Indian Literature in English

Representing Desire in Minor Literature: Characterisation in The White Tiger

/
131 views

Farooq Ahmad Sheikh
Assistant Professor, Department of English, North Campus, University of Kashmir, J&K, India.

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 17, Issue 2, 2025. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v17n2.02g
Full-Text PDF Issue Access
Abstract

The Lacanian subject has two distinct aspects: one corresponds to the structural subject shaped by the symbolic order. At the same time, the other transcends symbolisation or coding, referred to by Lacan as the subject of desire or the Real. Minor literature, defined as the literature of minorities expressed in a major language, also seeks to disrupt dominant codifications and convey the flow of pure desire. Viewed through a Lacanian lens, minor literature primarily engages with the Real. This paper examines The White Tiger as an example of minor literature, with a particular emphasis on its characterisation. The central argument is that the novel’s characters do not conform to traditional types, identities, or subject positions. Instead, they embody pure desire and are better understood as Lacanian subjects of desire/Real, rather than as ideological constructs within a discourse. The primary focus of the novel is to represent the reverse side of the subject or the desire rather than the discursive formation.

Keywords: Representing Desire, Minor Literature, Characterisation, Indian Novel, The White Tiger

Conflicts of Interest: The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
Funding: No funding was received for this research.
Article History: Received: 28 February 2025. Revised: 13 May 2025. Accepted: 14 May 2025. First published: 21 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 by the author/s.
License: License Aesthetix Media Services, India. Distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Published by: Aesthetix Media Services, India 
Citation: Sheikh, F. A. (2025). Representing Desire in Minor Literature: Characterisation in The White Tiger. Rupkatha Journal, 17(2). https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v17n2.02g

Rupkatha Journal's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Quality education (SDG 4) Gender equality (SDG 5) Decent work and economic growth (SDG 8) Reduced inequalities (SDG 10) Sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11) Climate action (SDG 13) Life on land (SDG 15) Peace, justice, and strong institutions (SDG 16)

Representing Gandhi: A Study of Mahatma Gandhi as a Character in Selected Novels from Colonial and Post-Colonial Times

/
599 views

Mainak Gupta
Academic Content Researcher and Writer, Inventive Gentech Solutions, LLP: Kolkata, India
Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 15, Issue 3, 2023. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v15n3.07
[Article History: Received: 05 January 2023. Revised: 10 August 2023. Accepted: 15 August 2023. Published: 20 August 2023.]
Full-Text PDF  Issue Access

Abstract

The 1930s saw the rise of Mahatma Gandhi as the frontline leader of India’s struggle against the British imperialists, and it was also a decade when the Indian novel in English came of age, with the publication of Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable, R.K. Narayan’s Swami and Friends and Raja Rao’s Kanthapura within a few years of each other. The English novel in India grew as a consequence of the English education introduced by the British, and it was used as a weapon against the imperialists by a bunch of young men who were primarily educated abroad, with an aim to use a universal language that addressed all Indians all over the world. Gandhi, unsurprisingly, became a great source of inspiration for these writers. Gandhi has been a subject of literature and other forms of art to this day, but the portrayal of the ‘Great-soul’ (as Tagore called Gandhi) has gone through a change since the pre-independence days. This essay analyses the change in the portrayal of Gandhi by close-reading four novels, Untouchable (1935) and Kanthapura (1938) from the colonised period, and Waiting for the Mahatma (1955) and Dhorai Charit Manas (1950) from the post-independence era. The essay shows how the portrayal of Gandhi and Gandhism went through a change in the novels from the colonial period to post-colonial times, as the reverence and deification of Gandhi that was so prevalent in the novels of the colonial time gave way to a more humane portrayal of the most influential leader of India’s freedom struggle.

Keywords: Mahatma Gandhi; Indian fiction in English; Mulk Raj Anand; Raja Rao; R.K. Narayan; Satinath Bhaduri; Indian freedom struggle
[Sustainable Development Goals: Quality Education]
Citation: Gupta, Mainak. 2023. Representing Gandhi: A Study of Mahatma Gandhi as a Character in Selected Novels from Colonial and Post-Colonial Times. Rupkatha Journal 15:3. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v15n3.07

Of Maternal Uncles and Mangalik Brides: Sakuni in the Folk Narrations of The Mahabharata

///
541 views

Seema Sinha1, Kumar Sankar Bhattacharya2 & Sailaja Nandigama3
1Ph.D. and a Post-Doc from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus, Rajasthan. Email: p2015101@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in
2Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus, Rajasthan. Email: kumar.bhattacharya@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in
3Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus, Rajasthan. Email: sailajan@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in

[Received February 10 2023, modified 24 July 2023, accepted 25 July 2023, first published 29 July 2023]

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 15, Issue 2, 2023. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v15n2.23
Full-Text PDF Issue Access

Abstract
The timelessness of The Mahabharata lies in its ability to re-invent itself, thereby giving the society a chance to re-negotiate, revise, and revive the discourse. It also gives the so-called ‘villains of the piece’, well established in the ‘rogues’ gallery’, a chance to redeem themselves. One such character is Sakuni, the ‘shrewd’ maternal uncle of the Kauravas, whose negative image in Vyasa’s textual universe is questioned by the folk renditions of the grand epic. The Oriya Mahabharata by Sarala Das views Sakuni not as the master conspirator who brought about the great war, but as a victim who suffered because of the court politics of the Kauravas. The strong popular culture that supports him is also evident in the narratives of the Kalbelias of Rajasthan, and in the folk renderings of the epic in Kerala. This makes us reflect as to why the meta-narrative has vilified Sakuni and treated him with contempt when the folk traditions view him in a more charitable light, or at least give him the benefit of doubt. This paper utilizes narrative research methods to understand the dehumanization of Sakuni in the dominant discourse. It employs the postmodern theories of psychoanalytical criticism and deconstruction in the study of the petite narratives associated with Sakuni to facilitate engagement, plurality, and divergence in the discourse. The paper attempts to read the chronicles of self, society, and social justice in these lesser-known narratives to liberate Sakuni from his filial debt and relocate him into the discursive universe.

Keywords: The Mahabharata, Sakuni, discursive, petite narratives, oral tradition, plurality, social justice

[Sustainable Development Goals: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, Reduced Inequalities]

You might be interested in

Gay Subculture and the Cities in India: A Critical Reading of Select Works of R Raj Rao

///
697 views

Sriya Das

PhD Scholar, Humanities and Social Sciences Department, IIT Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, sriya1312@kgpian.iitkgp.ac.in, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9530-7296

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.40

PlumX Metrics

Abstract

In delineating the painful experiences of LGBTQ individuals after the introduction of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code R Raj Rao’s works look into the struggle of these people to survive the onslaught of normative sexual discourses. Given the fact that Queer sexuality has been continuously questioned, suspected and tormented prior to its legitimate recognition in 2018, Rao draws attention to the nuances of gay urban life in India. The paper critically analyses the representation of gay subculture in the cities of India as reflected in select works of Rao. It demystifies how gay people share the urban space, manage to make room for their pleasure in the cities, and pose a threat to the dominant understanding of sexuality. The ultimate objective of this paper is to understand the role of the city in the (un)making of a subcultural identity. Textual analysis, with reference to certain theoretical frameworks, would be used as a qualitative research method.

 Keywords: Sexuality, subculture, city, normativity, resistance

You might be interested in

Gender Subtexts in Collusive Linkages between Bhadralok Ethos and Colonial Law in Select Daroga Daptor Narratives

//
441 views

Tapti Roy

PhD Research Scholar, Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia. ORCID Id: 0000-0001-9354-1882. Email: subterraneanhominin@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.39

PlumX Metrics

Abstract

Crime writings can be said to have originated in Bengal in the last decades of the 19th century with the emergence of narratives of seemingly true criminal investigations compiled by real-life darogas like Girish Chandra Bose, Priyanath Mukhopadhyay, and Bakaullah. These non-canonical accounts though rendered in simplistic narrative techniques to report cases that may appear inconsequential to present-day readership not only set the field for more complex fictional works of criminal investigation but also laid the foundations of a new genre of vernacular popular fiction favoured till date. It can be mentioned here that the criminal investigation accounts of Priyanath Mukhopadhyay were serialised as Daroga Daptor for a significant span of a decade which owing to its elements of thrill, mystery, and instruction were immensely coveted by the readers. The significance of the Daroga Daptor narratives for the purpose of the paper however lies in its reflections of the contemporary socio-legal setup comprised of responses towards sexual mores, socio-ethical strictures, and gender positions. In this context, the objective of the paper is to analyse select narratives of Daroga Daptor with females as victims or accused, namely the novel Adarini and the short story “Promoda”. Initiating the process with an overview of the office of the daroga emphasising on the popular associations of daroga with sloth and corruption, the paper will note the manner in which Daroga Daptor marked a paradigm shift in the popular imagination with regards to the intellectual abilities and sensibilities of daroga. Proceeding with the analysis of the aforesaid narratives, the paper by emphasising the 19th-century gender roles with respect to hypermasculine bhadralok norms and tenets of colonial law will situate the women characters as existing in an ambiguous position within the colluding grounds of the two apparently opposite masculine factions. The paper thus will establish the 19th-century native female body as a passive pliable vessel for various ideological experimentations reading them as perpetually incarcerated within the dynamic limits of an efficient, promptly adaptive, and multifariously hegemonic masculine order.

Keywords: 19th century Bengal, Gender relations, Daroga Daptor, Crime Writing, Bhadralok, Priyanath Mukhopadhyay

You might be interested in

Relocating Colonial Women in Resistance: An Interpretation of Rabindranath Tagore’s Nastanirh and Chaturanga

/////
672 views

T. K. Krishnapriya1, Dr Padma Rani2, Dr Bashabi Fraser3

1Junior Research Fellow (UGC), Manipal Institute of Communication, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India; Email: krishnapriya.t1@learner.manipal.edu; ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5795-1275

2Director & Professor, Manipal Institute of Communication, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India; Email: padma.rani@manipal.edu

3Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing, Director, Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies (ScoTs), School of Arts & Creative Industries, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh; Email: bashabifraserwriter@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.38

PlumX Metrics

Abstract

The Colonial Bengal of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was a place of contradictions. For instance, despite certain evident advancements in the resolution of the women’s question, some of the emancipatory attempts of the period marked a rather dubious account of women’s liberation as patriarchal underpinnings hegemonized the efforts.  Amid this complex backdrop, the colonial women’s position is further jeopardized by the western feminist scholarship that contrives colonial third world women as perennial victims and beneficiaries of emancipatory actions from the West. The paper attempts to relocate the colonial women and their resistance by negotiating the fissures in their construction. This study, informed by bell hooks’ (1990) postulations on margin and resistance, simultaneously seeks to form a bridge between the experiences of marginalized women beyond borders. Rabindranath Tagore’s Nastanirh (1901) and Chaturanga (1916) are chosen for close textual reading to examine the experiences of colonial women.  The author’s women protagonists often embody the social dilemma of the period. Tagore’s Damini and Charu exist in the margin of resistance whilst Nanibala occupies the margin of deprivation.  Significantly, Charu and Damini traverse the precarious “profound edges” of the margin to imagine a “new world” free of subjugation. Thus, the resistance offered by these women subverts the predominant conceptions of victimhood of colonial women, and it enables them to be posited as active agents.

Keywords: Tagore, hooks, Colonial Bengal, Resistance, Agency

 

You might be interested in

Bimala in Ghare-Baire: Tagore’s New Woman Relocating the “World in Her Home”

///
5.7K views

Ayanita Banerjee (Ph.D)

Professor-English, University of Engineering and Management, New-Town, Kolkata. West Bengal. Email: abayanita8@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.37

PlumX Metrics

 Abstract

The character of Bimala in Tagore’s Ghare- Baire or The Home and the World as a symbol of struggle for the liberation of Bengali woman as well as Bengal remains at the centre of scholarly discussion since the publication (1916), translation (1919) and the film adaptation (1984) of the novel. Bimala, the main protagonist of the novel is presented as a native Indian woman who gets western education and lives a modern lifestyle due to her marriage. She has conflicting attitudes, feelings and thoughts which recur randomly in the narrative. The paper focusses on the character of Bimala and interrogates the location of her agency with respect to the rising Swadeshi movement and the political excesses on one hand and her relationship with Nikhil and Sandip on the other. On a further note, reflecting on the political and epic underpinnings of Bimala (caught between the gradual and the radical approach to Swadeshi), the paper intends to stretch beyond her “situation” (the apex of the triangular relationship) and explore her self-realization at the end of the novel. Bimala, the woman set between the option of choices between the ‘motherland’ and the ‘two-men’ gradually transgress from the shackles of her naïve identity to become the beset New Woman. To explore Tagore’s rewritten epic of a woman (epitomized in real life as the New Woman), we need to discuss how the writer helped shaping the image of the New Woman through his conscious evoking of Bimala in the role of Sita, Nikhil in the role of Rama and Sandip in the role of Ravana. In response to the popular inscriptions of Bharatmata, Tagore allegorises the iconographic representation of Bimala resembling the “divine feminine strength (Shakti)for creation and (Kali) for the cause of destruction.” (Pandit 1995,217-19).

 Keywords: Zenana, Epic battle, (Re)location, Bharatmata, New-Woman.

Indian English is also Creole: Incorporating Regional Bias in Research Pedagogy

/////
2.2K views

Tirtha Prasad Mukhopadhyay

Professor, Department of Art and Enterprise, University of Guanajuato, Campus Irapuato-Salamanca, Mexico., Mexico. Email: chiefeditor@rupkatha.com

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.16

PlumX Metrics

Abstract:

Research pedagogy in India should readjust itself to accommodate claims of regional autonomy in arts and letters. Different ways of reconstructing a pedagogy of research are recommended. Reflexive Humanism ensures adequate assessment and evaluation of cultural, literary, and aesthetic achievements of diverse populations. The Indian English corpus is redefined as a creolized Indian language with lexical and semantic factors borrowed from English. The consciousness of pro-national subjectivism is also considered an essential constituent of Indian English literature. Lines of research are suggested for aspiring scholars in the Indian academy. The author emphasizes a dynamic and sensitive adaptation of research methodology which respects and reintegrates itself with the evolution of globally aware, contemporary society in India.

 Keywords: Anglophone, Creolization, Indian English, Research Pedagogy

 

Of fear and fantasy, fact and fiction: Interrogating canonical Indian literary historiography towards comprehending partition of Bengal in post-Independence Indian (English) fictional space

//
433 views

Ashes Gupta

Professor, Dept. of English, Tripura University (A Central University), Suryamaninagar, Agartala, West Tripura. ORCID: 0000-0002-5881-8468. Email: ashesgupta@tripurauniv.in

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.13

 Abstract

A victim of the partition of Eastern India/undivided Bengal, a refugee is one who has ironically left behind the real but has carried on forever indelibly imprinted in memory that which is lost and remembered in superlatives, thus moving and simultaneously resisting to move. Remaining mentally anchored forever on ‘Bengal’s shore’ and having been denied the moment of adequate articulation of the loss in factual terms partly due to immediate trauma and partly due to the inherent politics of the language of standard literary expression vis-à-vis spoken language (Bangla vs Bangal respectively) with its hierarchic positionings, as well as the politics of state policy that attributed partition of Western India primordial signification, the Bengali Hindu refugee migrating from erstwhile East Pakistan (and now Bangladesh) to India, has never ‘really’ spoken and this is the hypothesis of this argument. Thus, what is heard, being far removed from the historical moment of rupture that was partition and with the loss of that fateful generation is bound to be ‘fiction’ and not ‘fact’. This paper proposes that since the refugee voice was denied adequate articulation of the ‘facts’ and the ‘fears’ resultant from partition in this part of Eastern India, that historical moment of perception and documentation has been irretrievably lost. Hence any attempt at documenting the same now shall obviously result in fictionalization of and fantasizing the loss as is evident in original and translational post-Independence Indian English Fiction -the moment of loss being the moment of fictional genesis. This paper also puts forward the necessity of identifying two specific periods beyond ‘independence’ whose axiomatic point would be the partition of Eastern India/ undivided Bengal viz. pre-partition and post-partition Indian Literature. The same shall apply to Indian English Literature both in original and translation.

Keywords: fear, fantasy, fact, fiction, partition, canonical historiography, refugee, independence, Indian English fictional space, inter-semiotic, translation.

Representing Kolkata : A Study of ‘Gaze’ Construction in Amit Chaudhuri’s Calcutta: Two Years in the City and Bishwanath Ghosh’s Longing Belonging: An Outsider at Home in Calcutta

///
444 views

Saurabh Sarmadhikari

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Gangarampur College, Dakshin Dinajpur, West Bengal. ORCID: 0000-0002-8577-4878. Email:  saurabhsarmadhikari@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.32

Abstract

Indian travel writings in English exclusively on Kolkata have been rare even though tourist guidebooks such as the Lonely Planet have dedicated sections on the city. In such a scenario, Amit Chaudhuri’s Calcutta: Two Years in the City (2016) and Bishwanath Ghosh’s Longing Belonging: An Outsider at Home in Calcutta (2014) stand out as exceptions. Both these narratives, written by probashi (expatriate) Bengalis, represent Kolkata though a bifocal lens. On the one hand, their travels are a journey towards rediscovering their Bengali roots and on the other, their representation/construction of the city of Kolkata is as hard-boiled as any seasoned traveller. The contention of this paper is that both Chaudhuri and Ghosh foreground certain selected/pre-determined signifiers that are common to Kolkata for the purpose of their representation which are instrumental in constructing the ‘gaze’ of their readers towards the city. This process of ‘gaze’ construction is studied by applying John Urry and Jonas Larsen’s conceptualization of the ‘tourist gaze’. Borrowing the Foucauldian concept of ‘gaze’, Urry and Larsen state that ‘gazing’ is a discursive practice that is both constituted by the filters of the gazer’s cultural moorings as well as the institutionalized mechanisms of the travel/tourism industry which rely significantly on the deployment of signs and signifiers to construct the ‘gaze’ of the travellers and the tourists towards a tourist destination. The present paper seeks to analyze how both Chaudhuri and Ghosh use ‘selective’ signifiers of the city of Kolkata to construct the ‘gaze’ of their readers towards the city in their representation.

Keywords: representation, gaze, construction, Kolkata, travel narratives

You might be interested in

1 2