On the Border : Media and Meaning in Banni (The following is a background note to my presentation. The presentation is an informal one in which I share some field notes and early findings from an ongoing research project in the region of Banni, Kutch. This note provides the necessary information on Banni and its people for an unfamiliar audience.) Rita Kothari Professor, Mudra Institute of Communications Ahmedabad In fastening on the term zone as a theoretical mainstay, the intention has been to imagine a broad intellectual topography that is neither the property of a single nation, nor an amorphous condition associated with postnationalism, but rather a zone of critical engagement that connects the l and the n of translation and transnation (Aptor, 2006, 5). As a translator working between languages, and a student of Partition and migration studies who examines movements between nations, the state of in-betweenness informs my work in very profound ways. The bordered region between two apparently selfenclosed entities brings into relief the precarious nature of meaning and identity. This paper is drawn from my work on the communities living in the region called Banni in Kutch. I examine the social construction of Banni as a nation, its dynamic with Gujarat (a state whose perceived/posited exclusivist image of a Hindu nation begs no substantiation) and how the linguistic and cultural proximity to Pakistan interrupts the idea of a
seamless nation. In addition to the philosophical and sociological underpinnings of my previous work (see Kothari, 2007a, 2007b), the project has also encompassed an examination of how media is negotiated in a remote, rural and invisible part of rural India. The border becomes significant in this work for the communities whose media habits I study live along the Rann (desert) of Kutch, where the international border separates India from Pakistan. The communities also live on the psychological border of the mainstream Gujarat. Hailing from Sindh (now in Pakistan), the twenty odd communities I study in Banni are Muslims by religion. They speak almost only in Sindhi, a language that originates in the Sindhi province of Pakistan but is included (through the efforts of urban and Hindu Sindhis) in the Constitution of India.
Meanwhile, Banni is a area of 840 sq. kms and forms a part of Gujarat s largest district, Kutch. Situated about 60 kms north of the largest town of Bhuj, Banni is tucked away from most eyes. It is part of an extremely hostile and arid desert region, where nothing except dry shrubs and gaanda bawal grow. The villages of Banni are scattered, and are constituted by little enclaves of clans who live together as clans. They do not intermarry, and their women seldom see anything outside their wand, or the enclave of families living together. Consisting of a large Muslim majority, who trace their ancestry to Sindh centuries ago, the people of Banni are almost entirely cattle breeders. Their myths of origin go back to a period centuries ago when in quest of greener pastures they migrated from Sindh and crossed the desert to inhabit the grasslands of Banni. The grasslands have now turned into a dry desert because the Rann of Kutch has expanded its limits and the rivers that were once supposed to have existed in this region have dried up. The hot weather, lack of electricity and water, absence of infrastructure and transport and the dispersed human habitation, Banni is an uninviting place, visited by outsiders only when they need to go for specific reasons.
This forms the backdrop of my larger work on the Banni, a region little known and seldom discussed in generalizations about Gujarat, its Muslims, and rural India in general. Drawing upon my own background as a Sindhi speaking academic, I began my fieldtrip in Banni in 2007. Although the region s interaction with media was not my immediate concern, one of the first conversations (appearing later in this paper ) provided a hint of complexities that surround the reception of media in the region. The larger project encompasses seeing how this remote part of the Kutch district in Gujarat forms civilizational unities with what I call the composite West, the regions of Sindh,
Western Gujarat and parts of Rajasthan so that the castes, the songs and stories defy in their continuity the division of nations and linguistic states in India. From then on, I also go on to examine how the cattle-breeding communities of Banni defy the rigidity of physical borders by using their cellphones, radios, televisions and contacts to visit physically and mentally the so-called enemy state of Pakistan. The ubiquitous nature of oral tradition in Banni formed by the cultural memory of Sufi songs and stories forms yet another block of investigation in my project, and that shapes in very concrete ways the production and consumption of media there. While one of the few ways in which the men of this hostile and isolated region connect with the global modernity of the nation-state is through cellphones, the women of Banni are forbidden from consumption of media. They produce the stories of their lives and surroundings through embroidery and bring to the region the prestige of art generally associated with Kutch, but remain deprived of television and cellphone. I will discuss the contexts of this parhez (abstinence) processed in Banni through contexts of Islamic reform as well as Sindhi identity. Another fascinating aspect of this region which has over 90 % Muslims, is the small but entrepreneurial group of Meghwals. The Meghwals are a marginalized group in the Hindu caste system, what were formerly called untouchables. However, their business in leather and embroidery has made very successful players in the market economy, and they also account for the largest consumption of media in Banni. My own interaction with Banni began by coming in touch with its most literate person, Musa Mutwa (name changed) whose fiction on Banni written in Sindhi was introduced to me as the only example of rural literature available in the Sindhi language. Musa is the
most educated person in the region of Banni which has a population of over 30, 000 people. Given the fact that almost no woman in Banni has gone to school beyond grade three and save two (apart from Musa), no man beyond grade 7, Musa enjoys the most special privilege. He runs an organization to teach children to read and write in Sindhi, because the medium of instruction in the schools is Gujarati, a language the people of Banni find alien. My conversation with Musa was to explore the linguistic and transborder contexts that surround his creative act; however, what struck me in the process of talking with him was the response he brought to media, a strand that has increasingly become important in my understanding of that region. In our first meeting he began by narrating to me one of his short stories, Aftershock. Written in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Kutch of 2001, the story began by describing how such life-threatening events take place when women become unfaithful, and the devils inhabiting sources of entertainment such as television allure people away from Allah. In trying to understand where such views came from, I discovered from Musa that his community followed the Islamic reform movement of the Ah-le-Hadis which prohibited its followers from consuming and producing entertainment through music, dance and poetry. A substream of Sunni Islam, Ah le Hadis emphasizes the supremacy of the reports about the statements or action of the Prophet Mohammed. Importantly for us, at least in the region of Banni, it sets apart those who sing and celebrate the sufi poetry inherited from Sindhi culture, from those who attempt to fashion themselves as proper Muslims. Incidentally Musa had returned from a conference on Sindhi literature, where his fellow Sindhi writers from Pakistan had given him copies of Sufi poetry. This conversation led to a series of meetings with different communities to help locate the various contexts in Banni that govern the reception and generation of media, the field-notes of these will be shared through my presentation. References: Apter, Emily. 2006. The Translation Zone. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press
Kothari, R (2007) The Burden of Refuge : The Sindhi Hindus of Gujarat, Orient Blackswan, New Delhi. Kothari, R. (May, 2007b). Diffusing polarizations: Language and translation at the time of the Gujarat riots. Transversal. Retrieved May 2007, from http://translate.eipcp.net/transversal/1107/kothari/en