Understanding Marginalization of Indigenous Women in Mamang Dai’s “The Legends of Pensam”and “Stupid Cupid” (original) (raw)

UNSHACKLING THE TRIBAL WOMEN IN INDIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE: DREAMS AND VISIONS

The marginalised tribal women comprise the weakest section of the Indian society. It is a sad reality that their identity remains weak, unvoiced and largely unexplored. Invigorating them would enhance the collective national capability as it will carry justice, equity and development to the most vulnerable segment of the nation, thereby reinforcing and the frailest of its stalk. The portrayal of tribal women in literature can go a long way in spreading awareness about the cause, not only on the national, but also on an international scale. Writing on these marginalised, poor, and socially excluded women can in the long run, change the perception of the society and bring to attention the neglected lot, integrating them rightfully with society. Prominent writers including Mahasweta Devi, Kamala Markandaya and Gita Mehta among others have made important contributions in this area. While the tribal narratives voice the concerns of the tribals, there still remains lot of room for exploring and expressing the concerns of these women for a feminist rendition . This paper examines the potential of writings on the female tribal protagonist. Keywords: Tribal Women, Indian English Literature

Marginalization of women in the Selected Novels of Manjukapur And Anita Nair: A Study

Marginalization is the powerlessness and exclusion experienced by a group, resulting from an inequality of control of 'resources and power structures' within society. Feminism argues that woman is marginalized due to the patriarchal structure of society. Marginalisation happens when a person is cornered, alienated and driven to the wall in the society. It is a systematic process, so to say, a type of conspiracy woven like a web with the underlying characteristic features of domination and subordination forcing the woman into submission always. But the feminist theory advocates equality-politically, economically and socially. Even after harping on these equal rights alone, many feminists of late, have come to realise that these cannot free women from sexual and social subordination. So, it is in the fitness of things that marginalisation of women, their predicament, and their struggle for identity in finding their own space are taken up and adequately exposed which are the core elements of this trend.

Portrayal of Psyche and Pain of Marginalized Women in Indian Fiction by women writers

Indian English literature is abundant with examples of marginalizationof women. Women are malnourished;they have less opportunities; they often face discrimination. Above everything else, It has affected the mind set of the society. Whenever we pick a book it is interesting to note, how in count less works of literature, women have been portrayed as submissive and mild. By analysing the depiction of marginalized women we will bring them forefront. It is in this spirit this research paper has been written.

An unfinished story: The representation of adivasis in Indian feminist literature

Contemporary South Asia, 2012

Contemporary Indian feminism is concerned with a number of social justice issues, including the circumstances under which ‘adivasis' or tribal people, live. India has a large body of work on these peoples, but much of this romanticises them and fails to treat them as the inhabitants of a modern, industrial and globalising India. In this article, I discuss two works published by Indian feminist presses that provide new and alternative ways of representing adivasis. Anita Agnihotri's Forest Interludes: A Collection of Journals and Fiction is a multi-genre collection that reflects the author's time spent as an IAS officer in adivasi regions of eastern India. Agnihotri plays the dual role of privileged outsider and informed insider, which lends her narrative a forceful authority. Bhaskaran's life story of the Keralite adivasi activist C.K. Janu, Mother Forest: The Unfinished Story of C.K. Janu, attempts to present adivasi politics as relevant to modern India, yet the formal structuring of the text and the stylistic choices made by the translator and editors undercuts this. Both Forest Interludes and Mother Forest contain formal and stylistic innovations and, though not without problems, they represent a promising departure from traditional literary representations of adivasis – a departure that situates these subaltern peoples within a more contemporary discursive field.

With the Margin: The Theme of Gendered Subaltern in Mamang Dai’s Legends of Pensam

South Asian Research Journal of Arts, Language and Literature

Whether it is the pre-colonial, colonial, or post-colonial era, the problems of the indigenous tribal women of North-East India have not changed much. The same scenario is reflected in Mamang Dai’s Legends of Pensam as the women on margin have always retained in the same shape and misery. The gendered subalterns have been suffering in silence accepting their fate or restricting themselves amid their limited demarcated territory in order to survive. Over the years, these fair sexes are not only being ignored and exploited, under the hands of the colonial or elitist masses but also by the patriarchal structure designed in the Indian society. Various types of changes and uncertainties have touched the premises in the land of the Adi tribes, placing the women somewhere inbetween tradition and modernity. Dai in her work has tried to portray the scuffling situations of the Adi women, how they have resisted and quietly tackled those changes, uniquely sculpting their own identity. Keeping t...

Representation of Subaltern Voices in Contemporary Indian Tribal Literature: A Study

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2022

The main thematic concern of the present research paper is to discuss the conditions of contemporary tribal people in our society through select literary fiction. Subaltern is 'of an inferior rank', refers to those groups in society who are subject to the hegemony of the ruling class. The word subaltern specially denotes the lower classes, oppressed people at the margins of a society and social group who are struggling against hegemonic globalization. The voice of subaltern, a by-product of social, economic, religious conditions of historical Indian society, attempts to expose the experience of discrimination, poverty and human rights violation of lower class in contemporary India. Subaltern writers' prime concern is to raise voice against the injustice and inequality in social and economic domain. Gayatri C. Spivak says in her article "Can the subaltern speak", the subaltern has no history and they cannot speak out, subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow. In this research paper deals with the dynamics of gender discrimination in contemporary Indian tribal society. Our country is rich with a diversity of religions, arts, customs, races, traditions, and languages. On the other side Indian tribal literature is a document of life experiences of the marginal section. It is also a medium of expression of experiences that has been faced throughout the life in the form of excommunication, marginalization, exploitation and humiliation for centuries in the Indian caste and class-ridden society. These experiences are expressed in the contemporary Indian tribal literary fiction. Gopinath Mohanty's Paraja, Mahaswtea Devi's Dust on the Road, Mamang Dai's The Black Hill, and Hari Ram Meena's When Arrows Were Heated Up are select for this research paper.

Women at Crossroads: Reconfiguring the Gender Roles in Select Indian Genre Fiction

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2020

The inherent discursivity, entailing the composite category of ‘The third world women’ hinges on many contentious contours of female subjectivity, its genealogical and teleological subservience and submission to patriarchy, and the subsequent re-assertion of their identities and different female roles within the given rubric of patriarchal capitalist social order of the former colonies through strategic subversion, vis-à-vis negotiation of certain patriarchal ideals.The select novels, i.e. Anuradha Marwah Roy’s The Higher Education of Geetika Mehendiratta (1993) and Advaita Kala’s Almost Single (2007); from the discursive category of Indian genre fiction narrate two intersecting stories of two middle class Indian women, who have migrated to Delhi in pursuit of empowerment and to transcend the circumscribed trajectories of parochialism and stereotypical tropes of patriarchal order. Drawing inferences from these two texts, the present paper would like to look into the ethical question...

Depiction of Women in Literature: A Reading of Indian Literary Texts under Gender Theory

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL AND HUMANITARIAN RESEARCH, 2023

Within this complex spectrum of "culture" Indian Literature has represented accurate sufferings of numerous characters. Identity and our skirmish in finding its appropriate nature, has often pressurized the psychic nature of humans, particularly women. To be precise the struggling of marginalized identities is more toilsome in comparison to the "centered" identities. In this phallocentric Indian society, the "white-cis-phallus" is the centre and the remaining becomes the "other". Marginalization can be considered as a chain of events taking place in a society to create certain restrictions for few and power for the rest. Gender, class and caste are further divided into layers, creating a stratified structure where power dynamics moulds and produces identities, not for recognition but for marginalization, oppression. Within this marginalized "remaining" the identity of women and their effort to break the imposed roles of Woman/Wife/Mother is somewhere trapped between the supposed links between "sex" and "gender" which then is to be inherently related and "culturally" bound. Therefore my paper would focus on politicized children"s literature-Brave Rajputs by Anant Pai, and presentation of Tilo in Chitra Banerjee Devakaruni"s The Mistress of Spices, gender-power dynamics in Mahasweta Devi"s Breast Stories, Jhumpa Lahiri"s Lowland, and Khaleid Hosseni"s A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Canvassing Gender Issues and Opportunities in Select Indian English Fiction Through the Perspective of Dalit Women

Springer Nature Singapore, 2022

The question of gender equality and equity has been prevailing in the mainstream society since many ages in pre- and post-colonial India. It has found in almost all religions and societies irrespective of caste, creed and geography. It is inevitable and most fatal, especially in case of women groups of the society. Women have been getting rough treatment from the very beginning in the name of customized demonic moral code of conducts and phantastic religious beliefs. They are being subjugated at home as well as in the society. The degree of torture and assault get double in case of marginalized women. The situation of subaltern women is double cursed than the women from other caste and class. The present study tries to showcase the pathetic and ironic subjugation of Dalit women in pandemonium society as presented in select Indian English fictions. This research paper is also an attempt to discuss the gender issues in form of unfairness and sexual assault for which the researcher has applied qualitative and comparative methodology. It also tries to highlight the positive consequences of giving the equal opportunities and rights to the women mass by indulging into various works which have signified gender inequity in Dalit literature