The second day of the programme had a discussion on the history of the veil and its modern-day manifestations. Shrabasti Mallik reports
Veil or ghunghat has often been used in poetry, dance and other art forms, sometimes as a metaphor and at times as a symbol to describe varied expressions. On the second and concluding day of Shovana Narayan’s lecture-demonstration Ram-mat, the panellists explored the word ghunghat and its references in dance, poetry, everyday life and society.
According to MP and author Pavan K Varma, the ultimate veil is a trick “which compels one to see the world the way they want.” The veil, he explained, is born of two things. “Avidya or ignorance, which prevents you from seeing who you are and lets you stay with what you want to see. Avidya is the ultimate veil which takes a person away from his own inherent immortality to the level of the world that he/she sees empirically. From that avidya, arises another remarkable aspect of that veil — ahankar or ego. The ignorance leads to the notion of ‘I am.’ Therefore, it is this veil that gives us many illusions,” he said.
In Islam, veil or hijab is the way of life and there are stories in the scriptures which narrate the descent of the cloth. Syeda Hameed, writer and former member of the Planning Commission, referred to the story of the Prophet’s marriage. She said, “There is a tradition in Muslim culture where the host cannot not ask his guests to leave. So when the Prophet wanted to spend some time with his newlywed wife and the guests did not leave, he put up a veil to have some personal space. Women in early days were considered so radiant that they were kept in a hijab, to hide their beauty.” The concept of the Muslim hijab has come down as a tradition of creating both a division between the boorish people and refined people like the Prophet and also to conceal the radiant beauty of women.
Defying all the interpretation that was discussed Arshiya Sethi, scholar and artiste, said that she did not find the ghunghat as a symbol of liberation. She argued the belief that the veil is supposed to protect a woman, which is followed in many communities even today. “If something like a ghunghat is forced upon someone like a shackle, then how can it protect themIJ,” she asked.
The veil is a symbol of patriarchy to her and she didn’t want to endorse it “especially at a time when we are searching for India’s missing daughters.” She said that discarding the ghunghat marked a new beginning in the Indian history. “Women who shed the ghunghat and stepped out of the house during the freedom movement stirred the generation. Similarly many Muslim communities did away with thepurdah system. These were all symbols of the awakening of women,” she added.
The discussion was followed by Shovana Narayan’s performance based on the narrative of Ismat Chughtai’s The Veil. It chronicled the story of a beautiful maiden who, through all her growing up years, was trained and taught never to lift her ghunghat unless her husband does it. In the first part of the narration, Narayan portrayed the girl on her wedding day — shy, scared and anxious — to see the face of her husband.
The husband, instead of lifting up the ghunghat, asked her to lift it on her own. Years of training forbade her to do it which left him disappointed. The second part showed the girl, now a woman, playing with children. She was informed about her husband’s return. History repeated itself when he asked her to lift her ghunghat which she disobeyed again. By the concluding part, the woman had aged and regretted not lifting her veil when she was asked.
When her husband returned again, she shed the ghunghat and rushed to see him, only to find him dead. “It is a moment of epiphany that Chughtai tried to capture. The woman finally realised the futility of the ghunghat, which was supposed to protect her dignity. The story blended well with the interpretation of the image so that people are triggered to form their own opinion,” concluded Narayan.