Voices of Desire: (Re)negotiating Sexuality in a Cultural Space

The Bhojpuri speaking community in India can be found along eastern Uttar Pradesh, western Bihar, northern Chhattisgarh and parts of Jharkhand. In the Bhojpuri speaking community, Jhumar songs are songs sung at weddings at both the bride and groom’s house. These songs are not ritual specific. The songs are replete with sexual references. They create a safety valve for women who are otherwise restricted to express themselves in the patriarchal world. One of the most secular form of songs, in Jhumar songs, a woman’s body becomes the site of desires. She gives voice to her individual desires instead of the gendered aspirations. In these songs, the identity of a woman is of a lover, who is aware of her sexual and material needs.  In these songs, the common themes portrayed are of illicit relationship between a younger brother-in-law and sister-in-law, relationship of love between a husband and wife which transgress beyond the marital responsibilities. In this paper, I attempt to analyze songs as a way to foreground women’s experiences of the social and cultural realities. By embedding the songs within the micro politics of kinship and sexuality, I attempt to locate desire in the women’s world and how the meaning of desire changes in different situations in the familial context and how songs become a tool for women to bargain with and resist patriarchal control and express themselves based on ethnographic work conducted in Ghazipur situated in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Buxar which is situated in Western Bihar.