Gender Studies - Page 12

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

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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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A Journey of Exploration and Reconstruction of the Feminine Self: Reading Shivya Nath’s The Shooting Star: A Girl, Her Backpack and the World (2018)

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Akshita Chotia

Research Scholar, Department of English and Modern European Languages, Banasthali University, Rajasthan. Email: akshitasharma0023@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.34

Abstract

The contemporary philosophical, intellectual and literary plentitudes aver the fact that travel literature deals with the discourse of identity. Travel records our temporal and spatial progress. It throws light on how one is defined and identified. Many critical texts on travel writing have explored the transcendental world of the journey of the human self. Further, there have been some critical theorists from India as well who have also examined the uncanny nature of journey and therefore the journey in the outside world is represented as a metaphor of the journey of the internal world. In addition, there have been some Indian women writers who have explored the complex terrain of journey that a woman undertakes and through the process they explore themselves. The present paper intends to explore the journey from an existential crisis to the growth of the woman self in the book The Shooting Star: A Girl, Her Backpack and the World (2018) by Shivya Nath. The vivid descriptions, moving encounters and the uplifting adventures of an Indian woman which are depicted in the book, map not only the world but also the human spirit. The study intends to apply the basic arguments of female bildungsroman and theory of self for understanding the process of growth and development as far as the life of the protagonist is concerned.

Keywords: identity crisis, exploration of the woman self, female bildungsroman, travel literature

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Women and Cultural Transformation: The Politics of Representation in the Novels of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay

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Sudip Roy Choudhury

Ph.D Research Scholar, Raiganj University, West Bengal, India. Orcid: 0000-0003-4833-7975. Email id: sudiproychoudhury60@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.07

 Abstract

This paper begins by arguing that Bankimchandra, a pioneering novelist and nationalist thinker of India, sought to contain the nineteenth century ‘woman question’ within his nationalist project of ‘cultural transformation’. But this nationalist ideal is based on a gendered differentiation of the nation-culture into spiritual and material which has a far reaching implication in terms of his novelistic re-presentation of the nineteenth century ‘woman question’ and the ‘hierarchical inclusion’ of women in the political space of the nation. Hence, by contextualizing the works of Bankimchandra in a time of colonial encounter the present paper aims to bring out the complexities and paradoxes inherent in Bankimchandra’s formation of the strategy of re-presentation of women and reform in several of his novels.

Keywords: Colonial encounter, cultural transformation, nationalist consciousness, gender, social reform.

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Gender Gap among the BPL Households of Tea Gardens and Villages of Dibrugarh District of Assam

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Bidisha Mahanta

Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, DoomDooma College. Email: sonmoni_mahanta@yahoo.co.in

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n1.26

Abstract

The present paper aims to analyse the status of gender gap among the BPL households of Panitola Block of Dibrugarh District of Assam. The target households are divided into two groups –village and tea gardens and then compared the gender gap status of the two groups using indicators like education, employment, political participation, household decision making and attitude towards unequal gender role. The study reveals that gender gap exists in areas like education and employment. However gaps in educational attainment and employment are more in village households as compared to tea garden households. In household decision making also gender gap exists and it is more prominent in tea garden. However in regard of political empowerment, not a single person of the study area is a member of even the Gaon Panchayat. So their political empowerment is analyzed through their participation in political process merely by casting vote. All the respondents from the study area show negative attitude towards unequal gender role and reported that they do not support wife beating and  treat both male and female child equally. From the study we have found that tea garden women are more empowered than village women as less gender gap prevails in tea garden as compared to village.

Keywords: BPL, Village, tea garden, Gender gap, Gender disparity

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