Gender/Culture/Caste: From Theoretical Conceptions to Practical Visualization in Indian Literary and Political Context.

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India's destructive caste system hurts women more than anyone else

 

By Suparna Roy     28 July 2021

Abstract

Caste generally can be defined as a group or category identifiable popularly in respect of their occupation and culture. From here, then ‘culture’ stands to be heterogonous keeping the numerous stratifications of Indian society in consideration. What then is culture? Culture, is a complex social apparatus that dices the norms and regulations and is a stratified concept with hues that light up the disillusionment and dissent. It presents and portrays the oppressive naturality of all human existence.  Stevie Jackson and Jackie Jones regarded in her article- Contemporary Feminist Theory that “The concepts of gender and sexuality as a highly ambiguous term, as a point of reference” (Jackson, 131, ch-10). Gender is a complex operative spectrum in a society, that functions in accordance to the numerous power dynamics operating with the hunger of establishing themselves, of which patriarchy and feminism are the two powers that deal intensively with these three ideologies of identification. Marginalization is a broader operation to segregate and mark bodies on the basis of caste, class, gender, ethnicity, religion, social, cultural, economic, creed, and other factors. The vast network of Indian literature has thereby portrayed these layers of subjugation and victimized bodies in respect of culture, caste, and gender. The paper will follow a clear systematized division where one part will focus on the literary representation of the tyrannized lives and another part will depict how the present political scenario functions to maintain and sustain the same hierarchy. This paper will therefore try to explore how in Indian English Literature and in the present political scenario the ‘complex power dynamics of caste/culture/gender’ functions.

Keywords- gender, caste, identities, culture, political structure

Introduction

When we begin talking about society the arena of History must be touched upon to see how immense hard work is done by any society to maintain their ‘natural’ rules and regulations, so that, their mainstream ideologies can be safeguarded without a scratch. First, I have a problem with the term ‘History’, why? Because,  the term ‘History’ is hued political word whose complex decorum can be decoded once the term is deconstructed as ‘His’-‘Story’. ‘His’ is a pronoun used in place of a male/boy noun. Our society is strategically divided in binaries and believes in binarized operations of ‘opposites’ to derive and fix meaning of everything. In this regard, Gayle Rubin’s article argues that ideas about sexuality are structured “strategically” in binary oppositions, where one side is positive, good, moral, strong, and right and the other side is negative, bad, immoral, weak and wrong. If this is so, then ‘His’ is surely the opposite of ‘Her’, a pronoun used in the place of a female/girl noun. Story, a term which broadly means a fable, a detailed description about an incident, a person, place, and a thing, but can also mean as a piece made up, ‘constructed’, created by a thought, a mind, a person. Now on the association of a .created piece’ along with the male pronoun ‘His’, it calculatingly results in the creation of a fable of the His, the He, the Male. Then what about the ‘She’, the ‘female’, the ‘Her’? Therefore finding the Herstory or Her-Story within the History/ His-story needs the help of certain hermeneutical devices like Feminism and Gender and Queer theory that eventually helps in projecting the unknown, unacknowledged ‘Herstory’! As Simone De Beauvoir writes in The Second Sex (1949) that men are considered universal so are left unmarked while women become “women” because they are marked, restricted, and norms are imposed upon them. Projecting the plight of “women” and restrictions imposed upon them is because they are ‘marked’ as Simone De Beauvoir has tried to represent.

To draw focus into the complex cultural links of caste and gender, let’s decipher their meaning and politicized representation of these terms as devices of controlling identities/bodies. Helene Cixous notes in “Laugh of Medusa that men and women enter the symbolic order in a different way and the subject position open to either sex is different. Cixious’s understanding that the centre of the symbolic order is ‘phallus’ and everybody surrounding it stands in the periphery makes women (without intersectionality) as the victim of this phallocentric society. If Gender is constructed, who does the construction? If gender is a set of signs/meanings foisted on two kinds of bodies then meanings become dependent on bodies that must carry them. So it is not biology that is destiny, more clearly it is ‘culture’ which is so. Irigaray’s theorizes that femininity is not ‘othered’ at all; rather it is a part of a closed patriarchal economy, it is a fantasy of the other but very a creation of the patriarchal self. According to Irigaray, there is nothing outside the masculine text- the woman is still the man (encore) and patriarchy embodied (en corps). But Irigaray’s theory is not universally applicable; rather it is more like a totalizing, appropriate, colonizing act.  Coalition can be self-defeating if a ‘strict’ homogeneity is set as a precondition for the coalition and is followed. Divergence, breakages, splintering must be factored in too because that is the only democratic. Identity is a normative ideal and it is solidified through the sex/gender/desire teleology. It is when those troublesome beings emerge who do not conform to the telos that the binarization is in danger, like in present- agender, queer; gender non-confirmative, transgender, gender fluid, etc. The identities have no limit because it is a continuum. Now, this further overlaps and interconnects with sexuality where a gay is falling in love with a transman, or a person is aromantic, agender yet pansexual! Confusing, right? No it is not confusing, rather very simple- these are just a few terms that came to reflect the exact way we feel about ourselves. Since the cultural demarcation of binarized identity has kept on ruling and ordering the bodies, these terms came out of the closet as a voice to ‘reclaim’ one’s own self-identity!

Multiculturalism indeed has appreciated the difference in cultures but has also made avenues accessible to analyze it from queer perspectives. The Spectrum of marginalization in India is perhaps so intricately designed, that when it gets unfold; its spectrum reflects all those wailing lives which get veiled by this intricate design of culture, power, and aesthetics. In this regard what Gopal Guru says regarding Dalits in his article- Freedom of Expression and the Life of the Dalit Mind, is very valuable as he questions “Under what conditions does the freedom of expression enable the Dalit to live a life of the mind? Does the foregrounding of the body and the elevation of the bodily expression…dignity and emancipation” (Guru, 39). The concept of ‘subaltern’ as presented in a newspaper article “Voices and Views from the Margins” – Times of India by Swati Shinde has become prominent in our present scenario of marginalized literature as ‘subaltern’ refers to that marginalized culture that flourished away from the mainstream literature as Antonio Gramsci regarded. Patankar and Omvedt emphasize through their article “The Dalit Liberation Movement in Colonial Period” (1979), the necessity of acknowledging caste oppression and consider it as a problem and focus on the need to find a solution. The problem of Dalit identity in the so-called Brahminical culture was somewhere boxed up as pseudo-Hindus whose political, social, cultural identities were not a ‘need’ in acknowledgment of ‘rights’! B.R Ambedkar criticizing the so-called British rule once said that-

Our wrongs have remained open and they have not been righted. Although 150 years of British rule have ruled away. Of what good is such a government to anybody? It was a government that did realize that the capitalists were denying the workers a living wage and decent condition of works and which did realize that the landlords were squeezing the masses dry and yet it did not remove social evils that blighted lives of the downtrodden class these years.

Feminism and Patriarchy are two broader and contradictory regimes operating as a fundamental inclusive feather. But there is a difference? How? Patriarchy includes to exclude, obliterate the identity of any ‘body’ outside the mainstream; whereas, Feminism includes to recognize and provide space to all experiences. It is a political premise for some, educational understanding for some, practical deviation from rules for some, and etcetera. Feminism is an antidote to Patriarchy, which is a mutating drug resisting virus. According to Maggie Humm and Rebecca Walker, the history of Feminism can be divided into three waves- the first wave was in the nineteenth and early twentieth century which can be referred to as an extended period of feminist activities in the United Kingdom and United State involving the Suffragettes and focusing on equal contract and property rights for women. The second wave refers to the period of activity from the early 1960s to the late 1980swhich was as Estelle Freedman said focused on other aspects of equality like ending discrimination and divided  Feminism under three categories- cultural, radical, liberal. The slogan “Personal is Political” was coined by Carol Hanisch and became synonymous with the second wave. Then chronologically moving from The Second Sex of Simone De Beauvoir, the Feminist Mystique and finally Women’s Liberation in the USA gradually marked the beginning of Third wave Feminism during the early 1990s which seeks to challenge the second wave’s essentialist definitions of femininity. A post-structuralist interpretation of gender and sexuality is central to third wave’s ideology. The third wave focused on “micro-politics”. Another spectrum of Feminism included Socialist and Marxist, Radical, Liberal, Black, and Post-colonial and third world Feminisms. Feminism, now with MeToo Movement, has started reflecting its fifth wave, where intersectional experiences of sexual violation is represented and re-presented. To look at the history of Feminism in India, this term had no such existence. Prominent women to break the patriarchal rule and started reclaiming their rights as humans in different fields, few out of them includes-

  • Kadambini Ganguly (1861-1923), who was the first woman from Bengal to study Doctorate degree abroad
  • Savitribai Phule (1831-1897), was the first woman teacher of India and also the first to set up all-women school. She opened a care centre for women who were victims of sexual assaults and were impregnated.
  • Bhanwari Devi(1951- at present)- A rape survival and the reason behind the creation of Vishaka Guidelines (against sexual assaults). She is that figure whose scuffles represent the complex political oppression of gender, caste, and locations. Being a rural woman, as she protested against child marriage (still, practice in remote villages of India), she was raped by five ‘upper-caste Hindu men after they beat her husband. Her complaint was overlooked by local police officers but she kept her combat alive and created the Vishaka Guidelines showing ‘silence is not the only option for women’!

Feminism in India has now commuted a lot. Queer Politics, class, sexual orientation, diasporic and indigenous identities, geo-location, etcetera, started relating its strings under the broader concept of Feminism. Patriarchy is that existing and modifying system, scrutinizing which is important to deconstruct each and every stratified agenda of ‘boxing up’ the political, social, emotional, sexual, physical, educations, and religious possibilities.

Theoretical Interpretations in Indian English Literature

Every language that expresses emotions is indeed influenced by patriarchy being a part of a phallocentric society. To remember deconstructivists like Derrida, who believed that the binarization of speech being the more direct and crucial form of presenting ideas and writing the secondary is because language is in itself the product of a ‘phallogocentric’ society where (phallus+logo) is the centre. Means every word as such is influenced by the power of phallus and would try to represent the same as universal- for instance, “mankind” to refer to the entire world of ‘living beings’, why? Now, the English language has another history related to India, the history of ‘colonialism’. English being the language of the colonizers, replicates a colonial hangover, so the tag ‘Indian English Literature’ reflects this ‘medium of expression’ the way it wants to present, represent, re-present, establish, accept, and define. Culture modifies the language a speaker uses to reflect their ideas, we often fall short of vocabulary to express many such desires in today’s date- have we ever wondered the reason? It is because Culture stood as a canned standard in selecting our palaver; hence resulting in its limitations. Culture is a complex operative spectrum that has ordered and systemized lives in a binarized pattern. Language, too being a cultural and politicized product is one of the many sources of marginalization. Language represents a culture, therefore replacing and omitting any language to establish another language is to veil up that existing culture with the mark of ‘absence’. So, when one calculates marginalizing points of identity, language comes into consideration too. English Language as Tennyson said- “The English Language is a methodical, energetic, business-like and sober language…For words, like Nation, half-revealed/ and half conceal the soul within” (Jespersen, 1983). It is known that the English Language is written and spoken all over the world for historical, political, economical reasons. Like every other language English Language, too has its unique, appealing, inherent qualities and history. But history shows how the global power of English Language is only because it has entombed the echoes of other Languages with its own. To create an essence, an authentication, a fixed centre of Language is a constructive nature that mingles up with a culture to represent its ‘authority’. Reconsidering English Language within Indian context, we see, there is a presence of duality regarding the same. With its multifarious sui generis characters as a global Language, there also exists a history of ‘colonialism’, focused by Post-colonial studies, of how it became a global language and a ‘lingua franca’. Focusing on the enriching side of English Language we see, it is a language of “extraordinary receptive and adaptable heterogeneousness” (Wrenn, 2013).

I will therefore select few excerpts from few literary works like- Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things (1997), Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable (1935), Mahasweta Devi’s “Rudali” (1993), Jhumpa Lahiri’s Lowland (2013), and Chitra Banerjee Devakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices (1997) to represent how gender and caste politics works in our cultural complexions.to begin with, Roy’s work, God of small Things is about love between two “dizygotic twins”, between their mother- Ammu, and Velutha, who was a Dalit. Ammu, who was an upper-caste Syrian Christian from a very patriarchal and conservative family where the male ‘buying’ of women into the house (without considering the caste) is of no issue but loving a lower caste man by a woman of the same house is banned, where the head of the house is a male and beating the ‘wife’ is completely acceptable and regarded as a parameter to measure the ‘masculinity’! Roy’s story represents the theme of incest, love having the power to breakthrough all cultural restrictions of caste, and caste oppression by showcasing how Velutha was treated. Here we also see how none of the single days passes without Velutha being insulted, all human rights for him denigrate and present him in a dehumanized state, particularly the way he was killed. The deplorable situation of a woman through the model of Ammu- begins when she decides to elope and marry the person of her choice, who eventually turns out to be alcoholic and used to torture Ammu to such an extent that he sold Ammu off to his manager in return of his job. She could only mother her dizygotic twins for few years and their father both psychologically and physically abandoned them immediately. Ammu’s plight begins when she with her children return to her father’s home. She was made to live with her children in the farthest corner of the house. Eventually, Velutha, who was an outcast, who served in this house, became close to Ammu, and their tragic love story marked both of their ends. However, Roy’s presentation of this uniquely Keralite world with universal quality gets a more transparent portrayal when Ammu’s brother Chako is held up. This world, populated by Syrian Christians, ironically hangs on the prejudice and practices of orthodox Hinduism because whatever Chako does is acceptable because he has a ‘phallus’ but anything Ammu does is equally punishable just because she has a ‘vagina’! Similarity can be traced in Anand’s Untouchable, where the presentation of a day in the life of a young, toilet and latrine cleaner Bakha who is an outcast, a ‘subaltern’ under the cultural segregation of the Indian caste system has portrayed the hues of degradation, strife and misery of a ‘casted body’. Bakha’s search for meanings to the tragic existence he has born to leads him to an unexpectable conclusion and reveals the inner conflicts sourced out of his conscious and sub-conscious realms of mind and life, only to find a more acceptable reason to ‘go-on’ with the subjugated, oppressed, marked identity.  Bakha’s day starts with his father yelling at him and ends with latrines. Even while walking on the streets Bakha needs to be very cautious regarding his steps, because he is forbidden to walk on parts of the streets were ‘touched’ people can walk or he has to shout to make the touched ones aware that an ‘untouched’ is coming because even somehow if he is a bit unconscious of his footstep he will be abused- “The dirty dog bumped right into me! So unmindfully do these sons of bitches walk on the streets! He was walking alone without the slightest effort at announcing his approach, the swine” (Anand, 39). For women, in such cultures being a ‘Dalit and having a ‘vagina’ is a medium to be the victim of ‘double oppression’, understanding the situation of Bakha’s sister-Sohini who was repeatedly designated as “polluted” (39) by the priest when the temple incident took place, we can see how women and particularly their bodily identities are victims of our hypocrite, caste-based society – “A thumping crowd of worshippers rushed out of the temple and stood arrayed as in the grand finale of an opera show. The lanky priest stood with upraised hands, a few steps below him. His sister Sohini…lingered modestly in the courtyard” (Anand, 52-53).  From this perspective, it can be understood that marginalization is further segregated within the outcast community, where women are not only seen as objects of pleasure but also as objects that must not have the right to raise the voice- “He-e-e just teased me…And then when I was bending down to work, he came and held me by my breasts” (Anand, 54-55).

Lahiri’s work was more to reflect the identity of a Bengali woman who ‘shits’ to America and the journey of her gender with ‘dispersed’ cultural settings. Gauri’s journey can be visualized. Liberty is when we have “A Room of Ours Own” when we treat humans beyond categorized identities and stop expecting them to respond in accordance to the expected or demanded social roles! The journey of one’s identity, particularly a Woman’s is somewhere static and is not enjoyed by the surroundings if it grows and undoubtedly Gauri grew in ‘migrating’ from Kolkata to America beyond the roles of a wife, a mother, and only desired to become a human whose life and identity can be a beautiful journey of ‘delicate chaos’!  Her desire to not become what her newly married husband/ prior brother-in-law wanted her to become again, gets mirrored when she compares her ‘pregnant’ body with other “women’s” body in her surrounding while taking her classes in the University campus- “…She put on her winter coat over her sari…She saw students going in and out…women n in dark tights and short wool coats…” (Lahiri, 157). Gauri grew to understand the dynamics of her identity in relation to her role assigned due to her body in respect of the cultural migration she was out into. Divakaruni’s novel The Mistress of Spices is an exuberant novel where Divakaruni builds an enchanting story upon the fault line in American identity that lies between the self and community, Tilo’s arrogance of her own precocious ability of knowledge regarding the magical properties of spices and her understanding that she has to live for others and not herself, that she must not pursue love, perhaps, which eventually takes place!  With all superhuman powers somewhere the basic requirements of a woman to be happy are obliterated from the social definition of what a woman should, hence Divakaruni’s simple plot that she tried to shoot in an extraordinary manner fumble at the patriarchal threshold.  And finally, we have Mahasweta Devi’s Rudali, where we how “Rudali” provides an opportunity for these unvalued bodies to express their long-suppressed emotion in front of the ‘public’ in form of ‘CRY’, which is then priced- the louder the wailing, greater the money. When these “invaluable” bodies transgress the marital, social, sexual burdens of “respectability”, these bodies start earning value in terms of money and position. Therefore, I would like to study how the pricing of emotion in “Rudali” also becomes one such branch of the enormous spectrum of Literature of the Margins, depicting the complex margins of class, caste and gender.

Operation of Caste and Gender Power Dynamics in Present Indian Politics

Being a bit systematic defining Politics in terms of what Wikipedia notes, stands as the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. It may be used positively in the context of a “political solution” which is compromising and non-violent or descriptively as “the art or science of government”, but also often carries a negative connotation. Now, the present political scenario of India to make a ‘simple’ comment is quite similar to a Turkish proverb used by Paulo Coelho in his Twitter comment that – ‘The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood he was one of them’. The reason for including this proverb is I somewhere feel we are the ‘trees’ and supporting the AXE! We can see how the promises of Anti-Romeo law, the throbbing echoes of Hathras’s case, the Farmer’s Protest is reflecting the immensely patriarchal policies of centering and marginalizing human bodies; yet, the responses from our “educated” lot is indeed surprising. Acknowledging the very fact that our Indian society is a ‘brahminical’ one, hierarchies are inevitable. India’s political scenario is regressively progressive. The rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. Politics or ‘Rajniti’ is a spectrum. Our politics is nothing like the definition written in our constitution. I am not in the favor of any party nether am I a demeaning one, I am just saying about the system, the realities which I can see. Why are so many regulations implemented to maintain what is “natural”? Because nothing is natural and maintenance is required to continue and sustain the artificially created code of order which powers the few bodies and marginalizes the res; an effort to keep on regulating the ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ relation. So, in this context to refer, what Nivedita Menon wrote in her book Seeing Like A Feminist (2012) was-

The whole point of nude make-up, clearly, is to spend hours painting your face to make it look like you had not touched it at all. The maintaining of ‘social order’ is rather like that. It requires the faithful performance of the prescribed rituals over and over again throughout one’s lifetime. The complex networks of cultural reproduction are dedicated to this purpose solely (Menon, vii).

Politics in India is strictly ordering Sexuality because their representation of ‘bodies’ as subjects of political identities are based on ‘brahminical’ hierarchies of power where, ‘by birth’ agenda is followed to control bodies in terms of caste, and themes of ‘lust/skin/desire’ is followed to oppress a particular form of appearance/recognition and body. The mechanism of ‘silence’ is the humongous powered device of subjugation in India; silence dominates each identity, the moment that person deviates from maintained mainstream ‘silence’ in ingrained through every practice since their birth. It is taught that if you are a low caste person, being a woman, being a person who recognizes themselves as anyone from the LGBTHQIA++ community, being from another religion, and being anyone outside the ‘white-fleshed upper-caste Hindu men’, one should be silent towards all crimes imposed on her. As I was talking about the Hathra’s case, few lines above, was an incident that took place in the Hathra region of Uttar Pradesh. In a state of India with the largest population, the event was few upper-caste Hindu men raped a ‘dalit woman’ because she raised her voice against them teasing her. No justice is still given. Our government surrounded the housed of the victim, so that, media cannot do the coverage and realities are suppressed in silence. The father was shot dead by one of the rapists a few days later as he demanded justice for her dead daughter. None of the principles written in our constitution is thereby followed. This is how ‘maintenance’ is done, you protest, the system and the people who sustain the same will compel you into ‘silence’. Today no more verbal discourses are there that can be heard. The same was the situation when the Nirbhaya case took place. ‘Protection’ is that crux and operating tool which results in the above ‘events’. The term originates from that source of power/authenticity. The responsibility of protection is ‘by default’/ on men, why, because they are ‘by default’ the owners of power, again, why, because they have phallus!

Gender/Culture/Caste and political repression can be seen clearly if we consider few examples that are predominantly followed and believed. It has been ingrained within the mental process to maintain these systems, as they are a symbolic presentation of ‘patriarchy in progress’. First, is marriage, and talking about which, we must remember, a heteronormative institution is being portrayed here. Comparing all the cultures the synoptically, the main view which comes to forefront is – changing of the surnames (only valid for women), the concept that ‘my husband allowed me’, changing of the leaving places/home (only for women), ‘markers of marriage’- means looking at few specific ornaments/jewelries to be worn only by the women after marriage so that one can recognize she is married. Why such arrangements? If we remember Simone De Beauvoir’s reference that women are marked because they are considered all ‘body’ men are left unmarked because they are considered to be universal, without body. This strict mind/body binary works immensely in Indian marriages, in the name of culture what I find is only ways of binding women. ‘Vermillion’, a significant marker of marriage for women, why women? So that this body can be shown to the society as -‘owned by the master’. People has to marry within their caste- so a Dalit woman has to marry a Dalit man, why? So that the caste system is sustained and the hierarchical order is maintained. Similarly, Menstruation, is another oppressing arena politically organized and maintained. First, the concept of transman is not even considered yet. Secondly, the problems related to menstruation can be traced to a central focal point- ‘connection/link/relativity’. These terms are somewhat a reflection on our cultural tendencies to describe or comprehend or represent anything in terms or in connection or in relation to something else. For instance, identifying women with Goddesses has been a popular trend here; although, women are restricted, oppressed, defined as incomplete without a man and also presented the same in socially constructed religious institutions like marriages. This linking of very much an anatomical process- Menstruation, with cultural believes, ideologies are another reason why this “taboo” of Menstruation needs to be conversed upon. Because of this link so many lives are oppressed and submerged in the depths of inhumanity. Marginalization due to geo-location is another important factor that operates for both these states for which a speculation regarding menstruation in relation to this is an important issue to be considered. Thus we see both Marriage and Menstruation are politically constructed cultural products that believes subjugation of the peripheral identities as the main aim!

Politics and Phallus are complementary theories in India! Pandemic opened virtual access on every platform, the present politics ceased and limited them bypassing the protocol that virtual conferences before presenting international wise will have to take permission to represent anything that highlights India’s privacy, well the underlying meaning is oppression. A very intense political link is there between now and the British Rule of 200 years- 1756-1947. I only feel that the present politics is only enriching itself at the cost of not all Indians but “anti-nationals”. Education can be both a boon and a curse both. If we get education including possibilities we get to know many, but if it’s modified to create and organize a particular class and group then English Missionaries of the British Rule is nothing different from Hindutva of present times. So supporting the present political should also make us aware that we unconsciously or consciously are supporting the marginalization based on-Gender, where the centre is only ‘upper-caste, Hindu, heterosexual male’ and rest ‘sorts’ of men, all ‘forms’ of women, LGBTQIA++, are the peripheral others! Gender is only one branch among the numerous branches of oppression, most securely intermingled with caste, religion, sexuality, sex, class, location, language, and race, and etc! Marginalization is based on caste where if a Dalit boy is refrained from entering the temple, we say nothing and if a Dalit woman is raped by Brahmin CM ‘ka beta’, we say nothing. Marginalization is based on class, where the farmer has no life, oppression based on colour where Fair&Lovely is the only line, subjugation is based on Education where knowledge accessibilities are limited and modified. Marginalization on personal freedom where speaking against the wrong will receive Hitler’s response. Marginalization is based on every minute right of humans that makes them ‘smile’.

Conclusion

Thus, we can see how from printed forms to practical practices, from psychological understandings to emotional justifications, from religious fundamentals to constitutional justice, Gender/Culture/Caste operates as containers to experiment and compress individual identities into certain established, accepted, and widely practiced norms. Literature and literary works are nothing but reflections of our society and culture in a format that is presented after critical speculation of the present as well as archaic happenings so that people can commence perceiving the same in a manner so as to interrogate the functioning regulations. Whereas, political ongoings are a premise that serves as a source to write the literary pages as well as brutally represent the ‘benevolent’ patriarchy it aims to use as the major ruling device against individual freedom.

 

 

 

Works Cited

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Wrenn, C L. 2013. The English Language. India: AITBS Publishers.

Beauvoir, De Simone. The Second Sex. Vintage, 2011.

Cixious, Helene. Laugh of Medusa. Oxford, 2008.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. Routledge, 1990.

Irigaray, Luce. Speculum of the Other Woman. Cornell University Press, 1985.

Guru, Gopal. “Freedom of expression and the Life of the Dalit Mind.” Economic and

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www.jstor.org/stable/23391375.

Patankar, Bharat and Gail Omvedt. “The Dalit Liberation Movement in Colonial Period.”

Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 14, No. 7/8 (February, 1979), pp.409-424. JSTOR

            https://www.jstor.org/stable/4367359.

Anand, Mulk Raj. Untouchable. India: Penguin, 1940.

Devi, Mahasweta. Rudali. India: Seagull, 1997.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Lowland, 2013.

Divakaruni, Chitra Baneerjee. The Mistress of Spices. Black Swan, 1997.

Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. Penguin. India, 1997.

Menon, Nivedita. Seeing Like A Feminist. Penguin. India, 2012.

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