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Ruth Vanita is a poet, editor, translator, academic and activist. Her book of poems, Play of Light (Penguin India) was published in 1994. She is Professor at the University of Montana. She was founding co-editor of Manushi, an influential journal about women and society, from 1978 to 1990. Her poetry has appeared in several anthologies, and she has translated several works of fiction and poetry from Hindi and Urdu to English. She is deeply engaged in the fields of lesbian and gay studies, gender studies, and British and South Asian literary history. she has authored Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination; co-authored Same-Sex Love in India: Readings in Literature and History; co-edited In Search of Answers: Indian Women’s Voices from Manushi; and edited Queering India. Her recent books include Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West and Gandhi’s Tiger and Sita’s Smile: Essays on Gender, Culture and Sexuality. She has also published on Shakespeare in several journals, including, most recently, Shakespeare Survey.
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TMYS: Could you tell us about your transition from being a student at Delhi University to a professor at the University of Montana?
Ruth:
I taught at Miranda House College for Women for 17 years and then at the Department of English, Delhi University, for three years, so a total of 20 years. Several of my classmates moved to the US immediately after the MA and did their PhDs there. I chose to remain in India, and completed my PhD from Delhi University. Much later, I applied for jobs in the US and got the one at U Montana, where I moved at the age of 40.
TMYS: Reflecting on your time with Manushi, what do you believe was its most significant impact on society?
Ruth:
Manushi was one of the major influences that encouraged the media as well as political parties to take women’s issues seriously. Before Manushi, women’s magazines like Femina and Eve’s Weekly focused mostly on how to balance work and housework, and on matters such as cooking, fashion, make-up, and home décor. Newspapers relegated women’s concerns to a weekly women’s page. After Manushi, they began to treat women’s issues as central to politics and to society.
TMYS: In your novel, Memory of Light, you delve into the lives of courtesans in 18th-century India. What drew you to this particular narrative?
Ruth:
For my 2012 book, Gender, Sex and the City, I had conducted research on Urdu poetry in 18th-century north India, and discovered that courtesans were not sex workers, as they are often misunderstood to be. They were female intellectuals, and the colleagues of male poets. They kept alive the arts of classical music and dance. They were highly accomplished and educated. They also lived in women-dominated households and had serially monogamous relationships with men but also with each other. In earlier work such as Same-Sex Love in India (2000), I had argued that same-sex desire was openly discussed and practised in India until the British criminalised it in 1861 and stigmatised it through their education and administration. Eighteenth-century Urdu poetry celebrates love of all kinds – between men and women, between men, and between women. I wanted to explore how same-sex relationships developed in an earlier Indian society that was not homophobic in the modern way.
TMYS: Your book Love’s Rite discusses the phenomenon of young couples’ unions through marriage or joint suicide. What insights did you gain about societal pressures while researching for this book?
Ruth:
From at least 1980, up to the present, newspapers have reported how hundreds of young couples all over the country have either got married by Hindu rites or have committed joint suicide. The most interesting fact is that almost all these couples are young women from low-income, non-English speaking backgrounds. They include factory workers, agricultural labourers, fisherwomen, domestic workers, students, Dalits, tribals. What the reports show is that communities and families are deeply divided on the issue. Some families accept the couples and celebrate their marriages. Several Hindu priests and gurus have conducted same-sex marriages; I interviewed some of them too. Other families try to forcibly separate the couples and get the women married to men. Of course, male-female couples often face similar situations. They also run away to get married and families harass them, sometimes driving them to suicide. The difference is that when a man and woman get married, they have the law on their side to protect them. That is what same-sex couples also need.
TMYS: The phrase ‘men don’t cry’ is often associated with toxic masculinity. How do you think this affects men’s emotional well-being and their professional relationships? Also, how does men’s emotional well-being affect the women in their lives? In your view, what cultural shifts are necessary to challenge the stigma around men expressing vulnerability?
Ruth:
I think we should stop borrowing terms from the West and applying them to our society without conducting research here. For example, India does not have a tradition of forbidding men to cry, and expectations from men vary widely throughout the country. Instead of constantly blaming men for so-called “toxic masculinity” I think it is important to notice the burdens that many men carry, supporting not only immediate family but also relatives who may be widowed, orphaned, or poor. Most men work long hours all their lives, and huge numbers of men work in cities far from home, living in very difficult conditions in order to send money back to their families in villages. Yes, many men also drink and beat their wives and children. But we should acknowledge the millions of good sons, husbands, fathers and friends.
TMYS: Can you tell us about the portrayal of men in your books? Have you encountered any resistance or expectations from readers or publishers regarding the portrayal of male emotions in your work, and how have you navigated these challenges?
Ruth:
No, I have not. One reader wanted to know more about Sharad, a male character in my novel Memory of Light (Penguin, 2020), which is set in the 18th century. This led me to reimagine Sharad, as it were, reborn, in my next novel, A Slight Angle, which is set in the 1920s, and which will appear from Penguin in summer 2024.
TMYS: We say the adage is long gone, but traces are left of a bewildering toxic masculinity that negatively affects our youth. As films like “Kabir Singh” and “Animal” amass popularity, they mirror an audience demand for characters embodying aggression, dominance, and misogyny. This preference, when mirrored in real-life behaviours, contributes to a worrisome perpetuation of toxic attitudes and behaviours within society. But the makers are showing lucrative numbers and business, which might lure more filmmakers towards investing more of such films. How do you think Indian film or media is responsible in blurring the line between reel and reality? And how can such content be discouraged? Does social responsibility not apply to the entertainment business?
Ruth:
I think everyone should be free to make the movies they want and people can then choose which ones they want to see. Also, movies are open to multiple interpretations. I have not seen the two films you mention but I have read contrasting interpretations of them. Interpretations of social responsibility also vary. Films are an art form, and in my view the purpose of art is to give pleasure, or joy (depending on the kind of art), not to convey social messages. That is the difference between art and propaganda.
TMYS: In your work, you draw parallels between Sappho’s poetry and the Virgin Mary’s story. How do these figures inspire your understanding of female autonomy and love?
Ruth:
In my book Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination, I argue that the figures of Sappho and the Virgin Mary, as powerful, autonomous female creators surrounded by female community, inspired many English writers and European artists, both men and women, over centuries, to create such figures in their work. Among the authors I examined were Austen, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Wilde, Meredith, Michael Field (two women who wrote together), Pater, Forster, and Woolf. My book Shakespeare’s Re-Visions of History, which will appear this year, looks at social collusion with and against oppression, and also at Shakespeare’s futuristic visions of Marian female autonomy and power, especially in the last plays.
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The interview was conducted by Joyashree Dey.
This interview is included in our book themed on Gender Stereotyping, available worldwide via Amazon. The India link is here.