[Reader-list] Independent Research Project Posting 3

[Subhajit Chatterjee]

Sarai Posting 3


Given the outline of my reflections on romance in the city , I would now like to take up an issue that is more discursive and a matter of popular debate. I have tried to point out how urban spaces are used by inhabitants for purposes that are at odds with their intended function. Now of course the case is not so simple as it seems because the legal and social apparatus has its own way of conceptualizing and/or surveillance of intimate encounters within the city. Before coming to concrete instances and city spaces in Kolkata I would like to reflect on the legal aspect of this issue and it's representation in literature where the problem is narrated in more psychological terms.
 	Let's take an instance from literature this time before coming down to legal aspects. Bengali literature , for instance has a number of examples particularly short stories which articulate such cultural experience of the city. Dipen Bandopadhyaya's 'Ashawamedher Ghora' (The Horse of Ashwamedha), is a  typical example of modernist storytelling that  incorporates a thoroughly urban sensibility. The tale begins with a couple walking in the city. As I have stated in my earlier posting this  used to be and remains one of the most active phase  of  amorous life of Bengali middle class. So this couple Kanchan and Rekha , are legally married but have not been able to acquire social sanction from the wife's family due to economic problems of the husband and the caste difference. So until Kanchan is able to manage a climb up the economic ladder, the couple is condemned to meet in secrecy like lovers that they were earlier. Since the  'private' is simply unavailable in concrete terms they resort to the streets as usual walking mostly, stopping to chat at small restaurants and sometimes taking rides across the city by buses and maybe taxi when they can afford it. The story describes one such regular stroll when the couple decided to ride a horse drawn carriage in Central Calcutta from Esplanade to Khiderpore.  They move on to the carriage after much bargaining and  amidst the journey the driver pulls down the side curtain thereby creating a really private space for the first time. As the couple contemplate  their privacy and attempt to resist their erotic impulses, the ride comes to an end .  When they get down and  offer the decided fare the driver demands much more than that. On  being asked the reason he sneers caustically " you'll had  fun and now don't even want to pay the hotel charge."
	Such transformation of public places into 'hotels' is a common phenomena in many cities  where restaurants have private cabins with curtains or even in Kolkata boats across the Ganges have a place in the middle more or less secluded from the public gaze.  Taxi's also are more often used for erotic purposes by lovers and also clients dealing with flying sex workers. But such spaces are always prone to verbal or gestural harrassment from various sources. Under tipped waiters in restaurants for example, might just barge in the cabin destroying the intimate moment. Not to mention the lewd whistles or comments that might follow an intimate couple in a taxi. But this story also representations an anxiety that is more abstract.
The story alternates between objective narration and first person narration of Kanchan often fusing the two smoothly to complicate the source of enunciation.  Thus the narrator's voice often unsuspectingly gives way with Kanchan's subjective first person musings about his amorous situation and his failure to take up social responsibility . Quite curious is the way in which his hatred is directed at the city itself which is represented as a hostile, claustrophobic  and virulent entity. At one point while the couple walk down the narrator describes through Kanchan's voice : " some unknown fear started following me - I remembered the registrar's chamber - small, congested, remembered the restaurant cabin --- small, congested, remembered the stairs of the bus-small , congested, remembered the bedroom -- small , congested. I was almost breathless."  Just after the curtains are put down in the carriage detaching them from the world the narrator describes : "the two sat absolutely quiet. None of them could look at the other .What a strange situation! We were searching for desolate place where we could sit intimately.   The city of  Calcutta does not have such private space. We searched for time when we could be extremely close. We can't have time in our life. We were searching for a sphere where we could be sovereign rulers. Our times does not allow us such a sphere. Still today, still what .. still in this way --- the closed carriage moves, it's raining outside, today is our first marriage anniversary. My wife Rekha - with God as witness-lawful wife
".  Such anxieties regarding the city spills over to Kanchan's perception of people in general which again invokes the imagined city .  " Kanchan was irritated because the smile of the bloodshot eyes the horse carriage driver seemed unreasonable and obscene. But his recollected images of  horse carriages from foreign novels and Madhusudan Datta's History of Calcutta was of an entirely different shape." I will come back again to this real and imagined city that the couple has to negotiate in various forms but right now I shall focus on the question of harassment that the story draws attention to.
A signboard in front of a church in Goa that I have just visited claims that the premises of the church (constituting of some roads, some small lawns adorned with tress and benches etc.) is holy. Therefore no unholy activities are permitted on the premises. The curious part is  that while describing such 'unholy' activities the board specifies activities by couples and other people. While 'activities by other people' is generally an unclear notion one can easily imagine what such activities refer to in case of couples.
Of course this might  not actually be a public area  in technical terms but some such unwritten laws are operable in public places as well particularly in parks, amusement  centers , metro stations, libraries, or even museums etc. The question that is usually raised pertains to the problem of availability of spaces for the amorous couple.  The issue, as evident from the story discussed above,  is obviously more relevant in a post-colonial nation -state like India where ties with pre modern modes of social organization is still operative and the state happens to be only one of the power points that overlooks interpersonal social organizations. The dissent is thus related to a double harrassment : one by the pre modern forms of symbolic surveillance that would deny fully articulated privacy to the unmarried couple (in some instances even to the married couple) and the legal machinery's  surveillance over spaces which by definition are public spaces. The latter issue is directly related to everyday cases of police harrassments coupled with harassment of local youth groups or even 'goondas' (thugs)  who have their own forms of authority of spaces termed in regional languages as a 'para' (locality).
	So let us first look at the legal domain to investigate what actually gives authority and agency to the police. Well, as I tried to look into the matter, at first sight there is no such law that actually prohibits physical intimacy of  heterosexual couples. Below I give the records which I found relevant in this context : 

 Section  268.  Offences Affecting the Public Health, Safety, Convenience, Decency and Morals.
A person is guilty of a public nuisance who does any act or is guilty of an illegal omission which causes any common injury, danger or annoyance to the public or to the people in general who dwell or occupy property in the vicinity, or which must necessarily cause injury, obstruction, danger or annoyance to persons who may have occasion to use any public right. 
A common nuisance is not excused on the ground that it causes some convenience or advantage. 


 Section 294. Obscene acts and songs 
Whoever, to the annoyance of others- 
(a) does any obscene act in any public place, or 
(b) sings, recites or utters any obscene song, ballad or words, in or near any public place, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three months, or with fine, or with both.


	It is to be noted that these are the only laws that in any way can be mobilized to harass intimate couples in public spaces. While neither actually mentions any consensual intimate acts such as holding hands, touching parts of each others body or kissing, both of them vaguely ascribes offence to acts which are immoral or obscene  in a social sense. Now obviously the catch phrases are 'obscene acts' which can cause 'annoyance to people who may use public space as a matter of right.'. Both the descriptions are suitably vague and open to interpretation and therefore necessarily take recourse to some sense of agreed social consensus about public morality. How then does the police invoke this social agreement with which the victims might disagree given that the definition of obscenity is not clearly stated? Here comes the addendum from regional police acts : 

PREVENTIVE ACTION OF THE POLICE 
149.Police to prevent cognizable offences.- Every police officer may interpose for the purpose of preventing, and shall, to the best of his ability, prevent, the commission of any cognizable offence. 

Here the operative term is 'cognizable offence' which gives the authority of interpretation to the policeman concerned at least for immediate pick up or arrest. This of course is sufficient condition for harassment because in such cases it is not of interest to either parties to drag the matter to court but to settle the issue through bribery : 'extortion' is a better word to describe the situation. 
	But my concern is the general anxiety in relation to urban spaces that gets articulated in everyday oral accounts that describe experience or cases of harassment or is represented in more abstract terms in cinema and literature. The intention is to bring out a more complex web of cultural anxieties that is veiled by what at first sight seems to be a progressive argument  for a right to privacy. For this we need to look at a concrete case which I shall come to  in the next posting.

References :
1.Ashawamedher Ghora( The Horse of Ashwamedha) by Dipen Bandopadhayay in Samaresh Majumdar (ed.)  Eksho Bochorer Sera Golpo(Best Stories  in Hundred Years ,Kolkata:Mitra and Ghosh
2. The Indian Penal Code , Justice M Hindyatullah and V.R.Manokar, 27th edition,1992.
3.Bhat's Criminal major Acts, 2nd edition by D.N.Sen,Delhi: Bharat Law House,1996,2001.

			SUBHAJIT CHATTERJEE