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Revisioning Subalternity: A critical study of Ramayana through Mandavi and Urmila

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Aditi Tiwari1 & Priyanka Chaudhary2

Research Scholar, Department of Languages, Manipal University Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Orchid id: 0000-0002-3751-5310. Email: meetadititiwari@gmail.com

Professor and Head, Department of Languages, Manipal University Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Email: priyanka.chaudhary@jaipur.manipal.edu

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.43

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Abstract:

Ramayana is a narrative knitted through multiple voices but is written around the story of Rama, neglecting the voices of the minor characters. The contemporary South Asian authors breaking the conventional norms of Ramkatha tradition have provided agency to such characters through their contemporary renderings. The study tries to bring forth such hidden nested narratives of the unheard characters of Mandavi and Urmila who are identified either in relation to Sita or their husbands, to re-define the idea subaltern. The paper will analyse the social and political oppression faced by the two female characters because of the existing gender and power hierarchy existing in the text, the unconscious oppression and suffering neglected by the author, reader and the characters of the text as well. The paper will try to analyse the contemporary renderings as an agency and subaltern space for the voice of these subaltern unsung characters of Ramayana, understanding how the concept of unconscious subaltern and normalization of oppression on these character in the epic, demarcating the related myths.

Keywords: Gender-power hierarchy, Myth, Oppression, Ramayana, Subaltern

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Infidelity to True Story and Novel: Locating the Auteur in Rituparno Ghosh’s Dahan

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Akaitab Mukherjee

Assistant Professor, School of Social Sciences and Languages (SSL), Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Chennai Campus, Tamil Nadu, India, akaitab.mukherjee@gmail.com, ORCID id-0000-0001-6410-9898

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.42

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Rituparno Ghosh (1961-2013), a celebrated Bengali film director who started making films in 90s, often borrows plots from literary and other cultural narratives.  The essay aims to explicate Ghosh’s early film Dahan (1997) which is an adaptation of distinguished Bengali novelist Suchitra Bhattacharya’s novel with the same title. Bhattacharya’s novel is influenced by the real incident in which a couple was harassed by four youths at Tollygunge Metro Station in Kolkata on 27th November, 1992. The film also acknowledges that it is indebted to the true story. The essay explicates the adaptation of the two sources by the auteur. It examines the duplication of authorial concerns in this adaptation while following the narratives of two texts. Ghosh remains unfaithful to the literary text and the cultural memory of the true story to establish his authorship. As Ghosh’s films portray the middle-class women in a patriarchal society, following Janet Staiger’s reconsideration of the theory of auteur in the context of queer movement and identity politics in the 1970s, the essay argues that the performance of infidelity to the literary and true story to establish authorship is auteur’s “technique of the self”.

Keywords: Auteur, fidelity, Dahan, Based on true story, Rituparno Ghosh

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Reframing Reproduction in Vernacular Periodicals: A Study of Contraception in Late Colonial Bengal

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Ayana Bhattacharya

M. Phil scholar at the Department of English, Jadavpur University. ORCID id: 0000-0001-7160-6323. Email: b_ayana@yahoo.in, b20.ayana@gmail.com

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.41

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Abstract

With the emergence of the thriving literary public sphere around the close of the 19th century across colonial India, the issue of birth control was being debated in various magazines by economists, sexologists, doctors and members of women’s organizations. The discussions on reproductive rights of women and dissemination of contraceptive information published in various vernacular periodicals can be situated within a network of other contemporary discourses on “economizing reproduction” that were gaining visibility around this time. The present paper would like to explore the perceptions of women’s reproductive body at the beginning of the 20th century that were being forged through coalescing narratives on bourgeois norms of obscenity (aslilata?), biopolitical concerns of an emerging nation state in the last throes of anti-colonial struggle, and various takes on (heteronormative) interpersonal relationships between future citizens. It is within this specific context that I would like to examine articles on birth control published during the early 1930s in the ‘self-styled’ Bengali women’s magazine Jayasree? launched by revolutionary leader Leela Nag. By situating the opinions voiced by the men and women writing in the pages of this literary periodical vis-à-vis contemporary intellectual trends of birth control movement in India, this paper seeks to study the interactive textual ecosystem within which the writers and readers (the implied future authors) of Jayasree? were functioning.

 Keywords: birth control, reproductive politics, obscenity, bio-power, ‘right’ consciousness.

Review article: The Politics of Gender Hybrid Representation of Delhi

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Shruti Rawal

Department of English, St. Xavier’s College, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Email: shrutirawal@stxaviersjaipur.org

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.40

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The growth of the metropolitan phenomenon has resulted in the emergence of new power centres in all the countries of the world. These cities have geographical, political and economic significance. The narratives of these cities have been captured by the writers for centuries in their fictional and non-fictional work. The research intends to focus on the representation of the city of Delhi in two prominent works: Khushwant Singh’s Delhi: A Novel and Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Both the texts are located in the city of Delhi and have a prominent transgender character at its core and the study aims to understand the writer’s intent and manner of drawing similarities between the city and the character. It also proposes to explore this hybridity of gender as a deliberate tool to represent the city of Delhi. The failure of anyone binary to capture the essence of the city and the advantage of the androgynous approach will be discussed in the paper. It will also endeavour to understand how the phenomenon of cities has led to the creation of spaces that promote hybridity.

Keywords: Delhi, transgender, spaces, androgyny

The Processes of Dehumanization in the Encounter with the Other: An Exploratory Study During the Lynching of African Americans in the United States, 1882 – 1968

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Giovanni B. Corvino

University of Turin. Email: giovanni.corvino@edu.unito.it

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.39

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The dehumanization processes represent a failure in the attribution of thinking skills to other human beings. Based on ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, and nationality, social prejudices are reinforced in basic neurocognitive structures. Still, their manifestation is conveyed by personal goals and normative beliefs, which develop in an environment of a dyadic relationship or intergroup contexts. Therefore, this paper aims to peruse the perspectives for a theory of dehumanization, supporting them with neuroscientific research on the neural basis, and exploring the forms of dehumanization that African Americans suffered when they were victims of lynching in the United States.

Keywords: dehumanization, lynching, cognitive bias

“He made me fall at the feet of a woman”: Masculine Anxieties and Dysfunctional Romance in Tamil Cult Film Subramaniyapuram (2008)

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379 views

Divya A

Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. ORCID: 0000-0002-4516-6763. Email: divya@iitm.ac.in

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.38

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Tamil Cinema is “one of India’s largest, most prolific and increasingly significant cinemas” (Velayutham 2008, pp.1-2). Madurai genre in Tamil films is popularly known as 3M films (Murder, Mayhem and Madurai) (Damodaran Gorringe 2017, p.9). Subramaniyapuram (Sasikumar, 2008) is a Madurai film that attained cult status in both the Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala since its release in 2008. A collection of essays on Subramaniyapuram edited by anthropologist Anand Pandian was published in 2013, a rare honour to be bestowed on a Tamil film in recent times. Significantly, the film’s problematic gender narrative—especially the entangled relation between the romantic plot and the masculine “plots”—is not the central subject of exploration of any of the essays in this edited collection, nor has it been discussed in depth in any critical discourse on the film so far. In this article, using Laura Mulvey’s theoretical lens as a point of departure, I argue that the female identity is crucial to the narrative functioning of the various plots of Subramaniyapuram. The film’s ultimate narrative desires, I illustrate, are in affirmation of masculine supremacy, hegemonic masculinity, and the women as femme fatales.

Keywords: Subramaniyapuram, Madurai, Tamil cinema, Masculinity, Gaze, Mulvey, Sasikumar, Romantic plot.

Chachnama Discourse: The Dichotomy of Islamic Origins in South Asia

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Priyanka Chaudhary1, Sara Rathore2

1Professor and Head, Department of Languages, Manipal University Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Email: priyanka.chaudhary@jaipur.manipal.edu

2Department of Languages, Manipal University Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Email: sara.181102019@muj.manipal.edu

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.36A

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Abstract

The common narrative of the arrival of Islam in South Asia is shaping contemporary discourse on religious nationalism in the subcontinent. However, this common narrative tends to marginalise the origins of Shias in the region. The study employs the critical theory of New Historicism to trace the historiography of the text in context to the schism among Muslims and discusses the ways in which it participates with only the Sunni origins in the region which are in stark contrast to the Shia origins. Therefore, the paper introspects upon whether Chachnama exclusively a Sunni perspective of the conquest. The findings indicate the marginalisation of Shias in the collective narrative of Muslim origins in South Asia.

Keywords- Sindh, Alids, Chachnama, Indo-Persian Relation, discourse, Umayyad Caliphate

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Hasya: Towards a Poetics of the Comic

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Jagannath Basu

Assistant Professor of English, Sitalkuchi College, India.  Orcid: 0000-0003-0306-7238. Email: dyukrish@gmail.com

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.37

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Abstract:

Amidst a whole range of criticism and derision that laughter has received down the ages, the question still lingers: why “One daren’t even laugh any more”? The comic, according to Aristotle, is associated with the ridiculous or the ugly. It constitutes a deformity or an error and leans towards something which is mean. The comedy, on the other hand, is a form of low art consisting of what is base or inferior. This view of the comic and comedy has largely been accepted and forwarded by the West. They have looked down upon the comic with a one-dimensional view of derision and condemnation. As Lisa Trahair correctly states, “to comprehend the comic is to risk overlooking the structure of incomprehensibility that is crucial to its operation”. Although often considered as a synonym for humour or laughter, hâsya, on the other hand, is much more than that. Hâsya always enabled us to understand comic’s implications in the object world and vice versa. It is not only enigmatic but also esoteric in nature. Through a select study of VidûSaka (the deformed clown in Sanskrit theatre) and two poems— one a Sanskrit Muktaka and the other a Nind?-stuti, this paper intends to read the potentialities of hâsya as an-other laughter, not just as a mode of gay affirmation or subversion but as a mode of “free play” (ju), within the space that exists between the self and the other(s). This, however, by no means is an attempt to conceive hâsya only as a disruptive event with the intentions of the ‘Empire writing back’, rather a wish to hermeneutically comprehend the harmony of the comic within the dimensions of Indian aesthetics, so that the poetics of laughter can be retrieved and reclaimed.

Keywords: Hâsya, laughter, being, other, comic, poetics, ju

Victimhood, Health Challenges and Violent Restiveness in Blood and Oil: Music, Characterization and Colours as Metaphors

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Uche-Chinemere Nwaozuzu1, Adebowale O. Adeogun2, Cindy Ezeugwu3, Alphonsus C. Ugwu4 & Emeka Aniago5

1Associate Professor, Theatre & Film Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria

2Senior Lecturer, Music, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria

3Lecturer, Theatre & Film Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria

4Lecturer, Mass Communication, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria

5Senior Lecturer, Theatre & Film Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria. ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3194-1463. Email: emeka.aniago@unn.edu.ng 

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.36

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 Abstract

This study examines the aesthetics, efficacy, and propriety of the embedded metaphors in characterization, music, and colour application as creative vision in projecting victimhood atmosphere around traumatized Niger-Deltans due to many years of deprivation in Blood and Oil. Thus, this study explains how Blood and Oil represents a credible narrative, subsuming polemics of environmental degradation, health misery, massive unemployment, subjugation, and violent restiveness in Niger Delta due to poor political leadership, greed, and corruption. On creative vision, we are discussing how the ingenious application of characterization, music, and colour combined effectively in creating an enduring mood for the scenes in the film as channels of accentuating intended messages. To add relevant scholarly rigor, we applied victimhood theory and interpretive discuss approach to create relevant and lucid insights regarding the inclinations and actions of select characters in the film as well as analysis of relevant secondary texts. In the end, we deduce that the apt portrayal of Niger-Delta oil communities’ extensively degraded and polluted environment validates the reality of anguish and victimhood because of the massively diminished fishing and farming prospects. Lastly, the implication of this scenario is increased unemployment, psychological distress, diseases, and violent restiveness which have reduced enormously the wellbeing of Niger Delta inhabitants.  

Keywords: crude oil, health concerns, Niger-Delta, Nollywood, restiveness, victimhood

Conversations through Web 2.0 tools: Nurturing 21st century Values in the ESL Classroom

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Kshema Jose

Department for Training and Development, School of English Language Education, The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India. ORCID: 0000-0003-3204-7404. Email: kshema@efluniversity.ac.in

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.35

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 Abstract

21st century skills framework proposed by the World Economic Forum (2015) suggests that the development of foundational literacies, competencies and character qualities in students can help them function as responsible and productive global citizens. However, most educational systems focus only on developing foundational literacies like reading and writing, numeracy, scientific literacy, etc. This paper describes an exploratory research conducted to investigate how the 21st century ESL teacher can nurture the development of competencies and character qualities through language development tasks delivered using digital tools. The paper is based on the premise that since character qualities are both social and individualistic in nature, they are ideally delivered through collaborative events and acquired best through self-reflection. Reporting from an ESL teacher’s perspective, the paper elucidates how participating in the communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity activities mediated through web 2.0 tools can facilitate the acquisition of character qualities like curiosity, persistence, adaptability, social and cultural awareness, etc.  It was found that certain features of web 2.0 tools like participatory environments, asynchronicity and ease of use for creating content offered students multiple opportunities for meaningful, sustained and reflective conversations. Using observational data, the researcher identifies the acquisition of character qualities and the development of competencies in students through these conversations.

Keywords: Adult learning, Value Education, Collaborative learning, 21st century character qualities, ESL classrooms 

 

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