Sheila Jasanoff, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, speaks to TNM about the need for Science and Technology Studies, policy playing catch-up with the progress of science, data collection in democracies and more.
It’s widely accepted in India that humanities and social sciences isn’t given the same due as sciences. But the two still are linked, and the implications of humanities on the sciences are rarely studied. Here’s where Science and Technology Studies comes in.
An academic field that sits at the intersection of these fields, it looks at how science and technology emerged from society, how it shapes society, what the risks are, etc. In a nutshell, it looks at understanding the relationship between science, politics, societal challenges and law and policy. A pioneer of the field, Sheila Jasanoff, a Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School, speaks to TNM about the origins of the field and the need for one, policy playing catch-up with the progress of science, data collection in democracies and more.
Sheila, who is originally from India, says that human values are at the centre of science. “In the US, STS has grown hand in hand with engineering, which hasn’t been the case in India,” she says.
The origins of STS, Sheila says, was in the late 1960s as part of the youth turmoil and rebellion against the Vietnam War. “By the late 1990s, it begins to be institutionalised in lots of universities. Now, one of my particular interests is both to try to understand why STS is so unknown in India and to try to counteract it,” she says. This, given India’s current situation, makes for an interesting case, she adds.
A social scientist, Sheila says that science is a very forgetful discipline when it comes to its own mistakes, but has — especially in biology — acquired a degree of authority where “everyone turns to the inventor of any new technology for ethical prescriptions and dispensations for which they have zero competence,” she says. This was something she even addressed in her book, Can Science Make Sense of Life?
On policymaking
When one talks about the intersection of science & technology and policy & law, a common assumption is that policymaking plays catch-up with science. Disagreeing with this assumption, she says there often is policy, but science runs ahead because nobody has bothered to check. Similarly, Sheila says many things are not standardised, and science often has human bias also built into it, which should have been addressed.
“Why are we still using a system that in a way perpetuates gender inequality in the bowels of a machine? You need an army of people like me in all countries of the world who are studying these technological systems in a critical way to then say that policy is not because we decided to let private companies build their machines and we didn't standardise them. That’s policy too. Not having a policy is also policy, and much of what we see in the tech world today has grown in a vacuum of policy. In a sense, we created a world in which it looks like policy is playing catch up,” she says.
On governments using technology
Just as she says a system of policy playing catch up has been created, she asks, “One of the astonishing stories about India is the rapidity with which the Aadhaar system was introduced, and more than a billion people signed up. Was there a nationwide debate about any of the social dimensions — like the error proneness of the system. If you've been denied something, how does that feedback into the system? What does that do to your credibility if you're operating with a card that's been denied?”
Technology and surveillance are not things that are an uncommon part of human history, and she says that one must not be surprised that governments will use technology to whatever their ends of the moment are.
“But how you hold them accountable then is a deeply political issue. It will not be acted upon unless people become aware of the levels at which something called the ‘political’ can get built in,” she says, citing the example of research on facial recognition software in the USA, which has shown that white faces are recognised better than black faces.
“In order to understand modernity and the kind of societies that we live in now, we have to go back and understand quite deeply all the different levels at which our technological systems have social assumptions built into them. We are so seduced by the promises of the digital now that we attribute a kind of smartness to the mere act of digitising but the smartness is in the designer,” she says.
She adds that because it's in the designing of the system, the values and biases get built in already. By the time one gets the black box of the engineered object, it becomes very complicated, she says.
On data protection
While Sheila admits that she hasn’t studied the Indian data protection bill in detail, she says, “My first cynical question would be protection for whom and against what. Is it protecting people in power so that they can use the data without accounting for it?”
There is precedent for what happens when the state controls data, she adds, but says that concern about data protection at large didn’t exist till private companies started messing up on a colossal scale.
“The Indian government perfectly recognises the power of data, and it's not minded to let other people have control of it and certainly not citizens themselves. I think that for public interest lawyers, this is an extraordinarily important moment in which to recognize that the bland word, data, is really a stand-in for civil rights in every sense,” she says.
“This is an area that we're walking into with our eyes not open and we just need to act and not just get railroaded into positions that will become very hard to undo when and if they're already in law,” she adds.
Furthermore, Sheila says that in order for people to look up and take notice, putting it to them in a different manner could make a difference, especially with regard to tech companies and how much data they collect.
“Getting people to see just how much of the technological world is outside of their control, but it could be in their control, is one of the big lessons of democracy. “Women go on marches and say Take Back the Night. I think technology in a democracy is a form of night and we need to take it back,” she says.
'Biryani power': Meet the Hyderabad man selling 'dakhni' t-shirts and merchandise
The merchandise includes T-shirts which say 'Biryani power', 'Beware of sarcasm, born Hyderabadi' and even gems like 'Apan Hyderabadi hai, apne se calm or kaam dono nahi hota'.
'Sab bolo meko kaam nakko bolo’ ,‘Lite le Baap’ ,‘Baigan ko bolo’, ‘Ek to apan Hyderabadi, upar se kiraak’, ‘Apan tension lete nai, dete’.
While these phrases may seem strange to a non-Hyderabadi reader, these are common parlance and typical taglines used in the day to day life of the people of Hyderabad, especially from the Old City. The Dakhni (Deccani) catchphrases are distinctive and have been used in different ways for a long time in the city. Dakhni is a unique form and descendant of the Urdu language.
A youngster hailing from Hyderabad, 28-year-old Syed Saif, is trying to promote the language and culture in a unique manner through his business.
A graphic designer by profession, Saif has designed merchandise like T-shirts, mugs, paintings and other items with these taglines and is selling them online under the 'Being Hyderabadi' brand.
A sample of the slogans on his T-shirts: 'Biryani power', 'Beware of sarcasm, born Hyderabadi', 'Chai in my veins' and even gems like 'Apan Hyderabadi hai, apne se calm or kaam dono nahi hota'.
Speaking to TNM, Saif says, “A few years ago, I visited Comic Con India in Hyderabad where I got the idea to support and extend these taglines of the language differently and uniquely. Dakhni has a certain depth as a language, and its phrases are very unique."
Since he started selling the products in 2014, Saif says that his main customers have been youngsters working in the city, and several Non-Resident Indians (NRIs).
"Many Hyderabadi youngsters who work in the Gulf and other foreign countries miss the the local language of Hyderabad; the language which they were taught in the lap of their mothers is imprinted in their minds. They are attracted towards the idea of T-shirts with the dialect as it has a rich and extensive literary heritage," he says.
In 2014, Saif's love for Dakhni made him set up a stall in Comic Con. The idea was new and it worked. With the success of the stall, he decided to begin selling his merchandise online.
“Dakhni has become a source of business for me. Since I launched the 'Being Hyderabadi' e-store, several people have bought the merchandise and this makes me very happy," he says.
Another big customer base for Saif, are the techies working in the city's Information Technology (IT) sector.
“Techies working in the MNCs near Hitech City, Gachibowli, Madhapur and other areas like this concept as it is new for them. The response is positive. I think much more should be done to promote our language," Saif says.
Mohd Suleman, one of Saif's customers, says, "We Hyderabadis love the language and its uniqueness as it has a rich heritage. That's why I love the idea of wearing the catchphrases and slang on my t-shirt with pride."
Wajeed Ullah Khan is a Hyderabad-based freelance journalist who writes predominantly on the issues surrounding Old City. He can be contacted at wuk040@gmail.com
Kshetrayya and the legacy of erasing women’s voices from erotic poetry
The writer remembers the women whose sexual desires and words were repressed behind a man’s identity.
While the right wing Bajrang Dal's Valentine's Day plans get preposterous year by year, let us measure such societal anxiety about the erotic, against the nuanced role it had in the lives of our ancestors.
Caress her nipples with your fingertips. Don't crush.
Make love very very gently.
Don't be wild…
Is this a para from a modern erotica? No. These are lines from Radhika Santvanamu (Penguin Translations) by Muddupalani who was in the court of Maratha ruler Pratapa Simha (18th century, Tanjavur) where Radha instructs Krishna’s new bride. Tamil country’s literary history, starting from Sangam poetry, to works of Bhakti poets like Nammalvar, Manivachagar, Andal and later Annamayya are filled with ideas of the sensual. Bharatanatyam, like some other forms, has cleverly managed to keep the token umbilical cord to the courtesan performing traditions of erotic poetry, through either sanitising them or exaggerating them.
Friend, tell me, who is more wicked, he or I?
When lustily I jump on top
and pound his chest
with my pointed nipples, he says
“That girl Kanakangi is very good at this.”
I slap him hard with all five fingers.
Now tell me, who is more wicked?
(When God is a Customer, Translations by A. K. Ramanujan, V. Narayana Rao & David Shulman)
Credit: Gyana Prakash Collection
The above padam was written by a well-known composer-Kshetrayya. Or was it? The new emerging knowledge that deconstructs Kshetrayya and declassifies padams that were pinned on him and on Madhura Bhakti (devotional love), will increase the existential anxiety of the culture guardians, particularly the dance world.
In a padam such as this, the actual sublimity is in its openness in speaking of desire. The gestures and movements used by the courtesan women were highly nuanced yet subtle. Besides, as skilled musicians they often sang the pieces themselves, making its exposition one of great artistry. But, with the 21st century burgeoning a version of Bharatanatyam that is hyper calisthenic, divorcing the dancer from music on the one hand, yet using every faculty under its wing from dramatic stage lighting, tighter costumes, husky voice overs in English, to sensual eye makeup replete with fake eyelashes, accentuating the dancer’s body, end up highlighting the erotic import of the padams. Hypocritically, while doing so, the dancer is separated carefully from the dance. The brahminical dancer of today, by merely alluding to a “universal union” of the soul to the divine (Jeevathma and Paramathma) as the underscoring theme of the padam, gets away with drawing attention to her/his own physicality, allowing themselves to be objectified but without the moral judgement weighted in by the poetry performed.
Kshetrayya was from the court of Nayaka Kings of Tamil country. Atleast 300 odd padams of his survive. Each draws a vivid sketch of the sensual pleasures enjoyed by lovers, capricious unions, and exciting lovemaking positions. Kshetrayya under the nation-state production got repositioned as a Bhakti-poet by the Telugu nationalists. He was picturized as a pious, non-sexual poet, whose only contact with the world of sensual bodily desire was through his fertile imagination. CR Reddy wrote of him, “I half suspect that he was not sensual in conduct. The imaginative abhor the real.” As scholars V Narayana Rao and David Shulman observe, both Telugu and Tamil elite recast literature and performance as national identities, fit to be preserved and pursued by respectable upper caste people, by making such apologist arguments for the erotic content.
Because these padams formed a major part of Sadir dance repertoire, people like advocate E Krishna Iyer, in the 20th century, carefully sieved them as noteworthy for their musicality but unsuitable for the “respectable family girls” to perform. This hardly met any opposition because these erotic poems connected dance to its original custodians, the Devadasis. At a time when huge public referendums on Devadasi’s morality were held, these served only as further examples to point to her moral depravity. As art transitioned into the hands of high caste Hindu women, they wanted as little as possible of its eroticism, which they believed, best suited the Devadasi’s risqué personality. Hence, women like Rukmini Devi readily censored most of these padams from the repertoire, claiming she had no taste for them.
Credit: Narthaki.com
But upon closer study of the life of Kshetrayya and the several hagiographies surfacing in the 19th and 20th centuries, Harshita Mruthinti Kamath, (Emory University) makes an explosive argument that questions the very existence of a historical figure called Kshetrayya! She points to the lack of historical information about him from the Nayaka literary sources. Kshetrajna, the Sanskritised version of the name finds mention only after about two hundred years post his lifetime, in a work on traditions of music. Harshita carefully traces every legend that claims Kshetrayya’s birth and life that reshaped his history. As part of the Telugu language reform, people like Sriramamurti and Kandukuri Viresalingam began censoring the erotic content in Telugu corpus by omitting the Padam, thus Kshetrayya all together from the literary genre, until he was reclaimed by the likes of Rallapalli Anantakrishna Sarma, Vissa Appa Rao and others who recast him as a Telugu poet, albeit not in his courtly avatar, but as a wandering saint-poet who sang erotic compositions in praise of deities.
But the most explosive argument she makes is that, Kshetrayya was a figment of revivalist imaginations and that the large corpus of erotic padams that reflect deep knowledge of a woman’s psyche and express freely her sexual desires were written by an assortment of courtesan women of the period. She does not however delve into the possible names of poetesses and courtesans, which I endeavor to do. In my research of the Nayaka period dance repertoires, I studied several works by courtesans who were erudite. For example, in the court of Raghunatha Nayaka were Ramabhadramba, Madhuravani, Krishnatvari and others. During the reign of Vijayaraghava Nayaka thrived Pasupuleti Rangajamma who wrote prolifically in eight languages alongside Krishnajamma, Candrarekha, Rupavati, Lokanayaki, Bhagyarati and others. Many of them composed padams which portrayed relationships; emotional, physical and social between the female lover and her deity / King / customer. Another compelling evidence one is able to add to Harshita’s conclusion is that, among the Nayaka period repertoires, there was one Nava padamulu. Nava to mean new, contemporary padams by a variety of composers, were performed in the court every day. Several of the “now attributed to Kshetryya” padams debuted there, through the courtesan voice and never in that of a Kshetrayya’s.
However, given that a poet named Kshetra/Cashatreya/Kshetrya features in various sources between 18th and 19th centuries, one can assume that there might have been a poet Kshetrya in Vijayaraghava Nayaka’s court. But let us not forget that Ramabhadramba, Rangajamma, Madhuravani and later Muddupalani and Nagaratnammal fall in the long line of audacious female figures from literary history, who wrote of the sensual pleasures and female sexual desires in an unabashed manner. More importantly, they did so in a society whose culture found nothing debased about sexual desire. The non-kshatriya ruling class of Nayaka Kings, celebrated these erotic poems as reflective of their championing every realm of desire to live and conquer.
But 19th and 20th century Tamil country was drastically different. Through a collective of brahmin saviours, social reformers, nationalists and Sanskritists, the agency of the courtesan; body and voice were systemically suppressed. The construction of a “male” poet Kshetrayya through whose pen women seemed like exotic creatures epitomising excessive sexual delight, was a product of the complementing processes of colonialism and patriarchy.
What do we do with Kshetrayya now?
The fact that the erotic padams were not only performed by courtesans but also authored by them is bound to acidify the pit of the stomachs of dancers and moral polices. Women composers suggesting sexual promise, untiring sensuality, unlimited desire (to borrow the words of Edward Said), will elicit a complex response; a threat, a frightening self-discovery, in a society that devalued these women within inherent brahminical cultures and Victorian values that made assumptions about the promiscuous exotic Devadasi/courtesan.
As Said says of Orientalism, here too the forces discovered a way to clothe, disguise, rarefy, and wrap the padam in a shroud of virtuous masculine voice as a desperate attempt to hide the woman’s voice which ferociously articulated her sexual desires. Are we prepared to hear these padams in its original, female, liberated tone, sans the undercover of discipline, rationality, utilitarian value and knowledge of divinity?
I agree with Bajrang Dal’s plan of celebrating today as Martyrs day. The courtesans, who represented a society that wasn’t afraid of desire and sex, whose courage of free expression of the self was viciously muted behind a man’s identity, are martyrs in an India that threatens to shame and lynch anyone who expresses desire. Never mind that pornography is a leading industry, women/ girls are raped by juveniles and reduced to mere bodies in this country.
Dr. Swarnamalya Ganesh is a dancer and dance-historian whose work looks at the plural histories of performance in late medieval and early modern South India. She is an Assistant Professor of Practice at Krea University and Director, Ranga Mandira Academy.
Views expressed are the author's own.
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