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Imagining the Dalit Identity: An Analysis of Narrative Techniques in Select Dalit writing
Get PDFThis paper analyses the narrative techniques of two Dalit texts; an autobiography called Joothan by Omprakash Valmiki and a novel called Koogai: The Owl by Cho. Dharman. Through this analysis, the paper presents an account of the changing socio-political conditions of the Dalits in India after independence. Using the theoretical framework of narratology, the paper argues that the two very different narrative styles present in these two texts are reflective of the respective conditions within which their writers found themselves in and the larger socio-political questions that the Dalit emancipation movement was dealing with during those periods. Another aspect that the paper covers is how these two texts present the inherent conflicts and contradictions within the Dalit identity. It then asks the question whether these contradictions should be flattened to present a more homogeneous conceptualisation of what it means to be a Dalit or whether the identity should be imagined alongside these contradictions
Mahasweta Devi: The Voice of Dalits and Tribal People
Get PDFWriting is a mirror that reflects social recorded, financial and political occasions refracted through nonexistent or anecdotal domains of public sayings. Strangely, in such accounts, writing additionally mirrors the irregular characteristics or complexities that exist in social as well as individual connections. Like many other European writers, Indians also have launched a war against such political, social and economic exploitations of the oppressors. As people know that women are more kind enough by heart, that’s why they have explored the various social evils and maladies that are continuously ruining the lives of the marginalized people in the form of caste, creed and religion. Apart from writing about feminism and gender discrimination, they have also dealt with the other grave issues that destroy the lives of these marginalized outcastes. Their works reveal the true picture of the contemporary society where innocence is exploited through the corrupted ideas of human beings in this man-made society. The present research paper has tried to explore the plight of Dalits and Tribals in the works of Mahasweta Devi, one of the great marginal voices in Indian English Literature
Nature as a Device in Tanure Ojaide’s The Tales of the Harmattan and Flora Nwapa’s Cassava Song and Rice Song
Get PDFThis paper examines nature as a device in Tanure Ojaide’s The Tale of the Harmattan and Flora Nwapa’s Cassava Song and Rice Song. It proceeds on the assumption that there is a relationship between nature and literature beyond the interest of the Romantics and Ecocriticism and that this relationship is often demonstrated aesthetically and thematically to express the human condition. With emphasis on the metaphorization of the components that make up nature, this paper deploys Peter Steiner’s Machine model of Formalism which sees literary criticism as a sort of mechanics and the text as a heap of devices. In this regard, Formalism is here deployed as a means of exploring the extent to which nature functions as a device in The Tale of the Harmattan and Cassava Song and Rice Song. It emphasizes the figurative use of nature to estrange the ordinary. This paper finds that the figurative use of nature helps to establish the aesthetic grounds that justifies the literariness of the poem. The paper also finds that the presence of nature in the poems heighten the aesthetic quality of the poems because nature readily finds expression in patterns or attributes common to all its components. Thus, the metaphorization of nature components as a means of portraying the human condition
A Critical Analysis of Adaptation, Domestication and Foreignization as Effective Strategies for Translating Shakespeare’s Plays into Assamese
Get PDFOne of the major challenges faced by the translators is finding equivalence in the target language. The translators of Shakespeare plays have used Assamese words as appropriate equivalence of English words used by Shakespeare. However, it is not possible for the translators to claim that a particular kind of translation is the most faithful to the source text or the original text. The critics of translation studies are divided on deciding the parameters to assess whether a particular translation is faithful or not. The translators face various challenges in the process of translation such as finding equivalence, truthfully representing the linguistic and cultural nuances etc. In this process, the Assamese translators of Shakespeare’s plays have used adaptation, domestication, foreignization etc. Although the methods are different, they serve a common purpose, i.e., to bring a culturally and linguistically different text close to Assamese readers. The Comedy of Errors was the first Shakespeare play to be translated into Assamese by Ratnadhar Barua, Ramakanta Barkakoti, Gunjanan Barua and Ghanashyam Barua as Bhramaranga in 1888. Since then, a good number of Shakespeare plays have been either adapted or translated into Assamese. As You Like It, Cymbeline, Macbeth, Troilus and Cressida, Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, A Midsummer Night’s Dream etc. were adapted into Assamese. Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Twelfth Night etc. were translated using domestication as an effective strategy. Othello, Macbeth, Measure for Measure were also translated by other translators using foreignization as an effective strategy. The paper examines the multiple methods that have been used for translation of Shakespeare’s plays into Assamese across time with special emphasis on adaptation, domestication and foreignization. As multiple translations of the same Shakespeare plays are available in Assamese, the paper also highlights the features of those translations and critically comments on their effectiveness in terms of strategies used by the translators. It also underlines the challenges faced by the translators while translating Shakespeare’s plays into Assamese. Specific examples from both the source texts and target texts are given to assess the process of translation. A few translators have retained the original names in the translations. A few others have change the names completely giving some indigenous flavor to the target texts. The choices of the translators and the factors responsible for such choices have also been discussed in this paper. The paper also documents most of the Shakespeare plays translated into Assamese since 1888. However, the assessment of the strategies used to translate the plays is not chronological. The paper is divided into three main parts: ‘Adaptation of Shakespeare’s Plays into Assamese’, ‘Domestication in Translation of Shakespeare’s Plays into Assamese’ and ‘Foreignization in Translation of Shakespeare’s Plays into Assamese’
Revisiting the Idea of Totalitarianism in George Orwell’s Ninety Eighty Four
Get PDFThis paper aims to analyse the lessons about truth and relevance that may be gained from literature by reading George Orwell's dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four in the context of philosopher Stanley Cavell's idea of “living scepticism”. According to the idea, we can view the novel as a representation of life under a totalitarian system. The protagonists in the totalitarian society of the novel experience this experienced scepticism, which is a state of confusion and doubt brought on by indoctrination as well as physical and psychological punishment. The three main types of authoritarian experiences that are imagined in the book are scepticism of the outside world, scepticism of language, and scepticism of other people's brains. The focus of the article is on the scepticism of other minds and totalitarian lived meaning among these three. It explicitly inquires as to who may be the “perfect case” in order for the main character to appreciate the viewpoints of others. Intimacy, privacy, love, brutality, and knowledge are all related in some way in the novel's imagined world. The article contends that through exposing us to The Party's peculiar unlearning pedagogy, Orwell's writing offers us a nightmare image of the elimination of the possibilities for love. What does it mean at the book's conclusion for the main character to “love” Big Brother? In the dystopian society of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the reader might utilise these crucial questions to assess her own moral and intellectual limits. Can you imagine being so obsessed with Big Brother? Or does the use of the term "love" in this situation simply aim to provide the reader the ability to distinguish between speech that makes sense and speech that doesn't
Deterioration of Values in Secondary Education and Indian Perspective
Get PDFThe article aims to analyse the underlying principle of ‘values’, and their inculcation in secondary education. It reviews critically the looming crisis of ‘values’ in education, and its ensuing impact on the intellectual and social development of a child. Value-based education is very imperative in the social and cultural orientation of an individual. For many decades Indian education system has been ensuring the proper instillation of ‘values’ in a child, which is reflected in his culturally rich existence in society. However, there has also been a gradual decline in ‘values’, particularly in education, and consequently, society is facing an advancing deterioration in cultural. The article also endeavours to elucidate various causes for the degradation of values, and how it can be mitigated so as to justify the impartation of education. Changing trends in modern lifestyle, accessibility of information, redefinition of cultural practices, modification of socio-political norms, and mercenary approach to education are affecting the core principles of education in India. Teacher-student relationship also has undergone a drastic change. The article also tries to highlight some of the palliatives to restore values in education, which has been further promulgated by National Education Policies time and again. Using the qualitative method, various research articles and resources have been studied and analysed to put forth the generalisations about the crisis in ‘values’ in secondary education. Furthermore, in the light of National Education Policy 2020, some of the core beliefs and vision to alleviate this crisis of values in education have also been suggested
Oh! Guileless Passion! Understanding Indian women’s ambivalent sexuality and gender performances post Feminism in India
Get PDFCinema is a powerful archive; an extension of the human perspective, where the nuanced human existence is dissected and laid bare for the spectators to find their realities. Lipstick Under My Burkha (2016) does that. The four women characters coming from lower-middle-class families of Bhopal, India, are shown to be trying to live their lives on their own terms; but the fetters of norms, gender regulations and patriarchy binds their wings. Foucault further claims that “a norm belongs to the arts of judgment and that although a norm is related to power, it is characterized less by the use of force or violence than by, as Ewald puts it, “an implicit logic that allows power to reflect upon its strategies and clearly define its objects. This logic is at once the force that enables us to imagine life and the living as objects of power, and the power that can take 'life' in hand, creating the sphere of the bio-political”. A melody as honest as this one requires a leitmotif - Passion. As the movie unfolds on screen that makes the viewer recall a vague sense of doomsday, the lyrics in the background confess, “Passion, you ruined my life without ever asking me first.” Deep in the confines of a beauty parlour, one woman tells another, “You know what our problem is? We dream too much.” The film closes with four women marvelling at erotica, where the oldest tells the youngest to have the courage to dream, even as her demeanour sits heavy, recovering from shame. Female Passion (sexual, emotional, career-driven etc.) in a patriarchal, small-town circumstance gives each woman the courage to come alive - and yet, each time they do, Reality shakes the dreams out of their eyes, making them die a little more inside. As with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the confines of a woman’s identity allow her acceptance in society, where she navigates her secret desires in utter isolation (i.e. turning into a symbolic Mr. Hyde) now and then, but always returning to her “respectable face” (i.e. the symbolic Dr Jekyll) until it becomes impossible to separate the two, leading to her downfall. This ambivalence in female identity then seems deeply rooted in a culture of shame, where more “feminist” desires may only be pursued by being “shameless” - she steps forwards in the community to enact the performance of a lifetime (her oppression is, literally, a life-sentence) as she slips from one persona (an actor’s mask) to the next, finding and losing herself in the stolen moments between them. The film then appears as a commentary on sustenance - the Female, in less-privileged societies, helpless in their despair, may only come alive in split persona. Their stories are all the same. Their lipstick (self-expression, autonomy) is hidden away under their (both symbolic and literal) burkas
Encountering The ‘Other’: Diasporic Consciousness in Jasmine and Brick Lane
Get PDFBharati Mukherjee and Monica Ali are both diasporic writers, from India and Bangladesh, respectively. Although Mukherjee’s growing up years were spent in India, it was her experience an immigrant in Canada, where she spent almost fourteen years of her life from 1966 to 1980, which provided her with the themes of her novels. The racism she encountered in Canada forced her to focus on issues such as cultural conflict, alienation, and gender discrimination, even gender violence. Her novel Jasmine encapsulates the experience of an Indian female immigrant to the US who despite various odds and hurdles, is able to survive and prevail. Monica Ali, a Dhaka born British writer, takes up gender problems as well as the issues of migrant community of Bangladesh and was hailed as the best of ‘young British novelists’ in 2003 for her debut novel Brick Lane. The novel explores the life of Nazneen, an immigrant in London, who becomes an embodiment of cultural conflict between east and west. The paper aims to bring out the fact that both women protagonists, Nazneen and Jasmine, as immigrants, adapt and survive due to the status of being the ‘other,’ which has been accorded to them since birth. Gender discrimination, which is a part of their life, turns them into fighters and survivors. The ‘otherness’ of their status, helps them acclimatise, while highlighting the commonality of their experience in terms of both, as females and immigrants
Narrating Individual and Cultural Identity in Julian Barnes’s England, England
Get PDFThe conception of culture and identity has seen variations with the passage of time. Postmodern writers and thinkers do not consider them fixed or stable entities but fluid and fragmented. In the past they were treated as centered and fixed but in present conflicting scenario they are supposed to be decentered and deconstructed. In postmodern world, when each and everything is tinted with the effect of science and technology, contemporary generation is imbibing a new spirit of materialism. The more they are developing with the help of technology the less they are finding solution and satisfaction. Advancement of science and technology has coloured each and every object of contemporary era and projected them as mere objects of marketisation. This comodification and marketisation of objects has reached to such level that everything has lost its original meaning and value. It becomes obvious that culture and identity are not untouched by this effect. The more we are advancing towards technological development the more we are losing the original ground of ancient meaning and value. Julian Barnes entertains and mocks this idea in his novel England, England in which Barnes’s ambitious mission is search for individual identity of the English characters and cultural identity of England
Ethnic Identity and Cultural Assimilation in M. G. Vassanji’s No New Land
Get PDFColonialism makes a large set of people from South Asia migrate to Africa. People from India are used as a man power for railway line construction in Africa. After the end of colonialism, these migrated people became competitors to Africans in employment. Africans start treating them harshly. So, they are forced to migrate once again to America or to Canada. M. G. Vassanji’s No New Land starts with the second migration of people from South Asia to Canada. Because of this second migration, these people want to make sure their connection to their culture and to their ethnicity. Their apartment in Canada looks like a mini version of Dar es Salaam. They try to stick to their Indianness in the midst of a completely strange culture. However, their kids who do not have any immediate connection with their culture start assimilating the new culture and way of living. This paper aims at projecting the plight of South Asian immigrants in Canada