Shiptown. Ann Grodzins Gold

Bhoju Ram Gujar’s three daughters, two of whom are coproducers of this book. You could say I suspended my fieldwork, or you could say I was more intensely engaged than during any other time period. When the date was first set, the family was undecided as to whether the wedding would be held in the brides’ home village of Ghatiyali (my former fieldwork site and Bhoju’s birthplace), or in Jahazpur, where most of the family currently resided. I remained a neutral listener while different persons advocated for different venues. Grandma really wanted the village; the girls were rooting for Jahazpur with their collective if modestly muted might. They knew that in the end the choice of location, just like the choice of bridegrooms, would be Papa’s, not theirs, and Papa would do what was best. When it finally was settled that it would be a town wedding, town elements, costly ones too, were incorporated into it. I intuited, but never heard expressed in words, that the decision was based in part on the young women’s wishes, in part on the prudence of avoiding certain difficult relatives in Ghatiyali, and in part on the ways that town life had genuinely transformed this family’s aspirations.

      The market, of course, is the paradigmatic meeting place of town and country. Vegetables come in from villages, as do shoppers whose needs, from blue jeans to tractors, are served by town tradespeople. In Chapter 8, the last substantial chapter of Shiptown, I finally arrive at its (mercenary) heart. Arguably, I might have come to the market immediately following Chapter 2: every gate, after all, leads to or from its central space. As periphery, Santosh Nagar depends on the center; if there were no qasba, there would be no colony. However, my choice to retreat in Chapter 3 to Santosh Nagar (thus to gender, to domesticity) was reasoned and deliberate. Shopping lists begin at home.

      When in Chapter 4 we look at the carefully negotiated routes of religious processions and the defining, peace-producing fear of danga (riots) as bad for dhandha (business), we of course traverse the market streets and listen attentively to shopkeepers’ concerns. Pluralism is as much or more a by-product of commercial life as it is of peace committees. We begin to apprehend that the priorities of having a peaceful environment for buying and selling was a large component of the “good-feeling” (sadbhavana) process. Moreover, shopping stimulates integration across religious communities: even modest young Hindu women will venture into a Muslim shop (for example, Gaji Pir Gota Center) in search of sparkling trim, if the variety and quality of selection is, after all, the best in town.

      The intricately intertwined histories of nonviolent Jain merchants and Minas as farmers/soldiers—presented in Chapter 5 as crucial to contemporary Jahazpur society and politics—also importantly underlies market transactions. In the market, most shopkeepers spoke fondly if somewhat patronizingly of Mina customers, who account for a huge percentage of their trade and were regularly characterized as ever eager to buy the latest fashion. Finery-loving Minas pit their wits against merchants determined to empty their pockets. How might this resonate with goat-sacrificing Minas possessing access to the dangerous power and potent blessings of the non-vegetarian goddess who requires respect from vegetarian Jains? These stereotypical roles seem set in an eternal dance in which each plays their part with vehemence and an underlying awareness, I am pretty sure, of the scripted nature of their interactions.

      The refreshingly secular self-help “Save the Nagdi” cleanup team, invoked at the close of Chapter 6, emerged a few years after my fieldwork concluded and includes Hindu, Jain, and Muslim shopkeepers. The salient term here is shopkeepers; religious identities seem to lack relevance. I by no means intend to imply that religious identities are not important in the qasba; the accelerated proliferation of processions and construction projects among all Jahazpur’s religious groups depends heavily on donations from businesspeople—donations that depend in turn on profit, that is, on surplus. However, alliances can and do form across religious difference on the basis of improving the atmosphere and reputation of the market; an improved market enhances resources available to fund separate religious projects.

      As Chapter 7 will highlight, to point to the commercialization of items used in wedding rituals may epitomize apparently trivial but cumulatively consequential aspects of urbanization, especially for those traveling on the slow passage by “ship” from rural to urban. These ritual props are not terribly costly, but with apparently increasing sales volume they seem to add up to worthwhile business opportunities. I don’t know what percentage of business in Jahazpur is generated by weddings or more broadly by life cycle ritual celebrations. Festivals such as Diwali and Id were mentioned by every purveyor of cloth and clothing as highlights of the business year. Still, it would not surprise me if the commerce stimulated by weddings were calculated to be equivalent to the staggering proportion of sales dependent on Christmas in the USA. Just that protracted cloth-giving ritual, the mayro, means many thousands of rupees to dealers in cloth, as merchants emphasized in our interviews. The sellers of silver and gold ornaments could hardly stay afloat without the trade generated by gifts at weddings and requisite dowry items. In addition, think of the sweet makers, the tent house at the bus stand that rents out all kinds of hospitality necessities, the light decoration people, even the tailors. Weddings in general are vital to a healthy market in many different areas.

      If the trees brought me bodily to Jahazpur, at the time I saw the town only as a blob adjacent to the hilltop. What eventually drew my mind into investigating Jahazpur as place were the legends naming it a pitiless land. As they initially provoked the research on which this book is based, I begin with these tales.

      PART I

      Origins, Gateways, Dwellings,

      Routes, Histories

      Chapter 1

      Legends

      Of Names, Snakes, and Compassion

      They say that on a dark night in the month of Asharh, at the start of the monsoon, a chieftain of Tughlaq, Saiyid Masood Ghazi, crossed the swollen Ganga and attacked Gadipuri. Accordingly, the town changed its name from Gadipuri to Ghazipur. The roads are the same, the lanes too, and the houses—just the name changed. Perhaps names are outer shells which can be changed. There is no unbreakable bond between names and identity, because if there were then Gadipuri too should have changed when it became Ghazipur. (Reza 2003:4)¹

      Like Ghazipur which was once Gadipuri, as my epigraph taken from Reza’s novelistic memoir of another qasba explains, Jahazpur also experienced a name change of which it is fully conscious. But while Jahazpur’s name change is associated with a period of history—“Mughal times”—it differs from Ghazipur’s in that no specific ruler or event precipitated the transformation. Moreover, at least until very recently, Jahazpur’s name was locally meaningful only in its provocation of curiosity. Jahazpur is a landlocked place, and a town by definition is set on the ground; so why “Shiptown”?²

      On a brief revisit to Jahazpur in 2013 I had one short encounter with a young and visionary Jain nun, an outsider who had taken up residence there in the wake of a miracle (see the Epilogue). She showed me a poster with her design for a new temple to be built on the outskirts of town.³ The temple would have the form of a stylized ship so that, as she expressed it to me, people from elsewhere would come to distinguish this special place, would learn, easily recognize, and recollect its name. This Jain nun’s design and her vision marked the singular instance of reference I ever heard in Jahazpur to the literal meaning of the town’s name, and of course it comes from someone who arrived from some other place. The name does indeed have a story, or stories, but the stories have nothing to do with