Comprehending the Paradox

Conceptualising Indian Writing
in English
Editorial Board
Chief Editor(s)
Dr. Vinod Bhatt

Associate Professor
Vellore Institute of Technology
VIT Bhopal University, India
Dr. Dev Brat Gupta

Assistant Professor
Vellore Institute of Technology
VIT Bhopal University, India
Dr. Jeton Kelmendi

Academic Professor
AAB University College
Pristina, Kosovo
Bruksel-Prishtinë
2022
Biblioteka
Botues
Jeton Kelmendi
IWA BOGDANI
iwabogdani@gmail.com
www.iwabogdani.org
Editor(s)
Prof. Dr. Isa Spahiu, Professor, University of Tetovo, North
Macedonia
Dr. Kyvete Shatri, Associate Professor, University of
Pristina, Kosovo
Dr. Mukti Upadhyay, Associate Professor, Kings Khalid
University, Soudi Arebia
Dr. Geethu Anne Mathew, Chair of Research and
Innovation, Biyan College, Muskut, Oman
Dr. Justin James, University of Technology and Applied
Sciences – Nizwa, Sultanate of Oman, Oman
Dr. Rooble Verma, Associate Professor and Head, School of
Studies in English and Foreign Languages, Vikram
University, Ujjain, M.P., India
Dr. Laxmi Dhar Dwivedi, Associate Professor Sr., Vellore
Institute of Technology, Vellore, India
Dr. Sumit Narula, Deputy Dean Research, (Publications and
Citations) Amity University Gwalior, M.P., India
Dr. Satyabrat Singh, Associate Professor, KIPM, College of
Engineering and Technology, Gorakhpur, U.P., India
Ms. Mayuri Kailas, Research Scholar, School of Advanced
Sciences and Languages, VIT Bhopal University, M.P., India
Conceptualising Indian Writing in English
Table of Contents
Feminist Manifestations in Menka Shivdasani Safe

House .............................................................................. 5
A Study of Ecofeminism in the Novels of Anita Nair .. 15
Tradition and Modernity in A.K. Ramanujan’s Poetry. 23
Concern for Nature and Environment: An Ecocritical
Study of Amitav Ghosh’s A River of Smoke and Kamala
Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve ................................... 34
Contemporary Indian Writings in English and the
Experimentation with History: A Special Reference to
the Works of Manohar Malgonkar ................................ 48
Critiquing Indian English Novel ................................... 73
Foregrounding Post-Coloniality in Indian Dystopic
Fiction ........................................................................... 91
Looking Beyond the Obvious: Critical Analysis of the
Novel through Bakhtinian Lens in Literature Class ... 114
Comprehending the paradox: The Matriarch as a
Defender of the Patriarch versus the Primacy of
Matrilineal Descent - in the select Novels .................. 124
Dr. Saranya P .............................................................. 124
Introduction of the Topic, Text, and Writer: ............... 124
References ................................................................... 141
Revisiting the Status of Odia Folktales through Eco-
Perspectives................................................................. 142
Shades of Colonialism in The Sirian Experiments by
Doris Lessing .............................................................. 158
Vijay Tendulkar's Kamala: A Satire on the
Contemporary Journalism ........................................... 171
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Dr. Vinod Bhatt - Dr. Dev Brat Gupta - Dr. Jeton Kelmendi
ABSTRACT ................................................................ 171

Socio-Cultural Issues in the Select Indian Regional Short
Stories by Regional Women Writers Translated into
English ........................................................................ 186
A Postcolonial Study of Trauma in The Lost Homestead:
My Mother Partition and Punjab................................. 199
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Feminist Manifestations in Menka Shivdasani

Safe House
Dr. Rooble Verma
Associate Professor,
School of Studies in English,
Vikram University, Ujjain (MP)-India
Prof. Manoj Verma

Professor,
Department of English,
Govt. College Nagod, Satna (MP)-India
Abstract
Indian Writings in English has now established itself

amidst literature written in English at the global level.
The Indian writers in English have carved a special
places for themselves in showcasing their creative
faculty. Not only the male writers but the women writers
have also stamped their authority as writers with
distinction. All forms of literature in English have
witnessed and are witnessing new age Indian writers
with exceptional flare. The originality and individuality
are the hall marks of these writers. Indian poets have
projected themselves as passionate and authentic creators
of beautiful verses. The rich legacy of Indian poets has
been successfully continued by the new generation of
poets. Women poets have been more vehement in
expressing their emotions on variegated themes. Menka
Shivdasani is such a forceful name to be reckoned with.
She has been instrumental in advocating the right
~5~
position of women in society. She projects her women

from diversified dimensions and in each case her women
are developing their own worlds where they have their
own say without being marshaled by any one. Menka
Shivdasani’s collection of poems Safe House
demonstrates her maturity and strength to successfully
present the case of women who are standing firmly on
their feet and defend their points of view without being
submissive. This paper explores the different angles in
which the poet wants her women characters to be seen
and known in the modern world.
Indian writing in English has come a long distance to be
identified with best in the world of literature written in
English. There has been a long and rigorous journey by
Indian writers to carve a niche for Indian English
literature the international stage. There is a long and
illustrious list of writers who have established an
enviable identity for Indian literature written English.
The international recognition earned by Indian writers in
English has been instrumental in the blossoming of new
creative geniuses in India. The great writers of early days
in Indian writing in English have swelled the chest with
pride. Who could have ever believed that Indian poetry
in English that started flowering in the hands of Henry
Louis Vivian Derozio and Kashi Prasad Ghouse the
journey undertaken by the poets of Indian writing in
English would reach the zenith of its mastery in the
hands of Toru Dutt, Rabindranath Tagore, Aurobindo
and Sarojini Naidu. The charisma of writing poetry in
English continued even after India’s independence in the
inspired poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. Ramanujan, Arun
Kolatkar, Kamala Das along with Jayanta Mahapatra,
~6~
Shiv K. Kumar, Keki N. Daruwala down to poets like

Mani Rao, Menka Shivdasani, Sujata Mehta and many
more.
Menka Shivdasani has published two collection of
poems namely Nirvana at Ten Rupees (1990) and Stet
(2001) before Safe House (2015). She is widely
recognized as a poet, journalist and columnist. She has
been instrumental in setting up the Poetry Circle in
Mumbai. Mohan Ramanan says “in appealing to us she
compels attention as an important new voice in Indian-
English poetry” (Indian Review of Books 1992). She has
developed as a poet in the last three decade and has
written on divergent themes. She makes her women
characters in the poems speak for themselves with a lot
of vehemence and grit. Her poems speak about the status
of women in the modern times and also about their point
of view in whatsoever position they are in. Her women
have been able to showcase their perspectives from
different angles. Her women are tender and caring on
one hand while reckless and defiant on the other hand.
Safe House is perfectly poised not only to show how the
poet has sharpened her skilled as a poet but also as a
master in portraying her women characters in different
shades. Mohan Ramanan rightly remarks; ‘Shivdasani
calls herself a housewife poet, but she is not limited as a
consequence. Her apparent domesticity is her strength is
her starting point for larger explorations” (Indian Review
of Books 1992).
The very first poem of the collection Safe House
displays the courage of the protagonist woman who
breaks all the obstacles hat stopped her from flying like a
‘bird woman’. She escapes the boundaries that
~7~
suffocated her inorder to search for a fresh air of

freedom “in the brightness of outside/after all those
years/in a dingy room” (“Bird Woman” 26-28). The
world outside has made her to stretch her limbs and for
“. . . breathing/was a whole/new experience” (30-32).
The new world of independence has given the woman
new company and has made her realize her al potential.
She has discovered the process that are hidden within
her:
I am making friends
with the birds now
and have discovered
my talons too,
which sink perfectly
into the eagle
with his beady eyes (41-47).
Sometimes the protagonist woman thinks of the
problems of her early days but now she has overcome
these problems that have cramping effect on her. She
says; “I have left those/jostling women behind” (51-52).
The poet transforms women in their household into
island ruled by them. Every stock in their kitchen
belongs to them and they command every minute space
there. The poet conveys the message that every woman
is the supreme authority in her own space of household.
Every woman has her own ways of flights; “Where the
gulls/careen, and kites soar unseen/and the wild wind
skims along” (“Everywoman is an Island” 4-6). She
rules supremely and has the reach to every part of the
island. Her physical space in the kitchen provides her an
opportunity to face and counter the “tsunami” of life and
“change the contours/of her geography” (18-19). The
~8~
poet metaphorically transforms woman to be a powerful

as an island where she is independent, strong and in her
own self. She is the one who is instrumental in making
an island of her own. Her own territory is the island and
“geography” defined by her own self.
The poem titled “The Woman Who Speaks to Milk Pots”
is about the inner turmoil of a woman. The inner
disturbance is figuratively compared with boiling of
milk. The woman character in the poem speaks to the
milk pots and wants the milk to boil as and when it is put
on the flame and should not lose it original trait or
nature. Similarly, if provoked one should also not
suppress original nature and should express with
aggression just like however hard one tries the milk will
boil if it is put on the flame. Ultimately suppressing the
reaction would cause inner commotion which is not good
for the health. She conveys the message to women to
stand for their cause and fight for their point of view.
She should not be “self contained” (“The Woman Who
Speaks to Milk Pots” 20) and “snow-white and cold”
(21). The woman in the poem in conversation with the
milk pots wants the pot to boil the milk for which she
says that “I shall turn the heat up” (22).
“Waiting” is another poem which peeps into he inner
recesses of the narrator woman. The physical
disturbances of the earth talking place in the deep layers
of soil cause a lot of disturbance beneath which is not
visible on the surface but the effects are great. Not only
the different layers of earth are “disturbed”, “gnarled”
and “twisted” but the creatures are also seeking places
for protection. Such external disturbances are compared
with the inner uproar of an individual’s psyche. The poet
~9~
conveys very strong message that how the crack break

the inner self where one strives for the protection and
safety when different layers of life cause disturbances in
one’s life. The poem is a beautiful comparison between
earth’s disturbance and inner disturbance. In both the
cases the struggle for survival is quite clear. Thus, the
problems are awaiting outside and only those can come
out safe that are careful. The poet sums up the situation
in the last two lines: “The crack is waiting/deep within
the womb” (“Waiting” 24-25).
“Iron Woman” is the poem about creating the identities
and shaping the personalities. Women are compared with
the strength of iron. At the same time poet says that
though iron is extremely powerful yet it can be shaped as
per the desire of the ironsmith similarly women are also
very strong but they show their delicate nature when
they wish to carve different identities. They have the
strength to shape the world that they desire. They are the
creators and can create a new world. The poet rightly
remarks;
Woman of iron,. . .
Hammer me into sheets;
stretch me into wires,
I will turn into a plough,
or light up
the world in return. (“Iron Woman” 1-8)
The poet speaks about the elastic strength of women that
can stretch to extreme limits without breaking. They can
“melt” and “mix’ still “emerge even purer” (13). The
flexibility of women should not be considered as their
weakness as they shape and reshape themselves for
~ 10 ~
creation or for saving others. They are made up of “iron

element” (15) that can be shaped but not broken.
Women are perfect in their craft and skill. They
have the capabilities to design and decorate. The poet
demonstrates the artistic qualities of Seamstress in the
poem with the same title. The seamstress can design the
dress which can fit the wearers and make them look
perfect. The poet means to convey that a woman is like a
seamstress who can look after the responsibilities of
taking care of her household with the finesse and
refinement. The poet speaks about the skill of women;
It’s good for you:
keeps the fabric taut
and bones in place;
tendons tight,
muscles lean,
bu don’t forget
the decorative touch,
that bit of lace
where the cleavage splits. (‘Seamstress” 11-20)
A skilled woman has the ability to mend any wrong
design or act through her skill. There are no loopholes
left by a good seamstress in her design just like an
efficient woman leaves no stone unturned in making
things perfect; “Make sure the loose ends/are covered
well/as the needle glints/and dives into your flesh “ (21-
24). Once the work of a seamstress is done then the
design is ready to be displayed on the ramp by the
model. Such is the refined work of a woman who can
make all the different through her craft.
The poem "Morning Walk" is an emotional poem where
the separation of father and daughter is seen. Narrator
~ 11 ~
girl reveals that one night "her father appeared " and
said; "I am tired/I think I will/go out for some air"
(“Morning Walk” 4-5) then her father's soul disappeared
through the roof. The daughter went to search for her
father in the morning across all the places that she might
have visited with her father, "walking along the leafy by-
lanes/of memory,/asking the butterflies/if they had
happened to see him"(10-13). But she didn't get the
answer from anywhere and eventually with passage of
time the hole in the roof got covered through which the
soul if her father disappeared. The poem shows the loss
of father for the girl who longs for her father desperately.
Though everyone knows that once someone dies there is
no returning back but it is difficult to reconcile with the
truth of death of the dear one. Similarly daughters are
very close to their father and the loss is quite heavy for
them. The loss is quite sincerely felt by the readers and
they identify with the pain of the bereaved girl. But the
truth is that he would not come back; "Her father never
made/his way back home" (18-19). This poem is an
example of what pramod k. nayar points out that
“Shivdasani is a poet of loss and memory. . .. There is a
detached and quietly amused tone in Shivdasani that is
refreshing” (Contemporary Indian poetry in English
1999).
Desperate longing for freedom is quite vividly expressed
in the poem "Wings". The poet wishes to have her own
wings to fly with to any place that she desires. She is the
designer of her own wings as she says;"Tonight I shall
fold myself up,/create an original origami pattern/that
morphs into bird or flower"(“wings”1-3). Menka
Shivdasani 's desire for the liberation of women is
~ 12 ~
reflected in the poem. She wants her heroine to have her

own space and be the owner of that space. Her
protagonist is all set to fly high and wider "Tonight I
shall soar/on paper wings/colour my bit of sky" (12-14).
The gritty nature and iron spirit of women are perfectly
expressed by the poet in the poem "Shillong
Silences". The poet reveals the strong fighting power of
the woman in the Northeast state of Meghalaya who
"stands like a sentinel/in the blue expanse" (“Shillong
Silences” 5-6). The landscape in the region of Shillong is
quite challenging but the survival instincts if the native
woman are so strong that the tough surroundings and
difficult climate don't stop her from living life. The poet
questions her;"What is your secret/perched upon these
peaks?/your bamboo house stands strong/upon its poles,
and the wind/ has special songs for you" (13-17). The
resistance of woman against all odds is enough to
designate her as the champion fighter. The never yield
approach of the mountain woman makes the poet to ask,
"Who are you/
Khasi woman on the mountain,. . ./How did you survive
the first onslaught/of storm and substance". So whether
urban or rural woman's zeal and power to stand firm in
nicely showcased by Menka Shivdasani in her poetry.
Safe House is fine book of poetry by Menka
Shivdasani that presents a woman poet’s perspectives
from various angles. It nicely presents the women in
their different personalities. She “explores a wide range
of themes from the question of violence against women
in a so-called ‘civilised’ urban setup, to aspect of loss
and memory, to the city landscape to the intricacies of
human relationships” (www.museindia.com). They are
~ 13 ~
portrayed as tender, caring and mellow at one end

savage, reckless and defiant one the other hand. The poet
has refined her skills as a poet in this collection both in
language and approach. She has shown herself and her
characters pretty strong and ready to face the challenges
posed to them by the world.
Works Cited
Nayar, P.K. Contemporary Indian poetry in English.
New Delhi:Sahitya Akademi, 1999. Print.
Shivdasani, Menka. Safe House.Mumbai: Poetrywala,
2015. Print.
www.museindia.com
~ 14 ~
A Study of Ecofeminism in the Novels of

Anita Nair
Mr. T. VISHNUPRIYAN., M.A., M.A., M.Phil. (PhD)
Assistant Professor of English
Sri Krishna Adithya College of Arts and Science
Coimbatore
Abstract
Ecofeminism is important to expose the developed
nations invasions and exploitations of our ecosystem and
its resources in India and other developing
/underdeveloped countries under the guise of
globalization, urbanization, and development. Similarly,
by considering our relationships with nature, other living
things, and the opposite sex/sexual minorities, gender
problems may be questioned and evaluated. According
to the concept and movement known as ecofeminism,
patriarchal society is characterized by masculine-
centered attitudes and behaviours that both oppress
women and the environment. Ecofeminism has literary
precedents as well. As a means of resistance to the
invasion of land and life, and in the hope of the
possibility of an eco-friendly and gender just world
order, I will be focusing my research on the selected
novels of Anita Nair. These novels are enriched with the
essence of ecofeminism, particularly with its post-
colonial lineage in the Indian socio-political and cultural
milieu. The purpose of my current research is to analyse
and evaluate the textual and philosophical underpinnings
of ecofeminism in a few selected novels by Anita Nair.
In order to do this, it is crucial to investigate pertinent
~ 15 ~
ecofeminist theories and viewpoints through a

comprehensive and extensive literature review.
Keywords: ecofeminism, environment, exploitations,

globalization, patriarchal
Introduction
Ecofeminism is essential to expose the developed
countries' exploitation and invasion of our ecology and
its resources in India and other
developing/underdeveloped countries under the guise of
globalization, urbanization, and development. Similarly,
by considering our relationships with nature, other living
things, and the opposite sex/sexual minorities, gender
issues can be questioned and evaluated. Analyzing this
connection is crucial because the disadvantaged are
always the first to be affected by destruction or disasters.
When certain combinations, such as women, children,
disabled, impoverished, black, and Dalit, collide,
marginalization grows geometrically to create a multi-
layered structure. In her book Staying Alive: Women,
Ecology and Survival in India, Vandana Shiva
challenges the western development paradigm and its
detrimental effects on women and the environment in
developing nations. She refers to this patriarchal Western
view of progress as "mal development" since it shows
the least regard for the welfare of all people and other
living things who are denied a place in society. Vandana
Shiva and Maria Mies criticize current ideas and
practices in their book Ecofeminism and suggest
alternative, sustainable ecofeminist perspectives that can
be put into daily practice.
~ 16 ~
Ecofeminism has literary roots as well. The linguistic

and literary features of literary theories and ideologies
have been influenced by ecocriticism and feminist
literary criticism. Even though ecofeminist literary
critique is not new, it is still in its infancy, particularly
when it comes to post-colonial literature. In my paper,
I'll be concentrating on a few of Anita Nair's novels that
are infused with the spirit of ecofeminism, particularly
with regard to its post-colonial roots in the Indian socio-
political and cultural context, as a means of resistance to
the invasion of land and life and the possibility of a
globally equitable and eco-friendly system of
government.
The primary goal of my current research is to analyze
and interpret the textual and philosophical underpinnings
of ecofeminism in a few of Anita Nair's chosen novels.
In order to do this, it is crucial to investigate pertinent
ecofeminist theories and viewpoints through an
exhaustive literature review. This study makes an effort
to concentrate on a few of Anita Nair's novels that are
written with the idea that women's empowerment is the
most important and fundamental need. From an
ecofeminist perspective, the novels tackle the
fundamental question of how invasion affects women
and the environment on a social, political, economic, and
psychological level. It aims to highlight the key
ecofeminist theories, particularly in the setting of India,
and attempts to analyze the books in the framework of
those theories.
~ 17 ~
Ecofeminism in the novels of Anita Nair’s

According to the concept and movement known as
ecofeminism, patriarchal society's male-centered beliefs
and behaviours are responsible for both human and
natural oppression. In her 1974 book Feminism or Death,
renowned French feminist Françoise d'Eaubonne, who
coined the term "ecofeminism," outlined the crucial part
that feminism plays in tackling environmental and
gender concerns. It has developed beyond the confines
of only women and environment. Ecofeminism is a
movement that advocates for women, the environment,
and all oppressed groups, including queers, according to
research from the late 20th century. The three main
pillars of ecofeminism are crucial in understanding the
relationship between women and environment.
Anita Nair is a former columnist from Kerala who now
lives in Bengaluru. She has released a number of novels,
short tales, poetry collections, children's books, and
travelogues. Her 2001 book Ladies Coupe, which has
been translated into more than 25 different languages
worldwide, is highly recognized. It detailed the lives of
six ladies who just so happened to travel together in a
coupe. Her first three novels, The Better Man (2000),
Ladies Coupe (2001), and Mistress (2005), which are
mostly written in the premise of Kerala like Sarah
Joseph's works, are her key books on women,
environment, and empowerment that I have picked for
the present study.
The Better Man

In her debut book, Anita Nair tells the tale of Mukundan,
a retired government employee who has returned to
~ 18 ~
Kerala, where he was born. His journey through

memories, regrets, and insights is chronicled in the book.
He reclaims his boyhood home and enlists the aid of
Bhasi, an outcast painter, in the rebuilding process. This
raises doubts about his development into a better man
like his father. The narrative, character representation,
and facial expressions used by Anita Nair give the book
a deep, earthy feel. The work also focuses on a person's
relationship with their land, their legacy, and the bond
that lasts a lifetime. Along with Mukundan's uncertain
and perplexed life, the primary female characters
exploited and constrained lives as well as their
unrealized bravery and actualization are described in the
book.
As a human, Anita Nair is of the opinion that men and
women share exactly the same relationship to nature.
Despite her ideological opposition to any form of
essentialism, she believes that women are more
susceptible to both the good and bad effects of nature.
"Women are the major agents of change, whether it be
environmental conservation or anything else," she
asserts. Women are ultimately the change agents because
they deal with the practicalities of life on a daily basis,
regardless of the regulations that are put in place.
"Women, whether they live in rural or metropolitan
regions, may begin change." (Jha and Krishna, 148)
Ladies Coupe
The heroine, Akhila, who is travelling to discover what
she truly wants in life, is given a glimpse into the lives of
six ladies who are travelling in a Ladies coupe. Akhila
has taken on all of her mother and siblings'
~ 19 ~
responsibilities after her father passed away, making her

the family's scapegoat. She is a source of money, yet the
majority of the time she lacks social freedom. Aged 45
and forced to be a spinster by her upbringing, she feels
lonely and vulnerable to being taken advantage of by her
sister. The tale moves between Akhila's recollections,
which are connected by the other passengers' storytelling
and their compassion for one another. They use the
Coupe as a platform to express themselves and help one
another. All of a sudden, the ladies from all classes,
castes, and ages form a sisterhood. Due to her status as a
woman, minor, Dalit, and impoverished, Marikolanthu's
tale continues to be distinctive and exposes the various
forms of abuse she has experienced throughout her life.
Finally, Akhila makes the daring decision to move
forward with her previous love affair.
Mistress
The plot of the book is around the opposing and
complementary living circumstances of travel writer
Christopher Stewart, a Kathakali dancer named Koman
that he encounters in Kerala, and Radha, Koman's niece
who just so happens to be confined to the traditional
housewife's role. The novel gradually reveals Stewart
and Radha's fondness for one another, the perplexing
circumstances of Radha's spouse Shyam, and Koman's
life story and relationships. The paternity of several
characters in the book, from Stewart to Radha's unborn
child, is continually questioned. Characters' suppressed
feelings are revealed in the novel through Navrasas, or
the nine emotions of Kathakali, which is written against
a backdrop of Kathakali. In her renowned work The
~ 20 ~
Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir investigates the

societal identification of women as the "Other." The
shady status of a woman who has been passed over for
the top job is implied by the title of the book, "Mistress."
Saadiya, Angela, and Radha, the three main female
characters in the book, are affected by the change in
environment from their natal place to married life.
Although they are from different times and places, they
are connected to one another because they can be
roughly described as Koman's mother, Chris mother/ex-
girlfriend, Koman's and Koman's niece/wife, Shyam's
respectively. However, they ought to have their own
unique identities that aren't really associated with these
titles in the book. Understanding how they are defined as
"woman" in the culture, without regard to time or
geography, is critical when defining them and when
examining their behaviours. Saadiya was still too young
and able to choose between life and death. Due to
Angela's emotional and intellectual balance, she was able
to maintain control of her life. Radha also had no regard
for other people or society. Simply to escape the
thoughts of her first love, she wed Shyam. Her
education, life experience, ageing wisdom, and
understanding of self-actualization, however, provide her
the ability to refuse to accept life as it is. Here, Radha's
uniqueness triumphs against societally manufactured
feminine "insecurities."
Conclusion
Anita Nair's novels expertly weave together a variety of
ecofeminist and feminist ideologies, but they also
actively look for ways to empower women and the
~ 21 ~
environment. She vividly depicts the devastating effects

that can result from the tyranny of women and
environment and spread into the future like a fatal
sickness, calling into question the entirety of human
civilization and technology up to this point. They also
contend that the only way we can improve the wellbeing
and overall empowerment of the entire ecological system
is by altering our daily interactions and activities in
favour of greater harmony and sustainability. By freeing
them from the constraints of a research paper, the literary
characteristics of these works must be thoroughly
examined. For a more thorough investigation, the
language connections can also be found and analyzed.
References
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Trans. Constance
Borde. London; Vintage Books. Reprint 2010. Pp.
Mies, Maria and Vandana Shiva. Ecofeminism. New
Delhi; Rawat Publications. Indian re-print 2010.
Nair, Anita. The Better Man. New Delhi; Penguin
Books. 2000. Print.
--------. Ladies Coupe. New Delhi; Penguin Books. 2001.
Print.
--------. Mistress. India: Penguin. 2005. Print.
Krishna, Niyathi R and S Jha. “Interview with Anita
Nair”. The Atlantic Critical Review. Vol: 12, No: 4 (Oct-
Dec 2013). Print.
Shiva, Vandana. Staying Alive; Women, Ecology and
Survival in India. New Delhi; Kali for Women. 1989.
Print.
~ 22 ~
Tradition and Modernity in A.K.

Ramanujan’s Poetry
Dr. Satyabrat Singh

Associate Professor, English
KIPM College of Engineering and Technology, GIDA,
Gorakhpur
The poetic output of A.K. Ramanujan, which consists of

merely two small volumes, Relations and The Strider, is
very thin. Yet he is a very fine and unadulterated poet.
Chidannda Das Gupta has rightly said that the poet in
him is not obvious but has to be gradually discovered.
He is a bilingual writer and has mastery. He says that by
the time he was 17, he spoke English upstairs, Tamil
downstairs and Kannada outside. When he was only
seventeen, he had experienced himself as being writer of
poetry for at least two years. K.R.S. Iyengar remarks
that, Ramanujan is a talented poet he further says that
Ramanujan has stabilized himself as the most talented
poet among the “new poets”. R. Parthasarthy adds that
Ramanujan produces ‘a specific culture’ in his poetry
and his real prominence lies in his unsurpassable ability
of translating this experience “into terms of another
culture”.
The interest of Ramanujan in linguistics has influenced
his conception of poetry and poetic craftsmanship. He
writes that the form of poetry is one of his oldest
concerns – it is not only the count of syllables or rhymes
~ 23 ~
but the way it starts and ends and gathers certain

lucidity. Only form independently does not develop the
content, as with the form the meaning go on changing. In
fact, there is a point where we instigate to feel that the
meaning of the poem lies in the form itself. He goes
further and says that he would say that the meaning is in
the form. The particular nuance is what we experience;
we are not looking for some big thought. Even the
biggest thought must come to us in a particular form; it
must be embodied. The how is as much as the what.
To Ramanujan words have a nonverbal content.
He writes about the importance of words in poetry: “of
course poetry is made of words, but here words are like
the paint or gesture or other non-verbal things you use in
the plastic arts or the performing arts. Words have a
sound; a look they are similar to objects. There was this
writer who said that the language is a universal whore
we are constantly trying to turn into a Virgin. Everybody
uses something new and innocent. Language is full of
clichés, stock phrases – we fall back on words whenever
we are not really thinking of them. It is precisely like an
insight. Usually whenever we see through the window,
we find that we have seen it many times, but now days
we may unexpectedly find as if we had never seen it
earlier. Then at that same moment it becomes aesthetic
as it gains quality of experience. When the words appear
in a particular order they surprise us, as though we had
never seen them earlier. That’s when we know we can’t
change it any more. We are our first reader.
The poet is a specialist in what everybody does
every now and then. You are talking to me. You turn
witty, you tell me a story, and you make a new phrase.
~ 24 ~
Suddenly, a phrase begins to sing, and everybody notices

it. And then you pass on to something more ordinary.
Poets are more consistent about it. They have to make
every phrase sing. Poetry intensifies words. From one
point of view, it is minimal utterance; from another
maximal. You can feel the temperature of the thing – If
the word is right. So poetry is language that has not been
used before- intense, creative, and imaginative. And yet
it is ordinary language, not a thing apart. It is this
paradox that interests me. I want my poems ultimately to
sound as though I spoke them. Ramanujan follows his
own views of poetry in his poems. His poetry has an
undeniable stamp of authenticity of tone and treatment.
A.K. Ramanujan, an Indian expatriate in U.S.A
for long, carefully avoids the sophistication of the
rootless and does not take advantage of the entirely
substantial reality of living in another nation. His poetry
is permeated with Indian experience. Chidananda Das
Gupta remarks that as with so many Indian writers living
abroad, it is the Indian experience – a whole storehouse
of it that they carry inside, review, relive from time to
time and bring into contact with the present experience-
that nourishes Ramanujan’s poetry. In “Conventions of
Despair” he categorically identifies that he cannot get rid
of his Hindu consciousness:
A language, a fire, a clean first floor
With a hill in the window, and eat
On an ancient sandal wood door.
The Hindu consciousness in pervasive
I must seek and will find
My particular hell in my Hindu mind.
~ 25 ~
Ramanujan expresses Indian sensibility, honed and

nurtured by western culture and setting in his poetry. He
himself writes in this connection that English and
discipline (linguistics: anthropology) give him his outer
form – linguistic, metrical, logical and other such ways
of shaping experience; and his first thirty years in India,
his frequent visits and field trips, his personal and
professional preoccupations with Kannada, Tamil, the
classics, and folklore give him his substance, his ‘inner’
forms, images and symbols. They are continuous with
each other, and he could no longer tell what comes from
where. Ramanujan’s success as a poet lies in the blend of
American experiences with his Indian sensibility. The
East-West or the traditional-modern conflict provides the
necessary tension to his poetry and raises it to the level
of the highest art.
Ramanujan’s Indian sensibility finds its superb
expression in poems dealing with familial relationships.
Family is the central theme in his very best poetry. M.K.
Naik remarks that recollected in adult tranquility abroad,
these memories and experience, indelibly etched on the
impressionable mind of a sensitive, growing boy, now
pulsate into life. The memory of the day when a great
aunt dies, of another when a basketful cobras come into
the house, and a host of such other felt experiences give
a certain immediacy to his poem.
Family is the main metaphor in Ramanujan’s poetry but
he views the family in the historical context. In this
respect he stands a comparison with Nissim Ezekiel who
lives in India and is committed entirely to the Indian
reality, Ramanujan, on the other hand, has been living in
U.S.A. for over two decades. He has, thus, been living in
~ 26 ~
immediate isolation from his adopted country, he feels

an intense yearning for his Indian roots body would not
assimilate with dust after burial and would not flower
into jasmine only burial.” In his famous poem “Death
and the Good Citizen” he writes with a touch of subtle
irony:
Or abroad
They’ll lay me out in a funeral
Parlor, embalm me in pesticide,
Bury me in a steel trap, lock
Me so out of nature
Till I’m oxidized by left-
Over air, withered by own
Vapors into grin and bone.
Distance lands historical charm and nostalgia to
his family poems. He looks across an alien culture and a
vast ocean, to find his roots in Indian myth and tradition.
In Ramanujan’s case apparent “alienation from the
immediate environment” has meant “continuity with an
older ideal “, i.e. with Indian historical tradition. Past
always haunts his poetry. Personal and familial conflicts
and frustrations to the Indian intellectual environment
both present and past are reflected in his poetry. M.
Sivaramkrishna remarks that history for Ramanujan
contemporizes itself through the intricate network of
familial contemporizes itself largely though the intricate
network of familial relations- with the figures of the
father and mother dominating the interior landscapes, a
parental authoritarianism with atrophies, ironically, the
poet’s marital relations.
The Indian scene and familial relationships
receive an ironic and bemused treatment in Ramanujans’
~ 27 ~
poetry. His irony is all pervasive. K.N.Daruwalla

comments in Ramanujan’s poetry. His ironies are always
focused and never diffused. He uses rapier-sharp
language and produces both intricate and delicate poetry
as a shell with the twisting line. He brings a genuineness
of experience to his poetry. But his experience is filtered
through the point of view of the past, a design of familial
associations and his paradoxical perception. An analysis
of his major poems on the theme of family will enable us
to have a proper understanding of his art.
Tradition and modernity both are blended
perfectly in Ramanujan’s poetry. It is often very natural
to find a contradiction between tradition and modernity
but ultimately Ramanujan emphasizes the inevitability of
assimilating the valuable and justified aspects of
tradition with modernity. K. N. Daruwalla remarks that
the hard light and the dark passion of reason going
together, are the elements that give to Ramanujan’s
dialectic its exacting frame. A conventional Hindu
outlook and a legend past describing itself in a language
sharpened in the U.S.A. and filtered through a half-ironic
analysis which is a part of knick-knack of modern
realization.
Bruce king as well observes in this context that in
Ramanujan’s poems The Striders (1966) and Relations
(1971) the poetry appeared to expand out of Indian
familiarity and sensibility with all its reminiscences of
local places, families, images, history and belief,
whereas having a modern stand with its uncertainty,
ironies and sense of living from moment to moment in a
changing world in which older values and attitudes often
are seen as unrealistic. While Ramnanujan can evoke the
~ 28 ~
warmth of traditional Indian family life and the closeness

of long remembered relationships, more often he shows
conflict, arguments, surprises; he also shows that the
supposed glory of the Tamil cultural heritage is a fiction
which ignores the reality of the past.
Ramanujan as a traditionalist justified by his
poetry which has been hugely influenced his Hindu
tradition. He reflects his memories from the exact
society of the Brahmins of Tamil families. While he was
moreover influenced by the culture and life style of west,
the Hinduism, its values, the Indian cultural ethos, and
his country has permeated his life and works. Chidanand
Das Gupta has written that as with so many Indian
writers living abroad, it is the Indian experience- a whole
storehouse of it that carry inside, review, relive from
time to time and bring into contact with the present
experience-that nourishes Ramanujan’s poetry. In
“Conventions of Despair” Ramanujan’s Hindu
consciousness all the time affects him he clearly points
out that:
A language, a fire, a clean first floor
With a hill on the window, and eat
On an ancient sandalwood is pervasive.
I must seek and will find
My particular hell in my Hindu mind.
Indeed, Ramanujan’s beautifully expresses the conflict
between the ethos of East and West the earlier is natural
in him the later he has adopted from USA it is between
East and West: tradition and modernity. He himself
explains that how his poetry is marked and shaped by
Indian and western influences :“ English and disciplines
( linguistics, anthropology) give me my outer forms-
~ 29 ~
linguistic, metrical, logical and other such ways of

shaping experience; and my first thirty years in India, my
frequent visits and field frips, my personal and
professional preoccupations with forms, images and
symbols. They are continuous with each other, and I can
no longer tell what comes from where.” The synthesis of
Indian sensibility with his American experiences is
revealed by his very best poetry.
The poetry of Ramanujan not only describes the
harmonization of tradition and modernity, but also
universalizes certain aspects of Indian background.
Raanujan’s present in Chicago and his past in India are
best assimilated by him in his famous poem “Chicago
Zen”:
Watch your step. Sight may strike you
Blind in unexpected places
The traffic light turns orange
On 57th and Dorchester,
and you stumble
You fall into a vision of forest firs
Enter a frothing Himalayan river, rapid, silent.
Ramanujan without being detached to the Indian roots
has attained the total naturalization with the American
ethos. The consciousness of his Indianness is always
expressed in his poetry. The lines given bellow from
“Death and the Good Citizen” express the harmonization
between Indian and western appears in his poetry:
Hearts
With your king of temper,
May even take, make connection
With alien veins and continue
Your struggle to be naturalized
~ 30 ~
Beat, and learn to miss a beat

In a foreign body.
The poems of Ramanujan on familial relationships-
“Small Scale Reflections on a Great House”, “History”,
”Love Poem for a Wife - 1”, ”Of Mothers, Among
Other Things” and many others – are nostalgic and a
merriment of indianness. Ramanujan expresses the
dichotomy between present and past, between the West
and the East, between tradition and modernity in the
lines given bellow from “Still another View of Grace”:
But there she stood
Upon the dusty road on a nightlit april mind
And gave me a look. Commandments crumbled
In my father’s past. Her tumbled hair suddenly known
As silk in my angry hand, I shook or little
And took her, behind the laws of my land.
In the above lines the poet submits to the passion of a
sexy woman whose figure is invoked by him against the
tradition of Brahminic family and his father’s advice as
well.
Ramanujan is a skilled craftsman. In the history of
Indian English poetry his technical skill remains
unparalleled. His produces the poetry of a particular
culture. The capability to translate his experience into
the terms of another culture is the real poetic greatness of
Ramanujan. He uses idioms of English with consummate
skill and matchless command. His image- craft is
unsurpassable. He is a flawless artist who tries to achieve
perfection before publishing a work.
Commenting on Ramanujan’s poetic
achievement K.N. Daruwalla writes: “One is confronted
with an intricate texture, both visual and conceptual, in
~ 31 ~
A.K. Ramanujan’s poetry. Drawing on the past, the

cultural heritage and the strong ties of kinship Hindu, he
uses a language which is rich in subtlety, nuance and
colour, and yet retains its precision, adjusting both to
reverie and the pointed thrust of immediate experience.
Thus, Ramanujan’s poetry combines to borrow a phrase
from Wallace Stevens, the beauty of inflection “ with the
beauty of innuendos “ . Nissim Ezekiel calls his second
volume of poems, entitled Relations” A modern classic.
It weighs and measures its effects from behind the
scenes, with cool mastery. The poet reads his passion as
if it is a newspaper report about turmoil in a distant
country.
The influence of the East and the West is also
revealed by the poetic technique of Ramanujan. His
poetry is greatly influenced by the techniques of Tamil
and Kannada verse. Bruce king observes in this
connection: “Then sophistication with which Ramanujan
recreates and treats South Indian culture is also reflected
in his techniques, which like his translations, often seem
a modern recreation of the spirit and Kannada verse. The
word play, funs, inner rhymes, rhetorical devices,
ironies, distanced neutrality of tone , under- statement,
compression and elliptical progression of poems have
similarities to his translation. This does not mean that
Ramanujan is unaffected by his readings of yeats, Eliot
and other moderns, but he is highly aware of the
conventions, techniques and structures of Indian verse
and these have been used and transformed in his poetry.”
~ 32 ~
Reference
(1) Ramanujan, A.K. The Striders, London:

Oxford University Press 1996.
(2) Ramanujan, A.K. Relations: Poems. Oxford
University Press, 1971.
(3) Ramanujan, A.K. Second Sight. Delhi :
Oxford University Press, 1986
(4) Ramanujan, A.K.Selected Poems : Delhi :
Oxford University Press, 1976
(5) Daruwala, K.N. (ed) “Two Decades of Indian
Poetry “. Delhi:VikasPulishing House. 1980
(6) Bhatnagar, M.K. (ed) “The Poetry of A.K.
Ramanujan” New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers. 2002
(7) Dwivedi, A.N. “The Poetic Art of A.K.
Ramanujan” NewDelhi: B.R. Publishing. Corporation
.1995.
(8) Naik, M.K. (ed) “Perspectives on Indian
Poetry” in English New Delhi:Abhinav Publication. .
1985.
~ 33 ~
Concern for Nature and Environment: An

Ecocritical Study of Amitav Ghosh’s A River
of Smoke and Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar
in a Sieve
Sarwar Ahmad Wani

Research Scholar
Department of English
Awadhesh Pratap Singh University. Rewa, [M.P] India.
Abstract
Literary texts have often been interpreted from
ecological perspectives to consider a link between man
and nature. It emphasizes the general physical existence
of Nature as a truth rather than an idea by interrogating
the cultural construction of reality. Eco-criticism as a
field of literary studies emerged in the late 1980s in
America and the United Kingdom. Nature-worship and
cosmic-literary imagination form the foundation of
Indian sensibility, which has persisted despite assaults
from colonial powers and societal technologization.
Literature has evolved into a means of communicating
about the environment and its significance in human
existence and the universe. The question of
environmental harmony has become a global hot topic in
the present era. It is a problem of international
significance. The entire planet is under the scourge of
global warming as a result of eco-imbalance and
environmental damage. The globe is succumbing to
environmental imbalances and destructions. A healthy,
well-balanced atmosphere is essential in this day and
age. The purpose of this study is to offer an eco-critical
~ 34 ~
investigation of the select Indian English novel. It will

also highlight how humn interventions lead to
environmental disasters.
Key Words: Ecology, Literature, Environment, Human
Interventions, Eco-Criticism.
Introduction
In the past thirty years, environmentalism emerged as a
major global concept and presently academics’ efforts
are currently in the process of designing both its
character and breadth. William Rueckert initially
introduced the concept of ecocriticism in 1978 with the
publication of his essay titled, Literature and Ecology:
An Experiment in Ecocriticism. The word eco and
logy are derived from the Greek roots Oikos and
logos, respectively which means household or earth in
etymology. Collectively, this refers to criticism of the
household and surroundings as they are being portrayed
in art and literature. William Rueckert states that
ecocriticism integrates the study of literature with
environmental or ecological principles. From the time of
creation, man has been a part of nature. Everything
about the man his presence, sustenance, and
development is made possible by his connection with
nature. Such involvement aids in increasing common
people's environmental awareness. At all times and in all
cultures, literature and nature were always in close
contact. It is encouraging as literature throughout the
globe has been attempting to deal with the main
environmental difficulties by including crucial topics
relating to ecology and seeks to explore nature through
the lens of ecocriticism, a modern literary theory. With
~ 35 ~
the help of this novel idea, all fields may work together
to improve our understanding of nature.
Discussion
All knowledge as well as development domains are
currently analyzing and emphasizing the close
connection between both the natural and social worlds.
Literary critics try to find out how the authors have
textualized this in their works. The Hungry Tide by
Amitav Ghosh, published in 2005 examines the conflicts
that exist between human societies, as well as how each
of these groups interacts with the outside world. The
apathetic reality of nature advances and is continuously
affected by people. Here water is portrayed as both the
builder as well as the destroyer of human relationships.
As Piyali Roy nearly drowns while on board a boat, she
is rescued from the river by Fokir in this way the
friendship is established between these two characters. A
neighborhood of India called Sundarbans serves as the
central focus of this narrative. Throughout the
whole story, Ghosh has shown an ecological testimony
in the west Bengal area after 2004, entirely encircled by
tropical forests. The characters used in the story cross
paths on numerous levels and serve a vital purpose in
highlighting the ecological aspects of the story.
The characters have a positive role in explaining
environmental events and the directions of change. The
narrative opens when the protagonist, Kanai Dutt meets
Piya. Despite her tone being Indian, he considers Piya a
foreigner. The travelers are headed in the same direction
and have a goal to achieve, which serves as the plot's
focal point. Kanai, a Delhi-based translator, goes to the
~ 36 ~
Sundarbans to meet his aunt and read the letter his late
uncle left behind.
The story eventually returns to Kanai's memories of
meeting Kusum back in 1970, while she was under
Nilima's custody since Kusam's family had disintegrated.
Kanai still remembers the play they attended and his
final encounter with Kusum. To uncover a unique
Dalphin variety, Piya traveled to her own country. She
requests help from a native fisherman. In addition, she
receives assistance from a forest ranger and a
boatman. Since, Mejda suggests the place where they
may see the dolphins, they travel towards their target
inside the forest and arrive at a certain location. After
some time, Piya could realize that these folks were not
really helpful and are simply being arrogant. Piya felt
terrified by the men's irresponsible behavior as she
nearly fell into the river and drowned. All these men are
unreliable to assist Piya in any manner, therefore she
cancels the project. Meanwhile, there in she meets Fokir
and they start their quest again for dolphin inside a
location named Garjontola, wherein they come upon a
couple of Irrawaddy Dolphins nearby. Piya feels
overwhelmed, although the day did not go so well, she
did make some progress in her task. Since crocodiles are
also there in the water, the danger seems unavoidable as
Piya nearly lost her hand to one of them.
After accepting Kanai's invitation to visit Lucibari, Piya
asks him for help. Nilima then agrees to assist Piya with
reserving the guesthouse for Piya to reside in, while
conducting research. The story leads the audience
through letter as it describes how Kusum, Nilima and
Nirmal met. This letter further described the different
~ 37 ~
reasons why Morichjhapi refugees in such tremendous

difficulty. As tigers regularly kill humans in the region
they are going to explore, Kanai gets ready to travel
back with Piya. This is compelling proof that the
government puts the interests of the tiger above that of
the general populace, who are the true victims. They
continue their movement toward Garjontola pool to start
the investigation. As Piya begins to discuss how she
grew interested in studying dolphins, Kanai tries to
interpret. The discussion reveals Piya's motivation as she
is traveling back to her own country from Seattle to learn
about a critically endangered species of dolphins. They
travel from Lucibari after Kanai Dutt extends a kind
invitation to Piya to stay at his home. He returns to
Lucbari after a long time with his aunt Nilima, and he is
amazed to notice the transformation of the whole
location. The river's flow has altered substantially, and it
also appears sluggish. The chat reveals Piya's
motivation: as a marine biologist, she is traveling back to
her own country from Seattle to learn more about a
threatened species of dolphin.
Through a strong connection between the old and the
new, Ghosh aims to provide an ecological answer to the
main concern of the novel. And through a depiction
of Kanai, the rapid deterioration of nature has been
emphasized also an immediate appeal for attention has
been portrayed. While Ghosh depicts the history and the
necessity for the current transformation in the nature
with rich description, the postcolonial concentration also
purposefully emphasizes ecological integrity. The main
message of ecocentrism is delivered by emphasizing the
relationship between indigenous people and their natural
~ 38 ~
environment. Throughout the entire narrative,

reconciling with nature is also heavily hinted at. In The
Hungry Tide, Amitav Ghosh depicts nature as being not
only picturesquely beautiful but also eager for human
blood. In contrast to Romantic's admiration of the same,
his portrayal of natural and geographical settings in the
narrative is completely different. Nature's beautiful
shapes were admired by the poets of the romantic age.
Ghosh's novel The Hungry Tide emphasizes the ongoing
conflicts in the Sundarbans between people and their
environment. The text explores the tensions between
nature and its stubborn inhabitants as well as between
those inhabitants and the international conservation
organizations whose goal is to protect the Sundarban's
typical aquatic life and tiger population at the expense of
its inhabitants. He rewrites history and utilizes it as a
lens to examine the current suffering of the tribal people.
Most of his works depict how capitalist civilizations and
colonial forces drive tribal people to migrate from place
to place to make them environmentally displaced.
A project is going to be constructed in Sundarbans. The
project comprised building hotels, eateries, stores,
business centers, and theaters. Moreover, it promoted
organizing events like motorboat trips into the interior.
Various ecological organizations opposed this action
because the building and usage of motorboats would
damage the delicate ecology and harm the
region's biodiversity. The initiative was rejected by
the government after continuous objections. Ghosh was
one of the well-known intellectuals at the time who
opposed the plan. He believes that both specific social
relationships and societal hierarchies are to blame for the
~ 39 ~
environmental disaster. As he promotes an awareness of

how hierarchy and dominance play a part in the
ecological problem, Ghosh adopts the position of a
social ecologist. As a result, Ghosh makes the argument
for environmental racism and injustice. He stresses the
need to think about the idea of habitat preservation and
the protection of endangered species since it disregards
and devastates the lives and homes of underprivileged
and minority people. When Piya witnesses a crowd
slaughtering a tiger, she is horrified to witness the
appalling violence committed by people against a
fearsome but mute animal that wanders into their
territory because of the noise of a buffalo giving birth,
the tiger ventures into a community at midnight. The
tiger chases the sound to the animal corral and uses its
claws to enter through the rooftop. The village advantage
of their chance to fight the tiger after it murdered two
local citizens and many animals. The enraged villagers
stab it in the eyes with a pointed bamboo rod, blinding it,
and then set it on fire. Piya a deep ecologist, protests
against this. She makes allusions to the fact that human
beings with their enormous ego, are always battling to
dominate and destroy other living things. She believes
that after humans exterminate every other species, they
begin to destroy their kind. Therefore, it is the
responsibility of human beings to understand the value
of every living creature. They are confused about what is
useful and what is useless, therefore their function as a
conqueror surely risks personal failure. This is true
because the biotic system is so complicated that it is
impossible to fully comprehend how it functions. Aldo
Leopold, a renowned ecologist, himself once disregarded
~ 40 ~
the mountain wolf's significance and went out to hunt it.

Only after gazing into the dying wolf's eyes does, he
experiences an epiphany. Realizing his error, he admits
that by slaying the wolf, he was not actually defending
the deer. But in reality, the deer population needs to be
kept under control because without it, the mountainside
would become chopped down.
Illegal hunting and excessive mangrove cutting are
unlawful practices that still happen there in Sundarbans.
The declining tiger population is closely tied to this
growing misuse of the forests. The most effective forest
protectors are tigers. They restrict people from coming
near. The tigers are still being poached in these
regions because its bones, claws, and skin are highly
valued. Due to habitat degradation, these tigers regularly
roam towards settlements. Through the course of this
novel, Ghosh communicates the message that those
responsible for the extinction of tigers and the
devastation of forest reserves are both poachers and
wood merchants. The tiger assault incident is among the
most terrifying thing Piya ever has witnessed. She labels
it utterly barbaric.
Ghosh presents the voices of many characters, including
Piya, Fokir, and Kanai, to convey different viewpoints.
Piya, a committed environmentalist, stands by her
philosophy of saving animals and other species, whereas
Fokir supports the mob because he is a part of the group
of people who really are marginalised by the government
and forced to reside in an area with harsh environmental
conditions. Kanai appears to agree with mob when they
claim that the animal has long been preying on the
cattles of poor farmers and also had killed two local
~ 41 ~
residents. Unfortunately, the government organizations

and wildlife fanatics do not compensate the bereaved of
the community for the damage caused to their property
and livestock. They cannot be heard. They are portrayed
as sufferers and victims of environmental injustice
because environmental justice safeguards victims' rights
to complete restoration and reimbursement for the losses,
as well as high-quality medical assistance. Ghosh makes
inquiries using this justification.
Ghosh here reminds the readers that while people
are an essential component of the entire ecosphere,
protecting wildlife must not come at the expense of
human life. He offers a fascinating ecological viewpoint
on the interactions between people and animals
throughout the tidelands. He claims that in a region
where the government is not really concerned about
humans when they are thirsty, the on the
contrary government is giving water to tigers. It is
unfortunate that people are not given the same priority as
animals.
In an article entitled “Restoration of Human Spirit in The
Hungry Tide of Amitav Ghosh Ambethkar writes: The
tigers are zealously protected by various international
environmental groups who apply economic and
diplomatic pressures on the Indian and Bangladeshi
governments to maintain the tiger habitats by
military or police force. But in the name of tiger
preservation human lives are threatened; the tigers
routinely maul and kill the islanders and their cattle. (6)
As Ghosh promotes an awareness of how hierarchy and
dominance play a part in the ecological problem,
he adopts the position of a social ecologist. The
~ 42 ~
impoverished, oppressed residents of Morichjhapi are

tormented and consciously placed opposite to nature, he
also emphasizes the inequality of socioeconomic status.
Like Bookchin, he underlines that the utterly real
dominance of humans by humans is where the notion of
conquering nature first emerged. The people are starved
and denied of water by the policemen. They are attacked
with poison gas, and all their property and
other belongings are demolished. Environmentalism
rejects military oppression, occupation and misuse of the
land, people, and other living things. Annu Jalais in
her "Dwelling on Morichjhapi," argues that the
local inhabitants are turned not only into tiger food but
were also forced to live as ecological refugees. Ghosh
conveys his readers about the government's increased
pressure on the impoverished settlers by using Kusum's
viewpoint. Everywhere on this island police is seen
patroling , which makes it difficult for the refugees to get
food and other necessities. People who are hungry are
brutally assaulted and slaughtered. Local residents are
threatened and harassed by the police. Nilima persuaded
Kanai to read the full document, written by hand and
later took the form of a diary. The letter is a summary of
the major happenings in the year 1979. Later, Nilima
explains the whole events of the Morichjhanpi massacre,
including the murder of Kusum. Nilima introduces Kanai
to Fokir and his family, Fokir himself an illiterate
fisherman of the same community. After talking to
Moyna, Kanai realizes how unpredictable the tide is
throughout the Sundarbans. He gained perspective from
hospital discussion. since, Moyna seemed passionate
with enrolling their boy Tutul to school. Moyna
~ 43 ~
expresses severe doubts about allowing her boy to travel

with her hubby and she also plans his son to
be enrolled in school in the coming future. As Kanai
knew nothing about the tragedy of Fokir's family, the
whole talk most certainly caught his attention. After
talking to Moyna, Kanai realizes how uncertain the tide
is in the Sundarbans. The story eventually returns to
Kanai's memories of meeting Kusum back in 1970,
while she was under Nilima's custody since Kusam's
family had disintegrated. Kanai still remembers the play
they attended and his final encounter with Kusum. To
uncover a unique Dalphin variety, Piya traveled to her
own country. She requests help from native fisherman.
In addition, she receives assistance from a forest ranger
and a boatman. Since, Mejda suggests the place
where they may see the dolphins they travel towards
their target inside the forest and arrive at a certain
location. After some time, Piya could realize that these
folks were not helpful and are simply being arrogant.
Piya felt terrified by the men's irresponsible behavior as
she nearly fell into the river and drowned. All these
men are unreliable to assist Piya in any manner,
therefore she cancels the project. Meanwhile, there is she
meets Fokir and they start their quest again for dolphin
inside a location named Garjontola, wherein they come
upon a couple of Irrawaddy Dolphins nearby. Piya feels
overwhelmed, although the day did not go so well, she
did make some progress in her task. Since crocodiles are
also there in the water, the danger seems unavoidable as
Piya nearly lost her hand to one of them. The
significance of ecocriticism becomes apparent as man's
~ 44 ~
unending desire leads to environmental degradation and

devastation.
Within the canon of Indian literature written in English
language, Kamala Markandaya occupies a prestigious
position. Her novel Nectar in a Sieve was not released
until 1954; this was exactly one hundred years after the
advent of industrialisation. Among the most
accomplished writers in Indian writing in English,
Markandaya describes wonderfully thoughout her novels
the diversity that exists within the natural world. She
has used a wonderful illustration of nature imagery in
her novel Nectar in a Sieve. Destruction of the
environment and the consequences it has on mankind
are addressed by the writer. The story of her novel
Nectar in a Sieve revolves around the main characters
Rukmani and Nathan who had a strong connection to the
land they live on. Both of them are putting in long hours
in their respective fields in order to ensure their own
existence. A strong connection is
shown between Rukmani and the ecosystem that
surrounds her country.
Rukmini, the main character stays attached to her
beautiful countryside even as the gripping clutches of
urbanisation begin to rend her existence apart. A major
plot concerns rice, since Nathan assures Rukmani that
their future success would be tied to the grain of the crop
he has recently shown to her. The necessity of water for
the growth of seeds and grains is emphasized across the
novel, Nectar in a Sieve. Some rains may fall across
India, although daily rainfall is notoriously difficult to
forecast. This instability of rain is a metaphor for the
unpredictability of Rukmani's outlook on life. For
~ 45 ~
Rukhmani good and terrible seasons are inevitable,

however neither the magnitude nor the timing of either
could be determined in advance.
The entire family experiences its worst moments as a
direct result of such dryness as well as the ensuing threat
of hunger. Ira engages herself in sex work to support her
family when they are down to eating rubbish and
leftovers. Kuti's death is the last blow for the family to
sunk. If the rain would have arrived at the stage when
there was a dire need for it, there would have been a fine
and pleanty of crop. It's obvious that rain really does
have an effect on vegetation as well as on harvests, while
it also seems to be a powerful metaphor both in terms of
shortage and abundance. A water reservoir near the
tannery provides water to the villagers during dry spells.
When nature fails to provide, human enterprise takes on
the task. Here we come to the core of the conflicting
opinions on the tannery. Water is beneficial when
consumed in appropriate amounts; yet, either an excess
of it or a deficiency of it could prove fatal. This similar
line of thinking may also be used to the sexuality of
women in this book. Water is beneficial, when receiverd
in a balanced quantity but insufficient or excessive
amounts may be fatal. Female sexuality throughout this
narrative may be analyzed in a similar way. Even a
woman's ruin might occur whenever she is infertile
whereas the prostitution of two main characters Kunthi
and Ira is an excellent illustration of woman's ripeness.
As water, the sexuality of women is to be consumed in
balance within this narrative otherwise it might have
disastrous effects.
Conclusion
~ 46 ~
To conclude we may say that Mankind and the

environment began to victimize one another, which led
to a negative cycle of consequences that are
unacceptable for humanity. Both Gosh and Markandaya
want people to live in harmony with the environment to
put an end to these kinds of ecological problems brought
on by mankind. Ecocriticism is crucial to the
investigation of how people interact with nature.
Ecocritics are worried with nature's recovery from a
catastrophe. The end purpose of ecocritics is always to
preserve nature and promote coexistence between people
and their natural surroundings.
Works Cited
1. Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination:
Thoreau, Nature Writing and the Formation of American
Culture, London: Princeton UniversityPress.1995.Print
2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecocriticism.
3. Ghosh, Amitav. The Hungry Tide, HarperCollins,
London, 2004.
4. Markandaya, Kamala. Nectar in a Sieve, Penguin
Books, 2009.
5. Mehta, Geeta, ‘A River Sutra’, Penguin, Delhi, 1993
6. P.D. Sharma, Ecology and Environment, Meerut:
Rastogi Publications, p. 1 and 2.
7. Glotfelty Cheryll and Harold Froomm (eds) The
Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology .
Athens G.A and London: Universty of Georgia Press.
1996
8. Shikha, Kumari. “Ecocriticism in Indian Fiction.”
IRWLE, vol. 7 no. 1, 2011. pp. 1-11.
9. www.google.co.in
10. www.wikipedia.org.in
~ 47 ~
Contemporary Indian Writings in English

and the Experimentation with History: A
Special Reference to the Works of Manohar
Malgonkar
Dr. Kranti Vats,

Anupma Shrivastva
Professor (English)
Research Scholar
Govt. M.V.M Bhopal (M.P)
Barkatullah University, Bhopal (MP)
Email- drk.vats@gmail.com
Email - anupma.shrivastav@gmail.com
Contact: 9425022543
Contact: 9165288122
Abstract
Indian English writing has posed very distinct and
remarkable implication on the English readers of India as
well as in the other countries. Indian- English in writing
was started by the Indians which hold the emblem of
Indians. As we know, Literature is the reflection of
society, people and a novelist engraves his creativity his
own experiences and environment, people and society.
Similarly, Manohar Malgonkar is also an Indian English
writer who has decorated his writings with his learning
from his keen observation of life as a whole and his own
experiences. As a versatile Indian novelist, Mahonar
Malgonkar has presented the realistic life before and
after independent India and elated the memories of the
time which not only changed the history of our nation
but also the society profoundly. Unlikely to his
~ 48 ~
contemporary writers, the works of Manohar Malgonkar

and his contribution to Indian – English writing is still
not celebrated. Malgonkar is an eminent Indo – Anglian
novelist and historian who uses an authentic background
from history but the central characters as well as the
incidents may be fictional. In this study, the connotation
of history in the novels of Malgonkar will be analyzed.
Keywords: Indian- English Writing, Prolific,

historical background, army life, partition of India,
experience and keen observer.
Introduction
It was only in the mid of nineteen century to date the
start of the writings in Indian English literature. When
this writing first started, the western aesthetic writings
had an immense impact on their writings and settings.
Initially, Indian terms were extensively used by the
pioneer Indian writers to convey an experience and
understanding that was, in general and profoundly had
the essence of ordeals of the Indians. The evolvement of
Indian Writing in English had its impetus from the
sources like- the amendment of education reforms by the
British government after the establishment of East India
Company which was established for operating the
transaction of south-eastern Asia with the new British
provinces in India, initiations of missionaries enterprises
and, the welcoming and embracing by the elites of India
of English literature and language.
Indian authors who write original works of literature in
the English language are referred to as "Indo-Anglians."
Many educated Indians today use the English language
~ 49 ~
as a vehicle for their creative inquiry and articulation of

their lived experiences. Their writing has since evolved
into a significant body of literature, and this significant
body of literature is known as Indo-Anglian literature.
Indo-Anglian literature is not fundamentally different in
kind from Indian literature, as C. R. Reddy notes in the
prologue of Srinivasa Iyengar's book.
Indian English literature has developed a strong
reputation both domestically and internationally. It now
occupies an important position in literature across the
globe. The Indo-English novelists are today
acknowledged as some of the greatest writers in the
world and have received several accolades from
throughout the world. The trio, Raja Rao, Mulk Raj
Anand, and R.K. Narayan, deserves credit for the
success of their Indo-English novels on a global scale.
The modern Indian novel in English has been shaped by
novelists from the later era, including Manohar
Malgonkar, Nayantara Sahgal, Arun Joshi, Chaman
Nahal, Bhabani Bhattacharya, Anita Desai, Khushwaht
Singh, and B.Rajan. Indian English-language novels
have become the best-selling books in the entire world
because of the works of contemporary novelists like
Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram
Chandra, Vikram Seth, Rohinton Mistry, Raj Kamal Jha,
and others. Owing to their enormous popularity
throughout the world, Indian English books have been
translated into practically all spoken languages. One big
benefit of Indo-Anglican literature is that it helps to
correct this image and reflect a more positive and
accurate image of India. Initially, Rabindranath Tagore,
Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Rishi Aurobindo Ghosh,
~ 50 ~
Jawaharlal Nehru and Sarojini Naidu became the

mouthpiece of pre- independent vulnerable people of
India to communicate with their natives and had served
profoundly for the historical maturity of English
literature in India.
Manohar Malgonkar is a prominent novelist, short
storyteller, and Indo-Anglian historian. In addition, he
has written a play, screenplays for movies, and a few
literary and non-literary essays. His body of work is not
particularly numerous. Through the biographies,
autobiographies, memoirs, private letters, and
information collected from the author, their friends,
family, and acquaintances, a man's private life is
typically known to others. Malgonkar has no biography,
no proof that he kept a diary or engaged in private
literary correspondence, and he hasn't yet written and
published an autobiography.
Manohar Malgonkar is the English-language
experimenter who create contemporary Indian literature.
He observes how modern education and industrialization
are transforming India's qualities, and he encourages us
to combat the negative elements. Malgonkar was a
contemporary of authors like Mulk Raj Anand and
Khushwant Singh, but his contributions to the field of
modern Indian Writing in English have been overlooked.
We can witness the infusion of diverse shades and
clangor, incense and social fauna of India in his fictional
work of art.
Manohar Malgonkar : Life and works

Manohar Malgonkar, who was born in 1912, completed
his schooling in Bombay and earned degrees in Sanskrit
~ 51 ~
and English. Manohar could prove his ancestry as a

member of a Goan royal family. He started big game
hunting after graduating and killed eight tigers. But he
suddenly stopped playing the sport and turned into a
fervent supporter of wildlife protection. He enlisted in
the Army and progressed to Lieutenant-Colonel. He was
a member of the Indian Army's General Staff and
worked in the counter-espionage division. After the
Second World War, he resigned from the Army and
started writing. Although he experimented in politics,
writing was still his ultimate love. He finished his first
book, Distant Drums, when he was 47 years old.
Manohar used his military experience wisely in creating
the book, which is why it received positive reviews.
Many people see Distant Drums as the eulogy for the
British Indian Army because it exposes the spirit of the
Indian soldier. Malgonkar produced five English-
language novels. A Bend in the Ganges (1964), The
Devil's Wind (1964), The Princes (1963), Combat of
Shadows (1962), and Distant Drums (1960) were among
them (1972). He also produced a large number of non-
fiction publications, such as Chhatrapatis of Kolhapur
(1962), Puars of Dewas Senior (1962), and Kanhoji
Angrey (1959). (1971).
He additionally produced a large number of non-fiction
publications, such as Chhatrapatis of Kolhapur (1962),
Puars of Dewas Senior (1962), and Kanhoji Angrey
(1959). (1971). In his book The Men Who Killed
Gandhi, he also provided a remarkably accurate
description of Gandhi's murder. Malgonkar maintained a
weekly column on a variety of issues for many years in
~ 52 ~
Indian newspapers like The Statesman and Deccan

Herald.
Manohar Malgonkar is a prolific and well-known Indian
writer in English. Malgonkar began writing Indian
English fiction in the 1960s and 1970s, but he has since
become renowned for his innovation. His fictional
writing makes clear that it has a goal—it explores the
conflicts in Indian political and social history. His
writing style is rich, and his approach to storytelling is
compelling. His role models tell the real story. We read
him several times because of the perspectives. In his
writing, estrangement is a prominent theme.
Malgonkar has done a commendable job of presenting
the timeline of the Indian independence movement, from
its start to its successful conclusion. The Devil's Wind
dramatically fictionalises the turbulent history of the
movement that started with the mutiny of 1857. The
other books, including Distant Drum, Combat of
Shadows, The Princes, and A Bend in the Ganges,
continue the theme of freedom, follow its rocky path,
emphasize the emergence of new political
consciousness, and set the scene with the partition of
Hindustan and the eventual achievement of long-awaited
Independence.
The protagonist Kiran Garud makes his debut in
Malgonkar's first book, Distant Drum, and the story
follows him as he transitions from Bum-wart to CO of
the 4th Satpuras in the British Indian Army. There are
numerous stages in Kiran's development between 1938,
when he enlists in the 9th Satpuras as a second
Lieutenant, and 1950, when he returns from the Kashmir
front to Raniwala as CO. The framework, which
~ 53 ~
symbolises in each portion the progressive phases of his

evolution, precisely expresses Malgonkar's intention to
depict the initiation and development of Kiran Garud.
The book is realistic and impressive because of how the
events develop. The story is given the illusion of life by
the depiction of actual and uncreated occurrences, and
the novel's rare theme is handled with extraordinary self-
confidence. The tale moves along smoothly and in a way
that doesn't confuse the reader, divert his attention, or
undermine the novel's overall framework. Malgonkar has
been able to paint an extremely accurate portrait of the
Indian Army in the context of the changes brought on by
the Second World War, the beginning of Independence,
the divide of the people and the army, the Kashmir War,
and the emergence of a national spirit in the Army.
Malgonkar holds traditional, conservative views. He
chooses conservative literary formats and is very clear
about his goals as an author.
The golden thread of authenticity with never a false note
runs through the entire book, faithfully recapturing "the
ambience of the older days." The author has successfully
captured the spirit of Indian soldiers, their flaws, their
depressions, and their exceptional devotion and bravery
in the wake of crisis in his book by using the texture of
the basic story of a regiment that maintains the
equanimity in spite of crushing defeats and glorious
victories. The rigors of drill, parade, and barrack life are
not without some redeeming qualities that give life zest
and spice and enchant the otherwise dull, routine
existence. It is a simple true story that completely
engrosses and absorbs the reader. The novel is written in
~ 54 ~
captivating and sparkling English and throbs and pulses

with sensitivity.
Combat of shadows, his second book, Malgonkar
underlines how crucial it is to make occasions unique
and distinctive. They are frequently amusing,
occasionally moving, and always unexpected. The
festivities go down without a hitch but surprise. The
story of an Englishman's moral collapse is told in the
novel. The work describes the emergence of ties between
Indians, Anglo-Indians, and the British on a public level.
It depicts the social interaction's dehumanizing moral
shallowness. The two shadows of yearning and antipathy
have been portrayed to be engaged in a struggle for
control of the human spirit against the backdrop of
British officers, Indian coolies, and politicians working
for the welfare of the labour.
Combat of Shadows' story is more complex than just a
few disconnected scenes or episodes. Here, each scene
advances the plot in some way, and each one flows into
the next while maintaining a constant logical coherence.
Malgonkar has handled the plot admirably, and this is
impressive. The dark sides of human life are central to
this book's plot from beginning to end. The novel's major
conflict is not just a personal one. It has aspects related
to race, creativity, and emotion. Malgonkar has
successfully combined a number of plot points. The
novel Combat of Shadows is expertly written. Tea and
pythons, love and passion, sportsmanship and vendetta
are the opposing forces in the shadow play that give the
novel's two parts—prelude to home leave and return
from leave—the precise symmetry of the hour-glass.
Although he is unaware of it, Winton is trapped right
~ 55 ~
away during the movement. He wriggles and attempts to

break away, but the coils just continue to contract, giving
him little chance. Like Distant Drum, there are a number
of themes in the book, including racial strife, big-game
hunting, the hunt for selfhood, but what stands out and is
crucial is the relationship between the characters, the
conflict between human values, and ultimately the
failure of a person who is taking part in the Combat of
Shadows without realising what is going on. Combat of
Shadows offers a broad perspective on numerous forms
of human connections, but it ultimately exposes the
fallibility of all men who deceive themselves and live in
a false world of moral decay, not just Henry Winton. The
book succeeds because of its thorough planning and
inner construction as well as its ability to create both
scenario and atmosphere through writing.
The Princes, Malgonkar's upcoming book, explores the
sentimental sense of loss for the pioneering past via the
lens of an engaging father-son connection. When read
from a particular angle, The Princes can be seen as both
a piece of deliberate literary creation and a record of
modern history. In this book, Indian princes' private
lives, glamorous lifestyles, and tragedies serve as a
backdrop against which the societal and political
advancements of Indian native states are described. The
amusement that results from the dramatic arrangement of
the episodes is legitimate and proof of the author's
expertise in crafting stories. Malgonkar manages the tale
in this instance with the elegance of a natural storyteller.
His historical writing and leisurely description are
superb. Malgonkar manages the combative movement in
this tale with impressive competence. The Princes tells
~ 56 ~
the beginning of Abhay Raj's transformation from a boy

to a man. The historical topic has been expertly weaved
into the initiation motif by Malgonkar. The public and
personal plots are parallel to one another.
Malgonkar meticulously constructs the plot according to
the conventional mythic structure. As in all myths, the
hero progresses through three stages: separation,
initiation, and return. Within this broad framework,
Malgonkar crafts his tale with unique originality. His
explanation of the action doesn't just play on people's
intrigue and suspense. Malgonkar expertly conveys his
worldview in The Princes, and the plot transforms into
action, which is the book's core. In this case, the main
character and the incidents are inextricably tied to one
another; the character decides the incidents, and the
incidents depict the character. The novel's most striking
aspect is the unbreakable bond between its characters
and circumstances. The authenticity of the book can be
found in the author's brave defence of traditional and
conservative principles in the epic and autobiographical
content of the book. The first person's point of view is
ultimately connected to the novel's overall structure.The
Princes is a timeless film in many ways. It skillfully
depicts not only the princes' battles for power and the
elderly Maharaja's passionate aspirations, but also the
world that the young prince Abhay is entering as well as
the conflicts between the British and the princes as well
as the nationalists and nationalists. Although it appears
to exalt the princes, it is aware of their flaws. It also
acknowledges the emergence of the historical forces'
dominance over the forces of inertia, resistance, and
superstition. The greatness of Malgonkar resides in his
~ 57 ~
ability to depict the crumbling of the princely India in all

its beauty and grandeur, as well as its inherent follies and
foibles, without the use of aesthetic gimmicks or
idiosyncrasies. In The Princes, he skillfully handled the
double movement and double vision while also
successfully humanising his incredibly authentic,
difficult, and historical source material. If the Princes'
magnificent vision makes it unique among works of
Indian-English literature, Malgonkar's aesthetic skill in
putting the novel together has allowed him to stand
alongside the finest practitioners of the genre.
The Devil's Wind: the Story of Nana Saheb, Malgonkar's
upcoming book, is both a historical account and an
intentional creative creation. The story depicts the
progress of the 1857 Rebellion, particularly the
Rebellion in Kanpur, on one level. This is the public
course of action or the historical narrative. On another
level, it is the tale of Nana Saheb, a young prince from
the nineteenth century who matures, stops being a spoilt
prince, and eventually becomes one of the Revolt's
leaders. This is also a personal story or a private course
of action. Public and private lines are expertly weaved
together. The reader gets the impression that the
characters could not have lived at any other time or
location in history through the characters' intimate ties to
their societal and political backgrounds rather than just
from the gallery of historical personalities. In The
Devil's Wind, Nana Saheb's professional development is
synced with the course of events and shows a
sophisticated blending of historical and personal themes.
The majority of the characters in this historical fiction
are real, accomplished people from history. It shows a
~ 58 ~
conflict between householders or freedom fighters on the

one side, and pirates, slave dealers, or robbers on the
other. He has a distinct talent for introducing his stories
in a way that is exciting and realistic. It is interesting to
observe how smoothly and confidently he transitions
from the social novel to the historical one through job
dealing.
The historical and fantastical range of events that make
up the book's core focus give it an appearance of epic
solidity. The Devil's Wind expertly illustrates
Malgonkar's great storytelling force and his love of the
unusual in human experience. In a way that doesn't
disrupt the texture of the tale, he has skillfully blended
analysis with narrative. The Devil's Wind successfully
combines the art of storytelling with a historical topic.
The novel is engaging because of how the tale and
history successfully converge. A scholarly approach is
used to present the history of the Sepoy Mutiny.
Malgonkar demonstrates impressive historical
imagination when he attempts to recreate ancient times
for which there are few, vague, ambiguous, or
contradicting historical documents. He uses this
information to successfully craft a historical narrative by
making up, changing, and rearrange events while always
staying inside the parameters of artistic reality. Whether
describing the fighting scene or Nana's interior
landscape, the descriptive sections are masterfully
written. Malgonkar has done a great job at capturing the
past in this place. The work has a rich execution and
situation; the picturesque conditions are historical, and
also Malgonkar's characters.
~ 59 ~
The second book by Malgonkar, A Bend in the Ganges,

covers the years 1938 to 1948 in Indian history.
Malgonkar skillfully illustrates through a straightforward
plot how vested interests want to undermine the inherent
communal peace of Indian society in order to further
their own objectives. When he reveals the bias and
inadequacy of the administration in addressing the tragic
circumstance, the author criticises the process by which
the country acquired freedom. The novel's plot, however,
becomes disorganised and jumbled since the numerous
plot lines are not connected. Of course, there is a lot to
say about the precise statistical data and vivid accounts
of the events. Although, like the author of War and
Peace, he achieves multifarious and epical heights in A
Bend in the Ganges, he does not do so in his other
works. And despite being a historian, he occasionally
loses his objectivity and impartiality. The obvious
outcomes are the occasional falsifications of data.
His writings bear witness to his talent for telling stories
and his preference for epic historical themes. His books
demonstrate that he is a novelist who conveys the
historical and social context, especially of the pre-
independence era and the early years of independence, in
an aesthetic manner.
Because of his diverse and extensive expertise, he deals
with a variety of issues in his work. The Princes, A Bend
in the Ganges, Distant Drum, Combat of Shadows, and
many other of his English books portray the author as a
Universalist with a perspective on humanity. More
emphasis is placed on the army lifestyle as well as the
lives of princes, landowners, officers, and bureaucrats.
The author of this tale honours the commitment,
~ 60 ~
integrity, and sacrifice of all Indian soldiers serving in

the British Army. Malgonkar describes the highs and
lows of princes' aristocratic lives in his book "The
Princes." Realism, Romanticism, and Authenticity are
present in the descriptions of both the princes and their
adherents.
The descriptions of specific occurrences are accurate and
realistic. Malgonkar's continued interest in the
aristocracy topic is very clear in his novel The Devil's
Wind. He has provided descriptions of the lives of
historical figures such as Nana Saheb, the Rani of Jhansi,
and others. In the foregoing, descriptions of the corrupt
behaviour of wealthy politicians and ministers are
clearly highlighted. His books, including Spy in Amber,
Bandicoot Run, The Garland Keepers, and Shalimar,
also touch on the issue of espionage. These books
describe bad activities and how honest officials are able
to catch them. His espionage-themed novels and short
stories are quite interesting and keep the readers on the
edge of their seats right up to the very last page. There is
a tenacious conviction that an artist may transform the
reports into works of art using their alembic of fancy and
imaginative creativity. Malgonkar is truthful in this case
since his writings are reliable and accurate.
His wide-ranging experiences and in-depth research on
Indian and Western authors have served as Malgonkar's
primary inspirations for his creative writing. Indirect
influences from Indian and Western authors helped him
put the story in the right shape and form, while personal
experiences directly assisted him in gathering the raw
material for his works. In practically all of Malgonkar's
writings, the influence of his cultural heritage is evident.
~ 61 ~
Malgonkar has taken a lot of inspiration from his life.

His debut book, Distant Drum, powerfully captures his
experiences in the military. Kiran and Abdul are two
characters who are cordial but fundamentally opposed to
one another. Both of them were forced to live in separate
camps after the partition in 1947, the former in India and
the latter in Pakistan. The fact that both are positioned
next to one another on the country's boundary line is
purely a matter of happenstance. The former pals are
now openly declared adversaries.
Manohar Malgonkar arrived on the English-language
Indian writing scene somewhat later than other Indian
authors, but he has quickly made a name for himself.
Before becoming a novelist, he served as a soldier as a
shikari, therefore he is familiar with the unique
challenges that every Indian writer of English faces.
Malgonkar’s Experimentation with History

Manohar Malgonkar is a novelist whose works are more
akin to the historical novel proper, as defined by the
Encyclopaedia Britannica. They use fictional central
people and occurrences, yet they have an actual
historical backdrop. Malgonkar demonstrates what
Hersey advocates, which is that contemporary historical
novelists must conduct more study than traditional
historical novelists and must be meticulous in their
material selection and deft in their story construction.
Malgonkar takes extreme care to stick to the facts when
discussing historical occurrences. Paul Ford postulates
that "It is simple for a fair-minded writer to treat of
present events without feeling as those of a hundred
years ago," and Malgonkar demonstrates this. Malgonkar
~ 62 ~
approaches the current events with the impartiality and

cool detachment of a historian. The belief that a
historical novel develops from the history, politics, and
social conditions of the moment seems to be shared by
Malgonkar and Georg Lukacs, and his writings show a
synthesis of these factors. His books roughly match
Leisy's assessment of successful historical novelists; he
is an excellent storyteller; he meticulously and wisely
uses the historical information; he delineates his
characters perceptively; and he faithfully recreates the
historical ambiance of the recent past. Malgonkar is not
only a historical novelist but also a historian and an
artist. The fusion of these three facets of his personality
has given Malgonkar's work a unique creative quality
and excellence.
Recent historical occurrences, whose repercussions can
still be heard in modern politics, serve as the backdrop
for Malgonkar's writings. From book to book, this
background differs in terms of nature, quantity, and
relationship to the fictitious plot. The fifteen-year span
of Indian history, from 1937 to 1952, was filled with
important historical happenings. The Second World War,
Indian Independence, India's partition, Pakistan's
aggressiveness in Kashmir, and Mahatma Gandhi's
passing are all crucial moments in contemporary India's
history. Malgonkar used this time period and these actual
events as the backdrop for his first four novels, and
because he has a natural interest in history, he gave them
the appropriate level of accuracy. He took great care to
conduct extensive research for his writings, despite the
fact that he was writing about events that were still fresh
in his readers' minds. He researched all the pertinent data
~ 63 ~
that were available in order to maintain the historical

accuracy of his tales, and more importantly, he upheld
the historian's impartial presentation style.
The main characters in practically all of Malgonkar's
works are made up. All of the principal characters, with
the exception of those in The Devil's Wind, are creations
of his mind. Malgonkar carefully excludes prominent
political figures like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal
Nehru, VallabhbhAi Patel, Mohemmed Ali Jinnah, Lord
Mountbatten, and many others from participating in the
action of his novels despite the period he has selected
and the significant historical events of the time.
Abhayraj is there in the gallery when Lord Mountbatten
addresses the Chamber of Princes in The Princes;
Malgonkar chooses not to capitalise on this momentous
moment. A nondescript under-secretary bluntly informs
Abhayraj that the Maharaja must sign the Instrument and
that's the end of the matter after the final meeting of
Hiroji Maharaj and the authorities of the States
Department in Delhi. Malgonkar does not invite either
Vallabhbhai Patel or V.P. Menon, the chief architects of
this merger. Mahatma Gandhi makes a physical
appearance in A Bend in the Ganges. The burning of the
foreign clothing occurs in the Mahatma's presence. But
because it happens to be Gandhi Day of Silence,
Malgonkar is able to keep him out of the spotlight.
Malgonkar therefore takes extra effort to ensure that no
historical or political figure actually participates in the
plot of his novels. The Devils Wind is a unique case
because although it is based on historical facts, it
nevertheless has a dramatic plot. Although nearly all of
its characters are real historical figures, only Nana Saheb
~ 64 ~
is completely developed; the others are only rough

sketches.
In his writings, Malgonkar demonstrates a strong
understanding of history. In fictional terms, he combines
the personal and the historical viewpoints. In addition to
history, his novels also discuss hunting, man-woman
interactions, initiation or self-discovery, and Indo-British
ties. In actuality, his novels give readers a
comprehensive view of Indian culture free from
pretences of profundity and mysticism.
Malgonkar chose this time period of Indian history in
order to accomplish three goals: first, he kept the
historical accuracy of his material by drawing on his
personal experiences with it; second, he drew directly
from his personal experience and, as a result, kept the
role of romance to a minimum; and third, he indirectly
projected his own understanding of the historical events
and political movements.
The political and historical strands are inextricably
entwined in Malgonkar's novels. Despite the fact that he
appears to have strong political convictions, he does not
use his novels as a platform to advance his political
views. He is primarily concerned with upholding the
historical truth in addition to his fidelity to the poetic
truth, even when presenting the political component.He
had to unroll, explain, debate, and examine the veracity
of his historical material since he was a novelist of
contemporary history. Malgonkar's deliberate attempt to
use his creativity within the bounds of this period's
historical realism may be seen in his choice of it.
Malgonkar set his first four books—Distant Drum,
Combat of Shadows, The Princes, and A Bend in the
~ 65 ~
Ganges—during the 1937–1953 Indian historical era.

The majority of his readers were familiar with this
practically historical substance. Political events abound
during this period, which has relevance. Every historical
development at this time has political ramifications. It is
impossible for anyone engaging with them to avoid
politics. Malgonkar discovered that neither historians nor
political figures were accurately portraying modern
history to the populace. The majority of Indians were
content to accept the shallow accounts of even the most
important events in their period. The informed
individuals who were aware of the reality either kept
quiet subtly or took advantage of their knowledge to
advance their own interests. The modern Indians lacked
a general understanding of history. Malgonkar aimed to
convey that historical sense through his writings and to
counteract the effects of historical information being
deliberately and willfully mishandled for nefarious
political ends.
The success of Manohar Malgonkar as a storyteller is
partly a result of his rich historical imagination. He is
possibly the first Indo-Anglian novelist to write full-
length historical books on modern topics. His books are
prime examples of the focus placed in the 20th century
"on history evolving through the present and impacting
the future."
Historian Malgonkar; Prior to switching to writing
novels, Malgonkar wrote a historical work titled Kanho
Angrey: The Maratha Admiral. This work highlighted
two facets of Malgonkar's historical perspective: his
desire to restore historical figures to their rightful
identities and dignity, as well as his unrelenting pursuit
~ 66 ~
of the truth. Another historical book, Puars of Dewas

Senior, had already left his hands by the time he began
work on The Princes. While creating Kanhoji Angrey,
Puars of Dewas Senior, and gathering information for
Chhatrapatis- of Kolhapur, another historical work.
Malgonkar diligently examined all the historical records
that were available, travelled to significant historical
sites, and engaged in lengthy debates with renowned
historians and academics. Both in KanhoJi Angrey and
his subsequent book, The Men Who Killed Gandhi, we
find Malgonkar painstakingly attempting to establish the
historical accuracy of these people's professional
histories.
Malgonkar thinks that studying the past has importance
for the present since history is an ongoing activity and a
stream of time. We can evaluate the present and direct
our steps into the future by considering the past, its
glory, and its stupidity. Additionally, due to the present's
close proximity to us, independent examination of it is
not possible. The present is illuminated by the past's
refracted light, which reveals its ugliness and harshness.
Malgonkar's training as a historian and innate curiosity
about the past enabled him to write history that was
rigorously accurate and objective. Malgonkar can depict
a scene or scenario with the objectivity of a painter and
the historical realism of a historian, but he never
confuses reality with realism. Malgonkar has been
influenced by both western and Indian writers. A keen
reader can find allusions to The Gita, The Mahabharata,
and The Ramayana. Malgonkar has also been affected by
everything from the straightforward vernacular forms of
experience to the intricate intellectual heritage as shown
~ 67 ~
in the Vedas, Upanishads, and other Indian classics. He

advances and adopts while experimenting and
innovating.
The best thing about Malgonkar's books is how well-
grounded in history they are. In his works, Malgonkar
depicts significant moments in the Indian national
struggle and how they affected people's social and
personal lives between 1857 and 1949. He invites
comparison to Leo Tolstoy in this regard, who primarily
limited himself to portraying Russian history from 1861
to 1905 in his later books. Tolstoy is a great chronicler of
Russia's time of transformation from the 1861
emancipation of the peasants through the 1905
Revolutions, according to Lukacs.
In comparison to other Indian-English authors, he stands
out because he depicts various stages of the Indian
national movement and its stirrings with the unflinching
tenacity of a historian turned fiction writer. The writings
of Malgonkar have a strong sense of history. He was a
Maratha historian before writing Indian-English fiction,
which is an important thing to keep in mind. The truth is
that he is a writer who writes with a clear awareness of
the area of his operation and the period of his
representation, despite the fact that some may interpret
this as evidence of the insufficiency of his original and
imaginative abilities. He is one of those writers who
have displayed a great understanding of Indian tradition
and her long history among Indian English novelists.
Malgonkar sees the past as the history that came before
the present. As with his predecessors, Malgonkar does
not use history as a means of escaping the misery of
modern existence. Now it is only a way for him to
~ 68 ~
express his subjectivity in a more expansive way than a

modern subject would allow. He is neither a glorifier of
the past nor an elegist of the past, like his forebears in
the genre of historical novel. He does not view history as
foreign. Even beyond costume and ornamentation, it
goes much beyond.
He believes that everything about human society is
influenced by history. In this regard, he is comparable to
Nirad C. Chaudhary, who in his book An Autobiography
of an Unknown Indian has a similar viewpoint of the
function of history. Every action, idea, sentiment of love,
hatred, and political allegiance to a certain race or group,
in his opinion, has its roots firmly planted in historical
reality.
Malgonkar's perspective on the past is illustrative of Mr.
Chaudhary's understanding of history. His historical
fiction is a creative representation of historical outlook
on life. He fixed the disconnect between the past and the
present that his forebears' historical novels had.
Malgonkar's reverence for English culture sets him apart
from his literary Indian-English forebears. He does not
treat the English with blind devotion, as other Indians
did, or as the offspring of a monkey or a tiger, as did the
early historical authors in Indian-English writing.
By doing this, he gives the historical fiction a solid
foundation and a respectable place in Indian-English
literature. Malgonkar's historical novels, in the words of
Uma Parameswaran, "enrich the social novels of the
predecessors in Indian-English writing." His novels carry
on the social novels of his forebears in equal measure.
Regarding Malgonkar's novels, GS Amur says, "He is
very much in the mainstream of realistic tradition."
~ 69 ~
Conclusion
Malgonkar is a successful author who has written
numerous novels, historical books, and collections of
short tales. He has also written a play and an anthology
of essays. Malgonkar is a skilled novelist with a strong
style. He is so firmly rooted in the extensive Indian
historical heritage that he will undoubtedly endure in the
future. When considered as a whole, his books seem to
support the idea that he is a writer who possesses "a
superb gift of constructing tales of singular originality."
This was made possible not by his interest in history, but
rather by his skill at fusing reality with fiction and
incorporating elements of romance and adventure into
his writing.
The result is that Malgonkar's works are well-written. He
is well familiar with Indian history; hence his novels are
very knowledgeable. Scholars, commentators, and
reviewers have all conducted research on Manohar
Malgonkar. Malgonkar is one of the novelists who has
demonstrated a profound understanding of ancient Indian
tradition. Mulk Raj Anand, Bhabani Bhattacharya,
Khushwant Singh, and Kamala Markandaya are just a
few of the novelists who have extensively covered
Indian history.
Malgonkar continues to be a match for modern Indian
English Fiction because of his distinct historical sense,
outdoor freshness, excellent plot construction, and
captivating tale telling. Malgonkar examines the people
and events with the historical objectivity that is typical
of him.
Malgonkar therefore distinguishes himself from other
Indian-English authors by depicting various stages of the
~ 70 ~
Indian National Movement and of its stirrings with the

unflinching tenacity of a historian turned fiction writer.
Everywhere in Malgonkar's writings, there is a strong
historical feeling. The fact that, before writing Indian-
English fiction, he was a historian of the Marathas must
be kept in mind. The truth is that he is a writer who
works with a clear awareness of the area of his operation
and the date of his depiction. Malgonkar is more drawn
to historical topics than psychological, social, or
anthropological ones.
Malgonkar sets himself apart from the early historical
novelists in Indian-English literature in terms of his
perspective on the past. The greatest contribution of
Malgonkar to Indian-English writing is the expansion of
the portrayal of pre-history to the portrayal of self-
experienced history. Malgonkar is characterised by his
keen sense of history, his awareness of the conflict
between the self and the forces of history, and his ability
to discern how a human situation interacts with its
physical environment. These traits compel some sort of
comparison to the ways in which Paul Scott, John
Masters, and E.M. Forster have depicted India in their
novels.
Reference
Rajagopalachari, M. The Novels of Manohar
Malgonkar, New Delhi: Prestige, 1989.
Pettela, R. (2013). The concept of racial superiority in
Malgonkar’s Combat of Shadows. International Journal
of English and Literature, 4(10), 538-541.
~ 71 ~
Balamurugan, K., Rajesh, N., & Thirunavukkarasu, S.

Writings of Manohar Malgonkar With Special Reference
to A Bend in the Ganges. LANGUAGE IN INDIA, 160.
Padmanabhan, A. (2002). The fictional world of
Manohar Malgonkar. Atlantic Publishers & Dist.
Best, A Marshall. ‘Manohar Malgonkar’ Contemporary
Novelists, 2nd Edition, ed. James Vinson. London: St.
James Press. 1976. Print.
The Historian as Novelist: Manohar Malgonkar,
Perspectives of Indian Fiction in English. ed. M.K. Naik.
New Delhi: Abhinav Publishers. 1985. Print
Parameshwaran, Uma. A Study of Representative Indo-
English Novelists. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing Pvt.
Ltd. 1976. Print.
Sharma, AK. The Novels of Manohar Malgonkar: A
Study. Delhi: BR Publishing Corporation. 1995. Print.
Parmeswaran, Uma. “Manohar Malgonkar as a
Historical Novelist.” World Literature Written in
English. Vol.14, No.2. November 1975: 29-338. Print.
~ 72 ~
Critiquing Indian English Novel

Altaf Ahmad Bhat
Assistant Professor (English Studies)
GDC Shopian-192303 (J&K India)
altafbhat8460@gmail.com/+917298932846
Introduction
Among all the popular genres of Indian English
Literature like poetry, drama and short story, novel has
flourished with leaps and bounds within no time and has
produced a galaxy of well talented and naturally genius
writers of global acclaim. Though the novel is not
indigenous form of writing in Indian, yet it has found a
fertile soil and provided suitably a vast platform for the
expression and representation of miscellaneous issues
and aspects of Indian socio-cultural setup. The fiction of
Indian English writers have manifested the native
sensibility by reflecting the rich cultural heritage with
diverse colours. Through novel, the novelists have
significantly contributed in spreading the awareness
among the common masses regarding various domestic,
social, political and economic matters. As a natural form
of expression, the novel inspires the literary figures to
look into these various dimensions of reality with critical
insight and thereby conceive measures to resolve them.
Pertaining to this scope of novel, H.M. Williamson
asserts: “ It is undoubtedly the most popular vehicle for
the transmission of Indian ideas to the wider English
speaking world”. The novel truely serves multiple
purposes simultaneously. It not only educates people
about the internal and external ingredients of man full of
potential and meaning for life, but also equipes them to
~ 73 ~
channelize means for better living. The English novel in

India had taken birth at the critical juncture when the
nation was undergoing rigorous freedom struggle from
colonialism. Therefore, it has a vital role to play in
galvanizing the spirit of nationalism and patriotic fervour
in the hearts of common people to stand against the
illegal occupation and exploitation of the foreign yoke.
After independence, it has also provided an appropriate
podium for the writers to resist the false claims and
misconceptions created by of English world about India
and thereby to rectify them with an adequate discourse.
It is also in this genre that Indian English writers excel to
native English novelists in terms of execution and
technique of writing. They have won laurels by grabbing
international awards and prizes including Nobel Prize,
Man Booker Prize and American Pulitzer Prize. Today it
is seen that this Indian English literature is read, taught
and researched across the globe. It is made part of the
curriculum of well reputed institutions and universities
in Europe and America. Thus, it can be said with
assurance that the Indian English Literature has
succeeded in satisfying the intellectual sense of a global
reader due to its universal appeal and multiple meanings.
The corpus of Indian novel has both quantity and quality.
Novel and Its Origin

The term novel has its roots in the Italian word
‘Novella’ which literary means ‘ a little new thing’. In
literature, the concept is used to denote a variety of
literary writings that share the common characteristics
of being extended works of fiction produced in prose. As
a fictional work, novel is differentiated from short story
~ 74 ~
and from the work of fiction of moderate length called

the ‘Novelette’. Moreover, as genres of literature, the
novel and the drama have many commonalities and
uniformities. These similar features of the two can be
seen in the form of plot, characters, background or
setting, conflict and diction. The big distinction between
these two major forms of literature is that the novel is
narrative in presentation and the drama is performative.
One is called a ‘telling’ art and the other is known as
‘showing’ art. The magnitude of both the genres allows a
writer to have a huge variety of personages, to develop a
complexity of plots, to include a vast milieu and to
display a sustained social and psychological exploration
of characters. Novels are of many categories based on
their backgrounds and substances they project. These
type may be named as: epistolary novel, picaresque
novel, gothic novel, realistic novel, historical novel and
social novel. There are also some recently emerged
narratives like regional novel, non-fiction novel, anti-
novel, new novel, documentary novel, involuted novel
and so on. The constituent elements of the novel may be
identified in the shapes of these following terms:
 Plot: It refers to ‘what’, the main story being told
either by invented character or by the author himself in
the form of first person narrator.
 Character: It denotes ‘who’, the central character
and their association with other characters and the world
they live. The relationship between plot and character is
that of subject (character) and object (plot).
 Setting: It implies ‘where’, the background, the
scene, and the environment of the characters. It may be
also defined as context of the text (plot) being described
~ 75 ~
by the character. The relation among character, plot and

setting is- who says what and where.
 Point of View: It signifies ‘how’ a story gets
narrated. It manifests mood through which readers are
presented with characters, story and setting that
constitute the overall work.
 Conflict: It refers to the problem the writer poses
to resolve at the end. The characters particularly
protagonist is to be challenged in some ways, or plot will
not develop with suspense and surprize at all. These
conflicts may be seen as: man versus man, man versus
nature, man versus himself, man versus society and like
things.
 Theme: It denotes ‘intention’ or message,
substance that the author wants to present before readers
to know it at the end. It is overall controlling substance
of the work.
Birth and Background of Indian English Novel

Indian English novel has significantly grown in
stature since its first production and publication in the
form of Rajmohan’s Wife written by Bankimchandra
Chatterjee in 1864. The genre has flourished
tremendously in magnitude, diversity and maturity. From
a short small plant, it has become a towering tree
disseminating its boughs in different directions. The
study of its progress shows its initial stage of imitation to
the ripe experimental stage of realism and psychological
revelation. The early period evinces that the Indian
English novel has been influenced by the discourse of
Henry Derozio, the spiritual writings of Robindranath
Tagore and pacific and non-violent philosophy preached
~ 76 ~
and practised by Mahatma Gandhi. With the advent of

Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan and Raja Roa, the tone
of novel has been set artistically and judiciously towards
its endless journey still going on.
Like poetry , the novels written at the outset
during colonial era are patriotic and nationalistic in
nature. But after independence as Indian begins its
onward journey towards prosperity and wellbeing,
Indian English novel also manifests positive change by
incorporating bigger issues facing humanity at the
universal level. With the passing of time, it has
embraced diversity and universality in terms of both
style and substance. Today Indian diaspora in different
parts of the world is all powerful in the writing and
publishing industry. They speak global language free
from the shackles of a particular socio-cultural ethos.
This type of novel presents the native Indian individual
in relation to international environment and their ability
of adjustment and negotiation in foreign setting. The
Indian immigrants demystified the romantic and
mythical fantasies that used to be the part of domestic
affairs of rural India. The trailblazing novelist Salman
Rushdie amuses the readers with his concept of
‘chutnification’ of history and language. He has opened
a new chapter for a number of writers to perceive the life
with afresh critical insight. Amitav Ghosh deliberates on
the postcolonial phenomenon. Vikram Seth amalgamates
prose and poetry with a tingle of English Victorian
sophistication. Moreover, Pica Iyer effortlessly and
tirelessly walks the map in his literature, while as
Rohinton Mistry unravels the reality of Parsi existence
before readers.
~ 77 ~
There are also many prominent female writers

who resist the women suppression and shows urgency
for their emancipation and empowerment in the rapidly
changing life. Among them Kamala Markandaya and
Shashi Deshpande depict women’s predicament in India
and portrays personages with their own complacency for
their poor status and deteriorated conditions. Arundhati
Roy adds a colourful spectacle to Indian English novel
by creating multi-layered meanings in fictional works.
Bharti Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri project the bitter-
sweet world of Indian diaspora residing in Europe and
America. These aforementioned and other female
novelists have achieved a critical appreciation and
acclamation in the English knowing world due to their
spectacular literary craft.
Indian English literature has received its real
recognition and genuine attention from the European
world with the Nobel Prize of Tagore. Its stature has
further been amplified when Indian origin novelist V.S.
Naipaul bagged the prize in 2001. Naipaul is also among
many well established writers who have been conferred
upon the envious Booker Prize, an equivalent to
American Pulitzer Prize.
Grand Trio of Indian English Novel

During the immediate pre-independence, Indian
English novel was considerably influenced by social and
political circumstances. It is at this juncture that the real
beginning of the genre starts. The talented triad viz
Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan and Raja Roa have made
entry on the literary scene and projected the socio-
political situations with the photographic reality without
~ 78 ~
distorting it. Their works are truely didactic and

reformative in nature. They display utmost concern for
deteriorated conditions of Indian masses. William Walsh
calls this big trio as ‘the founding fathers’, ‘the genuine
novelists’, and ‘inaugurators of the form’. These
novelists appeared almost simultaneously in 1930’s.
With the publication of Untouchable (1935), Swami and
Friends (1935), and Kanthapura (1938). Thus they have
established the foundation of Indian English novel on
solid rocks by creating these masterpieces.
Mulk Raj Anand is a humanist-novelist par
excellence. He is the writer with well defined purpose.
He has kept pace with the shifting scenario having
profound eye on his surrounding. His analysis of Indian
socio-cultural ethos is valid and meaningful. He hardy
leaves any issue and challenge unaddressed. While
dealing with these affairs of life, his understanding and
experience are up to mark. There is exact
correspondence between social reality and psychological
response in his works. He is of the opinion that the novel
is “ the creative weapon for attaining humanness- it is
the weapon of humanism”. He is the champion of the
lower class and marginalized ones in the society. He is
Indian Dickens. He also shows a tremendous influence
of Russian Leo Tolstoy in form as well in
characterization. Like all world’s great realists, his
novels are the projection of social contest and protest.
His philosophy of writing is merged ideologies of
western Marxism and Indian Gandhism. Therefore, he
has a universal appeal. His main domains of fiction may
be identified as: class system, imperialism,
demonstration against social and industrial evils, the
~ 79 ~
plight of woman and like issues. According to G.S.

Balarama Gupta: “ The moot point to be noted about
Anand is that he has firmly believed in the role of a
writer as essentially a crusader in the cause of humanity;
no hotchpotch of Vedantas; no hazy mysticism, but
inalienable faith in man” (1977). All his initial novels
like Coolie (1936), Two Leaves and a Bud (1937), The
Sword and the Sickle (1942) justify such statements in
spirit as the novelists has represented in these works
lower class and poor people. These people can be
identified in the form of characters as scavengers, the
coolies, the leather workers and dalits. His masterpiece
Untouchable is a supreme work of art so far as its
substance and technique are concerned. It reflects a day
from morning to evening in the life of Bakha, a sweeper
boy who is described by E.M. Forster as: “a real
individual, a lovable thwarted, sometimes grand,
sometimes week and thoroughly Indian” (198).
R.K. Narayan is the representative of middle class
sensibility and their aspirations. He is a genuine artist
and a magical story teller. From Swami and Friends
(1935) to The Painter of Signs (1976), his art of
narration is a continuous reminder of globally
acknowledged Anton Chekov, Tolstoy, and Walt Disney.
His works The Bachelor of Arts (1937), The Dark Room
(1938) and The English Teacher (1945) are all brilliant
descriptions of South Indian life. William Walsh looks
upon Narayan as “ a distinctive blend of western
technique and Eastern material”. The imaginary world of
R.K. Narayan is Malgudi, a South Indian town. It is just
like Thomas Hardy’s Wessex and William Faulkner’s
~ 80 ~
Yoknapatawpa. Regarding the genius of Narayan, K.R.

Srinivas Iyengar asserts:
He is one of the few writers in India who take their craft
seriously, constantly striving to improve the instrument,
pursuing with a sense of dedication what may often seem
to be the mirage of technical perfection. There is a norm
of excellence below which Narayan cannot possibly
lower himself. (359)
R.K. Narayan is extremely lucid and
straightforward in the manner of language and narration.
His tongue has been admired as a plain English. Like
Raja Roa, he is the part of a process aiming at
‘Indianisation’ of English.
Raja Roa is an indispensable part of this grand trio.
Though he is not as prolific writer as Anand and
Narayan. He shows a keen interest in philosophy and
mythology which distinguishes him from the other two
in the fold. He has produced a landmark in Indian fiction
in the form of his debut novel Kanthapura. The book
delineates the village life and the Indian rural sensibility.
It is the incarnation of Gandhian ideology and thought.
Pertaining to the subject of the novel, R.K. Srivastava
says:
Raja Rao’s Kanthapura is a garrulous account of
primitivistic, religious, political and social activities of
rural people. The novel is not a two-dimensional picture
of villagers but a colourful audio-visual presentation
….characterizing the entire country Kanthapura is India
in miniature.”
Regarding the difficulty of writing in English
Language, Raja Roa explicitly explains it in the
‘Forward’ to Kanthapura: “We cannot write like
~ 81 ~
English. We should not. We can write only as Indians.

We have grown to look at the large world as part of us.”
He further adds in this connection that English is: “the
language of our intellectual make up…. but not of our
emotional make up”.
Thus bearing these illustrations and analysis in
mind, it becomes evident that this talented grant trio has
a considerable hand in making Indian English novel a
powerful instrument to express the native sensibility and
social reality in a detailed way. They have shown other
writers how this novel can be used as a literary form to
depict different types of subjects by exploiting diverse
styles. They have widened the scope and range of novel
in India. They have created matching correspondence
between foreign language and native content, and social
reality and individual psyche. They provide a holistic
view of life full of diversity in a unified manner.
Indo-Anglian Novel in Post-independence Era

In the immediate post freedom literary scene,
G.V. Desani’s novel All About H. Hatterr (1948) has
revolutionized Indian English fiction with its innovative
technique and style. It is a remarkable piece of literary
art. The novelist’s real genius lies in his mastery of using
English language in an experimental way. The narrative
technique and English away from actual Englishness are
unique accomplishments in the history of Indo-Anglian
novel. After 1950’s, the novelists displayed their interest
to move from external social facts to internal
psychological mystery to unravel the complexity of
human nature. The immaterial ‘inner man” has been
preferred to a larger material world. There is a quest for
~ 82 ~
the essence of human existence. The writers like Anita

Desai, Arun Joshi and Nayantara Sehgal have reshaped
Indian English Novel and thereby set tone for future
developments and experiments. Anita Desai delves deep
into the inner consciousness and demonstrates its impact
on the outer behaviour of the characters. She explores
the psychological aspects and touches a new landscape
of sensibility in her novels. Arun Josh’s
experimentations with new narrative techniques is his
hallmark. Nayantara Sehgal through her work Rich Like
Us (1985) has displayed a great mastery of story telling.
The other writers in this genre includes Kamala
Markandaya, Manohar Malgoankar and others have also
been acclaimed and appreciated not only in India but at
global level. Kamala Markandaya depicts the rustic and
urban life with a photographic realism. She projects a
South Indian village whose life has visibly shown no
change at all for centuries. Moreover, Ruth Prawar
Jhabvala is noted for her engaging comedy manifested
through characters of North Indian urban middle class.
Proceeding ahead in time in the evolution of Indian
novel, it is Amitav Ghosh whose artistic genius has left a
deep imprint on the canvas of Indian literature. His duo-
The Circle of Life (1986) and The Shadow Lines (1988)
established Ghosh as one of the finest writers born out of
the post Midnight’s Children literary scenario. At this
point of time, Vikram Sethe has also gained a critical
attention and a wider circularity with the publication of
two inspiring novels- The Golden Gate (1986) and A
Suitable Boy (1993). A Suitable Boy has amused the
literary world by its extended length and in this matter
may be compared with Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace
~ 83 ~
and Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past.

English August (1988) is a novel by Upamanyu
Chatterjee which has also contributed to this tradition of
writing in India. It satirizes the foibles of Indian
bureaucracy. The work is also interesting in terms of its
indianised English. The contemporary Shashi Tharoor’s
The Great Indian Novel (1989) is also a big achievement
in Indian English fiction. Rohinton Mistry may be
included here in this race of writing due to his well-
crafted fiction. His, Such a Long Journey (1991) is the
maiden work in this field of literature showing the plight
of existing life.
Existing Scenario of Indian English Novel

It may not be hyperbolic to say that Salman
Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children is a magnum opus
not only in writer’s profile, but in overall Indian English
novel. It has modified the world view towards Indian
writing in English from dilettante to cognoscente. It is
truely trailblazing creation in terms of all- narrative
technique, language and the subject. It has inspired and
guided all Indian novelists there onwards to make new
experiments in the field of writing. In the novel, Rushdie
conceives a new folk of Indians born at the stroke of
midnight of 15th August 1947. He describes this moment
of history as:
What made the event noteworthy… was the nature of
these children, every one of the whom was, through
some freak of biology or perhaps owing to some
preternatural power of the moment, or just conceivably
by sheer coincidence… endowed with features, talents or
faculties which can only be described as miraculous. It
~ 84 ~
was as though … history, arriving at a point of the

highest significance and promise, had chosen to sow, in
that instant, the seeds of a future which would genuinely
differ from anything the world has seen up to that time.
(195)
What makes difference here onwards in Indian
English Literature is the manifestation of natural talent
and inherent genius in this type of writing. The writers
have made an indelible mark on the world literary scene.
Among these gifted ones is Arundhati Roy whose fiction
displays a profound psychological understanding vis-a-
vis the first hand knowledge of native culture and
history. Her The God of Small Things is a multi-
dimensional work which has attracted a critical response
from the world over and bagged a covetous Booker Prize
as its predecessor Midnight’s Children. While reading
Roy’s novel, one feels that she has overcome all
traditional shackles of writing conforming social norms
and writing methodology. She does experiments of new
types both in terms of content and form. With Arundhati
Roy, Kiran Desai explores unbeaten subjects in the
shape of postcolonial reality and the cultural
incompatibility between the East and the West in her
novels. Her maiden novel Hallobaloo in the Guava
Orchard is written in a satiric tone exposing society.
Her masterpiece The inheritance of Loss (2006)
demonstrates a cultural conflict between English life
style and Indian one. The novel has won Booker Prize
for her. The narrative technique, innovative use of
language and unique execution of plot put her among
the towering writers in Indo-Anglian literature.
Moreover, the publication of The white Tiger (2008) has
~ 85 ~
created one of the unforgettable novelists in Indian

English Novel. It is new type of work in its own way.
Though the epistolary technique is conventional one, yet
the language is absolutely absorbing so far as its lucidity
and journalistic colour is concerned. In the novel, Arvind
Adiga mirrors the whole Indian life with colourful
presentation. Indian traditional practices, social reality,
politics, faulty education system, poor medical facilities
all come under his satiric radar. His subject matter and
the lingual use are all engaging. The novel has made the
writer so popular and successful that it got for him
Booker Prize. In this race of writing, Amish Tripathi has
also gained the attention from the literary circle. His
Immortals of Meluha deals with the origin of Lord Shiva.
Besides, Pratab Sharma, Boman Desai, Gopal Gandhi
and others have also contributed to this ‘new novel’ and
have enriched the realm of it with innovative experiences
and experiments. This whole journey of Indian English
Novel with its inventions and novel practices is
beautifully described by K.R.S. Iyengar: “[novel is] a
living and evolving literary genre, and is trying, in the
hands of its practitioners, a fusion of form, substance and
expression that is recognizably Indian yet also bearing
the marks of universality.”
Lingual Innovation in Indian English Novel

The Indo-Anglian novel has not only undergone
innovations and experiments in terms of style, narrative
techniques and themes, but also witnessed a considerable
newness in the form of English language being exploited
for native Indian characters and content. The writers
have tried their utmost to create likeness between matter
~ 86 ~
and form in order to project the ambiance with realistic

tone and timbre. The language has been used to provide
an exact text to the context. In this process of speaking
Indian English through fictional characters with realism,
these writers have even coined new many words. There
are novelists who concentrate on issues like poverty,
class difference, gender discrimination and religious
dogmas. They have been recognized and acclaimed by
the western readership. There are also many writers who
are sometimes called ‘global Indians’. They are born
Indians, but live elsewhere in the world. They perceive
Indian reality and existence with objectively at a
distance. They display their mastery in handing the
English language with their native like competence and
creativity. They use English as per the demands of
literary art and subject matter. They have created a type
of matching resemblance between Indian ethos shown
by characters and English flair striking from their
tongue. Such novelists employ the foreign language with
flying colours. Their new coinages and neologisms have
created a unique flavour in the domain of English fiction.
The tone of this different Indian variant of English
language has been set by Raja Roa at the very birth of
Indian English novel in the ‘Forward’ of Kanthapura
published in 1938. He writes: “We cannot write like
English. We should not. We can write only as Indians.
We have grown to look at the large world as part of us.”
He further elaborates in this connection that English is:
“the language of our intellectual make up…. but not of
our emotional make up”.
~ 87 ~
Conclusion
The Indian English fiction has physically grown
into a large body with multiple facets of Indian social
existence and individual essence. This reading traces
the developmental journey of the genre and highlight
how it changes its colours to reflect the shifting reality
of life. It would also show various diversions and
digressions the novelists have adopted to keep pace with
realism of human psyche and social structure. It
demonstrates distinctive segments of timeline of Indian
English fiction. It has been done to make the concepts
easier in order to grab the meaning and significations of
particular pieces of writing in the temporal and spatial
context. The major themes of all prolific writers have
been highlighted to demonstrate the actual purpose of
these novelists. Moreover, an effort has been made to
evaluate the linguistic dimension of this writing with
innovations and inventions made in the foreign language
to suit the native sensibility of the projected characters.
On the whole, the evaluation would provide an elaborate
glimpse of Indian English novel with situational and
historical background; would foreground the changing
priorities of the writers in terms of form and content.
Bibliography
1. Iyengar, K. R. S. Indian Writing in English. New
Delhi : Sterling Publication, 1985.
2. Lal, Malashri. The law of the Threshold: Women
writers in Indian English. Shim1a:Indian
Institute of Advanced Study, 1995.
3. Mehrotra, A. K. An Illustrated History of Indian
English Literature. New Delhi: Permanent
Black, 2003.
~ 88 ~
4. Mehrotra, Arvind. Encyclopaedia of Indian Writing in

English. New Delhi: India Ink, 1990.
5. Mehta, P. P. Indo- Anglian Fiction: An Assessment.
Bareily: Prakash Book, 1978.
6. Mukherjee, Meenakshi. The Twice Born Fiction . New
Delhi: Arnold Heinemann, 1971.
7. Mukherjee, Meenakshi. Realism and Reality: The
novel and Society in India. New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1996.
8. Naik, M.K. A History of Indian English Literature,
New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1982.
9. Pathak R.S. ed. Recent Indian Fiction. New Delhi :
Prestige Books, 1994.
10. Ramamurti, K.S. Rise of the Indian Novel in English.
New Delhi: Sterling, 1987.
11. Rushdie, Salman and Elizabeth West eds. The
Vintage Book of Indian Writing in English .
London : Vintage, 1997.
~ 89 ~
ALTAF AHMAD BHAT is Assistant Professor

(English Studies) at Govt. Degree College Shopian (J&K
). He is UGC-NET qualified and Ph.D Awarded.
Besides, teaching English Literature-( Drama, Fiction,
Poetry, Literaray Theory & Criticism); English
Language, Communication Skills, Functional English;
and doing Extension Work & Evaluauation, he has
published around a score of research papers & book
chapters in the domain of English language and literature
in national as well as in international journals.
~ 90 ~
Foregrounding Post-Coloniality in Indian

Dystopic Fiction
Vyomakesisri T
Research Scholar
Osmania University
Abstract:
Fictional works that are centred on gloomy dystopian
future visions are frequent and popular in today's
culture. Some of the most well-known books, films, comic
books, and pieces of music of all time were inspired by
these images of dystopian societies. Numerous thinkers
and writers conjured up gloomy scenarios in which
ordinary citizens might live under totalitarian authority.
Their writings covered a variety of topics related to
dystopian societies, including oppressive social control
systems, government coercion of the populace, the
impact of technology on the human mind, coping
mechanisms, individuality, freedom of speech and
expression, censorship, sexual repression, class
distinctions, artificial life, and human interaction with
nature (and often the consequences of its destruction).
This paper examines five Dystopian novels by Indian
writers (Harvest by Manjula Padmanabhan, All Quiet in
Vikaspuri by Sarnath Banerjee, The lesson by Soumya
Rajendran, Leila by Prayag Akbar and Clone by Priya S
Chabria, in an effort to clarify the intent and purpose of
dystopian writing. Through this examination, the
question of whether the dystopian futures depicted in
literature are relevant to our own future is explored. As
the dystopian future unfolds, race, gender, class, caste
and sexual orientation, to name a few aspects, all find
their own place in the new world; this paper attempts to
~ 91 ~
define their roles in the new society from a post-colonial

perspective. Furthermore, this paper delves into the
degradation of man and how we are enslaved and forced
to believe in fictitious utopias. Finally, the paper
concludes with the importance of dystopian fiction in
unravelling a rare glimpse into the future that should be
heeded and exploited as a significant and vital point.
Key Words: Dystopia, Utopia, Post-colonial, Sexual
repression
***
Introduction:
“Dystopia is usually understood to be ‘utopia’s
twentieth-century doppelganger,’ one best exemplified
by science and political fiction” (Gordin, Tilley, and
Prakash I). Speculative fiction that envisions a future
world is known as dystopian literature. One of the most
renowned writers of dystopian fiction, Margaret Atwood,
views this genre as a window into the future. “If you’re
interested in writing speculative fiction, one way to
generate a plot is to take an idea from current society and
move it a little further down the road,” says Margaret.
Even though humans are short-term thinkers, fiction may
predict and extrapolate into numerous scenarios of the
future. Thus, we find dystopian fiction fascinating
because it incorporates elements of our own reality. The
finest dystopian novels create a world that is uncannily
similar to our own while being considerably more
terrifying because they mirror the characters in dystopias
fighting against environmental destruction, technological
domination, and political persecution in countries that
are cataclysmically in decline. Dystopian fiction, with a
didactic message frequently addresses issues such as
~ 92 ~
anarchy, marginalisation, and widespread poverty.

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's
1984, and more modern dystopian novels like Kazuo
Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Margaret Atwood's The
Handmaid's Tale all make an effort to depict this grim
reality that awaits the future generations. Thus,
Dystopian fictions serve as potent post-memory devices,
contemporaneously engaged with both the past and
present, wherein major events are investigated and
intensified. They do this through the use of strong
parallels to the real world.
Purpose of Dystopic Fiction:

Dystopian literature is important because it provokes
readers to rethink contemporary social and political
situations and, in some cases, even spur them to take
action. It critiques(satirizes), opines (author’s beliefs)
and educates (inform and forewarn) people about the
risks of the present social and political systems. The
novel A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess
is a societal parody of behaviourism. It takes place in a
futuristic world with a very aggressive youth subculture.
The totalitarian state guards the dismal society by
enforcing morality and outlawing violent inclinations.
Likewise, George Orwell’s Animal Farm is another
popular allegorical novel in which a group of pigs mount
an uprising against their human farmer. The farm
animals’ ascent to power was facilitated by the Russian
Revolution are classic examples of how Dystopian
novels critique the social and political systems. The
Time Machine, written by H.G. Wells in 1895, expressed
his socialist ideologies. The plot centres on a scientist
~ 93 ~
from Victorian England who constructs a time machine

and discovers the drawbacks of a capitalist society.
Margaret Atwood's 1985 best-seller The Handmaid's
Tale is set in the futuristic American state of Gilead
warns people against repressive patriarchal society and
educates people about the dangers of the contemporary
social and political institutions. Various themes like
Environmental destruction, Technological and
Government control, loss of individualism and survival
are usually dealt with.
Utopia Versus Dystopia:

“All utopias are dystopias. The term “dystopia” was
coined by fools that believed a “utopia” can be
functional.” A.E. Samaan
Through the millennia, the psychologies of individuals
living in various eras have had an impact on literature.
This is how the many genres of literature are categorised.
These two literary genres that investigate social and
political systems are the dystopia and its descendant, the
utopia. Whereas in utopian literature, the environment is
shown as being in line with the writer's ethos and having
a number of characteristics that readers usually find to be
indicative of what they would like to accomplish in
reality or utopia whereas dystopia is a horrifying,
dehumanising envisioned community or society. A
dystopia is the polar opposite of a utopia, which is an
ideal society. Sir Thomas More first used the word
"utopia" in his fictitious island-based utopian society-
focused novel Utopia, published in 1516. Fiction about a
dystopian future examines the perilous repercussions that
social and political institutions will have on mankind,
~ 94 ~
and it first emerged as a counter to utopian literature.

The antithesis of dystopian literature is the depiction of a
setting that fully contradicts the author's ethos and is
shown to have a variety of characteristics that readers
frequently consider to be indicative of what they would
prefer to avoid in reality or dystopia. Both are frequently
used in books as a metaphor for the various paths
mankind may take and how those paths might lead to
one of two conceivable futures. A form of speculative
fiction, utopias and dystopias are frequently depicted in
sci - fi and other speculative fiction genres.
Dystopia, Post-Coloniality and Indianness:

Dystopias can be read as tales of warning – but in the
case of a postcolonial dystopia, they speak to an all too
real “present” (Chakravorty 2015)
A very recent addition to the canon of Indian English
literature is dystopian fiction. When Penguin and the
other five publishing industry titans arrived in India in
the late 1980s, the market there began to take off. “The
post-1980s Indian novel’s own investment in the hold of
the (colonial, national) past on India’s present has
affected our readings of the entire genre to such a degree
that the field of Indian novel studies is almost entirely
dependent on a critique of historicity” (Anjaria, p2). For
the first time, ‘Science Fiction in Colonial India ,1835–
1905’ demonstrates how sci fi literature evolved in India
years before Jules Verne and H. G. Wells's
works. English language literature in India has linkages
with science fiction, modernism, and empire in their own
cultural and political settings. The inherent violence and
dysfunctional colonization inspired authors to envision
~ 95 ~
alternate worlds, whether utopian or dystopic, in India,

where sci-fi first emerged. These novels were written by
British and Indian authors in response to colonial India's
political turmoil and intellectual upheaval. Our
knowledge of the Victorian empire, sci - fi, and
speculative fiction is expanded significantly by them.
They offer fresh illustrations of how imperial and anti-
imperial minds operate. The themes and tropes of
science fiction were inspired by development and
destruction, cultural innovation, and colonial resistance.
‘Science fiction in Colonial India, 1835–1905’ contains
stories written by nineteenth-century Indian authors who
see both successful and unsuccessful revolutions taking
place in the twenty-first century. Because of the
proposed Panama Canal, British authors foresee both a
catastrophic flood and a tranquil multi-ethnic
parliamentary system of governance in the future. And a
Muslim author creates a feminism paradise where men
run the home and women conduct science.
Discussion:
Oscar Wilde said ‘Literature always anticipates life. It
does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose’ (Wilde
1997, 25). As a result, literature has an idealistic
emphasis that allows us to evaluate the likelihood of
change using our imagination. In 2019, when the Covid-
19 Pandemic gripped the entire world, once for all it
seemed as if there is something distinctly dystopian
about life even in 2022.
The notion of utopia—a fictitious location or period
where everything is ideal, everybody is content, and
every individual is catered for—served as the sardonic
~ 96 ~
predecessor to the literary genre of dystopia at first. Such

literary and societal productions were nothing but a type
of authoritarianism in the eyes of the authors of
dystopian literature. Who is to define what an ideal
society is, after all? Is it possible for one person or group
to decide what is best for a whole population without
allowing the needs of the many precedence over those of
the few? The world would undoubtedly be a dream for
some people but a nightmare for several others if every
individual was governed by the same rules and lived by
the same principles, regardless of their identities or what
they were going through.
A dystopia's primary goal from a literary perspective has
always been to exaggerate and extrapolate. Contrary to
an anti-utopia, which is merely a writing that rejects the
notion of utopia and provides no hope for a better future,
a dystopia aims to cause the readers to re-evaluate their
conceptions of what is ideal. In order to warn about the
future, dystopian literature has always taken inspiration
from current events and exaggerated and extrapolated
from them. The readers find themselves re-examining
their present with a critical lens and realising the origins
of a far from ideal future as they unearth the conflicts,
paradoxes, and flaws of a dystopian future. Thus, the
dystopian narrative serves as a kind of course correction
for the society it depicts, cautioning the readers about the
road mankind is taking and underlining the necessity for
a quick intervention before human hopes become
nightmares. This literary definition of Dystopia has
turned out to be a reality that pushed the entire world to
re-evaluate the lifestyle resulting in everyone ending
with up with their own personal epiphanies irrespective
~ 97 ~
of how big or tiny they may be. There is absolutely no

denying that Covid-19 is unlike any problem that Indian
writers have predicted for the future of our nation, yet
they have plenty of extrapolations. Nevertheless, each of
these fictitious crises is rooted in our socioeconomic
realities. The final outcome is a variety of less-than-ideal
dystopian Indian futures. This is so because the most
significant aspect of a dystopian literature is not the grim
future it imagines, but rather the human potential and
desire to change in which it exemplifies, even in the
most catastrophic of scenarios. Instead of being fearful
of such literature, one must read dystopian fiction and
discover what motivates individuals to persevere in the
face of the greatest of challenges. For this very reason in
order to understand the nature of Dystopian novels by
Indian writers and foregrounding post-coloniality, the 5
novels chosen for the study are analysed.
1. Harvest by Manjula Padmanabhan

Manjula Padmanabhan’s Harvest written in 1997 and set
in 2010 won the Onassis Cultural prize. In this sci-fi
novel Padmanabhan envisions how India would look like
in the next millennium. Her prognosis contrasted sharply
with the numerous aspirations that society placed in the
economic changes of 1991, with many anticipating that
poverty would soon become a thing of the past.
However, Padmanabhan's dystopian future, envisions
Indian citizens who are reduced to selling their organs to
the highest foreign bidder in an effort to afford food and
shelter. The play is a scathing critique on how the human
body has become a commodity in the era of global
capitalism. The drama emphasises the postmodern
~ 98 ~
reality of new technology and their impact on everyday

life, despite having a cast that fits a futuristic mould. The
play imagines the horrifying agony caused by those who
must work for money in order to exist in a modern
metropolis. It depicts the financial plight of the
disenfranchised poor who sell their organs in a system
that rewards the powerful and wealthy. As a work of
"science fiction," the play employs the technique of
"futurization" to make subtle allusions to contemporary
reality. It portrays the plight of the powerless people of a
third world nation. In addition to addressing these issues,
Padmanabhan also highlights the organ trade, living in a
prison-like environment, parental favoring of working-
class children, and the deplorable state of women in
metropolitan areas. Harvest not only portrays a
postcolonial scenario, but it also expresses the practice
of neo-colonisation. It focuses on the influence that
foreign buyers have over organ donors in developing
countries and presents a sociologically "cannibalistic"
equation. Through all this, the author voices the
subaltern life of the city inhabitants where they must
endure both poverty and exploitation in order to survive.
The title Harvest is metaphorical in its implication as it
is the harvest of organs, which is the result of
overpopulation in third world nations unlike the harvest
of growth and yielding resulting in abundance, growth
and prosperity.
East Versus West, Slavery/ Slave trade, Cultural

Othering:
The play depicts the conflict between the East and the
West, in which the West attempts to conquer the East
~ 99 ~
once more for the hedonistic benefit of raw materials.

But after India’s independence, poverty and
overpopulation have led to a worsening situation that has
once again drawn the attention of colonisers. However,
this time, their interest is in the body of the Other, which
they have previously denigrated by calling it sullen,
black fat, barbaric etc. The play explores the concept of
cannibalism in the ultra-medical setting where body
parts are used to assert power and wealth. The social
underpinnings of society addressed in Harvest
emphasizes how a modern trade in body parts must be
viewed in light of stark material disparities between first
and third worlds, in particular how poverty may restrict
moral alternatives and ruin humanity. The play's
futuristic setting, which makes use of the well-known
science fiction motif of body snatching, is a perfect fit
for the use of the international organ trade as a striking
metaphor to highlight how the west exploits its cultural
Others. The horrific organ trade shown in Harvest is
easily associated with its imperial predecessors, the
trans-Atlantic slave trade, which resulted in the buying,
selling, and interchange of countless racial bodies for the
purpose of European imperial expansion.
From a postcolonial viewpoint, the play poses a
compelling question about the characters' struggles with
their respective paths. They are forced to make terrible
decisions out of necessity in this situation due to their
identities as poor residents of the third world. It is crucial
to look at how masculinity and femininity are
constructed in tandem when articulating cultural and
national identity in both public and political discourse.
Male characters Om and Jeetu are both in perilous
~ 100 ~
situations that limit their ability to be truly manly. In

patriarchal societies, women are merely "bodies" that are
utilised for sexual pleasure. The drama alternates
between the first and third worlds in a similar manner,
with third world citizens portraying women whose major
identity is constrained to their body. Om and Jeetu are
both portrayed as male alternatives for women because
Om sells his body and Jeetu works as a male prostitute.
Jaya's identity is paradoxically diminished to her womb,
showing that the poor people are still denigrated at this
point. In exploring the connection between sexuality and
cultural diversity, Padmanabhan addresses the idea of the
exotic, seductive, but destructive Other that still
pervades European discourse at the end of this horrific
tale. Just as she refused to conceal her sexual desires by
portraying the modest wife of Om before, Jaya now
firmly refuses to take part in a contract that practically
puts Virgil in charge of her libido. The ambiguity that
pervaded imperialist sexuality can be seen in Virgil's
yearning to procreate Jaya and his concomitant fear that
she might poison him if their union occurred anywhere
other than in the digital world. Women's bodies often
have to bear the symbolic burden of standing in for their
community, nation, culture, and traditions. By
expressing the perspective of the colonised globe,
Padmanabhan opposes their position through the
character of Jaya. Through this play, Padmanabhan
conveyed the dystopian viewpoint of a futuristic India
and brought to light the dismal future of third-world
nations, who are nothing more than a crop.
~ 101 ~
2. All Quiet in Vikaspuri by Sarnath Banerjee

All Quiet in Vikaspuri, by Sarnath Banerjee was released
in 2015 by Harper Collins India. The novel envisions a
dystopian future/present in which Delhi's water shortage
causes gruesome water warfare. The essay is both a
reflection on the present and a prophesy for the future
because India has been identified as a country with a
significant water shortage (Yadav 2017). It incorporates
several story genres and motifs, including burlesque,
fantasy, epics, and fables. The comic is difficult to put
into one genre; it could be interpreted as a dystopic
narrative, a Homeric tale, or a documentary graphic book
(as stated in the blurb) (Adams 2008), but it is better
characterised as a blend of several genres.
By highlighting India's extreme class disparities and the
price paid by the underprivileged groups for
development projects, Banerjee undermines the narrative
of national economic strength. The author highlights the
"disposable casualties" of gradual violence brought on
by neoliberalism (Nixon 2011, 13). Additionally, All
Quiet in Vikaspuri uncovers the resource imperialism of
the middle class and criticises its myopia. It
demonstrates how the deeply unfair allocation of water
in Delhi results in the deprivation of hydraulic identity to
the underprivileged and migrants (Anand 2017). The
comic also highlights discrimination based on religion
and caste in the country. The comic subtly features a
working-class hero who transforms into a change agent
in opposition to capitalism and corruption. Banerjee
creates a beautiful image of water governance at the
text's conclusion.
~ 102 ~
Unlike earlier water war novels such as Bacigalupi's The

Water Knife, Karen Jayes' For the Mercy of Water,
Itäranta's novel Memory of Water, and others, where
water wars are the result of the inevitable forces of
natural scarcity, human nature, and imperialism,
Banerjee's water war is wholly constructed, with his text
underlining that shortage is indeed a situation that
is socio-politically created. Through this, Banerjee's
book avoids unintentionally embracing the logic of
commercialization, which is typically the result of novels
about the water wars.
Similar to Jayes, Banerjee's book deviates from the water
warfare novel's aesthetic norms in ways that hone its
critique. All Quiet in Vikaspuri extrapolates from the
current water crisis in India, the ongoing capitalist
experience, and the resurgence of Hindu nationalism.
This makes it a dystopia, the most typical type of water
wars story. Banerjee's writing is firmly rooted in an
Indian setting, much like Jaye's attentive, albeit
allegorical, references to South Africa's recent water
history.
Banerjee avoids discussing limitations that have
transpired across history of mankind and instead
attributes all of its origins to political agendas. He
describes the initiatives undertaken by local oligarchs,
financial firms, and multinational corporations to
advance economic liberalization and "short-termism"
(Banerjee 2015, p. 51), which actually serve to acquire
wealth and end up causing intense social and ecological
destruction. By calling the commercial organization that
obtains the money for Platypus to buy Bharat Copper
Limited "Fraser and Clive," alluding to the history of the
~ 103 ~
East India Company, Banerjee links such instances in

larger periods of colonial exploitation. Rastogi's quest to
find the Saraswati in in order to sell its water
simultaneously places the novel in the context of
continuous Hindutva efforts to establish Hindus as the
country's native residents, a development that has
mirrored and accelerated the neoliberal shift for which
Rastogi is also committed (Chacko 2019). The story is
anchored in local context and globalized economic and
political dynamics by Banerjee's mosaic of styles and
references. In doing so, his text rejects the naturalization
of water wars and provides an essential critique of
popular water wars literature and discourse.
In All Quiet in Vikaspuri, for instance, Banerjee includes
a full-page panel depicting an austere mega dam
towering over a reservoir, with a small, brief caption in
the top left corner and a drowned village at the bottom
(Banerjee 2015, p. 56). From the choice of the color and
the caption ‘s brevity readers must infer its significance
as a component of a larger historical discourse about
hydromodernity, capitalism, and exclusion in twentieth-
and twenty-first-century India, with the caption's brevity
and peripheral location emphasizing the marginalization
of alienating voices. The narrow, nearly invisible well of
the flooded village, with its bucket floating in the water,
symbolizes restricted and alternate means of using water.
~ 104 ~
3. The lesson by Soumya Rajendran

Women’s Oppression, Sexism, gender performity and
Stereotypical representation of women
The Lesson, Sowmya Rajendran's debut book, depicts a

dystopia in which women solely serve to bear children
since they are a valued resource. The rapist, who
performs his duties without passion or emotions, teaches
a lesson to women who are passionate about their studies
and do not support marriage. The Lesson is a sombre yet
potent satire of women's oppression.The humour in
Sowmya Rajendran's novel The Lesson won't leave
readers laughing out loud. Instead, it is the kind of
gloomy, sombre humour that only shows up when things
are so bad that crying is the only alternative. However, it
is clear from this dystopian novel's heroines that they
would never cry.
This India is a terrible country because it is set in a grim
future India where the State has shackled women's
sexuality in the name of "country development." Within
this society, women are expected to live one specific life:
that of perfect mothers and wives who will produce
perfect male offspring for the nation. The Lesson,
Sowmya Rajendran's debut book, depicts a dystopia in
which women solely serve to bear children since they are
a valued resource. The rapist, who performs his duties
without passion or emotions, teaches a lesson to women
who are passionate about their studies and do not support
marriage. The Lesson is a sombre yet potent satire of
women's oppression.
The Lesson's writer is highly recognised for her
children's books. But this one is no child's
~ 105 ~
play. Rajendran uses satire to explain the underlying

mores and morality of Indian society in her feminist
dystopia. The Holy Institution of (heterosexual)
Marriage is essential to preserving social order in this
world, which is very similar to our own. But in this case,
there is a real Moral Police Force that patrols the city
looking for any premarital hanky-panky. What's more,
there is a man simply known as The Rapist who has the
responsibility of teaching particularly recalcitrant ladies
the figurative and eponymous lesson. Rajendran gives
her work significance by legitimising and codifying the
"fairly innocuous" gender standards of the modern era; it
is the recognizable language of sexism without the
indignation verbiage used now in India to soften its
blow.
Although the world she creates is entirely identifiable, it
is also entirely repugnant, which raises the issue of
whether a reader can criticise the novel without
simultaneously criticising the culture that gave rise to it.
4. Leila by Prayag Akbar

Leila may be the most well-known piece because of a
star-studded Netflix adaptation directed by Deepa
Mehta. The novel itself portrays a rather eerie picture,
yet the series added to the plot to make it much scarier.
The world of this story is intersected with 59-foot
concrete walls that split it all into numerous sections. It
is set in an unnamed Indian metropolis in the near future.
People of one caste (and, in the case of non-Hindus,
religion) can live among individuals of their "own kind"
in each sector, which serves as a residential colony. No
prizes will be awarded for figuring out the
~ 106 ~
consanguineous marriage characteristic of modern

Indian culture Leila criticises.
Prayag Akbar, son of M.J. Akbar a muslim and Mallika
Joseph Akbar a Christian drives home the point of
secularism by depicting the atrocities of the dominant
groups to preserve endogamy. Leila is a social and
realistic novel as it depicts Akbar’s connect with these
two cities where he has spent his life. Throughout the
entire story, a mother's desperate desire to recover her
lost daughter endures in a society where caste and
religion serve as markers of one's true identity. Leila is
born to Shalini, a Hindu woman who marries a Muslim
man named Riz. She observes a quick transformation in
her society as well, with caste-based sector walls
isolating individuals and "Council" members holding the
reins of authority (1). The council uses a group of
individuals known as "repeaters" (23) to impose their
authoritarian values on society through physical force.
After being married, Shalini and Riz go to the "east end"
(63), where people don't live separated by sector barriers.
Shalini's relationship with her servant Sapna illustrates
how the powerful repress the powerless in today's
society. Following a repeaters attack in which Riz is
seriously injured, Shalini is separated from her three-
year-old daughter Leila. Shalini is made a slave in
"purity camp" (14), a place where women who have
defied the unreasonable rules of society are held captive
and made to admit their guilt. In Shalini's search to find
her daughter, for which she herself compulsorily follows
social conventions, the phoney purity camp is unable to
taint her with anything except the purest motherly love.
As a result, she battles to remain empathetic in a
~ 107 ~
prejudiced environment. The modern, ultra-modern

world nevertheless exhibits widespread prejudice on the
basis of race, class, and gender which is used to
recognise, eliminate, and revive the humane.
The dominating (the council) and the subjugated (the
ordinary people) in Leila are akin to the capitalist and
labour classes of the industrialization age. The novel's
unfair treatment of the "slummers" (3) by the upper and
middle classes mirrors the unfavourable aspects of real
India, where people's access to civil liberties is
determined by their caste and status. By encouraging a
terror of bodily humiliation and estrangement in
common people, the council standardises their views.
The subjugated eventually come to accept these
infractions as acceptable in their minds due to the
council's aggressive and ongoing dominance. The ironic
purity that the council attributed to the wall reveals their
attempts to make their ideals seem natural and leads
people to believe that there is a hidden purity within
these walls that, when revered, endows fulfilment in life.
Purity walls: The only clean and pure sector wall serves
as an example of the council's power. Even Shalini has
started to accept the efficacy of purity barriers. She
accuses herself of disrespecting the purity wall and sees
it as the root of her problems; nevertheless, the council
actually brought about these difficulties as punishment
for her non-conformity. People's subconscious thoughts
are continually patiently implanted with the council's
ideologies. The reason for Riz's death and Shalini's
predicament is Naz, Riz's brother, who gave Riz
assistance to enter Shalini's area with a fake
identification and perhaps even supported Riz against the
~ 108 ~
fierce repeaters. He has substituted the morality with a

racially inferior due to his unbelief and materialism. In
the interests of nefariously regulated society, he has
deprived his three-year-old, innocent nephew the warmth
of her mother's affection.
Thus, in Leila a society divided on religious and caste
echoes the postcolonial era in India. Internalized
prejudice of the dominant over the marginalized, Power,
misogynist views are some prominent themes found in
this novel. Yet the novel is open ended reflecting lot of
hope and optimism of the protagonist in her pursuit to
find her daughter.
5. Clone by Priya S Chabria

Similar to Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 (1949), which
was set in a nation called Oceania in the former
geography of Britain, Priya Sarukkai Chabria's 2018
book Clone is dystopian fiction that is set in what was
once India. Chabria's book actually has very little in
common with 1984, one of the first dystopian novels to
be published following the horrors of the two World
Wars that followed one another. Both novels are set in
countries where a totalitarian sect rules; whereas "The
Party" dominated Oceania, "The Global Community"
rules the planet in Chabria's novel. Clone 14/54/G of
Chabria is doomed to work for the "betterment" of the
people for the rest of their lives, just as Winston Smith in
Orwell's 1984. In Chabria's book, a clone's first-person
narrative is told for the first time. The majority of
Chabria's book is a first-person account of a clone which
serves as the story's main character. The protagonist's
clone 14/54/G and its original (human) identity, Aa-aa,
~ 109 ~
are both trying to emerge through the narratives of the

same entity throughout the entire book. Her tangled
relationship with the Leader's son, who is both her lover
and the adult version of the kid she longs for as a result
of her visions, complicates her understanding of her
subjectivity even more (or visitations as she calls them).
She does, though, continue to make a place for herself by
little uprisings. Because clones don't have lives, 14/54/G
finds comfort in the fact that she is a clone. However,
she gets caught in a web that is determined to turn her
into a version of Aa-aa by making her live, eat, and dress
like the Original.
She discovered faith in her "self" as her body and
consciousness continued to change and she physically
began to resemble a woman (she began menstruation and
finally became pregnant). She came to the conclusion
that "one had to trust one's self in order to understand
importance" (244). This is why, when she was finally
pushed over the line, she said that "I'm a person. We are
all human, and I assert that this is my inheritance "(269),
asserting her own identity as opposed to being only a
modified version of an Original human. Thus, Identity
formation as a site of resistance is a significant point that
the writer reflects in the novel.
Clone creates a complex world and crafts a story that
challenges multiple facets of Indian society in the
present, including caste, gender, and censorship.
Conclusion:
Deprivation and (im)purity are two themes that
frequently appear in English-language dystopian
literature from India. This paper thus examined
~ 110 ~
representation of the dystopia themes in mainstream

Indian fiction in English that always dominantly
reflected the different socio-cultural aspects going
through the different modes of representation and also
how precarity, (im)purity, and shifting conceptions of
India(nness) are portrayed in Indian dystopian fiction in
English. The investigation of Gender, Race, class,
privilege, freedom of movement, and religious affiliation
is part of this focus on (im)pure. The overall focus of this
paper was to know the intent of the writer on the use of
the dystopian as a narrative form to describe
"precarious" urban existence, a recurring topic in Indian
dystopian literature. Also, in order to meet the needs of
the reading public, Indian fiction has so largely
succeeded in shaking off the consequences of
colonialism, making these works distinctive in their
effortless portrayal of Indianness. One of the essential
points that appear to emerge in all dystopian literatures is
the presence of a warning, a warning into a present that
is going to turn into a bleak future. And it is this being
strongly rooted into the reality of the present, despite the
futuristic pattern. Finally, a ray of Hope for a better
future was always anticipated in these novels.
Works Cited:
Akbar, Prayaag. Leila.Simon&SchusterIndia,2017.
Anjaria, Ulka. A History of the Indian Novel in English.
Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Banerjee, Sarnath. 2015. All Quiet in Vikaspuri. Noida:
HarperCollins.
~ 111 ~
Chacko, Priya. 2019. Marketizing Hindutva: The State,

Society, and Markets in Hindu Nationalism. Modern
Asian Studies 53: 377–410. [CrossRef]
Chakravorty, Mrinalini. 2015. “Of Dystopias and
Deliriums: The Millenian Novel in India.” In A History
of the Indian Novel in English, edited by Ulka Anjaria,
267–281. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Gordin, Michael D., et al. Utopia/Dystopia: Conditions
of Historical Possibility. Princeton University Press,
2010.
MasterClass. “What Is Dystopian Fiction? 20 Examples
of Dystopian Fiction.” MasterClass, 22 Sept. 2022,
www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-dystopian-fiction-
learn-about-the-5-characteristics-of-dystopian-fiction-
with-examples.
The Ashvamegh. “Utopia & Dystopia - Utopian &
Dystopian Literature: Nidhi Sharma.” Ashvamegh Indian
Journal of English Literature, 14 Oct. 2016,
ashvamegh.net/utopia-dystopia-utopian-dystopian-
literature/.
Gibson, Mary Ellis. Science Fiction in Colonial India,
1835-1905: Five Stories of Speculation, Resistance and
Rebellion. Anthem Press, 2019.
Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence & the Environmentalism of
the Poor. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London,
England: Harvard University Press, 2011.
Gupta, Sukanya. “" Sarnath Banerjee's All Quiet in
Vikaspuri as Text/Image Activism & Cli-Fi ".” South
Asian Review, 13 Nov. 2018,
www.academia.edu/37763469/_Sarnath_Banerjees_All_
Quiet_in_Vikaspuri_as_Text_Image_Activism_and_Cli_
fi_.
~ 112 ~
“The Water Wars Novel - Warwick.”

Http://Wrap.warwick.ac.uk/141374/1/WRAP-Water-
Wars-Novel-Boast-2020.Pdf,
wrap.warwick.ac.uk/141374/1/WRAP-water-wars-
novel-Boast-2020.pdf.
Saraswat, S. (2020). Representation of Emerging
Technologies: Postmodern Urban Dystopia in Manjula
Padmanabhan’s Harvest. International Journal on
Emerging Technologies, 11(4): 446–449.
“Prayaag Akbar's Leila as an Illustration of the Tussle of
the Humane to Survive in a Reign of Sub-Humans.”
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, 18 Jan. 2022,
www.amrita.edu/publication/prayaag-akbars-leila-as-an-
illustration-of-the-tussle-of-the-humane-to-survive-in-a-
reign-of-sub-humans/.
E. Dawson Varughese (2021) Post-Millennial Indian
Dystopian Fiction: A Developing Canon of Precarity,
(Im)purity and Ideas of India(nness), South Asia: Journal
of South Asian Studies, 44:6, 1041-
1055, DOI: 10.1080/00856401.2021.1972258
~ 113 ~
Looking Beyond the Obvious: Critical

Analysis of the Novel through Bakhtinian
Lens in Literature Class
Mrs. Nisha Narwani,
Assistant Professor
Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology
DY Patil Deemed to be University, Nerul
Abstract
The development across the fields of
humanities prepared the fertile grounds for the flowering
of various ways to appreciate and analyze literary works,
especially novels. Among so many ways of appreciating
novels through the application of theories, stand
significant the theories by a Russian philosopher,
Mikhail Bakhtin. He has contributed abundantly to the
field of literary theory and transformed the way how
language and literature are seen. His unique ideas have
paved the way for many literary theories of current times
and relevance. Bakhtinian concepts of interpretation lead
to finding the deeper and untouched layers of a novel.
He had written extensively on the novels and
propounded various unique concepts of trail-blazing
importance. His writings in the field of literary theory
can be applied in different areas. The understanding of
these concepts can provide the reader with a new outlook
to indulge systematically in reading and analyzing a
novel. These concepts are polyphony, dialogics,
heteroglossia, carnivalesque, and chronotope. The
knowledge of these concepts can help literature students
to look beyond the obvious themes, characters, images
and symbols and interpret a novel to different levels.
~ 114 ~
This paper will explain the Bakhtinian concepts and try

to establish their relevance in novel reading in literature
class.
Keywords: Mikhail Bakhtin, Literary Theory, Novel
Reading, Literature Class.
Mikhail Bakhtin had developed a corpus of varied ideas
to be used in a variety of fields ranging from literary
theory, linguistics, and philosophy to film studies. Since
the time Bakhtin’s works were translated into English
and noticed by western scholars, he has been a key
figure in literary theory and several related fields in
Humanities. This paper aims to elaborate on the
Bakhtinian reading of a novel that has a multiplicity of
voices. This paper will explain various Bakhtinian
concepts and try to establish their relevance in the
analysis of a novel. The paper will be useful for those
who are new to the work of Bakhtin. The understanding
of these concepts can help students of literature to
develop a different outlook on reading and appreciating a
novel critically. The understanding of Bakhtinian
concepts will help the students of literature class to
develop different types of grounds to read and analyse a
novel. The paper does not intend to put the reader in an
elaborate set of pigeonholes, into which the novel can be
interpreted rather it likes to provide the readers with
some hints to develop diverse immersive ways of
reading a novel with multiple approaches.
The opaqueness and openness that formulate the
Bakhtinian theoretical and philosophical work have
aroused a lot of enthusiastic imitation and sceptical
criticism. (Borghart)
~ 115 ~
A lot of significance has been drawn by the works of

Bakhtin due to their relevance in current times and their
viability to be applied in a range of fields. This paper
will endeavour in the direction to fill the gaps between
theory and practice by applying theoretical concepts to
novels. One of the most important principles by Bakhtin
is that language is a social phenomenon and utterances
can be given meaning concerning the context or situation
they occur in. Bakhtinian concepts allow us to look at
literature and language from a different point of view but
at the same time, it does not completely deviate us from
the various approaches to appreciate literature and
language. Rather these concepts help us to build a strong
foundation for appreciation and analysis of literary work,
especially a novel.
The study of language done by Bakhtin is remarkable in
many ways. The observation shared by Bakhtin on
language not only anticipates many contemporary
thoughts but also suggests some unique and exciting
ways to appreciate the language in an act of interaction
and communication. Bakhtin excitedly locates the
significance of language in the use of its day-to-day
utterances and thus confirms that language is a social
phenomenon. It is fascinating to find out how utterances
can be a manifestation of ideologies expressed by many
characters, authors and narrators. So language is not just
a medium for expression in the given situation rather it is
a representation of deep-rooted ideologies. Language
signs do not only produce meaning but they take us into
the world of ideologies and values of the speaker. Signs
are open for multiple meanings also if they are used with
a variety of accentuation, emphasis and context. The
~ 116 ~
meaning of signs can be located in the society and since

the society is not homogenous, the meaning of signs and
ideologies behind them cannot be bereft of multi aspects.
According to Bakhtin, utterances can not only be
understood by the references of dictionaries but also in
live usage of real-life situations. This philosophy
becomes the base of many theories propounded by him.
The concepts developed by Bakhtin to understand and
analyze the novels are scattered in multiple books and
essays written by him. These works were written by him
during his time of exile and seclusion. Some of his
works were discovered very late and some were lost due
to unpropitious circumstances. So nothing comes
systematically when one strives to understand and apply
the views of Bakhtin. This complexity significantly
discloses the beauty of his ideas in novels; where
nothing gravitates to one central authoritative viewpoint.
There is a celebration of multiplicity which is free from
any transcendental force.
This idea of multiplicity has its roots in the concept of
polyphony which is described in Bakhtin’s seminal book
“Problem of Dostoevsky's Poetics. In this book, Bakhtin
described Dostoevsky's novels as polyphonic. The most
noticeable part of Dostoevsky's novels is that they are
multivoiced and these voices are not guided by the
author. In Bakhtin’s own words Dostoevsky’s novels
represent “a plurality of independent and unmerged
voices and consciousness, a genuine polyphony of fully
valid voices.”(Bakhtin 6) So these novels are free from
the clutches of one point of view expressed by the author
or narrator. There are multiple expressions of various
perspectives that are not subsuming in one domineering
~ 117 ~
perspective. In polyphonic novels, the voices of the

author, narrator and characters try to engage in an
unfinalized dialogue. So there is no final dictum but a
constant dialogue and this makes a novel polyphonic.
An understanding of the concept of polyphony can make
novel reading more fruitful. In the literature class, the
learners can indulge in identifying the multiple
perspectives coming from multiple voices that are free
from authoritative guidance. The students can be
encouraged to discover whether the novel is monophonic
or polyphonic. If the novel is polyphonic then further
dissection can be done in search of the various scattered
voices with multiple points of view. Once the novel has
been identified as polyphonic and multiple voices are
recognized then it should be seen which of the voices are
strong and which among them are feeble. Sometimes the
contesting ideologies are represented by the voices of the
author, narrator and various characters, and sometimes a
singular conscience is made a perennial ground of these
battling ideologies and perspectives. The characters in
such novels are not over-explained by the author in the
given socio-economical conditions rather these
characters are given the power to emerge with the
opinion and perspectives that can sometimes go against
the author or narrator. In Bakhtin’s own words about
Dostoevsky’s novels, “to affirm someone else’s ‘I’ not
as an object but as another subject.”(Bakhtin 10)
While reading a novel one can come across characters
that are having conscience built upon multiple
ideologies. It is also interesting to see that these
ideologies are in dialogue with previously expressed
notions on the same subject and sometimes anticipate
~ 118 ~
future responses. For example in Joseph Conrad's Heart

of Darkness, Marlow's conscience is the ground of many
conflicting ideologies. Marlow himself becomes a source
of both imperialistic voices and anti-imperialistic voices.
Other than Marlow there are voices of the author, an
unknown narrator and Kurtz with many minor characters
who are voicing different perspectives. It is also
noticeable that the native Africans and women are not
given any voices at all. In the novel Heart of Darkness,
Marlow who is the main character voice out criticism of
imperialism and at the same time demeans the natives by
calling them savage and barbaric. This notion of Marlow
goes in dialogue with all previously expressed ideas
about imperialism as a brutal or noble act. This makes
the novel reading a fulfilling experience if the character's
conscience can be seen as a collage made up of multiple
threads that are having connections to past and future
utterances on the same subject. This is called 'Dialogism'
in Bakhtinian terminology. In Bakhtin’s words
“character’s truth only emerges in contact with, or
anticipation of another’s truth.”(Bakhtin 252)
With the tool of polyphony, a novel can be analyzed to
its deepest of layers and it can be found on what
perspectives the construction of the novel is implied.
Dialogics can further help in finding out how different
voices are always in dialogue with previously expressed
notions or expressions of the future. This is what
differentiates a polyphonic novel from a monologic
novel, where one perspective rules throughout. Though
there can be many characters in a monologic novel, they
all end up contributing to the overarching perspective of
the author. Polyphonic novels are open to conflicting and
~ 119 ~
multiple perspectives that make the novel a process that

is never-ending and never achieves resolution.
Polyphonic novels rely on an objective narrative style
which is the modernist approach to writing and reading
novels. If a novel can be recognized as a polyphonic
work then the dialogic nature of utterances can easily be
seen. In such novels, priority is not given to one
dominant voice but there is a constant play of multiple
voices both meek and strong.
From Dialogics takes birth the concept of double-
voicedness. This concept provokes some interesting
points of understanding that how the utterances of the
speaker are based on more than an individual's thoughts
in the given context. Double-voiced discourse character
lacks authority on his or her narrative. This means the
character's words have based on earlier spoken
knowledge in the same field. For example, in Heart of
Darkness Marlow's narrative about colonization is not
only based on what he experiences in his journey in
Africa but also on the earlier expressed knowledge about
colonization as a civilization mission and that is why he
couldn't restrain himself in calling native Africans as
savage and animalistic. It is difficult to find the source of
dialogization many a time. But it is interesting to
understand how the utterances are influenced by earlier
expressed notions and how the present utterances about
something are going to affect future discourse.
Bakhtin gave a very interesting concept of carnivalesque
in his work Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics and further
explained in his other seminal work, Rabelais and His
World. He explained “this term to characterize writing
that depicts the de-stabilization or reversal of power
~ 120 ~
structures, albeit temporarily, as happens in traditional

forms of carnival.”(Oxford References) Carnivalesque
represents the momentary overturning of hierarchies
where authority is removed from the centre and voices
from the periphery take the centre position. “It creates a
situation in which diverse voices are heard and interact,
breaking down conventions and enabling genuine
dialogue.”(In Theory Bakhtin: Dialogism, Polyphony
and Heteroglossia | Ceasefire Magazine) Understanding
carnivalesque can make reading a polyphonic novel very
interesting as the reader can look for situations where the
authority is suspended temporarily. This can occur
contextually when a very feeble character with an almost
silenced voice says something very important or
contradicts the authority. At times in a novel, a
carnivalesque situation arises where a weak character
rebels and confronts the authority or does something that
subverts the power positions temporarily.
Chronotope is another interesting aspect given by
Bakhtin for novel reading. Bakhtin explained this
concept in his essay Forms of Time and of the
Chronotope in the Novel “Here Bakhtin showed how
different literary genres operated with different
configurations of time and space, which gave each genre
its particular narrative character.”(Wikipedia)
Chronotope means the study of time and space which
explains the way time and space are represented in the
novel. Based on how time and space are conceived, the
genre is established and the narrative takes shape.
According to Bakhtin if the protagonist goes on a road
trip and embroils in a lot of unexpected adventures then
the genre becomes an adventurous narrative and the
~ 121 ~
space that is the road becomes very crucial in the

development of the story and the character. If a novel
has to be read critically then it is relevant to see the
configuration of time and space in the novel and how
that helps in strengthening the narrative.
Mikhail Bakhtin was one of the greatest theorists of the

discourse of the twentieth century. The unique concepts
proposed by Bakhtin provide a framework to analyze a
novel in unique ways. The concept of polyphony makes
the reader look for all the voices that are not guided by
one authority and these voices represent different
ideologies and perspectives. The understanding of the
concept of dialogism can help in finding the double-
voicedness of the character where his/her utterance is
based on the knowledge shared earlier by someone and
how his/her utterance enters into dialogue with a future
discourse on the same subject. The concept of
Carnivalesque is based on the structure of a carnival
where the normal is replaced by the unexpected and
absurd. In the novel, it happens many a time that the
authority of the author and narrator is challenged by
different voices and they say or do something that can
challenge the official or normal. The theory of
chronotope makes the reader conscious of the usage of
time and space in the novel and their relevance in
establishing the genre in a particular category. If the
concepts propounded by Bakhtin are explained before
the novel reading in the literature class then students will
be able to apply one or two concepts to reach the deeper
layers of the novel and this will help them to find out
more than the obvious in a novel.
~ 122 ~
References:
Bakhtin, M. M. Mikhail Bakhtin Problems of
Dostoevsky's Poetics Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics.
1984.
Ibid,10.
Ibid,252.
Borghart, Pieter. Bakhtin's Theory of the Literary
Chronotope Reflections, Applications ,.
In Theory Bakhtin: Dialogism, Polyphony and
Heteroglossia | Ceasefire Magazine.
https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-bakhtin-1/.
Accessed 13 Dec. 2021.
Wikipedia contributors. "Chronotope." Wikipedia, The
Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,
18 Oct. 2022. Web. 16 Nov. 2022.
~ 123 ~
Comprehending the paradox: The Matriarch

as a Defender of the Patriarch versus the
Primacy of Matrilineal Descent - in the select
Novels
Reshika. T
Research Scholar
Department of English, Vel Tech Rangarajan Dr.
Sagunthala R&D Institute of Science and Technology
Dr. Saranya P
Research Supervisor
Department of English, Vel Tech Rangarajan Dr.
Sagunthala R&D Institute of Science and Technology
Introduction of the Topic, Text, and Writer:

The study is on the paradoxical nature of how the
Matriarch and Matrilineal functions in contradiction and
how it leads to the awakening of the feminine
consciousness of the protagonists of select novels of
Jahnavi Barua and Easterine Kire. Jahnavi Barua is a
contemporary Indian writer from Assam living in
Bangalore. Author of Next Door(2008), Rebirth (2010),
and Undertow (2020). Easterine Kire, born in Kohima,
Nagaland, is a poet, short story writer, and novelist. She
is remembered as the first to write and publish in English
from Nagaland in 1982.
Abstract
Gender discrimination against women within the
matriarchy and patriarchy plays a pivotal role in the
~ 124 ~
protagonist's life in the select novels. This paper

examines the protagonist's journey as seen in Jahnavi
Barua's Rebirth and Easterine Kire's A Terrible
Matriarchy. The central theme of Rebirth is family
violence against women. Keberi is the protagonist who is
pregnant. Home is a place to feel safe, but for women,
their own homes and families are seen as a threat.
Towards the end, Kaberi gives birth to a child, and she is
reborn as an independent woman. In A Terrible
Matriarchy, Kire gives a critical insight into how girls are
raised and groomed to be submissive wives. Women's
subordination in tribal communities is one of the key
themes explored in this novel. The Angami society is a
dominant patriarchal society; this work shows how unfair
the matriarchy is to women. This paper focuses on how a
matriarch becomes the ardent defender of patriarchy, and
this paper aims to expose patriarchy for what it is.
Introduction
India has one of the world's most significant
concentrations of native peoples. North-East India is
home to a sizable indigenous population and holds a
high profile in the community, one of the world's most
culturally varied regions. Tribal customs and regulations
heavily impact the native people of the area. Therefore,
the community's social, cultural, and political
components are influenced and decided by tribal law and
order. In Nagaland, women face numerous obstacles that
prohibit them from fully participating in the political-
social life of their community.
This paper focuses on gender discrimination issues in
India, especially in the Northeast, as seen in Jahnavi
~ 125 ~
Barua's Rebirth and Easterine Kire's A Terrible

Matriarchy. This study provides a gendered examination
of the systems and practices of violence that define both
public politics and private family space in Northeast
India. The study analyses vital gender challenges faced
by Northeast Indian women, as seen in Rebirth and A
Terrible Matriarchy. It examines how men write laws,
and it exploits women in every aspect. It discriminates
women, domestic violence against women is not
addressed, the unequal status of women in the society
prevails, there is a constant issue with women's identity,
forces women to be economically dependent on her
husband and his family, blames women for all the
conflicts in the family, not given the privilege of decision
making, denied of property rights. There is a lack of
health or emotional care by her husband and his family
members.
This paper refers to the work of Kire because her
narration accurately portrays women's life in North India.
The story is autobiographical and draws from her life
events.; the representation of powerful women in
positions perhaps be read as a reflection of the authors'
lives. Kire is aninfluential woman writer who has made a
mark in the academy by bringing the forgotten histories
of marginalised groups to a worldwide audience in
innovative ways. Kire is the first one to write in English
from Nagaland. Kire's work portrays the painful reality
of life in Nagaland and the intricacies of colonialism and
oppression. It also reflects upon the lifestyle and culture
of Angami. Mari is one of her bestselling novels, When
the River Sleeps (2015); she received 'The Hindu Prize.'
~ 126 ~
A Terrible Matriarchy (2007) by Easterine Kire

represents the status of women in Angami society, which
has a patriarchal setup. The work is fictitious, and real-
world events coexist. There is no doubt that women's
position in society has advanced significantly. We have
not yet achieved parity in all social and political
engagement areas. Modern women in India's academic
and administrative sectors are challenging the status quo
even as their patriarchal culture struggles to
acknowledge their achievements.
Angami society is patriarchal, and its treatment of

women regarding their rights to get primary education,
property inheritance, freedom of choice with their
marriage, divorce, and their very existence is patrilineal.
However, we can see that women are the primary source
of the family's income through various forms such as
agricultural activity, weaving clothes and sweaters, and
being good with handicrafts. Naga society is patriarchal,
but some women have freedom, and their role is
essential for the community's growth. Kire has
analyzed the Angami society's culture deeply and dealt
with the present situation by bringing her own life
experiences based on real people. Kire has given a
different perspective on how patriarchy operates in
Angami society.
Modern women in India's academic and administrative
spheres are challenging the dominant narrative despite the
country's persistent patriarchy, which makes it difficult for
the government to acknowledge the achievements and
skills of women. Writers like Kire have defined the
literary identity of the indigenous community by acting
~ 127 ~
as representatives of civilizations that have had to

overcome historical marginalization. In the novel, the
grandmother represents the docile grandparents whose
values contrast with the 'new Naga woman.' Matriarchal
dominance is described in the narrative by Dielieno's
grandmother. Nonetheless, let us analyze the
grandmother's storycarefully. Her influence over the young
female protagonist is primarily due to fear of society rather
than contributing to the community's cultural norms.
The novel's title alludes to the grandmother's matriarchal

hegemony, which she uses to bury the pain of raising a
daughter in a culture where men have all the power. The
novel revolves around female characters belonging to
three different generations, and the primary women
characters are Grandmother, Mother, and the protagonist
Dielieno. This novel is one of the few books about Naga
women and how their values and beliefs determine their
social roles. Kire's understated emphasis on patriarchal
authority is one of the work's distinctive features. Kire
skillfully makesmaternal authority and the harm it causes
to female offspring, as seen through the protagonist
Dielieno.
The matriarch is the last stage a woman attains in her

lifetime; she becomes a matriarch after living as a
mother. Traditional Naga patriarchal values are the root
cause of the grandmother's conformist role and the
values she upholds. Despite the absence of overt male
characters, the work permeates every aspect of the
workplace through the subtle yet potent influence of the
patriarchal societal order. While trying to mold Dielieno
~ 128 ~
into a 'decent' girl, her grandmother ignores that by

exercising her authority, she reinforces the norms of a
patriarchal culture that limit women's agency. It is clear
early in the book when Dielieno's grandma scolds
Dielieno's mother for not including Dielieno in
household tasks. Grandma expects Dielieno's parents
must make the girl do housework and should stop letting
her play around with her brothers. Grandma says, 'No
responsible parent would raise their daughter that way
(Kire, 2007). In addition to her worryingly conventional
outlook, grandmother's refusal to call Dielieno by her
name, preferring to refer to her as 'the girl,' is disturbing
to Dielieno, and she asks grandma to call her by her
name. Yet, Grandma still wonders where her current
identity came from.; Dielieno means 'errand girl' in the
Angami language, which is both exciting and relevant.
A matriarch is a woman who influences her community,
family, and society. The Grandmother, Vibano, has
earned the status of a matriarch. Grandmother takes
control of five-year-old Dielieno and prunes her into a
docile, dutiful woman to become a good wife in the
future and bring honor to her family and society. The
grandmother also takes control of the lives of two other
women in the novel, Bano and Dielieno's mother.
Dielieno has a hard life because of her grandmother's
attitude against girl children. In this novel, patriarchy is
dominant; the male child's value is more than the girl
child in the family. Towards the end, we know that this
partial treatment of the male heir is because of socially
and culturally constructed beliefs. Dielieno constantly
conflicts with Angami's tradition that keeps women
under suppression.
~ 129 ~
The protagonist Dielieno has a loving mother, father, and

brothers who support her in the novel. Still, she faces
matriarchal oppression from her grandmother, the
matriarch of the family who has no consideration for a
girl child. Lieno is just a five-year-old child while being
sent to care for her grandmother Vibano. Grandmother
has no sympathy for any girl child, so Lieno goes
through tremendous household work, which is impossible
for a child her age. As a result of her grandmother's lack
of sympathy for female children, Lieno exerted
compulsion to perform household chores beyond the
capabilities of a child her age. It compelled Lieno to
follow impossible rules dictated by her grandmother,
who believes that a girl child does not require care,
education, love, or even an adequate diet of meat and
jaggery. Because of her gender, a girl is not even entitled
to a slice of beef or jaggery.
What meat do you want?" she simpered sweetly… "I

was not the leg, Grandmother; give me the leg." "I was
not asking for you, silly girl," she said as she swiftly put
the chicken leg into my brother's plate. "that portion is
always for boys. Girls must eat theother parts. (Kire, 1)
Lieno's brothers enjoy every privilege imaginable, from

the smallest such as having jaggery to eat, extra food, or
meat, to the most significant such as inheriting the
family property even if the man cannot care for it.
The framework According to Kire's introduction, A

Terrible Matriarchy has an overarching patriarchal
framework and seems to be focused on exposing abuses
~ 130 ~
of the patriarchal system. However, the novel's less

obvious understructure is a matriarchy, which abuses the
patriarchal framework to justify violence against women
by members of the same gender. Kire presents
an entirely new perspective on women's oppression in A
Terrible Matriarchy by depicting thepatriarchy as abused
by the matriarchal structure, which results in gender
suppression within the same gender. In India, gender
discrimination is overwhelmingly patriarchal, but Kire
addresses the other women in the family who impose
women's suppression and oppression in the name of
tradition. Extremely oppressive matriarchal pressure is
the root cause of women'ssubjugation.
The novel delineates Angami's tradition, and the boo is

developing modernity. Modern concepts and ideas are
still in their infancy, evidenced by their evocation in the
developing Angami society. For instance, menstruation,
a natural process, is called 'the curse,' and young girls are
unaware of their body mechanisms. Lieno is terrified of
such 'adult matters.' Lieno and her friend are
apprehensive about purchasing sanitary napkins from a
shop run by a man. It demonstrates that the Angami
society persists without any development in such
matters.
Kire demonstrates how Angami society functions

patrilineal through the matriarch. We can see this through
the grandmother Vibano's character, where she reserves
the property rights of her grandson Vini, who is an
alcoholic and has no job. When Vini is dead, Vibano
shares her love for Vini's son and even gives him the
~ 131 ~
right to own the property. Though Lieno stays with her

grandmother and does all the work, she does not inherit
any property or money from the matriarch.
Even Bano, who has lived in her grandmother's house

her entire life, performs all housework, although she
receives no property rights or money from the matriarch.
Nino, Lieno's mother, explains that this patriarchal system
believes only the male heir can inherit the family's
propertyor money.
As Nino says, 'widows without sons lost all their

husband's property to their male relatives (Kire 250).
Kire illustrates this point through Neiko, grandmother
Vibano's younger sister, whohas remained unmarried and
thus spent her entire life at her father's house. However,
as far as anyone knows, the home and property belong to
Neiko's brother, Sizo. They claimed that Sizo was the
legal owner of the property even though he does not
currently reside there. As soon as Neiko passes away,
they will give it to Sizo.
The grandmother, the matriarch, provides additional food
and meat for the male heir and male family members
because, in her opinion, it is the man who cares for the
family. In contrast, a woman is of no use to the family.
According to Vibano,
There was no male heir in the family. There was no male

heir in the family. They werealways in constant danger if
there was a war. The women would have only one man
to protect them. We love our male children and give them
the best food. And we should."(Kire, Pg 35-36)
~ 132 ~
The common law of society provides only minor attention

to the desires and rights of a married woman. Kire gives
us a picture of three-generation women, allowing us to
observe the lives and positions of women in three
consecutive generations of society. Vibano's personal
experiences shape how she views men and women.
According to Lieno's mother, the grandmother Vibano's
gender discrimination against girls stems from how
society treats her mother. Vibano's behavior has taken
the form of her mother's struggles with being a woman,
demonstrating the community in which Vibano
developed.
Similarly, when Lieno's mother describes the type of

woman a man prefers, we can understand the society in
which she lived. Men like quiet and timid women; they do
not want an outspoken woman. According to Lieno's
mother, Strong-willed and opinionated women are
generally not well-received by men. As a result, they
value hardworking wives. You are an effective worker,
Lieno, but you could stand to be more submissive (Kire
249).
The views of Lieno's mother and grandmother illustrate

the treatment of women in society, which has remained
essentially constant throughout two generations. Women
still face many obstacles in today's culture, which is
skewed heavily toward men. Women in Naga society
experienced significant repercussions at this time of
transition since their voices and story excluded from
mainstream society and devalued. It is clear that
selective participation' is a persistent trend since
~ 133 ~
women's access to decision-making opportunities

remains limited. Conventional gender roles that previous
generations of Naga women adhered to are stifling and no
longer fit the needs of modern society. As much as
bestowing personal freedom, an individual should
encompass space of all types in all areas, private and
public.
For many Naga women in the modern day, Dielieno's

unyielding attitude against the pressures of society hurled
at her by her grandmother is a good symbol of the struggle
to find one's voice and identity in the face of the
domineering force of patriarchy. Kire connects
Angami's education system's traditional and
contemporary modern views toward girl children.
Grandmother Vibano denies primary education even for
a five-year-old child if it is a girl. According to her,
education does not help the girl child become a good
future wife or mother, which she considers the only
important goal for any girl in Naga society. Vibano
believes that educating a girl will make her adamant and
will get her into trouble; as she says,
In our days… girls did not attend school. we learned

fieldwork and everything we needed to know while
holed up at home.… They will always have something to
do, so they will be too occupied to cause any trouble
(Kire 22)
Compared to Grandmother, Lieno's parents support her

attending school. Though they persuade the grandmother
to enroll Lieno in school, the grandmother is unhappy
~ 134 ~
with the arrangement and ensures it is only temporary.

Lieno's primary goal is to attend school. However, she
may attend school if she agrees to complete all house
chores on time. Lieno works diligently and excels in her
education once she enrolls in school. We see Lieno grow
up in an Angami society that places little emphasis on
female education. Dielieno gets criticised for her
ambition to join college for higher education. Her
grandma tells her the harsh reality that men do not
choose to marry women with advanced degrees since
they see it as a barrier to having children (Kire, 2007).
The grandmother internalizes patriarchy since she
defends and values the community's cultural standards.
She conforms unthinkingly to her gendered role and
makes the other women in her home into virtual
prisoners, making herself a submissive victim. (Kire,
2007). Gender equality among Naga women requires
them to confront the cultural norm of male superiority
while working through the emotional scars of centuries
of subjugation. Because of this, tensions are rising
between the old ways and the new.
Women have been assigned the role of subordinate

figures, and their social identity and status have, time
and again, not been allowed to riseabove that of second-
class citizens. This is not new for Naga women deprived
of dignity and rights on the pretext of valuing
socialcustoms. As Dielieno grows up, she questions her
village's harsh and rigid traditions. She learns the hard
truths of being a girl while also knowing the wrongs
done to her by her grandmother. This is made clear by a
pivotal event in the story, after which Dielieno gradually
~ 135 ~
seeks new means of becoming self-sufficient and

valuable to the society to which she belongs, calling into
question the traditional role of women in Naga culture.
She is consistently subversive in her efforts to redefine
what is expected in woman's expectations and
consciously celebrates female protagonists who are
strong enough to make their own choices and take
charge of their destinies. Gender equality in Naga
society is just one of many issues obscured by the
dominant political aspect of the region. The discussion
of gender and empowerment is rapidly emerging in Naga
culture.
The protagonist's life is heavily influenced by the
patriarchal and familial forms of sexism she experiences.
Barua has provided crucial insight into how young girls
are socialized tosubmit to marriage. When women reflect
on their lives, their place in society, and the power and
privilege gaps, a feminist awareness emerges and is
articulated. Through Barua's pen, the protagonist can
speak out against the patriarchy that has oppressed her,
and in doing so, she comes into her own as a woman.
In the twentieth century, women's writing was viewed as

a powerful platform for modernist and feminist
statements. In the last twenty years, feminist works
written in English by Indian women have become wildly
popular. In describing their writing, many female authors
have adopted the term "feminist," which represents that,
in the modern era, women have come to realize they are
not helpless or dependent. These facts, portrayed in the
works of contemporary Indian women authors, reflect the
changed mentality of today's modern women.
~ 136 ~
Women writers in India delve into what it means to be a

woman, exploring a wide range of topics that pertain to
women at every stage of their lives, from childhood to
old age. They advocate for feminism as a solution to
women's repressed pain in their writings. When women
try to do more than the stereotypical housewife and
mother, they enter a realm overwhelmingly dominated by
men. As a result, they have an arduous and protracted
road ahead of them.
In India, the Northeast region is one of the country's
most diverse regions geographically and in terms of
linguistics. The northeastern state has a diverse range of
indigenous people belonging to different cultures and
lifestyles. Despite its rich tribal cultures and natural
resources, the Northeast is considered a turbulent,
violent geographical area. Though on one side, it has
beautiful nature and rich resources, on the other side,
there is gender discrimination and gender inequality, and
various political and social issues threaten people. In
Rebirth, Barua has mapped out the rich landscapes of
Assam as well as the violence against women in contrast.
Women writers addressed women's issues; in their
writings, they portray women as to how men desire to
want them in real life. The women of the Northeast lost
their real identity, a significant challenge of gender
discrimination.
The sole traditional notion of women's identity is that a
woman is referred to in terms of her husband's identity
and not seen as an individual being with her self-identity.
The identity that woman has created before her marriage
does not exist after marriage, as she is expected to
disown and ignore her self-identity. This treatment is seen
~ 137 ~
in Kaberi, the protagonist of Barua's novel Rebirth.

Kaberi is a young woman who moved to Bangalore from
Assam after marryingRanjit, she feels lost in living in the
city of Bangalore, but she tries hard to fit in with the
urbanculture in which her husband works.
Kaberi is experiencing many emotions at a crucial stage
in her life as she is pregnant and battling with her failing
marriage, shaped by years of unsuccessful attempts to
have a child and her husband's affair with another
woman. Kaberi uses every opportunity to express her
devotion to her husband's desires despite her failing
marriage.
Rohit and Kaberi have a strained married life; Kaberi
losses her self-identity after marriage and her husband
fails to see her as an individual being. Kaberi is
pregnant, and she narrates the events happening in her
daily life and shares her memories with the baby in her
womb; in this Journey of nine months, Kaberi is reborn
many times. Barua portrays how women are being the
victim of a male-dominated society. Women are
constantly dominated by their fathers before marriage
and their husbands after marriage,, as seen in Kaberi's
life. As an individual, Kaberi is not given the freedom of
choice in her marriage; she is wedded to Rohit according
toher parent's wishes.
While Bidyut's mother, with moist eyes, anointed Joya
with the sacred sender, her best friend, Jeudi Bora,
noticed me in the circle of young girls around Joya and
instantly chose me as her son's bride. (Rebirth 2010)
Since Kaberi is brought up in a conservative family that
follows strict traditional values, she has no right to
choose her husband; only her parents can decide about
~ 138 ~
her marriage. Kaberi suffers miserably after marrying

Rohit. He blames his wife unapologetically for not being
ableto produce a child, and he abandons her by having an
affair with Lakshmi. When Rohit knows about Kaberi's
pregnancy, he selfishly returns to her without regret for
his unfaithfulness.
Kaberi is raised to be a submissive, calm, and soft-
spoken woman. The structure of our traditional
patriarchy projects women's position in society as
inferior. The general constructive idea is that women are
only acknowledged as human beings after marriage. The
girl children in traditional India are raised to grow into
submissive women who should not consider themselves
independent women. They are expected to be dependent
throughout their life; an unmarried woman is expected to
be dependent on her father; after her marriage, she is
expected to be dependent on her husband and his family,
a woman, after having a son, is expected to be dependent
on her son until she dies.
Thus, it is evident that a woman, from the time of her
birth until her death, is expected to be utterly dependent
on a man for her living. Kaberi is seen as a dependent
wife; even when her husband beats her, she does not
reveal it to anybody. The mother of Kaberi also
undergoes domestic violence. Still, she has never told
anyone, even after her husband asks for a divorce from
Rohit when he refuses not to end his affair with
Lakshmi. Still, Rohit laughs angrily and mocks Kaberi
asking what she will do for her living. Kaberi goes
through much mental suffering because of her husband
Rohit, who also domestic violence. Still, society or
Kaberi's family does not take it into grave account as it is
~ 139 ~
conventional for a woman to endure all the suffering in

silence.
The novel begins with Kaberi conversing with her baby
in her womb. The baby is the only pillar of hope for
Kaberi as she transforms from being a submissive wife
to becoming an independent woman making her own life
decisions. Women living in such patriarchy are expected
to surrender their self-identity voluntarily; However, she
does not receive any dignified status after marriage, she
is expected to give up the existing identity they gained
before the wedding. In India, it is believed that the
primary purpose of marriage to a woman is to bear a
child, especially to have a son. Only a male child is the
decedent of the family.
According to feminists, it is a good social order in which
men hold the primary authority and have property rights,
most men are the political leaders, and male family
members control the women and children of the family.
Patriarchy is an organization of various cultures' politics,
society, and economics. The men take over the
community's welfare as they have the chief
responsibility. 'Patriarch' is derived from Greek words,
'Patria' meaning family and 'archy' meaning rule (Millet
1970). Traditionally, patriarchy granted the father nearly
total ownership over wives or wives and children.
Classically, as head of the family, the father is both
begetter and owner in a system in which kinship is
property (Millet, 1970)
Men are seen as a complete authority, whereas females
are seen as inferior or subordinate to men in society and
the family. According to Eisenstein, Patriarchy ideology
'destroys woman's consciousness about her potential
~ 140 ~
power, which derives from the necessity of society to

reproduce itself' (Eisenstein, 1981). The doctrine of
patriarchy can also be called androcentric; this is seen in
most of the great classical literary works written by
male writers, who portray
female characters as submissive and neglect their
characteristics. Therefore, patriarchy is seen as a male-
oriented androcentric society.
Rebirth intersects domestic violence and public political
violence. It analyses Barua's characters are at the core of
the violence that helps us to understand her portrayal of
home and motherland. The transformation of the
protagonist from a submissive woman to a self-realized
person who understands her worth. Nature and other
characters assist in the process of this transformation and
awakening of her feminine consciousness.
References
Primary Sources
Barua, Jahnavi (2010) Rebirth. India: Penguin Random

House. Kire, Easterine (2007) A Terrible Matriarchy:
New Delhi. Zubaan.Secondary Sources
Eisenstein, Z.R. (1993). The radical future of liberal
feminism. Boston: NortheasternUniversity Press
Kishor, S. and K. Gupta (2004) "Women's Empowerment
in India and its States: Evidencefrom the NFHS,"
Economic and Political Weekly, 39(7), 694–712.
Millett, K. (1970). Sexual politics. Columbia University
Press.
~ 141 ~
Revisiting the Status of Odia Folktales

through Eco-Perspectives
Chandan Parsad Jena
Ph.D. Research Scholar
KIIT University, Bhubaneswar
ABSTRACT
Folktale is a part of folklore literature, orally transferred
in the shape of poems, songs, myths, dramas, rituals,
proverbs and riddles of a particular place or people while
folklore is considered as the amalgam of the customs,
legends, traditions, old deities and timeless tales that
preserved and passed from one generation to the other.
One such richly endowed oral literature belongs to the
state of Odisha, where grandchildren have grown up
listening to stories from Mahabhārata, Abolakarā
Kāhāni, Bagulā-Baguli chronicles, The Legend of Taw-
poi, The heroic feat of Dharmapada, Jātaka Tales, and
many other myths and legends that are popular among
the people indigenous to this region. This paper will
strive to critically appreciate the selected short fictions of
Shri Raghabananda Dash and Ranjan Pradhan to explore
the eco-critical elements from their works such as
Kathalahari (1927) and Tales From Hill and Jungle
(2009) respectively. It represents the very essence of
rural Odia culture, nature and tribal communities and
focuses on the images of the stereotyping psychology
that constructs human relationships with the non-human
world . The study will analyze the vernacular tongue,
employment of supernatural elements and magic realism
used by Dash and Pradhan which replicate a unique
enchanting quality of Odia folktales.
~ 142 ~
Keywords - Folktale, Eco-psychology, Nature-Culture,

Stereotype, Anthropocentrism, Transition from Tradition
to Modern
INTRODUCTION
Folklore is a literary genre which has been shared by a
particular group of people encompasses the common
tradition of a particular culture, subculture or group.
Folktale which is a part of folklore literature includes
oral traditions that has composed with proverbs, myths,
riddles, animal tales, fables, fantasy and joke which
ranges from material culture to customary lore. This
particular genre has been started to distinguish itself as
an autonomous discipline during the period of romantic
nationalism in Europe. Johann Gotfried Von Herder is
the first figure of 1770s who has presented oral traditions
as an organic process grounded in locale. The Kinder-
Und Housemarchen of the Brothers Grimm in 1982 is
the best known and the only collection of verbal folklore
of the European peasantry of that time.
By the turn into the 20th century the number and
sophistication of folklore studies and folklorists have
grown both in Europe and North America. Whereas
European folklorists have focused on the oral folklore of
the homogeneous peasant populations in their regions, at
the same time the American folklorists Franz Boas
and Ruth Benedict have considered Native American
cultures in their research by including the totality of their
customs and beliefs as folklore.
Like British and American Literature, India literature
possesses a large body of heroic ballads and epic poetry
preserved in oral tradition, both in Sanskrit and the
~ 143 ~
various vernacular languages of India. The stories from

Indian country side have a sylvan flavour and they are
replete with myths, fables, adventurous tales of the
warriors, fairy tales etc. They speak of the idyllic and
innocuous nature of rural life. The moral values they
entail reveal the orientation of their mind towards value
act and keep them remote from the corrupt city life. In
other word the rhythm of nature and the carnival of rural
life find expression in the stories told by the rural folks,
down the centuries, which are widely known as folktales.
In it we find a vast treasure of mythical legends, Puranic
stories, fables from Panchatantra and Hitapodesa, etc.
Indian folktales succinctly present a genuine picture of
the social reality, the family life of rural India. It reflects
joy and sorrow, happiness and miseries of the common
people, love and devotion in the families, relation with
nature and community, etc.
Indian folk heroes like Rama, Krishna in Sanskrit epics
and history and also in freedom movement are well
known to everyone. They have found a place in written
literature. But in Indian cultural sub-system, Indian folk
heroes are most popular. The castes and tribes of India
have maintained their diversities of culture through their
language, religion and customs. So in addition to
national heroes, regional heroes and local folk and tribal
heroes are alive in the collective memory of the people.
Let's take examples of the Santhals or the Gonds . The
Santhals have their culture heroes Beer Kherwal and
Bidu Chandan. Gonds have their folk hero Chital Singh
Chhatti. Banjara folk hero is Lakha Banjara or Raja
Isalu.
~ 144 ~
Indian folklorists during the last thirty years have

substantially contributed to the study of folklore.
Devendra Satyarthi, Krishna Dev Upadyhayaya, Prafulla
Dutta Goswami, Kunja Bihari Dash, Ashutosh
Bhatacharya and many more senior folklorists have
contributed a lot into this the study. But it is during the
1970s that some folklorists have studied in US
universities and trained up themselves with the modern
theories and methods of folklore research and set a new
trend of folklore study in India. Especially, South Indian
universities have advocated for folklore as a discipline in
the universities and hundreds of scholars are trained up
on it. A.K. Ramanujan is the noted folklorist to analyse
folklore from Indian context.
The flow of folklore flourished since the dawn of
civilization. Folklore has a rich heritage in India that has
been used in practical life and also in sophisticated
works of art and treatises. This phenomenon is common
to all regions of India but the achievements vary in
degree. Odisha, a colourful region famous for its fine art,
folk painting on walls, Patta Chitra, (painting on cloth),
Koshli folk music and dance, pancha badya (ganda baja),
Odishi music and dance, architecture, sculpture, Bandha
kala (weaving design on cloth in west odisha) has justly
been called Odisha the land of exquisite arts and shows
its richness of traditional society, culture and lifestyle of
Odia people through various folktales.
~ 145 ~
ODISHA AND FOLKTALES

When we think about academic perspective of Odia
folklore, it is true that none has headache about
collection of study materials of this great treasure to
explore before the English scholar like John Beams who
is an administrator by taking his first interest in the field.
He has attracted with the charms and superstitions
among the people. His article on “Folklore of Orissa”
(1872) has been appeared in Indian Antiquary. He has
been attributed the reasons of isolation of the land from
outside world for a long period. The belief in witchcraft,
utterance of ‘mantra’, coming across an empty vessel at
the starting point of journey, touch of a broom stick and
so on has recorded by him. He has been felt the necessity
of folk materials for his administration.Fakir Mohan
Senapati, the pioneer Odia novelist who has been drawn
inspiration and made free use of folk materials,
especially in proverbs in his works. The name of T.E.
Revenshaw cannot be ignored in the field under whose
patronage Pt. Kapileswar Bidya Bhusan Nanda Sharma
worked on the ‘Popular Sayings of Odia people’ which
has published in 1876. However the names of Nilamani
Bidya Ratna, Chandra Sekhar Bahinipati, Raghabananda
Nayak’s collection related to agriculture have right place
in folklore study. Gopal Chandra Praharaj, the compiler
of (Odia Bhasa Kosha) Odia encyclopedic dictionary,
has worked hard and collected Odia folklore materials
and placed in his work. Devendra Satyarthi, an eminent
Indian folklorist in 1931 has made an extensive study on
folklore. Chakradhar Mahapatra has been collected folk
songs from the princely states of Odisha and published
Gauli Geeta Chumbak (1939) with hindi transcription
~ 146 ~
and English translation. Laxmi Narayan Sahu a member

of Bharat Sevak Samaj paid attention to tribal folklore,
collected songs from tribal ethnic communities and
published in 1937 titled as Gandharbi ka Satadalas.
When we open the pages of history we can see stress of
folklore in ancient Odia literature in the form of epics
and kabyas. The great epic Mahabharat of Sarala Das in
odia (15th century) embodies folklore and the use is so
frequent that it would not be wrong if one termed it as
folk-epic. Some of the medieval kabyas contains folk
elements are prominent for themes drawn from the folk
world. The best examples can be cited here by
mentioning two enchanted kabyas “Shasisena” and
“Kanchi Kaveri” (18th century) blended with folk tales
and ballads prevailing then. The volumeUtkal
Kahanipublished by Praharaj at the close of 19th
Century is still popular and has won appreciation from
all quarters. But Laxminarayan Sahu, a member of
Bharat Sevak Samaj, paid attention to tribal folklore. He
collected songs from the Khond, Saura, Gonda, Gadaba,
Santal, Paraja, Koya and other ethnic groups and
published them under the title Gandharbika Satadals
(1937). He has been published a critical study on their
religion, faith, rituals, songs, tales, etc.inHis Tribes of
Jeypore(1942).
The years following the independence have seen the
appearance of at least three major scholars in the field of
Orissan folklore, namely, Verrier Elwin, Chakradhar
Mahapatra and Kunjabihari Das though it has nothing to
do with independence. All the three had started their
work much earlier. But their major works appeared only
in the fifties. Besides, we have a non-folklorist in Pt.
~ 147 ~
Nilakantha Das, the veteran poet, philosopher and critic

has discussed, in depth, the role of folklore in the
development of Oriya literature and culture. He has also
stressed on the contribution of the tribal inhabitants to
the Oriya language and culture in his Odia Sahitya
Krama Parinam (1948-53) and in his other works. The
contribution of Verrier Elwin to Orissa, folklore deserves
special mention. He has spent years among the tribals
and brought out a monumental volume entitled Tribal
Myths of Orissa (1954).Dr. Kunjabihari Das has made
his mark among Indian folklorists both for the corpus of
materials he has collected and comparative as well as
analytical study of the same. With him the folklore
studies in Orissa attained a height which could very well
be compared with that in other parts of the country at
least in the fifties. A Study of Orissan Folklore’ (1953)
written in English made his own laurels from abroad. In
the N.B.T.’s folklore publication series he has written
Folklore of Orissa (1979) in collaboration with Professor
L. K. Mahapatra. He has published two volumes of
folktales too. The “Lok Galpa Sanchayan” contains over
200 tales classified into 16 types. After Dr. Das, folklore
studies in Orissa came to ebb. The study has not been
encouraged by the Universities. Dr. Natabar
Samantaray’s Odia Palli Sahitya (1970) is a handby
book lucidly written, introducing Oriya folk literature to
general readers. Dr. K. C. Behera’s Mogal Tamsa (1946)
brings to light the history and salient features of a folk
drama of the Bhadrak area which has on the wane. Some
other significant publications of the period are Odia Lok
Natak (1983) by Hemanta Kumar Das, A Study of Oriya
Folk-Ballads (1988) and Santal Lok Kahani by Dr.
~ 148 ~
Shyam Sundar Mohapatra and Paschima Odisar Adivasi

Lok Sanskruti(1992), kalahandira Lokasamskruti(1996),
Visioning Folklore(2002) and Oral Epics of Kalahandi (
2008) are worth mentioning.
This paper attempts to study two selected tales from
Tales from Hill and Jungle (2009) such as “The Flying
Elephant” and “Tale of Sashisena” by Pradhan and
another two from Das’s Kathalahari (1927) and they are
such as “Kacha khamba Katha” (Tale of Glass Pillar)
and “Neula Bhai Katha” (Tale of Mongoose Brother).
These tales give the crystal clear portrait of the
interdependence quality between human and the non
human world. It tells the stories from the past and shows
how nature ia an inevitable part of human life by dealing
with the present scenario of the environment. This paper
also explores eco-psychological themes, by examining
values and practices as it investigates contemporary idea
of wilderness and bio-regionalism. It takes us towards
the path of psychological reconnection with nature,
without and within. And it also reveals the unspoken
words of the forest are manifested in the spoken words
of the tribal. In the lap of nature, everyone irrespective of
man and animal have equal status as they are the creation
of this mother earth. As African proverbs says, “those
who are uninitiated, cannot understand our songs” which
means to the understand tribal life first we have to
understand their culture and their life within forest.
This paper has applied the qualitative and empirical
method of eco-critical theory. Environment is a hot topic
of the day in view of some present ecological issues. The
depletion of the earth is a much-talked matter of these
days; it is the byproduct of human activities for a long
~ 149 ~
time. William Rueckert has first made use of the term

‘ecocriticism’ in his critical prose-work “Literature and
Ecology-An Experiment in Ecocriticism”(1978) to mean
“the application of ecological concepts to the study of
literature because ecology…..has the greatest relevance
to the present and future of the world…”(Rueckert 107).
Eco-criticism as an academic discipline arose during the
last decade of the 20th century when Cheryll Glotfelty
and Harold Fromm Published a book named The Eco-
criticism Reader(1996) an anthology of Critical Essays
on Nature. Mere science or technology is not enough for
building up an eco-consciousness among the humans.
Eco-criticism undoubtedly does this work of
consciousness rising among the readers. Eco-criticism
pleads for a symbiosis (living together) which suggests
an ecological relationship between the human and the
non-human. The Man have lived in close kinship with
nature until there prevailed his hierarchic feeling being
the only literal animal. His materialistic attitude has led
him to look upon nature as a commodity. As long as the
humans will carry on this anthropocentric attitude, nature
will be exploited leading towards the ultimate doomsday
of the earth. Eco-criticism studies culture in relation to
the geography of a place or landscape. Because culture is
created by the people who have been living in particular
place over the years. The impact of such kind of
landscape on characters we find in Hardy’s Wessex
novels, Synge’s writings on Aran Island, R. K.
Narayan’s Malgudi, Bibhutibhushan’s Labtulia and the
like. An eco-critic is not after all an ecologist, eco-
criticism seeks to explore the interconnection between
man and nature. The harmonious relationship between
~ 150 ~
human and the nonhuman will build an eco wisdom

among the readers. In a sense, eco criticism is a process
of self-realization of who we are, where we stand, how
we should treat our habitat, how we should behave with
the other organisms etc.
Eco-psychology which is a part of eco-criticism and it
pursues the ambitious goal are steeped in the field’s of
counter-cultural beginnings. It has been emerged in the
early 1960s just as the modern environmental movement
gathering the strength, when Boston graduates have
discussed it as the isolation and the malaise infecting the
modern life. Theodore Roszak, a professor of history,
coined the term ‘counterculture’ and published a
manifesto, The Voice of the Earth (1992) in which he
criticizes modern psychology for neglecting the primal
bond between man and nature.
Representation of nature in literature is not a recent
phenomenon. Since time immemorial great classics of
literature have treatment of nature. From Beowulf to The
Wasteland nature plays an important role in literature.
But the writer’s attitude to nature is not always the same.
Sometimes nature appears as a background and
sometimes as a character. The metaphysical poets look
upon nature as a concept through which mankind
conceives of its difference from the non-human world.
The romantics took shelter in the open lap of nature
being dissatisfied with the surrounding world. Nature
plays a fateful role in Victorian writers like Hardy as we
find in his novels. Eco criticism draws its bearing from
the works of three great American writers like Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller and Henry David
Thoreau. Emerson enjoyed the impact of nature in his
~ 151 ~
first reflect essay “Nature”. Fuller’s Summer on the

Lakes(1843) encounters the American landscape at large.
In Walden(1854), Thoreau has been built a hut on the
shore of Walden Pond, a couple of miles away from his
hometown of Concord, Massachusetts. It is, perhaps, the
classic account of dropping out of modern life and
seeking to renew the self by a “return to nature”. (Barry)
Like other literature Indian regional has also filled with
eco-critical elements. And Odishan folk literature is one
of them. The selected Odia folktales are unique in
composition which explores the mysteries of the Nature
and presents a strong evidence on human and animals
bonding. In the story “The Flying Elephant” which is a
tale of dongaria kandha from Rayagada district shows
the interaction between the farmer and the elephant that
has come from the paradise. It seems very clear from this
line, “Who are you Mr.man and Why are you hanging
onto my tails like this?” (p.42) It also reflects that
animals have the power to understand human
psychology and they can feel human sentiments. As
farmer being a poor fellow who depends on his
agriculture only. But when elephant has eaten away all
the crops of him and now he has nothing to survive for.
So having been touched by appealing words of the
farmer, the elephant has provided him some gold coins
and wealth and said to him, “Now you can manage your
family comfortably with this wealth and there will be no
wants for you.” Like animals, the jungle Goddess or
Nature is kind enough for all the creatures as “Tale of
Sashisena” presents the mercy of jungle Goddess on
Sasisena, who is a beautiful angle like girl but unable to
get a suitable bridegroom. So “the jungle Goddess
~ 152 ~
appeared soon before her and a big serpent stood there.

By seeing the serpent sasisena was frightened and the
Goddess said to her, “Dear child don’t frightened that
serpent is your real bridegroom” (p.125). The
aforementioned lines fetch us the ideas about the
conversations of animal and nature and their capacity to
understand human psychology very well.
The tales indicates the stereotyping or taboo beliefs the
traditional society, human behaviour and their
involvement with nature. The opening line of “The Tale
of Mongoose Brother” opens with this belief that by
eating a mango which has once already half eaten by a
mongoose, king’s younger queen has given birth to a
baby mongoose which seems quite funny and odd now a
days. In “The Tale of Mongoose Brother”, the title itself
shows that how one animal can be fit into a human
character by being called as a brother and has the ability
to perform all the duties better than his other six brothers
and understands the human emotion as well. These tales
are related to animals are the reflection of human mind
which compares the human nature with animals.
Symbolically the tiger, or a mongoose, or a monkey, or a
jackal represent different human behaviour and
characters. Like Freud and Jung are looked to myths and
symbols to provide metaphors for the psychological
process and condition. In Jung’s theory myths and
folktales arise out of the same instinctual forms across
cultures, issuing that its from our inherited nature,
finding symbols in human habitat that yield knowledge
of psyche and of human kinship with the rest of the life.
The small creatures are witty and smart enough
to win the strong creatures. The context of the tales are
~ 153 ~
clearly mentioned the importance of nature in a

agricultural society. Co-existence of animals, birds and
man in the context symbiotic relationship between the
environment and the human habitat that makes social
contact and sometimes the struggle for the survival.
Story of the king and queen, prince and princess and
demoness is the common paradigm in Indian folktales
especially in Odisha. “Tale of the Glass Pillar” or
(“Kacha Khamba Katha”) has an employment of
demoness, king, queen, prince and princess. The outline
of the story tells about an old demoness, when the seven
daughters of Sadhaba have gone for a visit of the ending
line of the moon. By seeing these girls, “the demoness
said O’ children come and sit with me and play” (p.20).
Place and capital city are the models that influence
several communities since palace and capital are the
symbol of power. The importance of king’s court or
palace has been reflected through these two tales such as
, “Tale of the Glass Pillar” (Kacha Khamba Katha) and
“The Tale of Sasisena” which talks about the traditional
laws and rules of the traditional Odisha province. Both
the tales have represented the shifting attitude of places
which has been faced by Sasisena and her husband the
young man and also by the younger daughter of Sadhaba
when she has rescued herself from the demoness.
Magic, supernaturalism, trantric cult or savari vidya and
usage of vernacular language are the major aspects of
odishan these folk tales. “The Tale of Sasisena” talks
about the transformation of the young man into the sheep
and transformation of Sasisena into a young man (theme
of guise) which creates more interest in the readers mind.
As the line says, “In the midnight the florist woman
~ 154 ~
came into their room and sprinkled some charmed water

and the young man transformed into the sheep very
soon.” And “The Tale of Glass Pillar” introduces the
same magical and supernatural elements when the
Sadhaba’s younger daughter has met a mango tree and
asked it to open up so that she can enter into it and
rescue herself from the demon children. It seems clear
from the line, “O’ Mango tree! If you belong to Satya
yug then please be open and give me a shelter in you and
rescue me from these demons. By listening this,
immediately the tree opened up itself and give her a
place into it.” (p.21) It presents a vivid picture of the
past that before man talk with the trees, creepers,
animals and birds and also depends on them.
Environment gives us the opportunity to understand the
world around us as well. These folktales reveal some
moral lessons for the reader especially for the children
which helps them to built their character. Last line of the
“The Flying Elephant” is itself carries a moral message
that “the farmer and the villagers reaped the
consequences of being susceptible to too much of greed
and finally they attained death.”?(p.44)
This paper focuses on the importance of Nature, the
bond between human and nonhuman world and puts an
eye upon the bridge from past to present of human life
with nature. Looking at human consciousness from
ancient spirituality to modern folklore elucidates some of
the possible causes for our current struggle towards both
ecological and cultural conservation, and it point towards
possibilities for a sustainable future.
Human and animals need one another to survive in their
life. These folktales are the medium to gain knowledge
~ 155 ~
about a particular region’s traditional, social and cultural

mindset of the people and their lifestyles. But now a
days by being modern minded and with the effects of
globalization people are forgetting to perform their duty
for Mother Nature. Modern mindset, technology and
architecture brings death to the animals and do harm to
the green earth which causes many environmental issues
like global warming, hole in ozone layer, acid rain and
sudden climate changes which is fetching untimely death
towards human life.
Conclusion
This paper will make people understand about the
another realm of the culture and the nature that has the
truth and secrecy of maintaining cultural biodiversity. So
we should be dutiful of our environment to preserve the
natural resources. By adopting the sustainable
developments we should reconstruct the green planet for
the future generation where the habitat will not be
threatened by the modern technology and the climate
change. Everything that humans have needed to survive,
thrive is provided by the natural world around us. For
instances food, water, medicine, materials for shelter,
nutrients and most importantly it helps us to make a
healthy psychology by reducing human stress hormones.
Without Nature there is no life. So save nature and save
life and go green.
WORKS CITED
Antonov, Vladimir. Ecopsychology. Canada:
CreateSpace Independence Publisher, 2012.
~ 156 ~
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to

Literary and Cultural Theory.
Manchester:Manchester University Press, 2010.
Das, Raghabananda. Kathalahari. Cuttack:Dutta
Publication, 1927.
Gifford, Terry. Pastoral. London : Routledge, 1999.
Mansinha, Mayadhar. A History of Odia Literature. New
Delhi : Sahitya Academy Publication, 1962.
Mishra, Sandip and Itishree Sarangi. “Life Return in
Desert- A Green Approach to the Man
Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono.” vol.3, Issue no.1,
June 2017,pp.618-20.
Pradhan, Ranjan. Tales from Hill and Jungle. Creative
Odisha Publisher, 2009.
Roszak, Theodore. The Voice of the Earth. Simon &
Schuster Publisher, 1992.
Rueckert, William. “Literature and Ecology : An
Experiment in Ecocriticism”. Eds. Glotfelty,
CheryII and Harold Fromm. The Ecocriticism Reader :
Landmarks in Literary
Ecology. London : University of Georgia Press,
1996.
West, Rinda. Out of the Shadow : Ecopsychology, Story
and Encounters with the Land.
London : University of Virginia Press, 2007.
~ 157 ~
Shades of Colonialism in The Sirian

Experiments by Doris Lessing
Gautam Chatterjee
Ph.D. Research Scholar,
School of Studies in English
Vikram University, Ujjain
Abstract:-
Having been born and raised in Africa colonized by
the British Empire, Doris Lessing's first observation of
colonialism was from the perspective of colonizers.
Despite this, she remained a severe opponent of
colonialism. Her works decry the dispossession of black
Africans and expose the incompetence of the white
colonials. In response to Lessing's conspicuous
outspokenness, she was exiled from both Southern
Rhodesia and South Africa. After a brief foray into the
psychological study of fragmented identities, She
addresses colonialism again In her Space fiction series
Canopus in Argos: Archives and presents an objective
view of colonialism which indirectly and subtly
mentions the possible differences between different
imperial empires through her fictional universe. To give
her readers the perspective of a detached, unbiased, yet
critical observer, she uses Space-Science fiction. The
present paper attempts to highlight Lessing’s fictional
representation of the relationship between the colonizer
and the colonized in The Sirian Experiment. This paper
attempts to bring forth the differences in objectives of
different types of colonial powers presented by Lessing
in The Sirian Experiments and analyze the same in the
~ 158 ~
light of understanding of the postcolonial critical theory

of Orientalism by Edward Said.
Theme: Recent trends in teaching-learning practices in

Language, Literature, Humanities, and Social Sciences
Subthemes: Coloniality and Cultural Trauma
Keywords- Colonization, Orientalism, Colonizer,
Colonized.
Doris Lessing established herself as a bold innovator for

her experimentation with form and genre, exploring
mysticism and the boundaries of consciousness. In a
career that spanned more than six decades, she produced
twenty-seven novels, seventeen volumes of short stories,
four memoirs, and several collections, and embraced a
variety of genres. As a white woman raised in the
conflicted world of colonial Africa, Lessing developed a
strong sense of social justice that emerged in her fiction
and autobiographical writings as a deeply personal
examination of a wide range of political issues. Her
writing examines not only the far-reaching effects of
colonialism and postcolonialism but also the condition of
women, the inequalities fostered by capitalism, and the
destructive power of war. These works explore her
critical views on Marxism and feminism. She won a
variety of literary awards, including the 2007 Nobel
Prize in literature, with the Nobel committee lauding her
as an “epicist of the female experience, who with
skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a
divided civilization to scrutiny.”
The historical period in which Lessing was born
made sure that her growth mindset was deeply affected
~ 159 ~
by Colonialism. She was part of the white race that

colonized Africa but her works reflect her hatred for
White Colonial rules. The white colonial rules have
haunted her past. In his book entitled Doris Lessing’s
Africa (1978) Professor Michael Thorpe argues: ‘‘It is
possible that everything she has written since she left
Africa, not only her African writing, is the voice of such
an exile”.
Doris Lessing was a superb writer and she
masterly influenced readers by forms as well as by
choice of words for her protagonists. For Lessing ‘‘the
novelist talks, as an individual to individuals, in a small
personal voice’’ (Lessing p 4-5). The artist’s
responsibility is to give form to the nature of reality by
letting the form organically grow from the whole of
reality Lessing through her novels best tried to capture
all the predicament of blacks and the ill intentions of
Europeans to obliterate their happy lives. Apartheid
came to an end in 1994 and the history of Africa
changed. Today we are in the era of postmodernism
followed by decolonization. The long and troublesome
journey of decolonization brings what we see and enjoy
today as independent states and nations. it is through
various authors such as Salman Rushdie, Ngugi wa
Thiong’o, Frantz Fanon, George Orwell, and Doris
Lessing's work that we are able to see clearly the past
pictures of colonial tribulations. However, the
universally accepted view of colonialism as one of the
darkest periods in human history and colonials as purely
shameless exploiters who had but little concern with the
subject races is a bit contrasted by Doris Lessing in
Canopus in Argos Archive where Lessing has illustrated
~ 160 ~
three different types of Colonial empires with different

objectives and justification for their colonization. Here, I
can’t stop appreciating Lessing for her fantastic vision
and superb knack for spilling ink onto the papers very
cleverly.
The novel The Sirian Experiment that has been
used to analyze for the present paper comes from
Canopus in Argos: Archives, a sequence of five science
fiction novels by Nobel laureate author Doris Lessing,
which portray a number of societies at different stages of
development, over a great period of time. The focus is on
accelerated evolution guided by advanced species for
less advanced species and societies.
The third novel of the much-celebrated space
fiction series of five novels, the Canopus in Argos:
Archives, The Sirian experiment is set in some distant
future. Set in the intergalactic setting, Lessing creates an
extraordinary new universe in which the rivalries and
interactions of three powerful galactic Colonial empires
: Canopus: the extreme form of evolution and
benevolence in all dimensions; Puttiora is an inherently
evil colonizer that has taken the wrong direction of
evolution and it creates chaos in the universe; Sirius is an
empire whose sole objective is to solve problems
through technological growth and expansion of their
empire. Through the technique of first-person narration
with limited perspective, Lessing describes how different
colonial empires can have different shades of
colonialism.
It retells the same story of the tragedy of planet
Shikasta from the point of view of another colonizer.
Sirius is another colonizer that has been allowed by
~ 161 ~
Canopus to share half of the planet. Ambien II is a senior

administrative authority of the Sirian Empire. She bears
the responsibility of exploiting the abundant natural
resources of Shikasta. The motives of the Sirian Empire
are totally utilitarian. She makes many social
experiments with the purpose of developing some
animals which can be used for exploiting the resources
of Shikasta and other planets near it.
The basic theme of this novel is colonialism and
its effects. As Lessing is from a nation and race which
colonized most of the world, she knows the ill effects
this can have. In this novel, she enables us to see the
historical events of our planet through a detached,
unbiased alien view. She describes inherent flaws in our
society, our cultures, our outlook, and even in our
governments.
It may be a coincidence that Lessing’s The Sirian
experiment (1980) was published after two years of
publication of Orientalism (1978) by Edward Said, a
public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of
postcolonial studies. In his critical text Said establishes
the term "Orientalism" as a critical concept to describe
the West's commonly contemptuous depiction and
portrayal of The East, i.e. the Orient. Societies and
peoples of the Orient are those who inhabit the places of
Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Educated in the
Western canon at British and American schools, Said
applied his education and bi-cultural perspective to
illuminating the gaps of cultural and political
understanding between the Western world and the
Eastern world, especially about the Israeli–Palestinian
conflict in the Middle East; his principal influences were
~ 162 ~
Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Michel

Foucault, and Theodor Adorno. Said argues that
Orientalism, in the sense of the Western scholarship
about the Eastern World, is inextricably tied to the
imperialist societies that produced it, which makes much
Orientalist work inherently political and servile to
power. Like this proximity in times of publication, a
close reading of the critical text of Orientalism and the
novel under study by Lessing reveals similarity in ideas
that find illustration in the fictional universe of The
Sirian experiment.
Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) brought new
dynamics to the study of postcolonial literature. He
concisely demonstrates how the colonizers marginalize
the culture and people of the colonized nation as
“inferior” and the “other”. Edward said is most famous
for the description and critique of Orientalism as the
source of the culturally inaccurate representations that
are the foundation of western thoughts towards the
Middle East of how the west perceives and represents
the East.
As Said says further, “Orientalism is
fundamentally a political doctrine built over the Orient
because the Orient was weaker than the west which
eluded the Orient's difference with its weakness”
(Orientalism: 204). In other words it is the western
misconception of the East that has been portrayed by
Said. The west created a false image of the Orient both
subconsciously and consciously in order to assert their
own power over them. With the help of various notions
derived by Edward Said in his critical work Orientalism,
this paper discusses different ways in which Colonialism
~ 163 ~
has been portrayed in Doris Lessing’s The Sirian

Experiment.
Born in an Arab Christian family in Jerusalem
and Educated in the Western canon at British and
American schools, Edward Said inherited a perspective
of the detached and unbiased critical observer which
enabled him to describe the perils of colonialism from an
objective perspective and reveal the biased western
attitudes of Colonialism and Racism. A similar
perspective is shared with Doris Lessing who has been
much criticized for her strong stance against colonialism
to such an extent that she was banned from entering her
nation of birth by the govt of South Africa. In
Orientalism, Edward Said mentions the advantages of
being away from culture to observe it critically. This
imparts an alien disinterested objective perspective to the
culture that the observer is analyzing or criticizing. Said
finds
“The more one is able to leave one’s cultural home, the
more easily is one able to judge it, and the whole world
as well, with the spiritual detachment and generosity
necessary for true vision. The more easily, too, does one
assess oneself and alien cultures with the same
combination of intimacy and distance.”
Lessing born in Southern Rhodesia, was part of
colonial civilization by birth yet was raised in a
continent where the debilitating economical condition of
her family and her father’s she never felt to be part of the
colonial world order. This gave her a subjective point of
view which is akin to Said. In the Canopus in Argos:
Archives, she used the first-person narrator. Whose
primary role is not to participate in the events but to
~ 164 ~
report them back to her empire for records. The gradual

impact of Canopean agents immunizes her from
following the rhetoric of popular colonial records and
she views her works from an alien point of view
If there is, if there has been, a minority of individuals
who have in fact maintained a view different from the
official one, then they will have considered me as a
bastion of orthodoxy. This is not an apology I am
making. We all see truths when we can see them. When
we do, it is always a temptation to consider those who
have not yet seen them as quite intrinsically and
obdurately stupid.
The long existing traits and techniques of Colonialism
were evident to the unbiased scholarly perspective of
Edward Said. These techniques start with justification of
colonial rule due to moral reasons. Said argues.:
Every single empire in its official discourse has said that
it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are
special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring
order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last
resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of
willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign
or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the
evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the
misery and death brought by the latest mission
civilizatrice.
The above quote from the preface of Orientalism
by Said describes the inherent illusory, framework which
provides a logical yet self-deceptive direction to the
flawed moral compass of Colonizers who consider
themselves responsible for the upliftment of Colonized
subject races rather than abject unabashed exploiter and
~ 165 ~
demeaning destroyers of civilizations who never sought

their aid. This belief is evident by the title of a famous
poem by Rudyard Kipling,"The White Man's Burden"
(1899). The same self-deceptive and selfish mission
enveloped as beguiling altruism seems to form the basis
of the relationship between different empires in The
Sirian experiment and other novels of the series. As
already mentioned the supremely powerful yet altruistic
Canopus empire is always shown to be highly motivated
for universal harmony. Though they work on the Sirian
Empire on Rohanda, their main concern is to solve
various problems such as existential crises, unplanned
technological advancements, and the Sirian empires’
attitude towards the subject species. Ambien II records
the attitude of their colonial empire who colonized many
planets for solving their self-made problem of unplanned
technological growth which reduced the need for human
labor. Due to this, “there was nothing for billions upon
billions of individuals to do. They had no purpose but to
exist, and then die.”(16). Moreover, after such technical
advancement, the population of labors in the Sirian
empire considered manual labor “abhorrent or
demeaning”. To resolve this they occupied this surplus
population in the Colonisation of different planets. This
further caused problems for newly colonized planets
whose residents are considered inferior and deliberately
belittled in reports of Ambien II by calling them
“savages” and considering their work of uplifting these
unworthy brutes. It is noteworthy that the Colonial
mindset denies considering themselves as the cause and
blames the colonized species. Ambien II records. :
~ 166 ~
Very soon in our career as the makers of Empire, we

knew that if we established ourselves on even the most
barbarous of planets with the intention of using its
inhabitants in various necessary ways for the good of our
Empire as a whole, then it must be expected in short time
these savages would demand—at which point they
would be freely given—all the advantages at our
disposal. Our Empire could be regarded as a mechanism
for advancement of an almost unlimited number of
planets, in different stages of development, towards a
civilised norm.
Said argues that colonial empires see it as their duty
to uplift the barbarians and inhuman degraded
civilizations of the east and for this purpose. To them
anything lying out of their boundary of civilizational
notions is barbaric. Said traces a typical relationship
between knowledge and geography. He uses Levi-
Strauss's theory to prove that terming the objects is
purely arbitrary. Said finds it true for relatively
uncommon things, like foreigners. He terms this
arbitrary positioning as “imaginative geography and
fictional reality”. He observes:
A group of people living on a few acres of land will set
up boundaries between their land and its immediate
surroundings and the territory beyond, which they call
"the land of the barbarians". In other words, this
universal practice of designating in one's mind a familiar
space which is "ours" and an unfamiliar space beyond
"ours" which is "theirs" is a way of making geographical
distinctions that can be entirely arbitrary.
Similar notions of typifying some people as
barbaric based on their geographical location are
~ 167 ~
exposed in various places in the narrative of The Sirian

Experiment as well. This is very well-trenched inside the
plot and characterization of the novel. The
characterization of the novel is flat and although the
protagonist changes with exterior influence, the
difference between good and evil has been maintained
throughout the plot and made evident quite often. For
instance, without proper analysis of the historical
background, the narrator Ambien II describes the
Shammat empire as barbarians. Such natural hatred can
confluence and justify any kind of torture on subject
civilizations. In The Sirian Experiment, Lessing connects
such oppression with illogical racism. Present
throughout the text is the idea of the subordinate nature
of the natives who are by nature considered to be
endowed with all that is undesirable in a human being.
“The white race’” uses this to make their dominance
appear logical to the other native races. Ambien II
describes this nature of alienating and dehumanizing
others to be the guiding principle behind colonization by
the west,“ If what I see is different from myself then it
must be punished or wiped out. Anything that is not me
is primitive and bad...”
Although Said ignores to include the Science of
Anthropology, He gives examples of scientific and
secular rationalization of orientalism in the works of the
two main figures of the 18th century who transformed
Orientalism into a secular field: Silvestre de Sacy and
Ernest Renan. Said first discusses Sacy as the individual
who created the first "systematic body of texts'' on
Orientalism and confirmed the position of the Orient not
as an unknowable divine, but rather as another object of
~ 168 ~
"European scholarship." Apart from the moral

responsibility to uplift the Oriental subject race as
evident from the above discussion, such scientific
experiments justified colonialism by proving the
inferiority of the subject race. In the fictional universe of
The Sirian Experiment, Ambien II reports about the
inhumane scientific experiments done by the ruling
colonial power of “Lelanian” on the subject of native
species. “They did not enjoy causing pain, they insisted.
But they believed that the experimentees, being of an
inferior kind, did not feel physical or psychological pain
as they themselves did.” Ambien II is so shocked by the
vile nature of these experiments that she recommends
complete genocide of the Lelanians. Ironically, such
experiments are part of the colonial doctrines of the
Sirian empire. The Canopean emissary successfully
exposes the unsympathetic colonial attitude of the Sirian
empire to Ambien II and thereby inspires her to alter its
objective from exploitation to necessity.
The title of the novel “The Sirian Experiments” is
suggestive of the results of the experiment which have
been shown by Lessing to vary according to the purpose
of the experiment. As Said finds, “There is, after all, a
profound difference between the will to understand for
purposes of coexistence and humanistic enlargement of
horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of
control and external enlargement of horizons .” The
novel concludes with Ambien II in exile while her
reports on experiments change the objectives and
ideologies of the Sirian Empire and make them ask,
“What foundations? What uses, what purposes? What
service? What function?” The novel can be seen as
~ 169 ~
Lessing's attempt to understand the colonial mindset in

order to transform it and from the above discussion it is
evident that various ideas presented by Lessing in this
novel have also been articulated by Edward Said in
Orientalism. Though one can not deny that the novelistic
vision of Doris Lessing functions as the fictional
exemplification of critical notions of Said, thereby
furthering their comprehension.
Works Cited
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2007. Nobel Prize.org.
Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2022. Wed. 9 Nov
2022.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2007/summ
ary/
Lessing Doris and Paul Schlueter. A Small Personal

Voice. [1st ed.] ed. Knopf; Distributed by
Random House 1974.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Penguin Books, 1995.

Lessing Doris. The Sirian Experiments. Jonathan Cape
1980.
Profile / Work Experience: Currently pursuing a Ph.D.

in English literature from Vikram University, Ujjain,
Prof. Gautam Chatterjee has completed his education at
Ujjain and is an arduous learner and never ceases to
learn and relearn. He has vast experience in teaching
English language and literature to High School, Higher
Secondary, Post-graduate and undergraduate students.
~ 170 ~
Vijay Tendulkar's Kamala: A Satire on the

Contemporary Journalism
Manaswini Rath ,
Research Scholar, KIIT School of Humanities
Dr. Itishri Sarangi,
Associate Professor, RD Women’s University
ABSTRACT
Media is regarded as the fourth pillar of democracy. In a
democratic set up it acts as a connecting link between the
government and the people. That’s why in a democratic
country like India journalism is a blessed profession,
having the potential to bring transformation in the
society. People have tremendous faith in transparent
journalism as it makes them aware of the harsh realities
of the world. However, some journalists use this power
of media with a selfish motif to accomplish their
individual goals. The present paper is based on the play “
kamala” written by Vijay Tendulkar , who was a
journalist turned playwright. The play is based on a
journalist named Jaisingh Jadhav , who exploited a
woman named Kamala for his professional elevation but
ironically in the end he is fired from his job . In this
research study there is an attempt to show how Vijay
Tendulkar has presented the true picture of
contemporary journalism in an unbiased manner.
Keywords: media, democracy, journalism, Vijay

Tendulkar
~ 171 ~
INTRODUCTION
Vijay Dhondopant Tendulkar, one of the prolific literary
figures of India , took birth on 06 January 1928 in a
saraswat brahmin family of Maharashtra. He died in
Pune on 19 May 2008. He was awarded with the coveted
Padma Bhushan and SangeetNatakAkademi Award for
his literary achievements. Tendulkar is best remembered
as a prominent dramatist and theatre personality. All his
plays are immensely popular as they unveil the harsh
realities of the contemporary society. His plays were
originally written in Marathi and later translated into
english and a lot of other regional languages. The play
Kamala (1981) translated into english by
Priya Adarkar , is based on a real life incident. A
journalist of The Indian Express , named Aswin Sarin
had really bought a woman in a rural flesh market and
exposed her in a press conference to bring to the public
attention the reality of the brutal flesh trade still rampant
in the villages of India. In the play Kamala, a journalist
named Jaisingh Jadhav buys an adivasi woman Kamala
from a flesh market in Bihar in order to get prominence
in the media world.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The play Kamala has been studied and analysed by a lot
of researchers:
Kumar (2013) has point out in his paper that through the
play Kamala Vijay Tendulkar has highlighted that
women are still dominated by the powerful men as they
are still considered subservient. Kumar had added that
inspite of the oppression, Tendulkar's women try their
best to raise their voice in the male dominated society.
~ 172 ~
Pawar ( 2015) opines that Kamala is a gynocentric play.

According to him Tendulkar has presented the women
characters and their sufferings compassionately whereas
the male characters, specially Jaisingh is presented as a
selfish, brutal and hypocritical man.
Patnaik ( 2016) has mentioned that Tendulkar has
presented the women of the play as victims of male
dominated society
Kumar et al ( 2018) focused on the feministic
perspectives in Kamala. According to the researchers,
Tendulkar , as a leader of the feministic voices has
presented the predicament of women through the
educated house wife Sarita and the poor uneducated
Kamala.
Priyadarshini( 2020) opines that the characters Sarita
and Kamala in Tendulkar’s play Kamala have undergone
a lot of mental oppression. Through them the playwright
has presented the position of women in the patriarchal
society.
Kumar ( 2021) considers Tendulkar as a naturalistic
playwright whose characters are drawn from day to day
life . According to him Tendulkar maintained a perfect
balance between the techniques and the themes in all his
highly successful plays.
The review of the preceding studies suggests that the
play Kamala is mainly studied from The feminist point
of view. The current study aims to present how
Tendulkar has castigated the Contemporary Journalism
through his play.
~ 173 ~
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
• To study the importance of ideal journalism
• To reflect on the motives of the journalists of
today
• To examine how Tendulkar has presented the
Contemporary Journalism
• To find out the intention of the playwright in
presenting the Contemporary Journalism in a negative
way
•
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
For the purpose of research, the play Kamala was
studied and analysed. Secondary data analysis of books ,
research papers, Critical essays and websites was done
to fulfil the objectives of the study .
ANALYSIS
“ The sole aim of Journalism should be service”
( M.K Gandhi, The Story of My
Experiment with Truth, 192)
Journalism plays a monumental role in a democratic
country like India, where people depend upon it to get
trustworthy account of all the issues. People keep
themselves abreast of the socio political cultural and
economic development of their country and the whole
world through the relevant sources of Journalism .
People hold ethical journalism in high esteem as it serves
them by providing truth in an unprejudiced manner.
That’s why the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi ji,
who himself was a journalist regarded Journalism as a
means to serve the people. People have enormous
respect for the journalists who possess honesty,
~ 174 ~
transparency and integrity . However, the present day

Journalism is not regarded with reverence as the
journalists of today are no longer sensible people as most
of them have diverted towards sensationalism. In order
to attract the attention of the greatest number of readers
and viewers , the journalists of today resort to
sensationalism and this kind of Journalism is called “
Yellow Journalism”. In the play Kamala, the journalist
turned playwright, Vijay Tendulkar has criticised the
Contemporary sensational journalism by presenting a
fame obsessed journalist Jaisingh Jadhav who doesn’t
hesitate to misuse the power of media and adopt
unethical practice to create a sensational news item. In
the entire first act of the play , the playwright has
presented various aspects of contemporary journalism
through the characters like Jaisingh and Jain. Whereas,
Kakasaheb is a staunch supporter of idealistic journalism
, which aims to serve the people. He often criticises the
present day journalism. Through the character of
Kakasaheb the playwright has satirised the present day
Journalism and idealized the ethical Journalism of the
past .
The play Kamala begins with Kakasaheb, a 60 years old
gentleman, answering a phone call in the drawing room
of a famous young journalist Jaisingh Jadhav, in the
Neeti Bagh area of New Delhi. Sarita , wife of Jaisingh
enters the drawing room with breakfast for his uncle.
From their conversation we come to know that Jaisingh
always wants Sarita to write down the names of the
people who call him during his absence at home. Sarita ,
as an obedient wife follows the instruction very
seriously. From Surinder, a man from Jaisingh’s office,
~ 175 ~
Sarita comes to know that Jaisingh is going to arrive

home that day and makes all necessary arrangements
with the help of her maid Kamalabai. Kakasaheb
expresses his happiness that he is going to meet his son-
in-law Jaisingh. However, Kakasaheb is forthright
while expressing his aversion towards the present day
high-speed journalism wherein gathering eye witness
evidence of accident, riot , atrocity etc. has become
important rather than the content and suggesting
measures to curb such problems . He considers himself a
dead journalist whose ethos are different from the
present day journalists like Jaisingh. He says:
KAKASHB: I’m honoured. Who asks after me now ?

I’m a back number- a remnant of times past. A
dead journalist- who’s just about staying alive!
Now it is the day of your husband’s type of
Journalism.
The High – Speed type !
something catches fire – and there he runs! There’s a
riot somewhere else – and off he flies .If there’s
an atrocity in the heavens or a ministry topples in
the sky – why, there he is ! Eye- witness report !
Being on the spot- that’s what’s important ! Never
mind what you write.
(Tendulkar, 05)
~ 176 ~
According to Kakasaheb, the Contemporary Journalism

is merely a business, which aims at gathering eye-
witness evidence and narrating the incidences of murder,
bloodshed, rape, arson, atrocity etc. He strongly feels
that journalists of today like Jaisingh should have
discussed and suggested ways to stop them . In not doing
so they are just wasting the time of the people as well as
the country. Another feature of the Contemporary
Journalism is a craving for popularity. Journalists like
Jaisingh try their best to become popular by exposing the
weakness of others. Though by doing so they invite
grudge from others. One such example in the play is the
call from an anonymous person who gives threat to
murder Jaisingh by dragging him out of his home. The
reason behind this threatening call is that in the paper
published on the twenty third , Jaisingh had written
about an M.P from Madhya Pradesh, who had locked
his servant and beaten him severely as he suspected him
of stealing something. Jaisingh took advantage of the
situation and published the news in his newspaper.
Kakasaheb expresses his concern over Jaising’s safety
and asks Sarita why does not he use “ from our
correspondence” to avoid such threats. Sarita replies:
SARITA: He is absolutely determined to write everything

under his own name. Once they forgot to print his name
– and he nearly resigned.
( Tendulkar, 07 )
Sarita’s reply is sufficient enough to understand how

Jaysingh is avid for gaining popularity. Sarita also
~ 177 ~
informs Kakasaheb that they have got used to such

threatening calls. They frequently get those types of calls
even in the middle of night. Through Sarita, the
playwright has also exposed one execrable facet of the
present day police men .when Kakasaheb asks whether
the police men are aware of those threats . Sarita replies :
SARITA: He says, half of them are from
the police , anyway. So whom will you
inform ? I get upset sometimes. But he
doesn’t let it bother him.
( Tendulkar, 07 )
After sometime Jaisingh returns home with a village
woman, Kamala, wearing a grubby white saree. Her
face is concealed behind the saree. She has bought a
bundle along with her. Jaisingh becomes glad to see
Kakasaheb, his father-in-law and requests him to stay
with them for at least one week . On his request
Kakasaheb again gives his acerbic commentary on the
Contemporary journalists who are highly desirous of
achieving success and can do anything for the sake of
their professional upliftment. He says :
KAKASAHEB : Okay, leave me
here – and
go to Kerala or else to Nepal and conduct your
– your murder investigations.
(Tendulkar ,08 )
During his telephonic conversation with Jaspalji,
Jaisingh mentions that Kamala is just like the crescent
moon visible at the time of the famous Muslim festival
of Id, “ Ekdum Id- ka Chand!” ( Tendulkar, 09 ).He
also shows his curiosity towards the proposed press
~ 178 ~
conference. He is quite confident that the news of

Kamala will surely be a front page item and their team
will get more publicity. The words of Jaisingh show his
excessive excitement for creating the sensational news
item and his indifference towards Kamala. For Jaisingh
Kamala is only a means for getting professional success.
According to S. Subalakashmi, “ He is one of those
modern individuals , who purse their goals
unquestionably, with a single – track mind . Jadhav is
never bothered of what will happen to Kamala after
exhibiting her at the press conference”.
( Subalakashmi, 934 )
Kakasaheb asks Jaisingh about Kamala but he remains
evasive. When asked by Sarita again, he replies that he
has bought her in the Luhardaga bazaar in Bihar by
paying two hundred and fifty rupees. When Sarita asks
her husband why did he go there. He replies that he
wants to prove that flesh trade is still rampant in the
country, auctions of women are still taking place. He
wants to prove the people wrong who believe, “ These
newspaperwalas have the bad habit of misusing the
freedom of press’’. ( Tendulkar, 14 ). When Sarita
expresses her displeasure over his work, Jaisingh makes
his stand by saying:
JAISINGH: Because when I first
wrote about it,
I didn’t have any definite facts. But I could smell
something wrong. The police, as usual,
washed their hands of it. The Home Minis-
ter put his hands over his ears .They made
the false charge that newspapermen tell
lies . So it fell on me to put the noose
~ 179 ~
round the right neck – with evidence. Who

else would have done it?
(
Tendulkar, 15 )
Jaisingh instructs Sarita to keep everything secret till the
press conference of that evening. He shows his
excitement by saying:
JAISINGH: ××× See how we’ll
blast out this shameful
affair. There’ll be high drama at today’s
press conference. It’ll create an uproar !
( Tendulkar, 15 )
Even the secret is not divulged to Jaysing’s journalist
friend Jain. Jaisingh convinces Kamala to go to the press
conference by telling that there would be a feast and
grand reception for them. People will clap and ask her
questions. She will answer to the right questions asked
by right people .Vijay Tendulkar castigates the
Contemporary Journalism through the caustic remarks of
Kakasaheb during the conversation between him and
Jaisingh. Kakasaheb’s words like “ how far has your
conspiracy got ?’’ and “ your blood thirsty professional
plot” ( Tendulkar, 22 ) signify his extreme abhorrence of
the tactics used by the modern journalists . Kakasaheb
gives a harangue on the degradation of contemporary
journalism, in which the journalists compete with one
another to publish scandalous news and get pecuniary
rewards. Kakasaheb tells Jaisingh that he intends to
recruit two young men like him who will be capable
enough to gather exciting news by extensively visiting
his district. As a consequence his newspaper will be
~ 180 ~
sold like hot cakes and he will also get enormous

monetary benefits like the present day journalists.
Jaisingh finds the remark of Kakasaheb distasteful and
asserts that the present day journalists like him are not
doing mercenary journalism. Kakasaheb retorts by
saying that before five years Jaisingh was living in the
shed outside a house in Karol Bagh area. Now he is
residing in a bungalow in Neeti Bagh . He possesses a
car and domestic aids are there to assist them. He travels
by flight all over the country. He halts in five star hotels.
He is not only an invitee in foreign embassies but also he
has access to ministers, Chief Ministers and even the
Prime Minister. He sarcastically says Jaisingh that there
is no problem in this game if one knows how to play it
well . As a reply to this Jaisingh puts forth his viewpoint
and emphasizes that his type of Journalism is not at all a
game . He explains that the common man of today is
living in a vague atmosphere. His aim is to expose the
harsh reality in order to raise his consciousness so that he
will be able to bring social and political transformation.
But Kakasaheb again criticises by telling that by
publishing news in English daily he can’t reach all the
common men of the country, he will be able to influence
only a few number of people who can read english.
After the press conference is over Jaisingh, Jain and
Kamala return home . Jaisingh and Jain are fully drunk.
Jaisingh is beaming owing to the success of the press
conference. Jain says :
JAIN : Sensational journalism. You ‘re all
right , but
from tomorrow our editor’s going to twist all our tails.
Look what Jaisingh brought ! You have to bring some-
~ 181 ~
thing more sensational, more explosive.

( Tendulkar, 27 )
The statement of Jain makes it evident that there is stiff
competition among publishing houses to publish
sensational news. Jain considers the drama shown in the
press conference as “ tamasha” ( Tendulkar, 27 ) and
compares Kamala with heroines like Sabana and Smita .
According to Jain, Kamala defeated these heroines in the
press conference and the photographers present there
were almost mad to take a snap of her. He also derides
the insensible journalists who asked Kamala, an
uneducated village woman, questions like “ what are the
important social concerns in your area ?” and “ what are
your opinion about the economic exploitation of the
tribals ?” ( Tendulkar, 28 ). Some also asked Kamala
about free sex and illegitimate children. They didn’t
hesitate to ask questions like “ how many men have you
slept with?” ( Tendulkar, 29 ) . When Sarita disgustedly
asks Jaisingh while his journalists friends were asking
Kamala horrendous questions and were ridiculing her
was he a mute spectator. Jaisingh then tells that there
were also some frank and gentle questions. He further
tells that his motif behind holding the press conference
was only to bring the illegal practice of flesh trade to
limelight. To this Kakasaheb critically replies that to do
so he sold an innocent woman in the press conference.
Through the dialogues of Jain and Jaisingh the
playwright Vijay Tendulkar has presented a vivid picture
of the present day press conference. After using Kamala
in the press conference, Jaisingh leaves her in a
women’s orphanage. His wife Sarita realises that she
and Kamala are just like hand puppets for
~ 182 ~
JaisinghYadhav. Her condition in his home is just

similar to the slave Kamala. She gets determined to
expose the hypocrisy of her husband by holding a press
conference. But doesn’t do so when Jaisingh is sacked
from his job. Jaisingh did not hesitate to resort to illegal
activities and exploit human beings to become
professionally successful but ironically he is dismissed
from his job. Through this perhaps the playwright wants
to suggest that errant behaviour can never be condoned
in journalism.
CONCLUSION
In view of the above analysis it can be concluded that
Jaisingh’s attempt to expose the illegal flesh trade is
praiseworthy but his self centered ness , excessive
obsession for fame and incurious treatment of Kamala
and Sarita are abominable. The delineation of
Kakasaheb, Jaisingh and Jain makes us realise that
journalism used to be reverential in past but in the
present time it has degraded. A news item is deliberately
made sensational by either distorting or exaggerating the
fact with gruesome details. The journalists do not dither
while adopting unethical means for gaining popularity
and increasing circulation. The character of Jaisingh and
his serious endeavor to make a sensational news story
have been brought out by the playwright to invite the
attention of all towards the decadence of
contemporaneous journalism.
~ 183 ~
WORKS CITED
Tendulkar, Vijay. “ Kamala” Trans. Priya Adarkar,
Five Plays , New Delhi , Oxford University Press , 2003,
print.
Gandhi, M.K. “ The Story of My Experiment with
Truth”, Mumbai, Wilco Publishing House, 2019, print.
Kumar, Akshay. “ Women as Victims of Power in Vijay
Tendulkar’s Kamala” The Criterion , vol.4, Issue 6,
Dec.2013, pp. 18 -26 .
http://www.the-criterion.com
Pawar, Pramod Ambadasrao. “ Vijay Tendulkar’s
Kamala: A Gynocentric Stance” Epitome Journal,vol
1,Issue.8, Dec 2015, pp.1-8.
http://www.epitomejournals.com
Patnaik, Bharati. “ Opressed and Marginalised Women
in Vijay Tendulkar’s Kamala” , The Criterion, vol. 7,
April 2016, pp.86- 89.
http://the-criterion.com
Kumar,K.Senthil., John,Suma Aleya. “ Feministic
Perspectives in Vijay Tendulkar’s Kamala” ,RJELAL,
vol.6, Issue 1, Jan-Mar 2018,pp. 301- 305.
http://www.rjelal.com
S, Subalakshmi. “ Women Identity as Protrayed by Vijay
Tendulkar’s Kamala” , Language in India, vol.19, Issue
3, Mar 2019,pp.120-123.
https://www.languageinindia.com
Priyadarshini , L. “ Portrayal of Women and their Mental

Trauma in the Patriarchal Society through the Play ‘
Kamala’by Vijay Dhondopant Tendulkar” ,IJELS,
vol.5,Issue 6, Dec 2020, pp.2182 – 2284.
https://www.ijels.com
~ 184 ~
Kumar, Ranjeev. “ Dramatic Stature of Vijay

Tendulkar” , RJELAL, vol.9, Issue 3, July-Sep
2021,pp.234- 236.
https://www.rjelal.com
~ 185 ~
Socio-Cultural Issues in the Select Indian

Regional Short Stories by Regional Women
Writers Translated into English
Dr. Ronald Franklin
Research Scholar
School of Studies in English, Vikram University, Ujjain,
M.P., India
Dr. Rooble Verma

Associate Professor
School of Studies in English, Vikram University, Ujjain,
M.P., India
Abstract
Society and culture are two sides of the coin of
mankind. Every study of human behavior has its roots in
the society and culture of a particular place at a
particular time. The practice of the civilization settled in
a particular area, following a particular pattern of truth
shapes the culture of the region. Humans began to follow
a pattern of worship, shaping culture and social patterns
even before language could be evolved as a regular
pattern of written and oral systems of a comprehensive
body of knowledge. The existence of religion can be
understood due to the existence of heavenly bodies and
the fear to be saved in exchange for a ritual. They
observed the hills, mountains, waterfall, sea, ocean,
water, wind, stone, and all such natural bodies as God
and Goddesses. This can be said to be the reason for the
practice of believing and worshipping nature and its
entities. There is a subsequent deity to every natural
~ 186 ~
object present in the heart. God of the Moon, God of the

Sun, God of Water, God of Wind, and so on are
observed in the Hindu Mythologies and stories that exist
even today in many religious enchanting. It is also
observed that mythology and mythological characters are
region-specific, culture-specific, and religious specific
and some are even universally accepted. With the
passage of time and humans living in the lap of
technology rather than nature, such occurrences,
practices, and beliefs started diminishing in modern
times. We can observe in modern short stories that the
aura of such practices is replaced by the role-play of life
of people, characters, live incidents, and so on.
There is an interconnection of people with society so
alteration in society is projected through the people as
well. John F. Kennedy rightly remarks “Our most basic
common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all
breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s
future. And we are all mortal” (Reese 168). With the
advancement of time and pattern of living, the
terminology called ‘society’ also has transformed its
attributes. The simple structure of society is now in its
comprehensive form. Migration of people has
interconnectivity, and interchange of customs, caste, and
methods of living. In the modern world, the particular
approach of humans to life, religion, custom, and
psychology defines the characteristics of society. India
has already seen a vast change in its social order under
different rules. Mention the Aryans, the Mughals, the
colonialism, and now with the blend of the past and the
present it has its complex form of widely spread society
with its diversity, sects, region, religion, and heritage.
~ 187 ~
Such a complex and multidimensional aspect needs to be

analyzed with a wider point of view.
There may be clashes at times between society, its
norms, and the pattern of culture that the region
practices, the other side may be that they go hand-in-
hand. This paper deals with the issues of these two major
aspects namely ‘Society’ and ‘Culture’. The short stories
selected for the analysis are the regional stories from the
most vibrant states of India written by women writers
and later translated into English as well as other
languages. The short story and the Indian regional
women writers selected for this paper are Purification
‘Sanskaar’and ParasuPator’s Well written by Assamese
writer Indira Goswami. Golden Fruit and At ten thirty
written by Gujarati writer HimanshiShelat, and
Paapathara and To the Sea written by Malayalam writer
Sara Joseph.
Keywords
Indian writings in English, short stories, Indian women
writers, regional issues, cultural issues, culture and
religion, tradition, orthodox, identity crises.
Assamese short stories by Indira Goswami

from the Collection Relive Indira Goswami:
The Rich Legacy of Her Stories.
Story 1: Purification ‘Sanskaar’
A robust projection of the caste system of the present
society is presented in the story through different
incidents and a peculiar outburst of characterization of
the story. Through this story, the issue in society is
~ 188 ~
raised for the extreme want of a male child with the

consequences and the alterations people make in their
lives. The line of the fate of a male as well as a female is
challenged through the plot and both are seen jumbling
the pattern of life they live in exchange for their
requirements. The issue raised can be treated as a social
as well as a cultural one as the society is seen supplying
all the odds and the culture pouring the circumstances to
go along the flow of the flaw. Pitambor the male
protagonist presented without an heir, is mocked by
Krishnakanta who personifies society “It is because you
do not have any children of your own” (Bhattacharyya
2). This presents the attitude of society for all those who
don’t have children, or specifically for those who do not
have a male child to carry forward the family name.
Whereas if we discuss the cultural point of view, the
urge of a male child can be connected to the practice of
the Shraddha ceremony. A ceremony performed after the
death of a person by the male member of the family and
believed that the dead will attain salvation only if this
rite is performed, peculiarly by the male member of the
family specifically by the son. “The Shraddha mourning
ceremonies must be performed by the eldest son; if there
is no son, then by the nearest male relative”
(Bhattacharyya 54).
The protagonist has observed the victim of
society, dealing with the criticism of not having a son,
which is anyhow connected to being left without
salvation after death. The second character named
Damayanti is prey to the caste issues of the society that
is divided into high and the other side low ones. Some
actions are restricted even if you are dying of hunger. As
~ 189 ~
presented in the story, she is a widow of a high-class

Brahmin priest, having illicit relations, with supporting
nuisances that she needed to support the basic
requirements such as food for her daughters. “she has put
all the Brahmins to shame” (Bhattacharyya 3). This deals
with the unusual social infrastructure that does not give a
helping hand to the needy but is allowed to criticize the
odds of a person. A society where a widow is forced to
hunt down herself on the grounds of prostitution to win
bread for her family. A society where she is treated to be
just a materialistic object of usage. As further seen
Krishnakant who represents the criticizing society as a
whole draws her to have a relationship with Pitamboor in
a sort of a barter system, i.e. a good life fulfilling
necessities of life for Dayamanti and her daughters, in
exchange for an heir for Pitambor that needs to be born
through her womb.
The treatment of society based on caste and deed
is also seen in the story. Dayamanti words in Adhikaars
house (priest of the temple). She was a treat to be pious
even after her husband's death ‘widow to a high-class
brahmin’, this is a social order by birth. But by her
deeds, she is not treated to be untouchable, inferior, and
a shame to the Brahmin society. The other issue raised in
the story is the degraded condition of priests. The wave
of modernity has in a way swept the tradition of
consulting a priest. “How many priests are there these
days who can recite the mantras?” (Bhattacharyya 4).
Some cultural practices are knitted with religion and
region and are mentioned in the story. Dakshina, which
is given to a priest in exchange for his presence for
enchanting Holy Scriptures for various occasions. Dhoti
~ 190 ~
is an attire usually worn by males and seen as majorly

used by males in the rural population. Janeu, is a thread
that is accepted as the start of student life and living
under the command of a guru. Shraddha, is a ritual
performed for a person after his death that is believed to
give him salvation.Satra¸ is a region-specific term that is
used in Assam for a group of people that follow practices
of Vaishanavism under a particular prayer house. These
were some of the cultural observations and social issues
in the story.
Story 2: Parasu Pator’s Well

Another story by the same writer portrays a strong
picture of the social structure of the region. The social
structure of living with scanty resources with the
presentation of the customs of the region. It also portrays
the social conditions of the people amidst the antisocial
elements present in the society such as the ULFA
militant group. Your youth are attracted to such groups
for the fulfillment of necessities of life, the people of the
selected region who are unaware of the government
policies. The presence of cunning people to earn easy
money is like the character of Chakradhar Mondal.
Another aspect of society is present in the form of land
grabbing and illegal encroachment on land “Advance
even two steps, and it will be us who will dig the well
and bury you in it” (Bhattacharyya 96).
The cultural practices of supernaturalism often tend to
hinder the development of the area as seen in the story
while digging the well, the villagers depended on Pani
Baba treated to be a pious man who has control over
nature and can speak to heavenly bodies. Another
~ 191 ~
example of superstition observed in the society is “this is

a cursed place haunted by the Jal Devta himself. Fool!
You can’t dig a well in Laimekuri (Bhattacharyya 98)”
The practice of money lending in exchange for pawning
of ornaments is still prevailing in the society that raises
issues of black money, corruption, and exploitation. The
social disorder is seen in the militant groups that are
wandering in the forest to take revenge for either
someone of their family who got killed in an encounter
or in demand for necessities that are scarce in the region.
The protagonist dared to go against the flow like the
other young boys of his village and join the militant
group, he decided to do the hard work of digging a well
and earning money. Social obstructions are seen as the
lack of government implementations on its policies,
corruption in the offices, and in the distribution of the
money that needed to be paid for his hard work. Social
practices of believing more in supernatural elements
rather to trust hard work is also an attribute in the story
that forms a part of social issues.
Gujarati Short Stories by Himanshi Sheelat

from the collection Frozen Whites in a Dark
Alley and Other Stories.
Story 1: The Golden Fruit
This story purely deals with the social issues as
projected, through the story of a female protagonist
Vatsala who is living in her forties. She is in relation
with a man name Chandravadan Jageerdar and the
couple wants to marry each other. The circumstances of
the marriage and the personal background of the
characters give way to social issues that are observed in
~ 192 ~
the story. The first issue raises with the age of the bride.
The idle acceptable age of a bride in the Indian context is
set to be between 21 and 25. If a girl is not married by
this age she slowly moves to be treated as an old lady
with less of marriage proposals. The same social issue is
strongly observed in the story. A woman of forty-three is
about a married man who has grown-up kids. Vatsala
lives with her sister. They both are not married. Woman
living without a man in the house, without marriage is
treated to be a taboo in the Indian context. Moreover, she
wants to marry a married man.
The next social and cultural link is found with the
organization called Aryasamai, which was founded by
Dayanand Saraswati. On one hand, where the majority of
Hindu families believe marriage to be a sacred ritual that
revolves around family, religion, and strict Hindu
tradition, the other hand is Aryasamai organization that
believes in one God and is helpful for all those who seek
religious spiritual guidance. This is the pre-decided place
that would support the couple instead of all odds. The
social order here treats the case of Vatsala to be a matter
of censure, where a woman who is attaining the age of
retirement is planning for her marriage. The cultural
aspect here followed that seems to be conflicting is that
the girl and her family need to be always obliged for the
groom to accept their daughter, secondly, the husbands
enjoy the position of God and are worshipped by the
wives as customary. The relocation of a bridge to a
bridegroom’s house accepting all the pros and cons and
the new world is a questionable aspect that is answered
in the story “A stranger’s world? Isn’t it, my home, too,
now?” (Sheelat 3). It challenges the social rubrics about
~ 193 ~
the training a girl gets from her childhood to switch over

her position the very next day of marriage from a
daughter to a daughter-in-law and to live in her father's
house an entity of someone else’s ownership.
The age of marriage of a girl, the girl to be
thought to be not eligible enough if she passes the age of
marriage pre-defined by the society and the male
domination to be kept on priority are the social issues of
the society as presented in the society. Another issue
with such marriages is the questionable aspect of the
future of the children of such marriages. The male
characters already had children that were to enter the age
of adulthood. His first wife needed to be divorced so that
he could re-marry. Here the question arises is the
purchasing power of a man understood to be the supreme
power that can change the norms of the society or does
the society bow before the rich and the traditional norms
are to be applied to the ones who do not entitle to such
priorities,
Story 2: At ten thirty

The story deals with again a social issue that needs to be
answered. A woman who lives alone in her house is
always questioned. The opening of the story raises the
question as Mr. Desai the neighbor to the protagonist
says “aren’t you scared being alone in the apartment”
(Sheelat 69). It can be treated as a general question of
society that is asked of every woman who lives alone.
The tendency of society is seen here that a woman is said
to be alone until she is married and is not allowed to or is
questionable if she decides to live her life by herself. The
protagonist is a divorcee and with the flashback
~ 194 ~
technique used by the writer, we come to know that there

were clashes of decisions between the couple. The social
organizations mentioned in the script are seen to take the
side of the protagonist but not to act as a bridge to the
parting relationship but with the priority to punish the
husband of the protagonist. Many such characters raise
the misconduct of social norms though seen to be social
yet act as an unsocial element in the story.
Malayalam Short Stories by Sara Joseph

from the collection The Masculine of Virgin.
Story 1: Paapathara
A very strong observation of the writer about society is
seen in this story. The opening lines of the story itself
portray a woman with labor pains and her sufferings that
increase with the social disorder of expectation and the
cultural practice of the region. In many remote areas of
the country even today the need for a doctor is not been
given importance, because of a strong belief in people
who cure others with their special powers. In this case, it
is the local ladies that take up the duties of a doctor for
childbirth. “Applying a poultice-bundle of garlic, the
arutha-bud, and peenari on Kochunarayanan’s wife”
(Joseph 70). The practice of invoking God and
Goddesses instead of calling a Doctor still prevails in
society. “She recites mantras, circles her hand on the
back of her head, and blows off something into the air
(Joseph 71)”. A strong belief system is also seen in the
protagonist who enchants prayers to the local deity who
can change the situation. The situation here is the next
question that rises in the social context. The strong belief
is that the Goddess Kurumba has the power to change
~ 195 ~
the sex of the child at birth. This points out the social
condition of women, who are expected to give birth only
to a male child and if doesn’t she is punished and treated
by the names ‘Pennuperanakodicchyei’ which is
translated as a ‘girl-making bitch’. These are the words
used by the protagonist and gives us the clue about the
condition of woman in the society in the selected region.
The demand for a male child is so strong that every
female child born is bashed into a concrete wall and
killed. This is a social issue prevailing in society that
gives rise to illegal activities that are readily acceptable
as everyone agrees that wrong is right.
The acceptance by the neighbors to the act of
killing every newborn girl child becomes part of a social
issue, and the insensitiveness of the society is
impactfully seen in the story. The last scene of the story
also deals with identity crises where the protagonist
bribes a maid to send off her newborn girl across the
river where she could live.
Story 2: To the Sea

The writer uses a contradictory situation here, strong
enough to keep her point. The Durga Pooja is the culture
followed by almost all the Hindus in the country. The
protagonist is named Durga, but the treatment of the
little girl is opposite to that of the Goddess shown in the
story. On one hand, the mud idol of the Goddess is
worshipped for nine days and then respectfully drowns
in water, on the other hand, the girl named Durga is sold
by her mother for 302 rupees to buy food for the rest of
the family for some days. The social evil of prostitution
is strongly visible in the story. Characters like Lakhan
~ 196 ~
and Tilakan are the darker side of the society who make
prey to such people and buy their daughters as a
commodity. The reason for the increment in such social
crimes of society is questionable that can be answered y
society itself. The increased demand for lust in the male-
dominated society leads to such practices. Thaayamma
along with, Lakhan and Tilakan present the part of
society where human emotions are placed on the verge
of destruction.
Such conditions grow as the living conditions of
the people are on the degrading scale, people live in
poverty and are even not able to afford stomach full food
even one time of the day. The grown-up men in the story
are seen to be a nightmare to the little girl as they fulfill
their lust and every scream for help vanishes with the
sound of the sea. She dreams of seeing the sea, but the
end scene shows us that she is running on the beach for
her life with cuts and bruises and without clothes. The
insensitive society again is observed here when people
start taking pictures of this unusual scene.
The scarcity of food in the village, the high stake
of unemployment, and the condition of the people living
starving for even a single meal create a clear picture of
the social structure of the village that forces a mother to
sell a daughter to a prostitution agent that becomes
similar to sell her to a butcher where she would be killed
every day, bit by bit. Not much of culture but more
social misconduct is observed in this story.
~ 197 ~
Works Cited
Reese. Byron. The Fourth Age: smart robots, conscious
computers, and the
future of humanity. New York: Austria Paperback
Publishers. 2000. Print.
Bhattacharyya, Gayatri.Trans. Relive Indira Goswami:
The Rich Legacy of Her Stories.
NewDelhi: Vitasta Publishing Pvt Ltd, 2014. Print.
Shelat, Himanshi. Trans. Vinod Meghani. Frozen Whites
in a Dark Alley and Other
Stories. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2007. Print.
Joseph, Sarah. Trans. J.Devika. Ed. Mini Krishnan. The
Masculine of Virgin. New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2012. Print.
Mittapalli, Rajeshwar, and Pier Paolo Piciucco. Studies
in Indian Writing in
English.Vol. II. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers. 2001.
Print.
Ramanan, Mohan, Ed. P. Sailaja. English and the Indian
Short Story: Essays in Criticism.
Pulickamandapam, Antony. Hindu: Spirituality:
Religious Vows and Feasts. Ujjain:
Ruhalaya Publications. 2006. Print.
~ 198 ~
A Postcolonial Study of Trauma in The Lost

Homestead: My Mother Partition and Punjab
Shreya Bhardwaj
Dr. Mukuta Borah
Ph.D. Research Scholar
Assistant Professor
Sharda University
Sharda University
Abstract
The British Raj, as it had been described all throughout
the Indian Independence Act, was abolished as a result
of India's partition in 1947. Marina Wheeler through her
memoir The Lost Homestead: My Mother Partition and
Punjab (Wheeler, 2020) analyzes the nature of trauma
and its devastating impact on the psyche of the
inhabitants on both sides of the border. Marina
Wheeler’s mother Dip Singh, a victim of the 1947 riots
was forced to leave her home during Partition. A memoir
that follows her mother marrying an Englishmen and
leaving the country for Berlin, the division of the city,
and Dip’s relocation to Washington DC, where the civil
rights movement adheres to the ideals of Mahatma
Gandhi. This led to the segregation of ‘self’ and ‘other’
when Dip questioned her identity throughout the
memoir. The research paper aims is to examine the
‘trauma’ people experienced both during and after the
1947 holocaust. Through trauma theory, the various
occurrences which served as evidences of that era's
~ 199 ~
savagery would be further analyzed and Gayatri Spivak's

concept of the ‘subaltern’ will be used to analyze that
how women are considered doubly colonized firstly
because of patriarchy and second because of colonialism.
Keywords- Partition, Women, Memoir, Self, Other
I understood people who wrote memoirs had journeys.
(Wheeler, 2020)
The Partition of India in 1947 culminated in the
dismantling of the British Raj, which had been referred
to throughout the Indian Independence Act. The Lost
Homestead: My Mother Partition and Punjab, a memoir
by Marina Wheeler (Wheeler, 2020), analyzes the nature
of trauma and its destructive effects on the psyches of
those inhabitants residing on both sides of the border
providing special emphasis towards her mother Dip
Singh. Although memoirs are considered to incorporate
all of the historical facts in the narration, the author of a
memoir has more liberty to convey personal trauma, to
highlight the separation of ‘self’ and ‘other’ faced by
them and their family members. They recollect the
narrative as themselves remembered it instead of as
‘others’ who can corroborate or deny it.
The Lost Homestead: Partition My Mother Partition and
Punjab written by Marina Wheeler (2020), an Anglo-
Indian woman remained connected to her mother's Sikh
ancestry in Punjab. Marina narrates the hardships
encountered by her mother, Dip Singh as well as what
her family experienced when she was ordered to leave
her home amid Partition. The memoir portrays her
mother's remarriage with an Englishman, their travel to
Berlin during the partition of India, and her subsequent
relocation to Washington, DC . It was in Washington DC
~ 200 ~
that the movement for civil rights preserved the ideals of

Mahatma Gandhi. It is a universal memoir that
addresses the issues of nationalism, segregation of
identity, and belongingness that resonate with religious
fundamentalism.
The memoir The Lost Homestead: Partition My Mother
Partition and Punjab was first published in Great Britain
2020, revolves around her mother Dip Singh as she
dedicates “For my parents, Dip and Charles”(Wheeler,
2020). With Charles, Dip took a trip to the entire world,
from the then divided city of Berlin to Washington DC
to ultimately Sussex, where she lived for forty years till
her death. Dip restructured her life on her terms,
blanking out the pre-1947 days. She never returned to
her country of birth or shelter and told Marina she never
even read a book from India, fearing it might make her
homesick.
The memoir, considered an Anglo Indian memoir still
rooted in her mother's Sikh family in Punjab, writes the
plight of how her mother, Dip Singh's family were
forced to leave their home during Partition. A story that
follows her mother marrying an Englishmen and leaving
the country for Berlin, the division of the city, and Dip’s
relocation to Washington DC, where the civil rights
movement adheres to the ideals of Gandhi. The memoir
is considered as an exodus of not just memory but that of
identity, of what we have, what we lose, and what we
reconstruct amid the bare chaos of Partition. As British
India plunged into turmoil, the split of the country into
nations was proclaimed on June 3, 1947. The brutality
and horrific upheaval increased for a while. Dip Singh,
mother of Marina Wheeler along with her Sikh family
~ 201 ~
was compelled to evacuate her home in Punjab Province,

never again to recover, alongside thousands of "others".
The memoir demonstrates how the partition affected
personal and communal lives of the inhabitants on a
global scale. It affected the lives of men, women and
children residing in the subcontinent. However it had a
tremendous effect towards women. The political
decision affected their demise, survivability, or
resettlement where violence perpetrated against women
was evident at the communal, interpersonal, and social
levels. To protect the country's honor, women felt under
obligation to commit suicide. Furthermore, considering
that they were viewed as ‘others', their family abandoned
them in the interest of spiritual rehabilitation, and their
children were denied basic human rights. These memoirs
emphasize how challenging it is to maintain one's
identity and feeling of ‘self’ throughout the Partition.
Marina Wheeler integrates her family's experience of
bereavement and optimism for the future, political and
personal independence, well with the country's grander,
sometimes particularly contentious narrative as just an
Anglo-Indian with antecedents from what is now
Pakistan. As a reader we follow Dip as she married
Charles Wheeler and moved from India to Berlin, then
perhaps a fragmented city, and lastly to Washington,
DC, where the civil rights movement implemented
beliefs of Mahatma Gandhi.
The Lost Homestead revolves around Dip Singh,
Marina's mother, sharing stories of the suffering and
bloodshed that Partition caused over the subcontinent.
The position of Dip can be analyzed by the literary
theory Gayatri Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak?"
~ 202 ~
published in 1988, examined the theory of the

“subaltern” and “fear of death” as they relate to feminist
suicide and how it is perceived in families. She believes
that women were doubly bound firstly because of
colonialism and secondly because of patriarchy such as
Dip. When the subcontinent descended into riots, and
carnage, her family's tranquil and secluded decades in
their family house in Sargodha, adjacent to Lahore (now
in Pakistan), suddenly busted. Just like thousands of
others, her family was forced to escape their lovely
home, never again to resurface.
Memoirs are authenticated by the memories of those
who have lived through them. The fact that memoirs are
collections of many memories justifies the secondary
method of data collecting even more appropriate.‘The
Lost Homestead: My Mother, Partition and
Punjab’(Wheeler, 2020) is a memoir that highlights the
segregation of ‘self’ and ‘other’. A journey that was
equivalent to several diasporas who were forced to leave
their ancestral places and were migrated to the other
parts of the border. Papaji’s friends state “Please go, just
for a time, until the madness has passed” (Wheeler,
2020). As described by the political scientist Ranabir
Sammadar the Post-Partitioned phase is a state of
postcolonial anxiety by which a society is eternally
suspended between a 'former colony' and a 'not yet
nation'. Dip’s escape from her unfruitful marriage to
Daljit Singh and how she was remarried to Charles
Wheeler. Partition is one of the saddest chapters in
Indian Independence history, and the most vulnerable
victims throughout this genocide were men, women a
children “A man killed his daughters by slicing off her
~ 203 ~
head with his kirpan. He then martyred twenty-five

others”(Wheeler, 2020).
A remarkable story deals with two ideas that are
intertwined: first, British India's Independence from the
Queen's reign after 150 years, and second, the partition
of India and Pakistan, which resulted in the division of
'self' and 'other' among these inhabitants. The traumatic
memories of Partition are indivisible from the ones who
became victims of this catastrophic event. Women's
assaults can be interpreted both in literal terms like
violence and oppression of the ‘other’ and symbolically
as a symbol of the chaos of the time when mother earth
was being assaulted during the time of Partition. Urvashi
Butalia mentions that those distinctions between free
will and obligation should be blurred. Marina Wheeler
termed this segregation of Identity as a “confused
identity” (Wheeler, 2020).
The memoir extensively explores, illustrates, and
describes the dehumanized community of those horrible
times, as well as the remarkable images and sides of the
catastrophic history event. The author conducts an in-
depth and incisive investigation into the circumstances
that led to the nation's partition, primarily questioning
the politicians of the time as well as communities
accountable for the nation's separation and the tragic
event that resulted. In the process, she didn’t spare
political leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Mohammad
Ali Jinnah, Tara Singh, and the British Government. The
Congress and Muslim League were chastised.
The term "home" conjures up images of emotional and
personal affinity. Since the beginning of time, the human
species has been psychologically dependent on a sense
~ 204 ~
of connectedness. As a result, home is considered as a

place inside a particular socio-cultural dynamic, but this
home also serves as a crucial political backdrop, forcing
residents to migrate despite their unwillingness to
migrate and suffered homeliness, diaspora, and exile
such as Dip’s family, was forced to migrate however
Papaji declined to do so. He believes Muslims are our
second family. We won't be separated from them, and
we'll be able to return to our residences. The inhabitants
suffered trauma, Cathy Caruth, a trauma theorist,
believes that literature is often intricately tied to trauma
in ways that we do not completely comprehend. She
states that even if traumatic experiences are never fully
understood, sharing them is still necessary.
The concept of trust is an odd one. It takes a lot of effort
to establish trust, yet it only takes a second to break one's
trust. This is what exactly Dip did to her father when she
married Charles Wheeler after her unsuccessful marriage
to Daljit whom her father chose for her as he believes “It
was unusual for a girl to be invited to join a wealthy
family without a dowry. So in 1950, dowry less Dip was
married to Daljit”(Wheeler, 2020). However, Dip
believes a decent man grows roses.
The memoir blurs the lines between sacred and secular
thought, creating a world where people's identities are
dramatically moved and displaced as they seek salvation
through religious intolerance and violence. In an attempt
to validate his point, the author provides the case of post-
partition criminals and why they became a worldwide
concern such as the #metoo movement, Nirbhaya case,
Pulwama attack, and many more. This influences how
‘self’ and ‘other’ images are constructed.
~ 205 ~
During this global catastrophe, women who had lost

their identities just at the expense of men found their
voices through the writings of good authors. Wheeler
considers ‘Eurocentric’ as problematic. She believes that
women should indeed be depicted as enormous resistors
with unbounded strength, and their rightful status must
be recovered. Wheeler started her search for a homestead
leading her to raise a question: Is this what the
homestead was like? The difference between both home
and homelessness is what makes home so valuable.
Through her writing concerning pre-Partition Sargodha
as well as the histories of Hindus, Sikhs communities of
that province and its neighboring chakras, Marina
Wheeler had indeed rendered history an excellent
service. Throughout Partition, all of us who did grow up
in intermingled houses within this area seemed to have
no method of understanding Partition history since our
grandparents have been traumatized to speak about it.
Because there are essentially little known historical
accounts of Hindu and Sikh Sargodha, the above
memoir covers the historical gaps. Dip Wheeler can be
considered as a legend in his own lifetime.
The memoir highlights the accomplishments and
catharsis of not only one, but two women. Marina
Wheeler takes her mother Dip out of the maelstrom of
individuals and things, and writes concerning her own
life—married for 25 years to a media personality to
examine her own. In November 2020, Marina ended her
official marriage to the British Prime Minister Boris
Johnson. She considers her mother has never been
capable of forgetting her sheltered upbringing in a rural
setting. The massive execution that resulted from the
~ 206 ~
partition and undivided Punjab remained quiescent. Dip

Singh eventually spoke forward, but she passed away in
February 2020, months before the memoir was released.
When the significance of a traumatic experience is
relieved years after it first occurred, the memories of a
terrible past is consolidated. It's a circumstance where
thinking about the event becomes compulsive and
unrelenting. It has a negative impact on the perpetrator's
human emotions and forces them to confront their
background. The argument is more complicated where
there has been assault, a breakdown, a forced marriage,
or an undesirable pregnancy following such a marriage.
Of course, the aforementioned problems are not related
to males as victims or with victimization in general. The
trauma is mostly the experienced trauma of women in
the greater part of the partition narratives. Women have
played a significant role in the partition narratives, as
was already established.
Work Cited
Cuddon, J., and M. Habib. The Penguin Dictionary of
Literary Terms and Literary Theory: Fifth Edition. 5th
ed., Penguin Books, 2015.
Mukherjee, Victor. “Blurring Boundaries, Defining

Spaces, Re-Shaping Identities: Re-Reading Ritwik
Ghatak’s Komal Gandhar”.Upanayan Publications, 2021
Print.
Pandey, Gyanendra. Remembering Partition: Violence,

Nationalism and History in India. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001. Print.
~ 207 ~
Ray, Debasmita. Refugee Women in Ritwik Ghatak's

Movies: At Your Altar Your Daughter Will Not Falter.
New Delhi: Kunal Books, 2013. Print.
Roy, Rajat. "Paschatya Somalochaker Drishtite Ritwik

Ghataker Chhabi". Ritwik Ghatak
Kolkata: Shristi Prakashan, 1976. Print.
Wheeler, Marina. The Lost Homestead: My Mother,

Partition and the Punjab, Hodder Paperbacks, 2021.
~ 208 ~
Katalogimi në botim – (CIP)
Biblioteka Kombëtare e Kosovës “Pjetër Bogdani”
821.21-4
Conceptualising Indian Writing in English / Chief

Editor(s) dr. Vinod Bhatt ... [et al.]. - Prishtinë : Iwa
Bogdani, 2022. - 209 ; 21 cm.
Letërsia indiane (amerikane) -- Ese indiane
ISBN 978-9951-764-72-8
Aleph [000105388]

Comprehending the Paradox

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Comprehending the Paradox

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Conceptualising Indian Writing

Dr. Vinod Bhatt

Dr. Dev Brat Gupta

Dr. Jeton Kelmendi

Feminist Manifestations in Menka Shivdasani Safe

ABSTRACT ................................................................ 171

Feminist Manifestations in Menka Shivdasani

Prof. Manoj Verma

Indian Writings in English has now established itself

position of women in society. She projects her women

Shiv K. Kumar, Keki N. Daruwala down to poets like

suffocated her inorder to search for a fresh air of

poet metaphorically transforms woman to be a powerful

conveys very strong message that how the crack break

creation or for saving others. They are made up of “iron

reflected in the poem. She wants her heroine to have her

portrayed as tender, caring and mellow at one end

A Study of Ecofeminism in the Novels of

ecofeminist theories and viewpoints through a

Keywords: ecofeminism, environment, exploitations,

Ecofeminism has literary roots as well. The linguistic

Ecofeminism in the novels of Anita Nair’s

The Better Man

Kerala, where he was born. His journey through

responsibilities after her father passed away, making her

Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir investigates the

environment. She vividly depicts the devastating effects

Tradition and Modernity in A.K.

Dr. Satyabrat Singh

The poetic output of A.K. Ramanujan, which consists of

but the way it starts and ends and gathers certain

Suddenly, a phrase begins to sing, and everybody notices

Ramanujan expresses Indian sensibility, honed and

immediate isolation from his adopted country, he feels

poetry. His irony is all pervasive. K.N.Daruwalla

warmth of traditional Indian family life and the closeness

linguistic, metrical, logical and other such ways of

Beat, and learn to miss a beat

A.K. Ramanujan’s poetry. Drawing on the past, the

(1) Ramanujan, A.K. The Striders, London:

Concern for Nature and Environment: An

Sarwar Ahmad Wani

investigation of the select Indian English novel. It will

reasons why Morichjhapi refugees in such tremendous

environment. Throughout the entire narrative,

environmental disaster. As he promotes an awareness of

the mountain wolf's significance and went out to hunt it.

residents. Unfortunately, the government organizations

impoverished, oppressed residents of Morichjhapi are

expresses severe doubts about allowing her boy to travel

unending desire leads to environmental degradation and

Rukhmani good and terrible seasons are inevitable,

To conclude we may say that Mankind and the

Contemporary Indian Writings in English

Dr. Kranti Vats,

contemporary writers, the works of Manohar Malgonkar

Keywords: Indian- English Writing, Prolific,

as a vehicle for their creative inquiry and articulation of

Jawaharlal Nehru and Sarojini Naidu became the

Manohar Malgonkar : Life and works

and English. Manohar could prove his ancestry as a

Indian newspapers like The Statesman and Deccan

symbolises in each portion the progressive phases of his

captivating and sparkling English and throbs and pulses