Invitation

Time continues to fly

I'm still waiting

Uninvited

like unwanted roots sprouting in rain 

Our meeting venue always offers me

an envelope full of your fragrance—my invitation

___________________

21.01.2025

Rahul Khandelwal

अन्वेषणयात्रा

"सार्वभौमिक सत्य की तलाश में अंतहीन यात्रा

कामयाब होने का दावा इसे खोखला कर देगा"

गर जो गौर से देखो

तो सीमित नहीं है नज़र तुम्हारी

स्त्रोत हो तुम उन सभी अनुभूतियों का

जो सबके हिस्ते आती हैं

बशर्ते

कि तुम सहानुभूति रख सकने की मानवीय प्रवृत्ति को

ख़त्म न होने दो

'दुःख' एक का होकर भी

सिर्फ़ उसका ही नहीं रहता

साझा हो जाती है मिल्कियत उसकी

पीड़ाओं को रिसने दो

आंसुओं से पवित्र कुछ नहीं संसार में

दुःख की अनुभूतियों में

सार्वभौमिक सत्य की ओर ले चलने की क्षमता होती हैं

___________________

03.01.2026

Rahul Khandelwal

Book launch event of Gyanendra Pandey's Men at Home: Imagining Liberation in Colonial and Postcolonial Indi

Book launch of 'Men at Home' in New Delhi. From left to right: Gyanendra Pandey, Mallarika Sinha Roy, Projit B. Mukharji, Mridula Garg. (Photo source: The Wire)

"𝑶𝒏𝒆 𝒊𝒔 𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒅 '𝑳𝒆𝒈𝒂𝒄𝒊𝒆𝒔,' 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒊𝒔 𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒅 '𝑷𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒆𝒔,' 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒊𝒔 𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒅 '𝑯𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒊𝒏 𝒂 𝑽𝒊𝒔𝒄𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒍 𝑹𝒆𝒈𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓.' 𝑨𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 '𝑯𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒊𝒏 𝒂 𝑽𝒊𝒔𝒄𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒍 𝑹𝒆𝒈𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓' 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒊𝒎𝒑𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒎𝒆. 𝑩𝒆𝒄𝒂𝒖𝒔𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒅𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒓𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒅𝒐. 𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒅𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒓𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒐𝒓𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒗𝒂𝒍𝒖𝒆𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒂 𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒔𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒕𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕. 𝑭𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕, 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒅𝒐 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒈𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆𝒔; 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒑𝒂𝒚 𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒔𝒆 𝒈𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆𝒔, 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒃𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒂𝒓𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒗𝒆. 𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒃𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒚 𝒈𝒆𝒕 𝒂 𝒍𝒐𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒘𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒏𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒏. 𝑨𝒏𝒅 𝒔𝒐, 𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒏𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒐𝒐𝒌 𝑰 𝒔𝒂𝒚, 𝒍𝒆𝒕'𝒔 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌. 𝑴𝒐𝒔𝒕 𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒉𝒂𝒔 𝒃𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒏 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒎 𝒐𝒇 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒍𝒅 𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚—𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒒𝒖𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒔, 𝒄𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒊𝒛𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒐𝒇 𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 ('𝒃𝒂𝒅𝒆 𝒍𝒐𝒈'), 𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒖𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒍 𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒐𝒍𝒖𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔, 𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒐𝒍𝒖𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒅𝒊𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒔, 𝒂𝒈𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒖𝒍𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒊𝒕 𝒊𝒔. 𝑻𝒉𝒐𝒔𝒆 𝒔𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒅𝒓𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒄 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒍𝒅 𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒔 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒅 𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚. 𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒆𝒏𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚𝒅𝒂𝒚? 𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒆𝒏𝒔 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚 𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒍𝒆 𝒅𝒂𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆? 𝑸𝒖𝒊𝒕𝒆 𝒐𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒏 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒉𝒐𝒎𝒆 𝒘𝒆 𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒅- 𝒊𝒕'𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆. 𝑻𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚? 𝑨𝒏𝒅 𝒔𝒐, 𝑰 𝒂𝒔𝒌, 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒏𝒆𝒄𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒂𝒓𝒚 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒏𝒕? 𝑨𝒏𝒅 𝑰 𝒔𝒖𝒈𝒈𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚𝒅𝒂𝒚 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒍 𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒘𝒆 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒃𝒆 𝒕𝒓𝒚𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆," this is what Prof. Gyanendra Pandey said in his final argument while closing the speech at the book launch event.

Men at Home is a book about masculinity and conjugality, as well as it is a book about Indian modernity, nationalism, and society, as seen from the location of men inside the home. Pandey investigates how men across the subcontinent negotiate marriage, intimacy, and conjugality, and focuses on the implications of their ambiguous commitment to this critical part of their lives. The book has also underscored the inextricable intertwining of “World Historical” time, the time of the future, and “everyday” time, the time of the here and now. Perhaps it invites us thereby to reflect a little more carefully on what is classified as “necessary” (the thunder and lightning of “World Historical” events?) and what as “contingent” (the matter of survival and reproduction of the species, of companionship and care, and the accompanying drudgery of everyday domestic life?).

Mallarika Sinha Roy (Centre for Women's Studies, JNU), one of the panellists at the event, tells that Men at Home is an extraordinary book about ordinary life of ordinary people. The book lists men and women who have done quite a few amazing things in their lives. From the creation of the Indian modern through snapshots of family life and domesticity to the architectural speciality of being at home, it grows through the pages as practices of duty, dignity and discipline interlaced with the ways in which 20th century South Asian men thought about inhabiting domesticity, performed it, imagined it and wrote about it. Both caste and gender make Pandey's explorations into performing the selfhood of men richly textured. The ideation of home as a sanctuary from complexities of the public is more prevalent in elite aristocratic mansions or modest middle-class homes, while the working class basti or the Dalit huts in villages spilled into neighbourhoods in a much more obvious self-evident way.

A detail from the photograph of a wedding photo taken outside a police officer’s family home in northern India, December 1935, which is featured on the cover of the book 'Men at Home'. (Picture source: The Wire)

The distinction between ghar and bahir, the home and the world, the inner sanctum and the outside world, reflect the way the Indian modern evolved through its predecessor, the Indian feudal. And Pandey describes the 20th century modernity as feudal without feudalism. The obstinate residue of feudalism has been roundly criticized. The ideals of equal opportunity, dignity for all, independence and freedom of thought have been cited again and again as the bedrock of modern civilization. And yet, to quote from the book, the old regime lives on in the new or at any rate claims to. But it is important to recognise the fact that during the 20th century colonial India, the intelligentsia and political leaders including Gandhi, Nehru, Maulana Azad, Mohammad Ali Jauhar and others were receiving the modern ideas with a critical outlook.

Roy further admits that she hugely enjoyed reading through the performance of intimacies as narrated by Pandey's protagonists and the way he analyses them. Learning about Dhanpatarai Premchand's domestic life as someone who regularly helped at the kitchen, helped with child-rearing, but also kept a secret romantic affair from his beloved second wife is quite incredible. In the same way, the author of 'Ghumakkar Shastra,' Rahul Sankrityayan, whom I have known since childhood as the author of 'From Volga to Ganga,' admitted publicly in his dedication of his book 'Kanaila ki Katha' to Ram Dulari Devi, whom he had abandoned thoughtlessly, ruining her entire life.

Gyanendra Pandey is a historian and a founding member of the Subaltern Studies project.

Gyanendra Pandey (Historian) also emphasizes upon the significance of the vernacular literature and argues that there is a huge corpus of Indian writings in Hindi, in Punjabi, in Urdu, in Marathi which refers to the home and it's not being investigated because the home is associated with women and children. There's been absolutely phenomenally good works on this particular theme but it does not center the man in the home. He further argues that, "𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝑰 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒐𝒏𝒍𝒚 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒈𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 (𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒆 19𝒕𝒉 𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒚 𝒐𝒓 𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒍𝒚 20𝒕𝒉 𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒚, 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉 𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒑𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆) 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒂𝒍𝒔𝒐 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒐 𝒎𝒚 𝒈𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏, 𝒎𝒚 𝒄𝒐𝒉𝒐𝒓𝒕, 𝒎𝒚 𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒖𝒂𝒍 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒕𝒚. 𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒑𝒆𝒄𝒖𝒍𝒊𝒂𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒐𝒇 𝒂 𝒑𝒐𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍 𝒓𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒎 (𝒂𝒕 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒄𝒉 𝒘𝒆 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒊𝒎𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒚 𝒈𝒊𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒇𝒖𝒍 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆 𝒘𝒆𝒍𝒍) 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒂 𝒔𝒐𝒄𝒊𝒂𝒍 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒆𝒓𝒗𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒔𝒎 𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒄𝒉 𝒘𝒆 𝒅𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕."

Ashok Vajpeyi (Poet, critic, essayist, translator), another panellist, adds that such historiography is an important counterpoint to the historical euphoria that we have in the first place. Even in the historical writing, such themes have not been addressed or explored. He reads an excerpt from the book—What is surprising is that there is an almost camaraderie across religions, across communities, across social hierarchy of absence. The history of men in South Asian homes builds on an abundant, expanding, and still underutilized archive of autobiographies and memoirs, ethnographic accounts and fiction, detailing and commenting on the life in intimate space of family and home. The diverse histories illuminate something of the desired, expected, anticipated. In a word, lived experience of men and women in the modern Indian home and family. They capture something of the feel of marriage, intimacy, and togetherness, including the effects of the humiliating and constant assertion of gender, caste, and class power in domestic interactions. What surfaces once more is the modern middle-class male fantasy of a categorical division between the home and the world, the private realm of the family, and the public realm of world history.

Mridula Garg (Distinguished writer), another panellist, argues that Men at Home would as well be titled Women at Work. She traces the seeds of this in the Mahabharata itself. When Bhishma gave an unethical but judicially proper, correct, valid reply to Draupadi's futile or illegitimate wedding. Her question is famous. She asked, 'Did Dharmaraj use her as a wager? Before he waged and lost himself on the gambling board or was it afterwards?' Actually, whatever she asked or did not ask, that is the question we are all still asking. Do we have intrinsic value or do you have value only as maker or worker in a home? Fortunately, the women in Gyanendra's book are also asking the same question. She also criticizes the author by saying that he himself appears to be quite patriarchal when he chooses his protagonists as the latter has majorly chosen men. She raises and adds important questions—Did the women sacrifice their careers and passions to be prominently housewives and mothers and be acceptable in the canvas of patriarchy of their own choice and free will or was it the compulsion to fit into the pattern of that patriarchy? And argues that the interesting thing is that all these women, wives of eminent people wrote voluminous autobiographies, which featured mostly their husbands. It was only Kausalya Baisantri, in whose autobiography her husband played no part at all.

In the end, she quotes from the book where the author says, "In the end, what the women might have said is: Educators, educate yourselves— about the people, animals, and lives around you, and most of all about yourselves. For the thing men did not question at all, in their lives and activities in the domestic arena or the wider public domain, was their right to wander at will and thus fulfil their natural talents. They hardly pondered the historically produced self- image of men as necessarily complex, thinking, many- sided, and independent human beings: so self- evident, so natural that it remains pervasive, even though it is widely challenged today. The belief depended, critically, on the assumption that the “self- made man” is beholden to no one outside himself, least of all to wives and other “minor dependents” in an only- occasionally- visible domestic world. To investigate that image might have been a step too far, too risky for men — and for some women, too risky for society as they knew it."

Projit B. Mukharji (Department of History, Ashoka University), shares his apprehensions that much of the recent works on history are based almost completely on English language sources and argues that by marshalling both biographies and fiction, Pandey shows us how much we historians can learn by delving into those ignored treasures. Generally speaking, pan-Indian histories are easier to write when we write with the archive of the colonial state or the post-colonial state. By contrast, when we get into the rough and tumble of everyday life worlds, myriad differences of language, religion, caste and class serve to usually render the historical scale more specific. The use of the sources by the author made him raise some questions—in this kind of fluid movement from Upper Hindustan to Western India mostly, are all the homes the same? Is a Bengali home exactly the same as a home in the Punjab or a home in Maharashtra? Are there differences? Indeed, differences of caste and class are often explicitly talked about in the book but both these registers of difference too were articulated in ways that did not ground them in the region or the community per se. Another such register of difference that Prof. Banerjee acknowledged was of age. Questions of authority, as Pandey often fully acknowledges in the book, frequently operate at the intersection of gender, age, community, caste, etc. The book repeatedly shows us that even a woman who otherwise is quite disadvantaged as she grows older comes to acquire more power in the household. But the book left wondering about what exactly is age and how does it actually work to anchor domestic power. Ishita Pandey's recent book Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age does a wonderful job in teaching us that age is not a natural category. It is constituted at the intersections of cultural practices, knowledge regimes, and legal instruments. So, Projit raised questions that what age are these individuals writing their biographies? How does the actual age at which these are happening matter? And how do we understand age, ageing, and its intersection and its anchoring of domestic power were things that I wanted to know a little more, or I craved a little more of.

Prof. Gyanendra answered the questions raised by Projit and said that it's very important to note that, because statist histories are what we have been stuck with forever. And the question is how we write micro-histories and yet recognize that the micro-histories matter. Micro-histories will be specific, there's no question. But you will never be able to write a micro-history or a bunch of micro-histories, as in this case, with all the requirements as it were.

Men at Home is not a history of nation, state, and institutional politics—the well-established subjects of World History—viewed from an unusual vantage point. It is better seen as a history of ordinary life among ordinary people (with both phrases appearing under the sign of a question mark), told from the location of the home—or what I shall for convenience, in the interest of flexibility and in recognition of its uncertain boundaries, simply call domestic space in modern South Asia. If the changed perspective and object of inquiry say something about the limits of World History, or of what a richer world history might be—a history of how people lived, and what it felt like to live in their times and conditions—that is a welcome bonus.

 

Orient BlackSwan organized the launch of the book Men at Home: Imagining Liberation in Colonial and Postcolonial India by Gyanendra Pandey. The programme features a discussion with the author, chaired by Mallarika Sinha Roy, with panelists Ashok Vajpeyi, Mridula Garg, and Projit B. Mukharji. It was held on Friday, 12 December at the India International Centre, New Delhi.

Rahul Khandelwal and Maaz Rashid are PhD Research Scholars in the Department of History and Culture at Jamia Millia Islamia.