, bureaucracy, infrastructure and nationalism. My doctoral research is funded by the Irish Research Council, Government of Ireland and Irish Higher Education Authority (HEA).

Editors Note: This is the final in a series of three posts by Bhargabi Das. 

Bhargabi Das

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The summer months in the chars of western Assam, India where my ethnographic fieldwork was based, are only of respite because of the calm breeze by the river, and conversations over jaggery tea. Because of my positionality, it was easier for me to strike up conversations with the Bengali Muslim women in the chars than men, particularly surrounding sexual health.  I was interested in bringing up conversations of sexual health because chars are known as spaces where the fertility rate among the people is high. The high fertility rate is for a variety of reasons such as low literacy level, early marriage of girls, and high dependence on agriculture requiring more labor.

But for those who are lost about what a char is, chars are river-islands that are unstable and undergo constant formation and destruction and are mostly inhabited by Bengali Muslims of East Bengal descent, who have historically faced stereotyping, violence and harassment in the hands of the majoritarian upper-caste Assamese Hindu society and State alike. They also constantly face suspicion of being ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘anti-immigrant’ hatred. Most chars in Western Assam, being geographically closer to Bangladesh, allow the Islamophobic and xenophobic caste-Hindu Assamese society and State to propagate such fears fiercely. The high fertility rate of Bengali Muslims has furthered the ‘anti-immigrant’ sentiment and even fears of the Assamese Hindu turning a minority. My conversations surrounding sexual health with mostly women in char areas is embedded in this history and context. However, through my conversations I stumbled upon a rather interesting practice among Bengali Muslim char women.

When I tried asking them about use or knowledge of contraceptives, they were confused by the use of my terminologies. One of the local women who often accompanied me to translate certain things then turned to them and repeated, “Baideo is asking about your use and knowledge of ‘Mala-Bori (pill)’.” The minute she uttered ‘Mala-Bori’ all started nodding their heads and showed evident signs of blush and giggly laughter. Mala-D is a type of oral contraceptive and in my two-year long ethnographic fieldwork, it became evident that Bengali Muslim char women were using these oral contraceptives widely. Interestingly, the use of condoms by their partners is extremely low. Women were candid enough to admit that most men simply refuse to use one, and women, including health workers themselves, find it difficult to even urge men to use condoms. Additionally, it became clear that though usage of oral pills were high, the knowledge surrounding their side-effects were next to none. For women, the pills were handy, saved them from menstrual pain – allowing them to work longer in the house and fields and most importantly, they do not have to face the heat of asking men to wear condoms.

Image 1: Char-land monthly health camps are majorly attended by women and children. Courtesy: Author.

But what is interesting is how the State is enabling this practice where the responsibility of control of Muslim population in the chars rests on Muslim women’s shoulders. Working with local health workers, it became evident that the distribution of condoms is lesser than oral pills citing reasons of low demand. In fact, the health awareness camps that are conducted in the char areas are mostly attended by women. The local health workers called Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) are local char women who themselves are hesitant in approaching men with taboo issues like male contraception.

In 2021, the right-wing Hindu state in Assam introduced a “population army” comprising of one thousand local youth in char-chapori areas with the intention to control fertility rate in char areas and improve living conditions thereafter. What is problematic in this initiative is that birth-control measures are specifically targeted with women in mind. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma in his speech to the State’s Legislative Assembly on July 19 talks about inducting ten thousand additional ASHA workers to provide contraceptives and birth-control measures specifically to women in char-chaporis. The State’s initiatives can be seen in the light of controlling Muslim population by controlling Muslim women’s bodies.

I would also encourage one to think of this initiative of the Assam Government as a nexus of corporatization of the medical sector and the patriarchal state. For in 2019, the Modi Government decided to tweak the law and exempt oral contraceptive pills as Schedule H drugs meaning they could be sold without a doctor’s prescription. HLL Lifecare Limited the firm tasked with selling the contraceptives including Mala-D on behalf of the government had in a letter to Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) mentioned how their sale was greatly affected due to it. Though not vouching against freedom of choice for women and their bodies, I want to ask, for char women, is the easy availability of oral contraceptives really freedom of choice and greater control over their bodies? When women living in char areas are not even given the choice and access to all kinds of contraceptive methods and knowledge surrounding birth-control, there is no real choice or any control of their bodies. Hence, one needs to ask are marginalized, unaware women’s bodies becoming sites of profiteering for this State?

Image 2: Mobile health clinics on boats cater to mostly maternal health and women’s reproductive health in the chars. Keeping of detailed registers tracking women’s reproductive health is a must. Courtesy: Author.

In reality, char areas with their low education level have always been under the strict grip of religious men who are not only widely followed but extremely feared. Local Muslim religious leaders citing religion vehemently argue against the use of any contraceptive methods. The birth of life should be celebrated at any cost, according to them. But the greater availability and use of oral pills over condoms is beyond religion. It is in fact deeply patriarchal. It stems from a sense of sex as an act of display of masculine power and celebration of masculinity. It can be drawn from the narrative where sex is seen as an act where the woman is passive and at the service of providing pleasure to the man. Condoms are seen as road-blocks to that pleasure and the very act of a woman asking a man to wear a condom is seen as questioning his masculine power and masculinity. Hence, when the state forwards an initiative of population control by providing more birth-control measures to the woman, it is actively contributing to that deep-seated patriarchal narrative. Hence, though the state through this initiative can be seen by many short-sighted people as ‘anti-Muslim’, but in reality, this state is ‘pro-patriarchy’ and misogynistic.

Women’s wombs have always remained sites of contention and control by patriarchal states from the Vichy regime in France to anti-abortion laws in Ireland. In the char areas of Assam, when the woman is being provided with more oral contraception pills, the State is instead taking away voices and choices over rights of poor Muslim women’s bodies. In the attempt of the Hindu right-wing state’s motive of lowering of Muslim population, particularly in the chars, who are always seen as ‘illegal’, ‘criminal’ and ‘threatening’, Muslim women have been made into passive objects, which will only tighten the patriarchal grip on them.

I remember in one of the many conversations that I had with char women in health camps, I would ask them why there were more women than men in the camps. One of the replies shocked me – “Women’s bodies are more diseased than men, I guess. We are weaker than men.” The State infrastructure that has kept women’s bodies at the center of sexual health is changing Muslim women’s subjectivities, their sense of self. And in the conflict of changing numbers and dominance of majoritarianism, that is a realization that hurt me the most.

Bhargabi Das: I like to call myself a raging potato, a part-time anthropologist and a poet. Currently a PhD Candidate of Anthropology at National University of Ireland, Maynooth, my doctoral research is based on the riverine ecologies called chars in Assam, India. This ethnographic study looks at char-dwellers’ experiences with the state. I am largely interested in the politics and poetics of water, citizenship, state, bureaucracy, infrastructure and nationalism. My doctoral research is funded by the Irish Research Council, Government of Ireland and Irish Higher Education Authority (HEA).

Editors Note: This is the second in a series of three posts by Bhargabi Das. 

Bhargabi Das

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The Social Meanings of Food in a COVID-19 World

by Rituparna Patgiri

The global crisis of COVID-19 has reignited debates on food and eating habits. Both anthropologists and sociologists have studied the social character of food. They argue that our food choices reveal a lot about us. Food divulges socio-cultural practices of people while communicating historical, local, and global narratives. In fact, an investigation of food in an India that is battling with COVID-19 will reveal a lot about what is going on in the society in the present times. As a part of the social system, food acts as a sign, symbol, and code that is useful to understand society, and India’s case perfectly illustrates it.

Initially, after the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, there was the circulation of news, and WhatsApp forwards all over the country that eating chicken and eggs could lead to COVID-19. Consequently, the poultry sector in many parts of the country incurred huge financial losses. The situation had become such that the director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) (one of the best medical institutes in India) had to clarify that chicken meat did not cause the disease. However, the meat industry in India is still facing huge losses because of the lockdown that was enforced hastily on 25th March 2020. The supply chain in various states has been deeply affected because of restrictions on movement. The lockdown is, in fact, still in place and thus it is unreasonable to expect that the industry will recover from its losses anytime soon.

In fact, after the imposition of the nation-wide lockdown, meat became a ‘scarce’ and ‘over-priced’ item in many parts of the country. India is primarily a non-vegetarian country, with around 80% of its population classifying themselves as non-vegetarians according to an IndiaSpend study of 2018. In spite of it, the consumption of meat has been contentious in some parts of India. Meat, by some Hindus (mostly the higher castes), is categorized as abhaksya (inedible) and impure (Patgiri, 2016) and as such, they follow a vegetarian diet. Also, in many Hindu festivals like Navaratri, even non-vegetarian Hindus in northern parts of India abstain from eating meat for some days. There is thus an association between vegetarianism and ritual purity in India. This linkage is rooted in the structures of caste and religion.

Historically, food politics over meat has been bitterly played out in India, especially in the last six years. There have been cases of mob lynchings of Muslims in many parts of the country because of the suspicion that they were carrying or eating beef. Cows are considered sacred by a majority of Hindus and these lynchings can only be seen as an attack on the food habits of others that includes Muslims, Christians, and Dalits apart from other Hindus. This offers an interesting example of how it is tough to break away from traditional social relationships and identities even in a globalized world. In a religious and diverse nation-state like India, food plays a pivotal role in socio-political power tussles. It becomes a source of identity construction as well – us versus them, vegetarians versus non-vegetarians, and beef eaters versus non-beef eaters.

Thus, although meat is widely consumed in almost all parts of the country, there is a push for vegetarianism that is rooted in the sociocultural structure of Indian society. Casual statements that are passed by politicians support this argument. Non-vegetarianism is associated with traits that are considered negative, for instance, aggression. Many times, politicians have blamed non-vegetarianism as a cause for rapes in India. Hence, it was easy to associate meat with a disease, and the Whatsapp forwards and fake news that linked meat to COVID-19 became instantly believable. Fear and suspicion cannot be eliminated so easily when these are deep-rooted in the social structure.

One of the fallouts of this was the increase in demand for jackfruit – which was seen as a substitute for meat. Jackfruit is often referred to as ‘vegetarian’s meat’ and was seen as safer compared to meat. While the price of jackfruit soared, that of meat dropped. As such, the meat industry in India is facing heavy losses as already stated above.

The fact that this prejudice against meat also gripped Assam – a primarily non-vegetarian state – says a lot about how the fear mechanism operated. Meat, eggs, and fish are part of the regular diet of most communities living in Assam, and unlike in many other parts of India, even higher castes consume meat regularly (Patgiri, 2016). While in other parts of the country like North India where non-vegetarian food is not consumed during certain festivals like Navaratri, no such prohibitions exist in Assam.

But after the lockdown was enforced, even in Assam, meat became a rare item. This happened as the supply chain was affected because of the lockdown, and meat generally comes to Guwahati (a city) from neighbouring rural and semi-urban areas. At the same time, meat was also viewed with fear and suspicion because of all the rumours and misinformation associated with it.

One of the causes that augmented this fear was the association that was drawn between meat and religion. An event that played a role in this context was an Islamic religious event – the Tablighi Jamaat that was organized in New Delhi from 13th-15th March 2020. The event had been held well before the lockdown in India had been announced on 25th March 2020. But most of the early cases of COVID-19 in Assam were traced to this event. Since most of the meat sellers, especially that of chicken and mutton, in Assam are Muslims, people became apprehensive about eating meat. It led to the rise of both a fear of meat and Islamophobia in the state. Thus, a study of food reveals the existing prejudice against Muslims – manifested in both mob lynchings and the COVID-19 world.

However, slowly this fear had also gripped the consumption of fruits and vegetables. Guwahati – the major city of Assam had a relatively lesser number of COVID-19 infected cases compared to other Indian metro cities in the initial days after the lockdown was enforced. But in the later part of April, there was a spike in the number of cases. Some of the infected patients were a vegetable seller and few workers of a potato godown (warehouse) in Guwahati which has caused widespread panic amongst people.

My mother, for instance, has been repeatedly saying that she is afraid to eat salad as it is not cooked, and has a greater chance of causing infection. She said, ‘It is better to boil the vegetables and eat them since the process of boiling will kill any infection or virus. I am scared to eat salad, raw vegetables can cause an infection.’

Earlier her fear was limited to meat but after watching the news about the vegetable seller getting infected, she is apprehensive of even eating vegetables. However, it is not just her. Earlier, she and her friends discussed the dangers of eating meat. But now, they also talk about how vegetables and fruits should be washed again and again before eating.

‘I wash the vegetables with both salt and baking soda to get rid of all kinds of infections and viruses. I wash them at least five to six times,’ says Meera, my mother’s friend from the neighbourhood. Manju, another woman from our neighbourhood supports this argument. She says, ‘I wash all the vegetables with salt four-five times and then cook them.’

The way vegetables and fruits are washed in many households is an indication of how the fear of catching COVID-19 from food has become real. Once vegetables and fruits are purchased and brought home, they are laid out in the veranda and washed with salt, multiple times. It becomes a collective effort as all of us are involved in it – bringing the salt, washing the vegetables and fruits, and then, drying them.

While the notions of fear and suspicion are new, this idea of the collective that food generates is old. But this collective effort is still rooted in the overwhelming fear and suspicion of food that exists in a COVID-19 world. What is at stake is the social meaning of food that promotes solidarity and relationships.

It would also be interesting to see how restaurants and eateries fare in the future, particularly in the Indian context. Traditional India possessed no enduring tradition of restaurants or public dining although food played a central role in the life and culture of Indians of all religious communities, social strata, and geographical regions. The norms of social life and rules of caste (based on the notions of purity) discouraged the institution of restaurants for public dining

In the past few years, both public dining and food delivery businesses had taken off in India, especially in urban areas. But after the outbreak of COVID-19 and the imposition of the lockdown, these businesses have suffered. There were restrictions imposed on both dining out and delivery. Also, people have become sceptical from ordering food from outside, especially after a pizza delivery person in Delhi had tested positive. Notions of impurity and suspicion that are attached to outside food have re-entered the society.

As such, food becomes a fascinating site to understand the changing nature of society. In times like ours, the study of food offers us a window into understanding the changes and continuities in socio-cultural practices in society. Brillat-Savarin had once famously said – “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.” From common celebrations to individual likings, our food habits reveal much about who we are and how we live. In today’s world, we are fearful and suspicious of others; and our food habits reveal so.

Reference:

Patgiri, Rituparna. The Social Nature of Food in India: A Review of Literature. Unpublished MPhil dissertation, 2016.

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A Crisis Of (Feminist) Faith Through An Encounter In A Clinical Setting

by Sreeparna Chattopadhyay

Introduction

In the last ten years since I graduated with my doctoral degree, I have conducted research in both clinical and conventional anthropological settings. My doctoral work examined domestic violence in Mumbai, India. My work since then has focused on health and sexual violence, with considerable periods of observation in hospital settings. My experiences tell me that while both types of project have the potential to inflict trauma on the anthropologist, their nature is different. In clinical settings, non-clinicians when witnessing clinical ‘acts’, loosely defined as surgeries and other invasive procedures, may be shocked and even traumatized by these, never having had exposure to such interventions. However, not all clinical acts are equally traumatic. Here, I offer examples of a third-trimester abortion contrasting it with a cesarean section of live twins, both of which I witnessed, to argue that whether procedures are viewed as being traumatic are contingent on the meanings that those acts embody, for us as anthropologists and for the individual undergoing these procedures.

Not all surgical incisions are the same

One winter morning in 2015, in a remote part of northeastern India, close to the border with Bangladesh, my research assistant and I were hanging out in a government hospital. I had just begun a study, the second stint of fieldwork after my Ph.D. on maternal health in the region. We had entered the pre-labor room which was comprised of ten beds, only two of which were occupied that day. We were speaking to one of the women, who was being transfused prior to her induction, about how she managed anemia in a region where 90% of women become pregnant with moderate levels of anemia.

Within what seemed like seconds, but must have been longer, there was a flurry of activities and the doctor was instructing all visitors to clear out the room. A curtain was quickly drawn around the bed of the second woman, whose name we later discovered was Anita [1]. She was accompanied by her mother, her fifteen-month-old daughter and a health worker. As we were wondering if we should leave too, the smell of blood hit my nose. A minute later, I saw the doctor walk across the room holding a bloody sac that left bright red spots on the cement floor. Soon after, Anita was wheeled into the Operation Theatre.

In the afternoon when we returned to the recovery room, Anita laid on the bed clutching her knees to her chest, her green skirt bloodied, face twisted with pain. I asked her mother whether she had a boy or a girl. I was wrong – it was a medical termination of pregnancy (MTP) at 7 months. My shock soon gave way to sadness and anger. A medical termination of pregnancy at 7 months is illegal in India. Besides, we now have the technology that ensures that a fetus is viable outside the womb at 7 months.

I discovered that Anita was an indigenous woman who lived forty kilometers from this facility. She had not known that she was pregnant until she was in her fifth month, because she was still breastfeeding her older daughter. It took her another two months to gather the resources to make this trip using three different modes of transport. She did not have enough money to bring up two children and had decided to end this pregnancy. The doctor and the health worker had counselled her on the possible harms, but she insisted on the MTP. She returned home that same evening with antibiotics and analgesics.

About four years later, in the early summer of 2019, in Karnataka in Southern India, I had front row seats to a pair of twins being delivered through an emergency Cesarean section. In a busy state facility, a very competent Ob/Gyn allowed me to accompany her into the OT as she performed the complex procedure. I saw the scalpel draw blood. She used scissors to widen the cut just above the woman’s pubic bone, standing on a stool to reach deep into the woman’s uterus as one of the twins was stuck below her rib cage with a cord tied around his neck. He was extracted first, while his sister was taken out a few minutes later, crying lustily as she tasted her first breath of air.

This was the first C-section or any operative procedure that I had seen. This was a far bloodier encounter than the MTP I had partially borne witness to. Yet the meanings that these acts embodied could not be more different. It was not the blood and gore of the clinical procedure itself that left its long shadow on me, but what it meant for me as a feminist and a woman who cannot bear her own children.

A crisis of (feminist) faith

When I remember that day in the winter of 2015, I remember pacing anxiously in my small cold room at the missionary boarding house, my home for the duration of the fieldwork. I remember having a fitful night, in fact several unsettled nights where sleep was punctuated with nightmares of children shrieking and worms splitting my skin to emerge like alien births.

As a feminist who is committed to pro-choice, but simultaneously unable to bear children and has yearned for motherhood for years, this encounter was emotionally traumatic, intellectually disruptive, and morally unsettling for me. While my immediate response was affective – grief, guilt, anger and fear – in subsequent processing of this encounter, I experienced an intellectual crisis which itself was deeply traumatic.

I knew that Anita had all the “risk” factors, for landing in this medically dangerous situation – she was poor, indigenous, lived in a remote, hilly part in a disadvantaged Indian state. Yet I oscillated between feeling that she “chose” what was right for herself and grieving the loss of a potential life. Anita went against medical advice and the advice of two family members in choosing to have a late-term abortion

I felt embittered and puzzled.  Why hadn’t she considered giving birth and then giving up the baby for adoption? I would have willingly adopted this baby and, as a recent adoptive parent, I know that the queue for legal adoption is long in India.

The feminist in me chided myself for thinking of Anita as a mere reproductive vessel. I knew intellectually that only she had autonomy over her body. Yes, the termination was medically risky, but so are many other medical procedures. Yet patients choose them, weighing the benefits and risks of such procedures. What was different here? Perhaps when it comes to late-term abortions, I was flexible with my feminist ethics? Perhaps my inability to bear children was clouding the intellectual apparatus required for feminist praxis? Worst of all, perhaps I was not a feminist at all?

The Return of the Prodigal Feminist

These doubts continued to plague me for a while. A year later, I chose to write a case study on ethics about Anita and the attendant ethical, moral and intellectual conundrums it presented. I also discussed my experience and responses with my friends, family and colleagues. As I unburdened myself through speech and text, the shame chipped away, and the edges of my guilt felt a little less jagged. The existential angst I had experienced, unsure of my identity as a feminist, had settled a bit by then.

With time, I choose to see things differently. My feminist self and the mother in me didn’t have to be like Sophie’s Choice – I could be both, and still grieve this death. Strathern famously said that anthropology and feminism make for strange bedfellows, an “awkward relationship.” But feminism gifted me a lens and a language which was not burdened by ideas of cultural relativism or individual versus collective rights.

Porter, in moving away from a rights-based discourse on abortion in a very divisive Ireland, draws out similarities between pro-life and pro-choice activists and argues that both sides “…advocate responsible sex, good parenting, and caring communities.” Thus, abortion moves away from being a strictly medical procedure or a rights-based claims to a social and moral issue, where nurturance is the bedrock on which women take these decisions, and never lightly.

Although, for Anita, this abortion was not a choice in a real sense.  She had it to give her young daughter a better life. In a country where female fetuses are routinely aborted due to a cultural preference for sons, perhaps Anita should, in fact, be be lauded for her actions?

The affective dissonance that this incident elicited in me, though unsettling, was ultimately productive. Hemmings (2012: 151) writes, “Challenging the status of the expert, considering the shared epistemic claims from below, thinking outside one’s own initial investment in the desire for clearer and more accountable knowledge; these are all the features of an affectively attentive epistemology that allows for the transformation of all participants in the research field as well as knowledge itself.” I may never do what Anita did or had to, but Hemmings argues that empathy is not a prerequisite for building affective solidarity since it requires a departure from an identity-based politics. Ethical concerns demand that we do not judge choices based on similarities between us and the doer.

I don’t know how Anita will process her experience later. For me, while nothing is settled, this experience forced a reckoning of my feminist self. The questions continue.

Like a circle in a spiral

Like a wheel within a wheel

Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel

As the images unwind, like the circles that you find

In the windmills of your mind!

Windmills of your mind.

Songwriters: Marilyn Bergman, Michel Legrand, Alan Bergman

For Further Reading

1. Nordstrom, Carolyn, and Antonius CGM Robben .1995. Fieldwork under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival. Univ of California Press.
2. Leibing, Annette, and Athena McLean. 2007. “Learn to Value Your Shadow!” An Introduction to the Margins of Fieldwork. The Shadow Side of Fieldwork: Exploring the Blurred Borders between Ethnography and Life: 1–28.
3. Hemmings, Clare. “Affective solidarity: Feminist reflexivity and political transformation.” Feminist Theory13, no. 2 (2012): 147-161.
4. Porter, Elisabeth. “Culture, community and responsibilities: abortion in Ireland.” Sociology30, no. 2 (1996): 279-298.
5. Strathern, Marilyn. “An awkward relationship: The case of feminism and anthropology.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society12, no. 2 (1987): 276-292.

[1] All names have been changed to protect identities and the precise location of the hospital has not been shared since what we witnessed was not only dangerous but also an illegal act.

Trauma and Resilience

This is a blog series curated by Beatriz Reyes-Foster and Rebecca Lester in collaboration with the Anthropology of Mental Health Interest Group.

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