Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature
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Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and the Debate over Gender Relations among Muslim Intellectuals in Late Colonial Bengal
Get PDFRokeya Sakhawat Hossain was undoubtedly a remarkable intellectual and social reformer of her time, and in recent decades, her work has rightfully found its place among writings by “exceptional,†“early feminist†women from colonial India. This paper is an attempt to situate Rokeya’s contribution as a writer and reformer within the larger context of debates over the “woman question†as it unfolded in discussions of Muslim intellectuals in late colonial Bengal. It proceeds from the premise that without such contextualisation, Rokeya and her work is too often cast as “out of†or “ahead ofâ€Â her time, when in fact Muslim intellectuals – a number of women among them – were engaged in vibrant debates over a range of social and political issues in the first half of the twentieth century that has been marginalised within normative histories of that time.Â
Enjambment in Thumboo’s Poem “Evening by Batok Townâ€
No full textEnjambment is a common technique of poetry. Enjambment breaks a line at different structural points. Based on the structure of the line break, we propose four types of enjambment, and assign a severity value to them. This allows us to quantify enjambment of a stanza or poem. By examining the enjambment of Thumboo’s poem “Evening by Batok Town,†we show that there is a correlation of iconicity between the nature of the imagery of a stanza and the stanza’s enjambment value
Nor Faridah Abdul Manaf and Mohammad A. Quayum eds., Imagined Communities Revisited: Critical Essays on Asia-Pacific Literatures and Cultures
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Fruits of Knowledge: Polemics, Humour and Moral Education in the Writings of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Lila Majumdar and Nabaneeta Dev Sen
Get PDFThis paper analyses literary sources, by three women writing in Bengali, from c.1900 to  contemporary times. These writings offer far more complex, heterogeneous, innovative and creative strategies for the shaping, reform and moral education of subjects, than have hitherto been recognised. Authors focused on in the article are Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932), Lila Majumdar (1908-2007) and Nabaneeta Dev Sen (1938-). “Moral education†and “reform†have tended to carry with them a stereotypical aura of sententiousness, didacticism, humourlessness and aridness. I argue, utilising tools from literary and gender studies, that polemical and fictional writing by Bengali women writers such as Rokeya, Lila and Nabaneeta repay attention to their stylistic fertility, their ability to craft and reinvent humour and their creative reinvention of genres. The projects of reform and moral education of subjects (not only female ones) that emerge from such writing are nuanced, multilayered, subversive and wickedly intelligent.Â
Amanda Lee Koe and Ng Yi-Sheng, eds. Eastern Heathens: An Anthology of Subverted Asian Folklore
Get PDFRabindranath Tagore’s The Home and the World: Story of the Failure of the Nationalist Project
Get PDFAs an intense literary text, The Home and the World could be read in more than one way, and through different interpretations. This paper attempts to compare the novel with early twentieth century Vietnamese novels. The Home and the World is a novel that reads like an allegory on the failure of the Indian nationalist projects, circling around the issues of “Home†versus “World,†tradition versus modernity, created by the active involvement of the colonisers in the cultural, economic and administrative life of the colonised. It could be read as an allegory on the failure of Indian nationalism to accept tradition and modernity, home and the world, concurrently. In addition, the novel offers an alternative nationalist project that could free India from its obsession with the colonising powers: true freedom of the nationalist imagination will be gained by going beyond every form of ideological prejudice and separation, and by synthesising every conceivable value that could be useful for the development and maintenance of the nation. And as a concrete example of his alternative nationalist project, Tagore founded Visva Bharati University in Santiniketan in 1921
