Harmony Siganporia

1. Coding ‘Woman’
Patanjali and the Problem of
Modernity
Dr. Harmony Siganporia
MICA-India

2. Why Patanjali?
“Revenues at Patanjali Ayurveda multiplied fifteen times from Rs. 317
crore at the end of 2010–2011 to. . .Rs. 5000 crore in 2015–2016.
Ramdev declared this number would double by the end of 2016–2017. It
did – to a staggering Rs. 10,000 crore (approximately $1.6 billion) in May
2017.” (Pathak-Narain 2017, 2–3)
More importantly, given that Patanjali was among the biggest advertisers
in India in 2017 (Anand 2017), the brand has a direct and obvious stake
in expanding the reach of our ‘stories in common’ (Deshpande, 2003)

3. This means that men like Ramdev have a say in defining who the
‘modern’ Indian woman is.

4. “Modernity becomes a big deal because we are desperate to be, and to be
acknowledged as, modern; but at the same time we don’t want to be ‘too
modern’ or ‘only modern’ – we wish to be modern on our own terms, and we
are often unsure what these terms are or ought to be.”
(Deshpande, 2003)

5. ‘Woman' has long been coded by her other: think about the Nationalist movement; Parsi
theatre; the beginnings of Indian cinema
Meet the inimitable Bal
Gandharva, one of the
leading female
impersonators of his
time, upon whose
body the ‘ideal’ Indian
woman was grafted in
the early 20th century.
(Nadkarni, 1988)

6. Women were taken to the theatre to watch and learn from Bal Gandharva and Jaishankar ‘Sundari’ how to
perform the best versions of themselves; to drape a sari, look coy, conduct themselves in private and public
just so…

7. But what does modern/modernization mean to us, in a specifically Indian
context?
“In India, as in most of the non-Western world, the themes of modernization,
development, growth and progress were part of the much wider canvas of
the colonial encounter, particularly since the latter half of the 19th century.
They were woven into colonialist narratives of the white man’s
burden(…)and also into emergent nationalist narratives of the desire for
development thwarted by colonial oppression and economic drain.
In the heady aftermath of Indian independence, the idea of modernization
took on the dimensions of a national mission; it became an integral part of
the Nehruvian ‘tryst with destiny’ that the nation had pledged to keep.”
(Deshpande, 2003)

8. Semiotically speaking, meaning is constructed at three levels
(Scolari, 2008) :
- the deep or axiological level, where a ‘few abstract elements
relate to and oppose each other’ to create binaries which make
sense when read together
-the semio-narrative level, where these basic elements are
‘narrativized and organized into sequences’ outlining fundamental
characteristics
-the discursive level, where narrative sequences are thematized,
defined, and take on a specific character, when consumed
alongside each other

9. Swadeshi/Patriotic
National (a)
Local (not b) Anti-National (Not A)
International (b)
Cosmopolitan/Rootless
Getting at one of Patanjali’s core axiological values using a Greimasian square:
It becomes obvious that Patanjali eschews the International/Anti-National paradigm for their
National/Local positioning (‘Patriotic’ as opposed to ‘Cosmopolitan/Rootless’)

10. Patanjali’s other axiological truths, creating the ‘morally charged’ universe of the
brand’s meaning:
- ‘Enslaved’ economy Vs ‘Strong’ economy
-Rural (production) Vs Urban (consumption)
-Society (the collective) Vs Individual
-Homegrown (‘Swadeshi’) Vs Foreign-made
And, perhaps most importantly:
- ‘Natural’ Vs ‘Chemical’
These elements form the nucleus of Patanjali’s sense of itself

11. Natural Vs Chemical, developed as a semiotic square, would yield
‘Inorganic’ (or ‘Synthesised’) and ‘Organic’ (or ‘unadulterated’) as its
respective Not A and Not B values.
The Patanjali woman, in particular, is postulated as the repository of
the ‘natural’: a case of ‘Nature’ determining the ‘Nurture’/Culture which
will allow it to propagate.
And who is this Patanjali woman? What does she do?

12. Guess which of these two ‘sisters’ (Saundarya and Aishwarya) makes the cut.

13. Worry not: Baba to the rescue.

14. These two are meant to be Mother and Daughter. The daughter is about to take over as General
Manager for a company, so no, she isn’t 16. I know. I was confused too.

15. At the semio-narrative level we find the ‘Indian woman’ as, primarily, mother
and incipient mother (the conduit for parampara) – the hero of Campbell’s
monomyth – she works hard to keep her home and family healthy, ‘slaying the
beast’(global brands which are adulterated and cause her skin to wither or her
hair to shine less fulsomely) with the ‘divine intervention’ afforded by a
bewildering array of Patanjali products.
At a discursive level, these narrative structures are expressed in different
communicative artefacts which, read together, perpetuate the conceit of an
Indian ‘modernity’ that looks a whole lot like our past with a handful of
changes, creating a new/old template of Indian femininity.
It doesn’t fall into the language of dualism (traditional Vs modern); it merely
appropriates what it deems to be the non-threatening elements of modernity
(dress*, education, the figure of the working woman*) and subsumes them into
the maintenance of status-quo.

16. So whether she goes to a university which looks like it belongs in a Karan Johar movie, or
lounges around preoccupied about her skin, she is told that her physical appearance and
roles in relation to the family-as-social-unit are the things about her that make her matter and
give her agency:

17. Which is why this new/old Indian woman feeds and cares (and
sweeps her floors with the very “scientific” GoNyle):

18. She can even be a manager or a working professional (as long as
the profession is always left hazy):
What? Manager bhi kabhi bacchi
thi.
Who doesn’t wander around the office
flicking their hair from side to side?

19. And she’ll do it wearing make-up and salwar-kurtas even:
*Please notice the nifty bath-robes the men are
in. Decidedly visions of urbanity.

20. - But she’ll still be told that all that is in her power to do is decide what ghee and atta enters her
home (this is how she contributes to Making India Great Again). And she must speak Sanskrit to
her daughter, so she learns that cow urine is scientifically proven to make floors cleaner.
-And that she needs to buy a gamut of skin-care products, because beauty begins where Baba
says it does.
-And that the domestic sphere is still where she is coded as making most sense. Forays into the
public sphere (exclusively the world of work; not leisure) remain limited, at best.

21. Disclaimer: No parampara was violated in the making of this woman.

22. References
-Anand, S. 2017. “Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali TV Advertisements Up 34% This Year.” The Economic Times,
June 27.
-Nadkarni, M. 1988. Bal Gandharva: The Non-Pareil Thespian. New Delhi: National Books Trust.
- Campbell, J. 2008. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Novato, California: New World Library.
- Deshpande, S. 2003. Contemporary India: A Sociological View. New Delhi: Penguin Books.
-Pathak-Narain, P. 2017. God-Man to Tycoon: The Untold Story of Baba Ramdev. New Delhi: Juggernaut.
-Scolari, C. 2008. “Online Brands: Branding, Possible Worlds, and Interactive Grammars.” Semiotica, 1/4:
169–188. doi:10.1515/SEM.2008.030.
-Siganporia, H. 2018. “Who Dreams This Dreaming? Patanjali’s Symbolic Usurpation of the ‘Enslaved’ Indian
Economy.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, DOI:10.1080/10304312.2018.1525926
- Thapar, S. 1993. “Women as Activists; Women as Symbols: A Study of the Indian Nationalist Movement”.
Feminist Review, No. 44, Nationalisms and National Identities, pp. 81-96