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Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner: Unveiling the Trauma of Adolescent Boys Trapped in Afghanistan’s Culturally Legitimised Paedophilia-‘Bacha Bazi’

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1.1K views

Pallavi Thakur

Assistant Professor, SHSS, Sharda University, Greater Noida. Email: pallavi.thakur@sharda.ac.in                                                                                     

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s9n5

Abstract

Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner is a powerful narrative on ‘Bacha Bazi’, “same-sex pedophilia restricted to adult men and adolescent boys” (Powell, 2018, p.1), prevalent in Afghanistan. When marginalisation of Afghan women became the nucleus of major studies , especially during the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Hosseini unveiled in The Kite Runner, the gruesome Afghan culture of ‘Bacha Bazi’ that disintegrates a boy’s social and sexual identity. ‘Bacha Bazi’ is not consensual rather coercion hence is equivalent to rape and reflects the grotesque violation of Afghan male children’s human rights. While the world viewed Afghanistan as a land of incessant wars, tribal conflicts, violence and female exploitation, Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner provided a startling insight into ‘Bacha Bazi’ and its implications on Afghan boys. The novel reveals the socio-culture domain of Afghanistan and ethnic rivalry playing an instrumental role in the existence of Bacha Bazi. In the light of the above discussions, the present paper examines   the deleterious effects of Bacha Bazi on Afghan male children. It elucidates the psychological trauma of adolescent Afghan boys that evolves out of the sexual abuse and new androgynous identity imposed on them.

Keywords: Bacha Bazi, Sexual slavery, ethnicity, con?icts, androgyny, poverty, rape

Narrative Strategies of Decolonisation: Autoethnography in Mamang Dai’s The Legends of Pensam

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300 views

Samrita Sinha

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Sophia College (Autonomous). ORCID: 0000-0003-1021-4988. Email: ssengsophia@gmail.com, samrita.sinha@sophiacollege.edu.in

   Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s18n4

Abstract

According to John Quintero, “The decolonisation agenda championed by the United Nations is not based exclusively on independence. It is the exercise of the human right of self-determination, rather than independence per se, that the United Nations has continued to push for.” Situated within ontologies of the human right of self-determination, this paper will focus on an analysis of The Legends of Pensam by Mamang Dai, a writer hailing from the Adi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh, to explore the strategies of decolonisation by which she revitalizes her tribe’s cultural enunciations. The project of decolonisation is predicated on the understanding that colonialism has not only displaced communities but also brought about an erasure of their epistemologies. Consequently, one of its major agenda is to recuperate displaced epistemic positions of such communities. In the context of Northeast India, the history of colonial rule and governance has had long lasting political repercussions which has resulted not only in a culture of impunity and secessionist violence but has also led to the reductive homogeneous construction of the Northeast as conflict ridden. In the contemporary context, the polyethnic, socio-cultural fabric of the Northeast borderlands foregrounds it as an evolving post-colonial geopolitical imaginary. In the light of this, the objective of this paper is to arrive at the ramifications of employing autoethnography as a narrative regime by which Mamang Dai reaffirms the Adi community’s epistemic agency and reclaims the human right towards a cultural self-determination.

Keywords: Decolonisation, Autoethnography, Northeast India, Displaced, Epistemic Agency

The Lioness Defending Her Clan in the North East: A Study of Ecospiritual Elements in Mamang Dai’s Fiction

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298 views

Meghamala Satapathy1 & Ipsita Nayak2

1PhD Research Scholar, KIIT Deemed to be University; Email: satapathymeghamala@gmail.com; ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3519-766X

2Assistant Professor in English and Research Supervisor, KIIT Deemed to be University; Email: ipsita.teacher@gmail.com; ORCID ID:  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4584-7470

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s18n1

Abstract

Ecospirituality signifies spiritual evolution in consequence of one’s response to ecological stimuli. Mamang Dai is a powerful tribal voice from the North East India who has explored in depth the theme of Ecospirituality in her books. The article explicates those ecological attributes manifested in Dai’s works which form an integral part of the spiritual voyage of her characters. In an attempt to define the term ‘Ecospirituality,’ a review of existing literature has been placed at the beginning which is followed by discourse analysis of the five works of fiction which Dai has to her credit. All the arguments put forth in the article are substantiated by textual evidence from her books. The analysis of the said texts is followed by a conclusion suggesting a way forward. The present study examines the elements of Ecospirituality in Dai’s ‘fictional’ works alone hence the exclusion of her books of non-fiction. It shows how a slew of ecospiritual elements are identifiable in the fictional outputs of Dai and yet the theme demands more elaborate treatment due to the advent of new theoretical constructs.

Keywords: Ecospirituality, North East, Ecospiritualism, Mamang Dai, ethnography, folklore, Deep ecology, topography, ethnic identity

“Colonize and Cholerize”: an attempt to decipher the ambiguity of the literary representation of the cholera epidemics in Nineteenth Century India

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156 views

Arijit Goswami
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Gorubathan Government College, Kalimpong, E-mail: arijit.goswami80@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s16n1

Abstract

The modus operandi of categorising European and especially British authors as representative of the hegemonic colonial enterprise that subjugated the Indian sub-continent for nearly two hundred years is a common analogy while dealing with the colonial era. The seemingly simplistic logic is problematised, when a British author, closely related to the ruling administrative set-up voices dissent, whereas the colonised intelligentsia fails to register minimal protest in their literary works. The article would try to decipher the anti- orientalist discourse with special reference to the literary representation of cholera epidemics in Fanny Parkes’s Wanderings of a pilgrim in search of the picturesque (1850), during the patriarchal-colonising enterprise in vogue and envisage to compare Lal Behari Day’s Folktales of Bengal (1883), which fails to express the reality of an epidemic-devastated land and displeasure of the commoners towards the ruling class for their inept handling of the epidemics.

Keywords: Colonization, Cholerize, Dissent, Anti-orientalism

Women at Crossroads: Reconfiguring the Gender Roles in Select Indian Genre Fiction

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217 views

Puja Chakraborty1 & Krishanu Adhikari2

1Faculty member, Dept. of English, Malda Women’s College. Email: puja6014@gmail.com

2Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, Kandra Radhakanta Kundu Mahavidyalaya. PhD Scholar, Dept. of English, University of Hyderabad. Email: krishanu26489@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s15n2

Abstract

The inherent discursivity, entailing the composite category of ‘The third world women’ hinges on many contentious contours of female subjectivity, its genealogical and teleological subservience and submission to patriarchy, and the subsequent re-assertion of their identities and different female roles within the given rubric of patriarchal capitalist social order of the former colonies through strategic subversion, vis-à-vis negotiation of certain patriarchal ideals.The select novels, i.e. Anuradha Marwah Roy’s The Higher Education of Geetika Mehendiratta  (1993) and Advaita Kala’s Almost Single (2007); from the discursive category of Indian genre fiction narrate two intersecting stories of two middle class Indian women, who have migrated to Delhi in pursuit of empowerment and to transcend the circumscribed trajectories of parochialism and stereotypical tropes of patriarchal order. Drawing inferences from these two texts, the present paper would like to look into the ethical question of women’s empowerment in India, so as to ‘problematize’ the much appropriated subversion of gender roles, through a ‘palimpsestic’ assertion of female subjectivity , as evidenced in the seemingly divergent experiences of the two protagonists, within the unstable contexts of a postcolonial nation. Having engaged with the contested notion ‘female consciousness’, the paper further seeks to examine the veracity of such changes in the lived experiences of the women within the ever-shifting paradigms of ‘post-national’ and ‘post-globalization’ Indian milieu, while being placed against the multifaceted impediments, faced by them to bridge the two extremes; personal and professional affairs. Last but not least, the paper would also seek to shed some light on the equivocality, bordering the genealogical and generic classification(s) of the ‘genre fiction’, often under the charade of ‘literary aesthetics’ and critical/wide reception of these literary narratives.

 Keywords: Third-World Feminism, Neoliberalism, Women empowerment, Indian middle class women, Indian genre fiction.

Identity Crisis suffered by the Women Protagonists in the Novels of Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai: A Comparative Study

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512 views

Rajneesh Kumar

Ph.D. Research Scholar, DAV University, Jalandhar/ Sr. Asst. Professor and Head, Deptt.of English, Govt. Arts & Sports College, Jalandhar, Punjab, India. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-5850-7467. Email: prof.rajneesh@yahoo.co.in

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s14n1

Abstract

Identity crisis is one of the most dominating thematic concerns in the novels of Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai. Sucked into the vortex of ascribed and achieved identities, the characters portrayed by these two authors struggle to create their personal identity and individuality. Roy has dwelt on the idea of identity on several platforms, be it on the page or stage. She has an in-depth understanding of individual and collective identities. On the other hand, Desai focuses on multiculturalism and dislocation in families that pose athreat to one’s social, civic and cultural identity. Her works offer some fresh insights into diaspora identity. This paper critically examines identity crisis suffered by the women protagonists in the novels of Roy andDesai within the comparative literature study framework by focusing on the method of thematology. Roy mulls over the significance of women in families and society. There is no dispute regarding their inevitable role, but their status is definitely a matter of debate. In her debut novel, Roy speaks freely about the concerns of women, but the issue of identity crisis outdoes in her second novel due to the polyphonic sounds of her women characters. Desai, to the contrary, presents an idealistic picture of Indian women. This paper delineates that Roy and Desai unearths various dimensions of womanhood in general and wifehood in particular. Both Roy and Desai deal with the issue of identity against the socio-cultural backdrop of India. They depict a panoramic view of identity crisis faced by women.

Keywords: Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, Identity crisis, Woman, Wife, Theme.

Feminisation of Multidimensional Poverty in Rural Odisha

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211 views

Surya Narayan Biswal1, S. K. Mishra2 & M. K. Sarangi3

1Doctoral Research Scholar in Economics, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (Deemed to be University), Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. ORCID: 0000-0003-3890-3988. E-mail: suryabiswal100@gmail.com,

2Associate Professor in Economics, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (Deemed to be University), Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. ORCID ID: 0000-0003-0018-4172. E-mail: santoshmishra@soa.ac.in / skmtite@gmail.com,

2Associate Professor in Economics, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (Deemed to be University), Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India.  ORCID ID: 0000-0002-9231-1601. E–mail: minaketansarangi@soa.ac.in / sarangimk@gmail.com,

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s12n2

Abstract                                                                                                                                                

UNDP’s 2030 agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasized gender equality in augmenting human capital and alleviating poverty. For eradication of extreme poverty and building resilience for persons who are vulnerable to poverty, SDGs calls for a pro-poor and gender-sensitive policy framework. In this context, a gender-based study on multi-dimensional aspects of poverty is highly significant. Extant literature reveals that females are more deprived in different dimensions of poverty such as education, health, living standard, empowerment, environment, autonomy and social relationship.  The present study is conducted with the basic objective of examining feminization of poverty in rural areas of Jagatsinghapur district of Odisha.  Seven socio-economic dimensions comprising sixteen indicators have been taken into consideration to construct the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) using the Alkire-Foster (AF) Method at the individual level. The novelty of the study lies in analyzing MPI at the individual level for rural Odisha.  Higher female deprivation is observed across social groups and all occupation categories except services. Dummy variable regression analysis also supports the major findings of the study. Complementary Cumulative Distribution Function satisfies strict first-order stochastic dominance condition and substantiates the feminisation of poverty at each level of poverty cut-off across all social groups and occupational categories except for services. The findings of the study have significant implications for developing suitable policies for gender equalization and poverty alleviation.

Keywords: Feminisation, Multidimensional Poverty, MPI, Odisha

Sustainability, Civilization and Women- An Environmental Study of The Overstory by Richard Powers

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489 views

Nikita Gandotra1 & Dr Shuchi Agrawal2

1PhD scholar, Amity Institute of English Studies and Research, Amity University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. Email: nikitagandotra55@gmail.com

2Associate Professor, Amity Institute of English Studies and Research, Amity University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. Email: sagarwal2@amity.edu

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s10n6

Abstract

The Overstory by Richard Powers is a reflection of the environmental issues gripping the human civilization once ozone depletion and global warming loomed into focus. Global warming and an intensive exploration of environmental effects on the human civilization have gained significance over time and they persist to be eminent topic of debate in both local and global context. While Emerson and Thoreau pay serious literary attention in nineteenth-century America; Robert Frost engages with ecology in the twentieth century. Likewise contemporary American literature reflects the conflicts that surfaced due to the industrial and technological moves affecting the environment. Richard Powers’ novel forms an example how individuals and communities negotiate with these phenomena. There is nothing like Wordsworth and the English romanticists in fiction like The Overstory; there is nevertheless a romantic idealism in the characters whose engagement and commitment to environment and trees is portrayed by Powers. His reference to the Chipko movement is a gesture towards radical practical need and towards human commitment. Powers lets his character Mother N to affirm the strength of the Chipko women in India and the Kayapo Indians in Brazil, who stood up for trees. This strongly underlines the author’s intention:  women are central to civilization and sustainability. The paper aims to establish a relationship between sustainability and trees which symbolize life, and women who play a crucial role in sustaining both nature and civilization, in a sense, an ecofeminism.

Keywords: Richard Powers, The Overstory, Sustainability, Trees, Ecofeminism.

“Sense of Place and Sense of Planet”: Local-Planetary Experiences of Climate Change in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior

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257 views

Sonam Jalan

Ph.D. Research Scholar, Bankura University, West Bengal. E-mail: sonam0726@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s10n5

Abstract

Climate change has become a harsh reality of our present times. It is happening here, there, and everywhere unbound by the spatial and temporal dimensions. The vacillating impact of such a global crisis equally demands multiple and concurrent scales in order to accurately comprehend the complexity of the problem. Borrowing the title of my paper from Ursula K. Heise’s book, Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global, where she proposes the concept of ‘eco-cosmopolitanism’, this article aims at reflecting upon the globalization of the present ecocatastrophes, musing upon the local (the experiences of the working class people) and the global scale (Unnatural Migration and thereby extinction of the Monarch Butterflies) impact of the climate crisis. Ursula K. Heise believes that the ‘deterritorialization’ of the local knowledge is not always detrimental rather can open up new avenues into ecological consciousness. Giving consideration to a deterritorialised environmental vision my paper will fall back on Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior– a novel dealing with the eco-apocalypse, climate change and global warming. In providing a deeply humane account of the working people’s response to the local effects of the global crisis along with a poignant account of the impact on a planetary scale- the Migration of the Monarch Butterflies and their extinction, Kingsolver in this novel contextualizes the micro-geographically bounded human experience and memory within the larger context of the global Anthropocene thereby calling for a ‘sense of planet’ along with a ‘sense of place’- which get along with each other.

Keywords: Climate change, Eco-cosmopolitanism, Monarch Butterflies, Global warming, Anthropocene

Humans, Animals and Habitats: Liminality and Environmental Concerns in George Saunders’ Fox 8

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224 views

Raisun Mathew1 & Dr. Digvijay Pandya2

1Doctoral Research Scholar, Department of English, Lovely Professional University, Punjab (India), E-mail: raisunmathew@gmail.com, orcid.org/0000-0003-3427-0941

2Associate Professor and Research Supervisor, Department of English, Lovely Professional University, Punjab (India), E-mail: digvijay.24354@lpu.co.in, orcid.org/0000-0002-5985-9579

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s10n4

Abstract

With the equal treatment of binary oppositions related to environmental concerns, the hypocrisy of human beings continues to dominate on earth having no counterpart to compete except the ones within the same race. Intruding into the unexplored habitats has helped the race to expand their jurisdictions, often with the exercise of power and unrivalled exhibition of uniqueness. This qualitative research paper aims to interpret the environmental concerns discussed in George Saunders’ Fox 8 in the light of the characteristics of coercive liminality exercised by the invasive domination of humans over the inhabitants. The intrusion of human beings transforms natural habitats to man-made environments, thus making it exclusively accessible only for their purposes. Human invasions lead to domination and it entails exploitation that results in the displacement of inhabitants and resources from their natural habitats. Introduction of the concepts such as coercive liminality from the textual interpretation and the argument of resultant counter-liminality develop the core of the paper. The research contributes to the perspective of liminality on studies related to environmental transitions and alterations due to human intervention.

Keywords: American Literature, domination, environment, exploitation, liminality.

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