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Unpacking caste politics through the multimodal communicative landscape of Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability

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314 views

Suryendu Chakraborty

Assistant Professor in English, Krishnagar Women’s College, Krishnagar, West Bengal, India. ORCID: 0000-0001-8555-2910. Email: suryenduchakraborty@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.06

Abstract

Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability by Srividya Natarajan and S.Anand reveals the bitter truth of casteism as prevalent in Indian society. Through the use of graphic novel format and reviving the traditional Gond art form, the text not only verbalizes the experience of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a major activist who battled against the various modes of oppression and aggression faced by the Dalit community, but also opens up the untouchable’s experiences of existence for the naïve readers. This essay shows how Bhimayana uses a multimodal structure to create a post colonial literacy about caste and caste based marginalizations.

Key Words: Ambedkar , Caste, Dalits, Gondh, Multimodality, Untouchables

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Cakapura: A Unique Ritual-painting Tradition of India

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274 views

Sanjay Sen Gupta

School of Fine Arts, Amity University, Kolkata, India. ORCID: 0000-0003-0824-9145.

Email:  ssgupta@kol.amity.edu

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.05

Abstract

Caka refers to a square – a lateral space on the ground – while pura means filling up. Together they identify a unique form of ritual painting, executed during the festival of Bandna all across the land of ancient Manbhum – including parts of today’s West Bengal and Jharkhand. In this tradition, a specially prepared liquid pigment is dripped with all the five fingers of the hand – creating sacred designs by the village women effortlessly on their ritual-grounds. This linear emotion often gets extended upon the adjoining wall – where the same pigment is sprinkled with the fingers, along with impressions added with the palm and finger-tip. As a whole, this form of visual expression could be distinguished and identified in comparison to any other floor or wall paintings in India. It’s undoubtedly one of the finest examples – all in terms of technique, style and aesthetics – representing the rich folk-tribal tradition of this country.

Keywords: Cakapura, Bandna, Manbhum, Mahato, Purulia, ritual, painting, tradition

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Katala vesa: On Revisiting the Hunter

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Meena J. Panikker

Associate Professor in English, P. A. First Grade College, Affiliated to Mangalore University, Karnataka. Email: dr.meena@pace.edu.in

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.04

Abstract

This paper attempts a study of: i) how the hunter myth is used in the temple ritual of katala vesa at Vairamkode vela; ii) focuses on how the indigeneity of the ritual is affected by modernization. As the study is related to chronological primitivism, qualitative research methods such as direct observation, unstructured interviews, and personal experiences, common in ethnographic researches, are used.  Taking the aid of the myths related to the hunter, this paper proves that the vitality and the validity of the katala vesa ritual though untarnished, its indigeneity is stained by modernization where the initial goal of such a ritual is no more realized. The ‘hunter’ is largely underrated in the many (eco-prefixed) theoretical discourses related to indigeneity on Indian agricultural architecture, and hence, this study makes a genuine attempt to repair this deficiency.

Keywords: hunter, katala vesa, myth, indigeneity, ritual.

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Negotiating Masculine Circles: Female Agency in Aphra Behn’s Work

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Arifa Ghani Rahman
Associate Professor, Department of English and Humanities, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. ORCID: 0000-0003-1165-2541. Email: arifa.rahman@ulab.edu.bd

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.03

Abstract

In her works, Aphra Behn examines the possibilities of female agency in a patriarchal world. This paper begins by contextualizing Behn’s work within the male literary tradition in which she wrote to understand the place of female agency. Her play The Rover is closely examined to show this agency in heterosexual relationships and its connection to money and parental/patriarchal authority. The paper also analyzes the interrelationship between subjects and objects of desire. The use of masks in the play as instruments that accord temporary liberation or empowerment is discussed, and the paper questions whether female agency in Behn’s world is real or merely assumed. A poem is also examined to reinforce the conclusion which suggests that, despite empowerment in various forms, female agency is ultimately only temporary. However, the paper also questions whether Behn had ulterior motives in presenting female agency as unsustainable.

Keywords: Female agency, Empowerment, Objects of desire, Masks, Masculine

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Experiencing Hindustani Raga Music: A Select Study from Kolkata

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Sanjoy Bandopadhyay1 & Samidha Vedabala2

1Professor, Department of Music, Sikkim University, Sikkim, India. Email:  sbandopadhyay@cus.ac.in

2Assistant Professor, Department of Music, Sikkim University, Sikkim, India. Email: svedabala@cus.ac.in

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.02

 Abstract

The research study is executed to identify the essential musical components that work behind the success of Hindustani Raga Music (HRM) renderings. It examines different performance components of HRM rendered in public concert situations. The traditionally prescribed parts of HRM performances and the music generated effects like raga mood, serenity, liveliness, surprise, and others in performances are also analyzed in the study. The objective of this study is to identify the musical components that are responsible for generating considerable impacts on the listeners. This investigation is based on the rating of different musical components by the listeners. Highly popular HRM festivals were selected for obtaining data. The findings successfully indicate that slow improvisations and traditionally accepted raga moods are the high-impact components for good acceptance by the listeners; also, the applications of high-speed components make the renderings outstanding.

Keywords: Hindustani, raga music, mood, speed, serenity, liveliness, uniqueness, surprise

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Reassembling Film Interpretation: Using Technique, Technology and Film Sciences in a Latin American Context

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Victor Hugo Jimenez

Associate Professor, Art & Enterprize, University of Guanajuato. Email: vhjimeneza@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.01

Abstract

Cinematic interpretation requires input from the praxis of film making, and involves extensive and slow understanding of artistic parameters like colorimetry, color cognition, editing and cinematography. These technical aspects may be extracted from knowledge of contemporary digital media that are commonly intrapolated into films. Technological media and its applications clarify how semantic units are generated and processed for understanding the kinetic effects of films. Filmic praxis affects communication of “story”, creating the best opportunity for insight into the weltanschauung of the media.

Keywords: cinematography, synergised interpretation, film praxis



Postcolonial Queer Dimension of Travel in the Goopi-Bagha Trilogy of Films

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245 views

Koushik Mondal

Ph.D, Independent Researcher. ORCID: 0000-0002-9003-3433. Email: itsme.onlykoushik@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.41

 Abstract

European genre of travel writing is guided by an “ethnographic impulse” which constructed India as an exotic space. Neglecting the country’s vast complex and liberal culture, the European travel narratives about India focused on certain negative aspects like ignorance, women subordination, casteism, and religious conflict to construct India as a primitive and exotic space, an excuse for colonialism. In contrast to these the British presented themselves as civilised, rational, masculine and enterprising. Resisting these definitive absolutes, postcolonial travel writers challenge the construction of India in terms of exotic barbarity. Goopi-Bagha trilogy (Satyajit Ray’s Goopi Gyne Bagha Byne (Adventures of Goopi and Bagha, 1969), Hirak Rajar Deshe (The Kingdom of Diamond, 1980) and his son Sandip Ray’s Goopi Bagha Phire  Elo (The Return of Goopi and Bagha, 1992)), though primarily children’s fantasy films, uses the motif of travel to challenge the Orientalising gaze of the European travel narratives. The scholastic seriousness of the realistic genre is parodied in a carnivalesque spirit through the fantastic mode of children’s films. The films not only question the ‘ethnographic impulse’ of constructing India as irrational and uncivilised but also dismiss the tropes of exoticism exposing India’s complex and rich culture and focusing on its scenic beauty. While European travel narratives are the story of exploitation of nature, of discovery and conquest, in these films the two friends Goopi, Bagha travel only to enjoy and wonder at nature’s unconquerable spirit. Presenting two lower caste effeminate men in the guise of travellers, the films unsettle the masculine aura of adventure, associated with this imperial genre. Travel provides them not only the opportunity to enjoy nature and express a concern for the marginalised, but also the scope to move beyond the carceral gaze of heteronormativity and enjoy their homoeroticism. Thus travel becomes the means to unsettle the heteronormative paradigm of knowledge and relation which was consolidated by the British colonisers in India through mediums like travel literature. Using the destabilising effect of postcolonial queer theory, this paper explores how the films not only resist the Oriental construction of India as an ‘exotic other’, but also how the motif of travel is used to contest the ideas of colonial modernity, of power and marginality.

Keywords: Travel, Exoticism, Postcolonial, Masculine, Queer

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Theorizing the Experience of Travel in the Film North 24 Kaatham

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Anupama A. P1 &  Vinod Balakrishnan2

1Research Scholar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. National Institute of Technology,Tiruchirappalli. Tamil Nadu. India. E-mail: anupriya2621@gmail.com

2Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli. Tamil Nadu. India. E-mail: winokrish@yahoo.co.uk

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.40

Abstract

There are two spaces in Anil Radhakrishnan’s travel narrative, North 24 Kaatham (2013), the topographical space outside and the psychological space inside. The film is read as a dialectical tension that plays out in the character of Harikrishnan who suffers from an obsessive compulsive disorder. The fateful journey of Harikrishnan on a day of harthal (general strike) is, to all appearance, topographical though it is, in equal measure, a psychological one. The paper, through a formalist analysis of the film, draws a correspondence between the two journeys of Harikrishnan in the company of fellow passengers: Gopalan and Narayani (Nani), in order to demonstrate Hari’s transformation from a self-absorbed individual towards a sociable human being. The argument is structured by combining Walter Benjamin’s idea of “aura” and Gaston Bachelard’s dialectics of space to explain the protagonist’s psycho-spatial transformation.

Keywords: travel, outside/inside, topographical space, formalist analysis, spectator experience

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Anxious Encounters with the (Monstrous) Other: The Yakshi Tales of Medieval Kerala

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Meenu B.

Department of English, Amrita School of Arts and Sciences, Amrita ViswaVidyapeetham, Kochi Campus.ORCID: 0000-0002-9141-3921. Email: beingmeenu@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.39

 Abstract
Stories about monstrous encounters during travel are ubiquitous in every culture. Scholars see them as figurative representations of the cultural anxiety related to traversing the unknown and the encounter with the “Other”. For instance, the early Greek ‘monster-on-the-road’ tales are often read in the context of the expansion of trade among Greek city-states and the Greek colonization of far flung territories which necessitated going beyond the safety of familiar town boundaries. The Indian epics and folktales also abound with encounters of travellers with supernatural/monstrous beings. Whether it is episodes such as the “YakshaPrasna” in the Mahabharata, or the Bodhisatta’s encounter with the Naga and the Yaksha in Buddhist legends, or his encounter with Yakkhinis in the Jataka tales, travel often involved encountering the Dangerous “Other” who had to be defeated/satiated/converted. These early traveller’s tales can be read as records of the anxieties regarding expansion/establishment of the Kshatriya hero’s kingdom where the wild/primitive outside the bounds of civilization had to be conquered/appropriated. In the case of the religious hero, the monster represented a crisis of faith – either he/she was an embodiment of the allures of material pleasure the ascetic had to guard against or a staunch believer of another faith who had to be converted/conquered. All these “forgotten” traditions of travel come together in the Yakshi tales of medieval Kerala where a shape-shifting tree spirit haunting lonely pathways evokes memories of the ancient traveller’s encounter with the wilderness and its corresponding deities. This paper attempts to read these tales from medieval Kerala against earlier Indian traditions of travel as well as the literal and metaphorical crossings of caste and gender borders that travel entailed during the medieval period.

Keywords: monsters, travel, Indian epics, Jataka tales, medieval Kerala, Yakshi tales

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Journeying through the Indian Railways in Around India in 80 Trains (2012) by Monisha Rajesh and Chai, Chai: Travels in Places Where You Stop But Get Never Off (2009) by Bishwanath Ghosh

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Siddharth Dubey

Ph.D Research Scholar, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Delhi NCR. ORCID id: 0000-0002-9438-787X. Email id: siddharthd888@gmail.com.

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.38

Abstract

An Indian train is a space that exemplifies a true sense of transient cultural pattern as it travels through different states of India constantly assimilating people of diverse cultures. In this liminal space, a passenger travels from known to unknown in terms of geography, culture, language, cuisine, sartorial configuration and psychological makeup. Indian Railways offers an insightful analysis of cohabitation – the conflict and the coexistence of people amidst cultural differences.An Indian train is an exemplar of an accurate secular structure, blurring the lines of discrepancies based on religion, caste, gender, sex and sexuality. Prejudices that are evident in spaces relatively marked by certain spatial permanence dilute in a train. A provisional spatial arrangement of a train therefore questions the idea of tolerance and intolerance compared to that of permanent arrangement. As the Indian train incorporates people of all ages and territories, the train is a specimen of the concept of Bakhtinian polyphony, wherein the dialogues occurring between passengers represent varied consciousness. Thus, a train travelogue encompasses unmerged voices, each carrying a unique conscious design. The people travelling in an Indian train are separated on one single ground: economy. Therefore, economic factor becomes an overarching pattern of base to assign a certain culture in a superstructure to each class and each offers a unique perspective to the travelogue. This paper will analyze the trope of the train in two Indian travelogues based on culture, Marxist economic structure, Bakhtinian concept of polyphony, secularism and the idea of tolerance.

Keywords: Indian trains, travelogue, liminality, polyphony, secularism

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