NOTES TO PAGES 430–39- The form of this story is an ancient one, for instance, in the epic depictions of Sita and
Draupadi in theRamayanaand theMahabharata. The movement of this story to a new register, in
which it becomes a state obligation to recover abducted women, is, however, a new way of anchor-
ing the state to the mythological imagination. For an analysis of the movements of gift and counter-
gift, marriage and abduction, in the stories, see Veena Das, ‘‘Narrativizing the Male and the Female
in Tulasidas’s Ramacharitamanasa,’’ inSocial Structure and Change:Ritual and Kinship, vol. 5, ed.
A. M Shah, B. S. Baviskar, and E. Ramaswamy (Delhi: Sage Publications, 1998), 67–93. - All quotes involving this discussion are fromProceedings of the Indian National Congress
1946–1947(New Delhi: Government of India, 1947). - Khosla,Stern Reckoning, 234.
- Rajashree Ghosh, ‘‘The Constitution of Refugee Identity,’’ M.Phil. dissertation, University
of Delhi, 1991. - Kamlabehn Patel,Mula Suta Ukhledan(Bombay: R. R. Seth & Co.,1985).
- Later chapters in the book from which this essay has been excerpted, Veena Das,Life and
Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006),
show the specific ways in which stories were framed in the first person and especially the place of
silence in the ‘‘telling.’’ Here I am interested in the logic of the state of exception with regard to
how law was instituted to shape the nation as amasculinenation, so that the social contract became
a contract between men conceived as heads of households. - This and the following quotations from these discussions are taken fromConstituent As-
sembly of India (Legislative) Debates(New Delhi: Government of India, 1949). - The mythic motif of the abduction of the innocent Sita by Ravana and her subsequent
banishment by Rama was evoked as a metaphor in popular literature as well as in popular Hindi
films. - Veena Das, ‘‘Sexual Violation and the Making of the Gendered Subject,’’ inDiscrimination
and Toleration, ed. K. Hastrup and G. Urlich (London: Kluwer Law International, 2002), 271. - The text of the Abducted Persons (Recovery and Restoration) Act 1949 is reproduced as
Appendix 1 in Menon and Bhasir,Borders and Boundaries. - On the relative weight given to men and women in the procreative process in Punjabi
kinship, see Veena Das, ‘‘Masks and Faces: An Essay on Punjabi Kinship, ‘‘Contrib. to Ind. Soc., n.s.
(1976 [1]): 1–30. A vast literature in anthropology shows how theories of procreation codify ideolo-
gies of kinship. Much of this was published in the late sixties and early seventies under the category
of the ‘‘virgin birth debate.’’ As an example, see Edmund Leach, ‘‘Virgin Birth,’’Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland(1996): 39–49. - In an astute analysis of sexual violence and the creation of public memory in the Bangla-
desh Liberation War of 1971, Nayanika Mookherjee shows the subtle changes in the nature of
reproductive (in addition to sexual) violence against women. She points out that one of the pur-
ported reasons for violence against Bengali women by Pakistani soldiers was to improve the genes
of the Bengali people and to populate Bangladesh with a race of ‘‘pure’’ Muslims. This eugenic ring
was completely absent in the case of Hindu-Muslim violence and shows that the image of Hinduized
Muslims could be mobilized for hate in the Bangladesh Liberation War. Thus creation of boundaries
is part of the shifting discourses of community rather than something pregiven and held in perpetu-
ity. See Nayanika Mookerjee, ‘‘ ‘A Lot of History’: Sexual Violence, Public Memories, and the Ban-
gladesh Liberation War of 1971,’’ Ph.D. Dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London, 2002. - I owe this insight to the important work of P. K. Dutta and Charu Gupta.
- See Veena Das, ‘‘Secularism and the Argument from Nature,’’ inThe Powers of the Secular
Modern: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors, ed. David Scott and Charles Hirschkind (Stanford: Stan-
PAGE 751751.................16224$ NOTE 10-13-06 12:34:26 PS