Rewriting Resistance: Caste and Gender in Indian Literature

‘Rewriting Resistance: Caste and Gender in Indian Literature’ explores the claustrophobic shadow of discrimination hanging over Indian women and lower caste people from ancient times. It examines how different literary figures paint a vivid and descriptive picture of the physical and psychological oppression faced throughout India. The book traces feminist resistance, subaltern resistance, and resistance during the anti-colonial struggle, with the literary outputs discussed working as socio-political activity against dominant ideologies. The volume further talks about the responsibility, not only of those oppressed, but also of us as human beings, to speak out against the violation of human rights and for justice. So, the book focuses on the literary writers who always dream of a better India where all people, regardless of their caste, class and gender, can live and breathe freely.

The book is divided into three parts. Part I describes the plight of women, their commodification and the politics around them, and how they fight hard to regain their faded identity. Part II depicts the interesting findings on gender-caste intersections and discrimination. Part III explores the struggle of the low caste, specifically male members of Dalit community, along with their history. It further portrays how orthodoxy in rituals creates the burden of traditional and existential crises.

‘Rewriting Resistance: Caste and Gender in Indian Literature’ re-visits Indian literary texts in terms of what they reveal about the resistance registered through the suffering of human beings (women and Dalits) at the hands of fellow human beings, and further links the discussion to our contemporary situation. The book has a unique quality in that it is not only a detailed study of select Indian English texts, but also delves into an in-depth analysis of texts from Bengali, Urdu, and Hindi literature. The work is likely to affect and appeal to students, scholars and academics, and can be adopted for classroom teaching and research purposes as well.

Foreword by Nazia Hasan

Preface

Acknowledgements

Note on Editors

Note on Contributors

Caste and Gender: An Introduction

PART I Gender and Resistance

Chapter 1 Power Politics and Reclaiming Identity: A Study of the Transgender in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Safiul Islam
Aliah University, West Bengal, India

Chapter 2 Redefining Women, Reconstructing Space in Attia Hosain’s Sunlight on a Broken Column
Afsha Naaz
GGS Indraprastha University, Delhi, India

Chapter 3 Women in Premchand’s Stories Are Types, Not Individuals: A Contemporary Study of Select Short Stories of Munshi Premchand
Shreya Ghosh
Holy Cross College, Tripura, India

Chapter 4 The God of Small Things: Revisiting the Bible of the Indian Feminist Movement
Mohosin Mandal
Aligarh Muslim University, Uttar Pradesh, India

Chapter 5 Bodies that Matter: Interrogating the Discourses around the ‘Body’ in Samina Ali’s Madras on Rainy Days
Hasina Wahida
Aliah University, West Bengal, india

Chapter 6 Body on the Market: A Marxist–Feminist Study of the Novel Masooma by Ismat Chughtai
Md Mizanur Rahaman
Samuktala Sidhu Kanhu College, West Bengal, India

Chapter 7 Searching for Self and Autonomy, Breaking Claustrophobic Domesticity: A Critical Analysis of Kavery Nambisan’s Mango-Coloured Fish
Tanbir Shahnawaz
Rishi Bankim Chandra College, West Bengal, India

Chapter 8 Technocracy versus Theocracy: A Critical Study of Sultana’s Dream
Abdul Mabood
Chandigarh University, Panjab, India

PART II Caste-Gender Intersectionality and Resistance

Chapter 9 Individual and Agency in Derozio’s “The Fakeer of Jungheera”
Siddhartha Chakraborti
Aligarh Muslim University, Uttar Pradesh, India

Chapter 10 Understanding Dalit Feminist Perspective through Bama’s Karukku
Fouzia Usmani
Aligarh Muslim University, Uttar Pradesh, India

Chapter 11 Reinterpreting to Retrieve Lost Women’s Voices: Gendered Subalternities in Mahasweta Devi’s “Bayen” and Raja Rao’s “Javni”
Kusumika Sarkar
Aligarh Muslim University, Uttar Pradesh, India

PART III Caste and Resistance

Chapter 12 Casteism and Colonial Discourse: A Projection of Marginality in Bama’s Karukku
Abdus Sattar
Galsi Mahavidyalaya, Purba Bardhaman, West Bengal, India

Chapter 13 Bhimayana as a Biographical Stance on Resistance
Anisha Ghosh
University of Kalyani, West Bengal, India

Chapter 14 Orthodoxy in Rituals Creating the Burden of Tradition and Existential Crisis: A Critical Reading of U. R. Anantha Murthy’s Samskara
Ismail Sarkar
University of Kalyani, West Bengal, India

Chapter 15 Bhimayana: A Graphic Projection of History and Plight of Dalits in India
Eeshan Ali
Dukhulal Nibaran Chandra College
Motahar Hossain
Aliah University, West Bengal, India
Imtiaj Alam
Aliah University, West Bengal, India

Further Readings

Index

Md Rakibul Islam is working as an Assistant Professor of English for the last five years at the Murshidabad Centre of Aligarh Muslim University, India. He has published several papers in various national and international journals and in edited books. He has already edited a book entitled 'Diaspora Poetics in South Asian English Writings' published from Cambridge Scholars Publishing, England, and recently got published his research paper entitled “Kim and Kip in the Mirror of Mimicry: A Postcolonial Study” in 'The Groves: Working Papers on English Studies', from Spain. He is presently working as one of the reviewers for 'The Criterion: An International Journal in English'.

Md Jakir Hossain is working as an Assistant Professor of English for the last four years at Chitta Mahato Memorial College (affiliated to Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University), Purulia, India. He has published several research papers in various National and International journals. He has also served as the college coordinator IQAC for three years and currently serves as the Teacher-in-Charge of the College.

Resistance, Class, Caste, Gender, Dalits, Feminism, Gender and Resistance, Caste-Gender Intersectionality, Caste and Resistance