women

Locating Women in the Naxalbari Movement: A Story of Resistance and Fabrication of the Individual Female Identity

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291 views

Pritha Sarkar

Research Scholar; Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur; spritha353@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.28

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Abstract

The objective in this paper is to explore the role of women in the Naxalbari movement by studying how a woman resists all the patriarchal authorities and carves her own space in a male-dominated movement through The Naxalites: A Novel (1979), a representative text on the Naxalbari movement in Indian English Literature. The Naxalbari movement (1965-1975) is the first peasant revolution within twenty years of Indian Independence that initiated in a small village named Naxalbari situated in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal. Though there have been many scholarly studies on the movement, the representation of women and their experiences in the texts on the movement in Indian English Literature has not yet been traversed upon. The paper, therefore, addresses this gap by studying the movement from the feminist standpoint through one of the representative texts. While on one hand, historical records show how women had been frontline warriors in the initial phase of the movement only to be marginalized with the spread of the movement; on the other, none of the chronicles on the movement recognizes the role of women and their contributions in it. Through the text of The Naxalites: A Novel, this paper engages with such problematic and contradictory location of women through the portrayal of a female character who attempts to change the whole direction of the movement with the aim to make it more sustainable. Thus, the paper tries to analyze women as a subversive force within the movement who represent the critical voice against the patriarchal framework by suggesting an alternative modus operandi while staying within the folds of the movement.

Keywords: Women, Movement, Patriarchy, Female Identity

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The Question of Female Embodiment and Sexual Agency in Anuradha Sharma Pujari’s Kanchan

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Koyel Chanda

Research scholar, Dept. of English, Pondicherry University. ORCID: 0000-0002-9375-2572. Email: chandakoyel@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 1, January-March, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n1.25

Abstract

The association of women with body has generated a host of negative connotations that have been used to justify their limited political and social role. So, questions regarding the female body and sexual agency are of utmost importance in feminist theories. Anuradha Sharma Pujari, an Assamese author has explored the complex question of female sexual agency in her novel Kanchan. The novel narrates the upheavals caused in the life of its economically and educationally disadvantaged eponymous character when she decides to use her body to make a living for herself and her family. The focus of the paper will be to understand the concept of women embodiment and the complexities surrounding female sexual agency with the help of embodiment theories most notably those forwarded by Meenakshi Thapan.

Keywords: women, embodiment, sexual agency, body, feminism

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Partition Trauma and Women: Unending Lament in Shoba Rao’s An Unrestored Women and Other Stories

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Kirankumar Nittali

Assistant Professor, Department of English,  Presidency University Bangalore, India.

Email: kirankumarnittali@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 1, January-March, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n1.24

Abstract

The Partition of India has gained widespread scholarly attention as a result of its massive political, social, economic, historical and moral significance in not only the affected countries, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh but also the whole world. However, not much attention has been paid to the experiences of women during the partition particularly with regard to the violence inflicted upon them, the consequent trauma and then the inevitable reliving of those horrors in memory.  This paper on Shobha Rao’s collection of short stories, An Unrestored Womenand Other Stories (2016) attempts to analyse select fictions and female characters who were victims of Partition, including those who experienced life in refugee homes and repatriation camps, the hitherto concealed narratives.

Keywords: Partition, Trauma, Women, Shoba Rao

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Reliving the Partition in Eastern India: Memories of and Memoirs by Women across the Borders

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Sharmistha Chatterjee Sriwastav

Associate Professor, Department of English, Aliah University, City Campus, West Bengal, India. ORCID: 0000-0001-6771-0435. Email Id: dr.s.c.sriwastav@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 1, January-March, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n1.23

Abstract

Genocide in Bangladesh: 1971 (2015), edited by A.K.M Nasimul Kamal is a well- documented, organised and factual record of newspaper clippings from all over the world. A collective effort, it is an objective, yet horrific account of the brutal atrocities of West Pakistanis on the Bengalis in East Pakistan, carefully interspersed with the international politics behind it.  Compared to this unparalleled book and many others like this, memoirs by individual women recording the carnage during the Bangladesh Liberation Struggle are pale, unreliable and flickering comments on the events and the real politick behind the bloodbath. Yet as the paper argues, these memoirs and interviews by various women, from all walks of life, do create an alternative history- a history characterised and problematised by doubts, gaps, lapses, silences, turbulences and half realized truths.

Autobiographical accounts by Begum Mushtari Shafi (translated, 2006),cand Farida Huq (2008), former a social activist and latter an educationist coupled with interviews given by several ordinary, poor women across the borders ( recorded in 2009) demand closer attention to themselves by recreating the gruesome days. Falling back on their personal repertoire which oscillates between the home and the world, these largely anecdotal narratives fill in the void of homogeneous official records. These memoirs do retrieve how women acted or were acted upon in the devastation which changed their lives permanently.

Keywords: Partition, Women, Eastern India, Memories, Memoirs, alternative, history, lapses, void.

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Consent, Choice and Stage: the Ambiguous Presence of Women in the KPAC

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Ashwathi

PhD Scholar, CWS, JNU, New Delhi- 110067. ORCID: 0000-0001-6048-7859.

Email: ashwathip02@gmail.com

Volume 11, Number 3, October-December, 2019 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v11n3.04

Abstract

Women had already started marking artistic endeavors and hence situating their identity in their respective fields by the early twentieth century. The left political movements and the socio-cultural movements, which were the by-product of and the supporting source for the political movements, also ‘included’ women as their members. Plays and theatre were one of the important fields in this respect in Kerala. Women were given ‘consent’ to make their ‘choices’ to make public appearances and be associated with these movements. But who were the consent givers to these women? This paper would look at the concept of men’s consent and women’s choices through the KPAC theatre and the plays. This paper would problematize the question of the importance of men’s consent in women’s decision making and the choices that they make for themselves. This paper would try to see what role and how this act of men’s consenting has influenced the female members of the KPAC as well as in the shaping of the characters in the plays produced by them.

Keywords: Women, Consent, Men’s Consent, Choice

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The Body Move: Revising Portuguese Female Poetry of the First Quarter of the Twentieth Century

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Isabel Pinto

Research Centre for Communication and Culture (the Catholic University of Portugal), Faculdade de Ciências Humanas, UCP, Palma de Cima, Lisboa–Portugal.E-mail: vilhalpandos@hotmail.com

Volume 8, Number 4, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n4.05

Received August 25, 2016; Revised December 15, 2016; Accepted December 20, 2016; Published January 14, 2017

Abstract

The first quarter of the twentieth century in Portugal was characterised by a series of important historical and political events: the Regicide (1st February 1908), the fall of the Monarchy and establishment of the Republic (5th October 1910), and the First World War (1914-1918). By this time, women could not yet vote and they were systematically ignored in the debate of crucial social issues. Therefore, the main question here addressed is how poetry as free embodiment can take part in a gender revolution, promoting the feminist turn. The answer lies in the consequent breakout of female sentimental literature, which entitled women to reveal themselves, by enabling the poetic scrutiny of their intimacy through a particular focus on the body as prime referent. In this way, they dared to expose dreams, desires, fulfilments and despairs, firming an identity pact through poetry, and engendering a collective voice with social meaning. The published poems here analysed convey the idea that being a woman was something valuable and unique, and, at the same time, manage to inscribe female poets such as Virgínia Vitorino and Zulmira Falcarreira in the Portuguese intellectual mainstream.

Keywords: twentieth-century poetry; women; gender; body; feminism.

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Semiotic Encryption of Women, Violence and Hysteria in Indian Women Dramaturgy

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Praggnaparamita Biswas,  Banaras Hindu University, India

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Abstract

The juxtaposing depiction of women, violence and hysteria as semiotic elements in women-centric play-texts attempts to translate the theatrical meanings because of its demonstrable approach to unearth the textual meanings and its relational politics of representation. From semiological aspect, the interplay of women, violence and hysteria generates a kind of semiotic femaleness in order to prognosticate the feminist route of cultural politics imbedded in the narratives of female composed drama. The present paper intends to analyze the semiotic transformation of Indian women dramaturgy in the plays of Padmanabhan, Mehta and Sengupta. Each of their plays tries to interpret new meanings hidden under the semiotic signs used by these playwrights and also attempt to project the gender politics visualized in the realm of feminist theatre.   Keep Reading

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Ritualistic World of Tuluva: a study of Tu?uva Women and the Siri Possession Cult

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Yogitha Shetty,University of Hyderabad

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Abstract

The paper could roughly be divided into two sections: first provides a brief outline of Bh?t?r?dhane or the ritual-performance traditions of the Tulu-speaking region in the coastal region of Karnataka. Second offers an insight into the mass possession cult of Siri, which like the other rituals of Bh?t?r?dhane derive their referential script from the oral tradition of the land. Connected intricately with the Siri epic or p??dana, Siri rituals are performed annually in many places of the coastal region of Karnataka. During these rituals thousands of ‘afflicted’ women gather and get ‘possessed’ by the pantheon of Siri spirits. This paper is an attempt to delve into the emancipatory potential that this platform could offer women who participate every year, first as novices and then as adepts. Keep Reading

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Mary Magdalene or Virgin Mary: Nationalism and the Concept of Woman in Bessie Head’s A Question of Power

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Sayyed Rahim Moosavinia, Seyyede Maryam Hosseini & Shahid Chamran

University of Ahvaz, Iran

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Abstract

Foucault believes that people live in systems of power different from one era to another. He applies the term “power archives” to demonstrate that those inside an institute cannot be aware of the subtle ways of power imposed on them. Likewise, it would be oversimplification to think that with the apparent end of colonialism, the colonized subjects will be free from subjugating contexts. In the case of women, the situation is even worse since they are repressed by both the colonialist and the post-colonial nationalist. “Under the anxiety of the influence” of the former colonial father, the once-belittled colonial men turn to support their females in terms of their body and soul, and in this way define them inside a strictly demarcated roles of good wives, mothers, and households or vicious prostitutes. Bessie Head in her semi-autobiographical masterpiece subtly examines this idea and through her coloured protagonist, Elizabeth, attempts to re-deconstruct this notion. Keep Reading

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

On Reading ‘Streer Patra’, Mrinal’s Letter to Her husband

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Shyamali Dasgupta, Seth Soorajmull Jalan Girl’s College, India

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Abstract

Tagore’s famous short story, ‘Streer Patra’, highlights the suffering, ignominy and neglect that women have to face in a male dominated society. Although set in late nineteenth century Kolkata, Tagore’s story has relevance for the discerning reader even today. It dwells upon issues like child-marriage, commoditization of women, the appalling state of woman-and-child healthcare, high rates of infant mortality as well as the marginalisation of economically dependent women. The story also exposes the terrible plight of orphaned, homeless girls without any means, like Bindu whose way to survive was to accept servitude and total humiliation, from which death becomes the only form of escape. Mrinal’s final rejection of her marital state and decision of leaving her husband is a lone woman’s act of defiance against the relentless subjugation of women in society. Keep Reading

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