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The Heart of a Gopi: Raihana Tyabji's Bhakti Devotionalism as Self-Representation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2013

SIOBHAN LAMBERT-HURLEY
SIOBHAN LAMBERT-HURLEY*
Affiliation:
Loughborough University, UK Email: S.T.Lambert-Hurley@lboro.ac.uk
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Abstract

Raihana Tyabji is best known in history, not for her writing or even her singing, but as a devotee of Gandhi. Yet in 1924 this at least nominally Muslim woman composed a small book of bhakti devotionalism that has continued to garner popular interest right into the twenty-first century. She gave it the evocative title, The Heart of a Gopi, on the basis that what had been revealed to her was the very ‘soul’, the inner self, of the gopi and, through that, an understanding of Lord Krishna himself. This paper considers the question of how far this piece of bhakti devotionalism may be read as a kind of personal narrative, an evocation of the self. Does the referencing of an established narrative tradition give the author's feelings and experiences, especially as a Muslim woman devoted to Krishna at a time of increasing religious rigidity and growing communal strife, a kind of validity not achievable otherwise? And, if so, how do we separate out the author's ‘self’ from the literary conventions—in this case, the gopi tradition—that structure the story? In the tradition of Islamic life-writing, can the gap between the miraculous and the mundane be breached in order to understand the mystical experience charted here as a kind of autobiography? Even from the rationalist's perspective, should not the life of the imagination still be considered part of the life?

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , May 2014 , pp. 569 - 595
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

*

Earlier drafts of this paper were presented at the panel, ‘Speaking of the Self? Women and Self Representation in South Asia’, at the European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies in Bonn, Germany in July 2010; and at the South Asia Studies Seminar at the University of Leeds in March 2011. My thanks to the participants, and especially to my co-convenor in Bonn, Anshu Malhotra, for their extremely useful comments on these occasions and after. I am also grateful to Anand Vivek Taneja and Sunil Sharma for their suggestions. More generally, this paper has benefited from lively discussions held in connection with the international research network, ‘Women's Autobiography in Islamic Societies’ [http://www.waiis.org, accessed 14 October 2012].

References

1 Tyabji, Raihana, The Heart of a Gopi (Poona: Miss R. Tyabji, n.d.). The quotes here come from pp. v–viGoogle Scholar.

2 Tyabji, Raihana, The Heart of a Gopi (Bombay: Vora, 1941Google Scholar; n.p.: n.d., 1953; Delhi: East West Publication, 1971); Gopi, L'Ame d'une, trans. Lizelle Reymond (Frameries, Belgium: Union des Imprimeries, 1935)Google Scholar; Das Herz einer Gopi (Darmstadt: Synergia/Syntropia, 1977); Het hart van een Gopi (Rotterdam: Synthese Uitgeverij, 1995).

3 See Inventory of the Catherine Murphy Urner Collection, [ca. 1910-ca. 1942], Music Library, University of California, Berkeley: http://www.oac.cdlib.org/data/13030/5x/tf0z09n55x/files/tf0z09n55x.pdf [Accessed 14 October 2012].

4 See, as examples, Guénon, René, Studies in Hinduism, trans. Fohr, Henry D. (Hillsdale New York: Sophia Perennis, 2001), pp. 194–195Google Scholar; Lord Krishna: http://www.ramdasstapes.org/krishna.htm [Accessed 14 October 2012]; The heart of a gopi: http://board.georgeharrison.com/viewtopic.php?q=board/viewtopic.php&f=7&t=4111 [Accessed 14 October 2012]; and Heart of a Gopi: http://www.blogcatalog.com/blog/godwriting [Accessed 14 October 2012].

5 ‘The Heart of a Gopi—The Screenplay’ [http://heartoagopi.org', accessed 10 December 2009]. © 2008-2010.

6 Two studies of such liminal communities in a historical context are: Khan, Dominique-Sila, Crossing the Threshold: Understanding Religious Identities in South Asia (London: I.B. Tauris and Co, 2004)Google Scholar; and Mayaram, Shail, Resisting Regimes: Myth, Memory and the Shaping of a Muslim Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar. For a more popular, contemporary study, though with a strong historical element, see Sikand, Yoginder, Shared Spaces: Exploring Traditions of Shared Faith in India (Delhi: Penguin, 2003)Google Scholar.

7 On Kabir and the Bhakti movement more generally, see Hawley, John Stratton, Three Bhakti Voices: Mirabai, Surdas and Kabir in Their Time and Ours (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).Google Scholar

8 My coverage of Bulleh Shah here draws on Malhotra, Anshu, ‘Telling her Tale? Unravelling a life in conflict in Peero's IK Sau Saṭh Kāfiaṅ (one hundred and sixty kafis)’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review 46:4 (2009), p. 572–573CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but, for a more comprehensive discussion, see Matringe, Denis, ‘Krsnaite and Nath Elements in the Poetry of the Eighteenth Century Panjabi Sufi Bulhe Sah’ in McGregor, R. S. (ed.), Devotional Literature in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 190–206Google Scholar. On ‘shared philosophical beliefs and imageries’ between the Bhakti and Sufi movements more generally, see Lawrence, Bruce, ‘The Sant Movement and North Indian Sufis’ in Schomer, Karine and McLeod, W. H. (eds), The Sants: Studies in a Devotional Tradition of India (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987), pp. 359–373Google Scholar.

9 Snell, Rupert, ‘Raskhān the Neophyte: Hindu Perspectives on a Muslim Vishnava’ in Shackle, Christopher (ed.) Urdu and Muslim South Asia: Studies in Honour of Ralph Russell (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 29–37.Google Scholar For particular quotes, see pp. 29, 32, 34. My thanks to Sunil Sharma for this reference.

10 Khan, Crossing the Threshold.

11 As an example, see Arnold, David and Blackburn, Stuart (eds), Telling Lives in India: Biography, Autobiography, and Life History (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004).Google Scholar

12 See Spivak, Gayatri, ‘Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography’ in Guha, Ranajit (ed.), Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society IV (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 330–363.Google Scholar

13 Kandiyoti, Deniz, ‘Bargaining with Patriarchy’, Gender and Society 2 (1988), pp. 274–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Malhotra, ‘Telling her Tale?’, pp. 544–545, 566.

15 On Abbas's judicial career, see Basu, Aparna, Abbas Tyabji (New Delhi: National Book Trust, India, 2007), pp. 24–42.Google Scholar

16 On this school, see Basu, Abbas, pp. 34–36. On Ameena Tyabji's experiences in Europe, I consulted a transcript of a speech delivered by her at the family ladies’ club, Akdé Suraya, on 22 August 1904. It is kept in the private collection of Rafia Abdul Ali in Mumbai.

17 Basu, Abbas, pp. 43–44.

18 Ibid., pp. 50, 53.

19 Ibid., p. 43.

20 Ibid., p. 44.

21 Ali, Safia Jabir, ‘Manuscript Memoirs of Mrs Safia Jabir Ali’, in Badruddin Tyabji Family Papers VI, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New DelhiGoogle Scholar.

22 On this, see Basu, Abbas, pp. 67–74.

23 Quoted in Mehta, Ved, Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penquin Books, 1976), p. 211Google Scholar. For another account of their first meeting, see the interview with Raihana Tyabji in Thakkar, Usha and Mehta, Jayshree (eds), Understanding Gandhi: Gandhians in Conversation with Fred J Blum (Delhi: Sage, 2011), p. 158–160CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Thakkar and Mehta, Understanding Gandhi, p. 160.

25 See, as an example, ‘Diary, 1932’, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Online: http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/cwmg.html [Accessed 15 October 2012] [subsequently CWMGO]. From Gandhi's letters, we know too that, at the least, he began reading The Heart of a Gopi in its first incarnation as a ‘Gopi's diary’ before leaving it for the Bardoli satyagraha in 1928. Sadly, there is no record of his opinion other than that he considered it ‘quite good news’ to hear that it was to be first published in the mid-1930s. See letter to Abbas Tyabji, 4 August 1928; and letter to Raihana Tyabji, 30 January 1934.

26 Letter to Raihana Tyabji, 12 July 1927, CWMGO. For an example of a published extract, see ‘Position of Women’, Young India, 17 October 1929, CWMGO.

27 See, as examples, letters to Raihana Tyabji, 25 January 1931, 1 October 1932, 23 January 1933 and 14 August 1941, CWMGO.

28 Mehta, Mahatma, p. 211.

29 Mark Devereux, ‘The Early Tyabji Women’ from Retroblog of Najm Tyabji (1930+): http://nstyabji.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/the-early-tyabji-women/ [Accessed 15 October 2012]; and interview with Salima Tyabji, New Delhi, 3 February 2006.

30 Interview with Rafia Abdul Ali, Bombay, 16 December 2005.

31 See, as examples, letters to Raihana Tyabji, 29 December 1930 and 25 April 1945, CWMGO.

32 See, as an example, letter to Raihana Tyabji, 20 June 1932, CWMGO.

33 Letter to Raihana Tyabji, 10 October 1928, CWMGO; Thakkar and Mehta, Understanding Gandhi, p. 204.

34 Letters to Raihana Tyabji, 11 April 1930 and 25 January 1931; Draft Letter to Viceroy, 27 April 1930; and ‘What Should One Not Do?’, Navajivan, 1 March 1931, CWMGO; Thakkar and Mehta, Understanding Gandhi, p. 202.

35 Draft of Power-of-Attorney, 1 April 1945, CWMGO.

36 Thakkar and Mehta, Understanding Gandhi, p. 172, 183, 237.

37 ‘The Spirit of Raas’, Navajivan, 27 April 1930, CWMGO.

38 Letter to Raihana Tyabji, 25 January 1931, CWMGO.

39 Letter to Raihana Tyabji, 28 June 1932, CWMGO.

40 Letter to Saroj Nanavati, 1 October 1946, CWMGO.

41 Proceedings of the Hindustani Prachar Sabha Meeting, Wardha, 16 February 1946, CWMGO.

42 ‘Hindustani Written in Nagari Only’, Harijan, 9 November 1947; and letter to Raihana Tyabji, 30 November 1947, CWMGO.

43 For two separate accounts of these spiritual services offered by Raihana in her later years, see Devereux, ‘Early Tyabji Women’; and Mehta, Mahatma, p. 3.

44 See ‘letters concerning past incarnations’ from Raihana Tyabji to Mary Cushing Niles, 1954–71, in Niles Family Papers, RG 5/267, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania: http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/friends/ead/5267nile.xml [Accessed 15 October 2012].

45 For an example of the secondary literature, see Gandhiji's Associates in India: http://www.gandhi-manibhavan.org/gandhicomesalive/comesalive_associates_india.htm#Tyabji,%20Raihana [Accessed 15 October 2012]. On Raihana's Urdu lessons and the Qur'an at prayer meetings, see, as examples, letter to Devdas Gandhi, 11 May 1932; and ‘Speech at Prayer Meeting’, Sodepur, 8 December 1945, CWMGO.

46 Thakkar and Mehta, Understanding Gandhi, p. 40.

47 ‘Position of Women’, Young India, 17 October 1929, CWMGO.

48 One particularly memorable performance at the Ahmedabad session of Congress in 1921 was recalled in Anil Nauriya's obituary of Raihana's sister, Sohaila Habib, ‘Memories of another Gujarat’: http://www.hinduonnet.com/2002/12/24/stories/2002122400941000.htm [Accessed 15 October 2012]

49 Lukmani, Yasmin, ‘The role played by the Tyabji women in the National Movement’ in Mody, Nawaz B. (ed.), Women in India's Freedom Struggle (Mumbai: Allied, 2000), pp. 219–236.Google Scholar The page quoted here is p. 227.

50 Letter to Raihana Tyabji, 4 April 1932, CWMGO.

51 Letter to R. V. Martin, Yeravda Mandir, 8 July 1930, CWMGO.

52 Mehta, Mahatma, p. 5. For just one example of the former, see Nicholas F. Gier, ‘Was Gandhi a Tantric?’: http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/gandtantric.htm [Accessed 15 October 2012].

53 Letter to Abbas Tyabji, 12 September 1934, CWMGO.

54 Letter to Raihana Tyabji, 18 June 1931, CWMGO.

55 Thakkar and Mehta, Understanding Gandhi, pp. 175–176.

56 ‘Gandhiji's Associates in India’: http://www.gandhi-manibhavan.org/gandhicomesalive/comesalive_associates_india.htm#Tyabji,%20Raihana [Accessed 15 October 2012].

57 Ramamurthy, V., Mahatma Gandhi: The Last 200 Days (Chennai: The Hindu, 2003), p. 41Google Scholar.

58 Mehta, Mahatma, p. 207.

59 Speech at Prayer Meeting, 29 January 1947, CWMGO.

60 Advice to Muslim Women, Patna, 16 March 1947, CWMGO.

61 Letter to Raihana Tyabji, 5 September 1934; and letter to Abbas Tyabji, 20 September 1934, CWMGO.

62 Letter to Raihana Tyabji, 19 December 1927; and letter to Dilip Kumar Roy, 17 June 1936, CWMGO.

63 Interview with Rafia Abdul Ali, Bombay, 16 December 2005; Interview with Salima Tyabji, Delhi, 3 February 2006; Basu, Abbas, p. 21.

64 Thakkar and Mehta, Understanding Gandhi, p. 217.

65 Ibid., p. 179.

66 Basu, Abbas, p. 20.

67 Mehta, Mahatma, p. 209.

68 Ibid., p. 211.

69 Tyabji, Heart, p. vi. Bold type in the original.

70 Metcalf, Barbara D., ‘What Happened in Mecca: Mumtaz Mufti's “Labbaik”’ in Folkenflik, Robert (ed.), The Culture of Autobiography: Constructions of Self-Representation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), pp. 149–167.Google Scholar The quote here comes from p. 157.

71 Metcalf, ‘What Happened in Mecca’, p. 158–159.

72 On this sub-genre of Islamic literature, see Brittlebank, Kate, ‘Piety and Power: A Preliminary Analysis of Tipu Sultan's Dreams’ in her edited volume, Tall Tales and True: India, Historiography and British Imperial Imaginings (Victoria: Monash University Press, 2008), pp. 31–41.Google Scholar My thanks to Andrea Major for this reference.

73 On the female voice in the Sufi tradition, see Abbas, Shemeem Burney, The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual: Devotional Practices in India and Pakistan (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2003).Google Scholar

74 My thanks to Sunil Sharma for this anecdote.

75 Tyabji, Heart, pp. 10–11.

76 See, as an example, letter to Raihana Tyabji, 7 July 1932.

77 For a brief introduction to the Bohras, see Lapidus, Ira M., A History of Islamic Societies, 2nd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 377.Google Scholar For a more comprehensive study, see Engineer, Asghar Ali, The Bohras (New Delhi: Vikas, 1980)Google Scholar.

78 Khan, Crossing the Threshold.

79 For just one example, see my discussion of Atiya Fyzee's ‘openness, or at least curiosity, to other religious faiths’ in her Zamana-i-tahsil in Lambert-Hurley, Siobhan and Sharma, Sunil, Atiya's Journeys: A Muslim Woman from Colonial Bombay to Edwardian Britain (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Chapter 4.

80 Tyabji, R., Suniye Kakasahib (Wardha: Hindustani Pracher Sabhai, 1954)Google Scholar, quoted in Basu, Abbas.

81 Basu, Abbas, p. 41.

82 Basu, Abbas, p. 78.

83 Khan, Crossing the Threshold, Chaper 3.

84 On the Tyabji clan's adoption of Urdu, see Karlitzky, Marlen, ‘The Tyabji Clan—Urdu as a Symbol of Group Identity’, Annual of Urdu Studies, vol. 17 (2002)Google Scholar; Wright, Theodore P. Jr's ‘Muslim Kinship and Modernization: The Tyabji Clan of Bombay’ in Ahmad, Imtiaz (ed.), Family, Kinship and Marriage among Muslims in India, Delhi: Manohar, 1976), pp. 217–238Google Scholar, especially p. 227; and Lambert-Hurley and Sharma, Atiya's Journeys, Chapter 1.

85 On this organization, see Minault, Gail, Secluded Scholars: Women's Education and Muslim Social Reform in Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 182–192.Google Scholar

86 Basu, Abbas, pp. 20–21.

87 Wright, ‘Muslim Kinship and Modernization’, p. 229.

88 Ibid., p. 227.

89 Basu, Abbas, p. 36–37.

90 Ibid., p. 37.

91 On this process, see Van der Veer, Peter, Gods on Earth: The Management of Religious Experience and Identity in a North Indian Pilgrimage Centre (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; and Sarkar, Sumit, ‘Kaliyuga, Chakri and Bhakti: Ramakrishna and His Times’ in his Writing Social History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 282–357Google Scholar. My thanks to Oliver Godsmark for raising this point during my seminar in Leeds.

92 Sarkar, ‘Kaliyuga’, p. 313.

93 This summary is based on Barbara D. Metcalf, ‘The Past in the Present: Instruction, Pleasure and Blessing in Maulana Muhammad Zakariyya's Aap Biitii’ in Arnold and Blackburn, Telling Lives in India, pp. 116–143. Relevant pages are pp. 119–121.

94 For a South Asian example, see Lal's, Rubydiscussion of Gulbadan Begam's Humayun-nama in Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

95 Robinson, Francis, Islam and Muslim History in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 95, 115.Google Scholar

96 Robinson, Islam, p. 95.

97 Ali, Asaf A. A. (ed.), ‘The Autobiography of Tyabji Bhoymeeah’, Journal of Asiatic Society of Bombay (New Series), vol. 36–7 (1961–2)Google Scholar.

98 For a well-known example by a male Tyabji, see Tyabji, Badruddin, Memoirs of an Egoist, 2 vols (New Delhi: Roli Books, 1988).Google Scholar

99 Sahiba, Nazli Rafia Sultan Nawab Begam, Sair-i-Yurop (Lahore: Union Steam Press, n.d.)Google Scholar; and Fyzee, Atiya, Zamana-i-tahsil (Agra: Matba' Mufid-i-'Am, 1921)Google Scholar. For a translation and commentary on the latter, see Lambert-Hurley and Sharma, Atiya's Journeys.

100 ‘A Page from the Past: Extracts from the Diary of Amina Binte Badruddin Tyabji’, Roshni (Delhi), Special number 1946, pp. 69–73.

101 Abbas Tyabji's diaries are now preserved in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.

102 Malhotra, ‘Telling Her Tale?’, p. 555.

103 My thanks to Veena Oldenburg for encouraging me to draw out this point. It has been developed in: Rao, Velcheru N., ‘A Ramayan of their Own: Women's Oral Tradition in Telegu’ in Richman, Paula (ed.), Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Tradition in South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 114–136.Google Scholar

104 Tyabji, Heart, p. 57.

105 Ibid.

106 Snell, ‘Raskhān’, p. 32.

107 See the section entitled ‘Two weeks later’ in Tyabji, Heart, pp. 62–69.

108 Tyabji, Heart, pp. 30, 47, 53. For comparison with the early gopi tradition, see Kinsley, David, Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 83–85.Google Scholar

109 Tyabji, Heart, p. 24.

110 Ibid., pp. 51–2.

111 Ibid., pp. 1–2

112 Ibid., p. 1.

113 Ibid., pp. 1–2.

114 Ibid., p. 19.

115 Letter to Dr Mohammad Alam, 26 November 1932, CWMGO.

116 Mehta, Mahatma, pp. 210–211.

117 Lukmani, ‘The role played by the Tyabji women in the National Movement’, pp. 219–236.

118 Letter to Raihana Tyabji, 12 July 1927, CWMGO.

119 Letter to Raihana Tyabji, 14 and 19 July 1927, and 5 March 1930, CWMGO.

120 Letter to Raihana Tyabji, 12 July 1927, and 19 October 1929, CWMGO.

121 Tyabji, Heart, p. 61.

122 Mehta, Mahatma, p. 211.

123 Ibid., p. 209.

124 Ibid., p. 211.

125 Begam, Shah Jahan, Tahzib un-Niswan wa Tarbiyat ul-Insan (Women's Reform, or the Cultivation of Humanity) (Delhi: Matba'i-Ansari, 1889)Google Scholar.

126 I have developed this point as part of a separate paper on intimacy and sexuality in Muslim autobiographical writing in South Asia, forthcoming.

127 Atiya, Zamana-i-Tahsil; and Nazli, Sair-i-Yurop. For an analysis of these silences, see Lambert-Hurley and Sharma, Atiya's Journeys, Chapter 2; and Delight and Disgust: Gendered Encounters in the Travelogues of the Fyzee Sisters' in On the Wonders of Land and Sea: Persianate Travel Writing, eds. R. Micallef and Sunil Sharma, forthcoming.

128 Tyabji, Heart, p. 74.

129 Ibid., inside back cover.

130 Ibid., p.vi

131 Metcalf, ‘What Happened in Mecca’, p. 149.

132 Ibid., p. 154.

133 Ibid., p. 152.

134 Ibid.

135 Consider, as an example, Philippe Lejeune's definition, often considered definitive even as his own work has belied it: ‘We call autobiography the retrospective narrative in prose that someone makes of his own existence when he puts the principal accent upon his life, especially upon the story of his own personality’. Translated from his L'autobiographie en France (1971) in Folkenflick, Robert (ed.), The Culture of Autobiography: Constructions of Self-Representation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 13Google Scholar.

136 Smith, Sidonie and Watson, Julia, A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives: Reading Autobiography (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010, 2nd edn.), p. 3.Google Scholar

137 Arnold and Blackburn, Telling Lives in India, p. 9.

138 Smith and Watson, Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives, p. 5.

139 I speak here of my individual research project on autobiographical writing by Muslim women in South Asia, as well as the international research network to which I belong on ‘Women's Autobiography in Islamic Societies’ (see http://www.waiis.org [accessed 15 October 2012]).