Revisiting “Being Ram”

This chapter is based on an autobiographical reassessment of the author as she recalls her complex and problematic experience of playing the leading role of Sri Ram for a period of twenty-five years in a modern dance-drama production titled Seeta Swayambara produced by the Uday Shankar India Culture Centre in Kolkata. Not only does the author deal with the challenge of playing a “male” role, which required her to capture the appropriate demeanor and gait of a Hindu Kshatriya prince, she also focuses on the more difficult proposition of being perceived as a “god” by a spectrum of viewers, particularly at a time when the image of Ram was being used for communal and fundamentalist purposes. Of critical importance here is the role of agency: Do dancers have any say in a critical representation of male gods? And do they have any freedom to decide where and for whom they should perform?

Islam and Science

One may wonder why the author wrote this book. In his own words:The germ of the idea grew from a lecture which the Lahore EducationSociety invited me to deliver in May 1984 on the subjectof Islam and Science. Those were bad times for the country ingeneral, and academics in particular ... numerous charlatans andsycophants, responding to the regime's rhetoric of Islamization,had seized the reins of society and set for themselves the task of"Islamizing" everything in sight, including science. (p. xiii)and, on his own secular and anti-Islamic attitudes:Indeed the last section of this book is a reprint entitled "TheyCall It lslamic Science." This is an exposition and critique thatwas inspired by the First International Conference of ScientificMiracles of the Holy Qur'an and Sunnah, organized in Islamabadby the International Islamic University during the time of GeneralZia. Originally published as an article in the Pakistani monthlymagazine "Herald" (January 1988), it drew vituperation and abusefrom proponents of the new so-called "Islamic Science." (p. xiv)Thus the question: Can the author deal competently with such an interdisciplinarysubject? According to Hoodbhoy:I wish to state wiequivocally that I have no illusions and makeno claims to mastery over the subject of this book, Islam and science,or even of the philosophy of science. It was quite unwillingly,and with considerable trepidation, that I embarked ona project so far removed from my field of professionalconcern-particle and nuclear physics ... I would have preferredsomeone with a professional interest to have done this jobinstead, but it seemed unwise to wait indefinitely for it to happen ...