South Asian review最新文献

{"title":"Pregnant Bodies in Transit: Maternity, Migration, and the 1962 Sino-Indian War in Rita Chowdhury’s <i>Chinatown Days</i>","authors":"Barsha Nayak, Mandakini Baruah","doi":"10.1080/02759527.2023.2278835","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2023.2278835","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractSigned as a response to the Sino-Indian war in 1962, the Defence of India Act facilitated the mass incarceration of Indians having Chinese ethnicity, not even sparing children and pregnant women. Rita Chowdhury’s historical fiction Chinatown Days (2018), translated from the Assamese novel Makam (2010), rescues this systematic elimination of the Assamese-Chinese narrative that is otherwise absent in the dominant paradigms of this war history. Chowdhury conducts a rare historiography tracing the origin of the community in colonial India, their internment at the Deoli camp following the war of 1962, and ultimately their deportation to China. Chowdhury’s novel illustrates that the worst victims of this forced migration were the women who had to bear the burden of their reproductive bodies. By borrowing specific contexts from Chowdhury’s fiction that illuminates the challenges faced by pregnant Assamese-Chinese women, this paper conducts a gendered investigation into the events of this state-sanctioned forced displacement and deportation. It interrogates the idea of constructive nation-building through state-sanctioned banishment of the unborn racially undesirable Assamese-Chinese children. It examines how the displaced pregnant female bodies are doubly marginalized in internment camps, having no access to proper sanitation or nutrition, and how they are treated as mere tools to stage political dissent.Keywords: Assamese-Chinese Sino-Indian war pregnant bodiesforced displacementmigration and body AcknowledgmentsOur sincere gratitude to Prof. Amit Rahul Baishya from the Department of English, University of Oklahoma for his valuable engagement and suggestions during the course of writing this paper, the audience at the Annual South-Asia Conference held at the Dublin City University, Ireland, where an earlier version of the paper was presented, for asking some of the most fascinating questions that shaped its present arguments, and the anonymous reviewers for their extremely constructive feedback.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1 A popularised slogan in Hindi language, literally meaning Indians and Chinese are brothers.2 A popular emotional patriotic song sung by the late Indian singer Lata Mangeshkar, specifically dedicated to the Indian soldiers martyred in the 1962 Sino-Indian war.3 Traditional Assamese dance form.4 Indian culinary dish in which rice and lentils are cooked together.5 Association of India Deoli Camp Internees, based in Toronto, Canada6 Hindi word for curd or yogurt.7 See “53 years of Indo-China war: Indian-Chinese prisoners recount horror behind barbed wires” India Today, 2015. https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/53-years-of-indo-china-war-indian-chinese-prisoners-recount-horror-behind-barbed-wires-269077-2015-10-208 See “Barbed wire at Deoli: Indian Chinese who were interned after the 1962 war want an apology” Scroll.in, 2015. https://scroll.in/article/760580/barbed-wire","PeriodicalId":85563,"journal":{"name":"South Asian review","volume":"65 9","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135684840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bharati Mukherjee’s Politics of Diaspora in <i>The Tiger’s Daughter</i>","authors":"Rima Bhattacharya, Gurumurthy Neelakantan","doi":"10.1080/02759527.2023.2278830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2023.2278830","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractMukherjee’s debut novel The Tiger’s Daughter (1971), critiques the Indian sixties from the perspective of a young expatriate, Tara Banerjee Cartwright, who returns to India after a seven-year stay in America only to find that the nation is vastly different from how it is pictured in her cherished memory. This article traces the journey of the protagonist from a bitterly disillusioned expatriate to a patient immigrant who reinvents herself to navigate the unfamiliar American socio-cultural terrain. It shows how Mukherjee captures the dissonance between the imagined homeland and its bitter realities to undermine the myth of return typical of the immigrant journey. In focusing on Mukherjee’s sustained meditation on the discontents and delights of being an immigrant in America, this essay significantly adds to the body of literature that analyses the novelist’s take on the immigration debates. We argue that even as early as 1971, Bharati Mukherjee’s fictional vision grapples with the spirit of transnationalism, a concept coeval with the early nineties which articulates how migrant diasporans can negotiate their identity in the hostland.Keywords: Homebelongingnessdiasporaidentityand return Additional informationNotes on contributorsRima BhattacharyaRima Bhattacharya is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India. Previously she was an Assistant Professor at IIT Jodhpur. She has published papers in journals like Media Watch, Journal of Men’s Studies, Neohelicon, Journal of Language, Literature and Culture, American Notes and Queries (ANQ), South Asian Review, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, International Journal of Comic Art, Economic and Political Review, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, British and American Studies.Gurumurthy NeelakantanGurumurthy Neelakantan, Senior Professor of English at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, is the author of Saul Bellow and the Modern Waste Land (Indian Publishers, 2000), in addition to articles on a range of modern and contemporary novelists. A Distinguished Teacher Awardee of IIT Kanpur, he serves on the editorial board of Philip Roth Studies published by Purdue University Press. He is also is an elected member of the International Association of University Professors of English (IAUPE).","PeriodicalId":85563,"journal":{"name":"South Asian review","volume":"46 20","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135682321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Retooling Trauma: Partition as Celebratory Nationalism in Neoliberal Metropolitan Cinema","authors":"Rini Bhattacharya Mehta","doi":"10.1080/02759527.2023.2275085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2023.2275085","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract‘Retooling Trauma’ scrutinizes the deployment of the Partition trope in 21st century Indian cinema. Using three films released between 2013 and 2017—Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, Rajkahini, and Begum Jaan—the paper elaborates on these films’ popular cultural maneuver of evoking historical trauma eventually to sideline it, for the sake of political-esthetic legitimacy. Far from the raw jingoism of the turn-of-the-millennium Partition films such as Gadar, Hé Ram, and Pinjar, these films adopt Partition trauma as backstory, coopting Partition violence as accelerant for otherwise weak plotlines. The advertisements and trailers of the films, however, highlight Partition as the driving force behind the narratives. How does this approach—of marketing a film around a political essence—compare with the earlier strategies of over-iteration and over-performance of Partition violence? The paper will answer this question through a contextual explication of these films’ style and content.Keywords: PartitionBollywoodBengali cinemamelodramanationalismjingoism Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Amar Chitra Katha is a popular brand of comic books based on biographies of mythical, historical, and current-day figures.2 Invalid source specified.3 https://youtu.be/y-kQN4RorPU, accessed February 28, 2023.4 https://youtu.be/5NIh2iUmTcc, accessed February 28, 2023.Additional informationNotes on contributorsRini Bhattacharya MehtaRini Bhattacharya Mehta is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an affiliate of National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Her book on Indian Cinema, Unruly Cinema: History, Politics, and Bollywood was published by University of Illinois Press in June 2020.She has published two co-edited anthologies: Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora (Anthem Press, 2010) and Indian Partition in Literature and Films: History, Politics, Esthetics (Routledge, 2014). One of the recipients of University of Illinois’s first Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts and the Humanities, she is the creator of a Digital Humanities Project on Global Film History.","PeriodicalId":85563,"journal":{"name":"South Asian review","volume":"35 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135868056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Anglo-Indian/Christian Middle-Class and Consumerist Modernity in the 1970s Hindi Cinema","authors":"Priya Alphonsa Mathew","doi":"10.1080/02759527.2023.2265111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2023.2265111","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":85563,"journal":{"name":"South Asian review","volume":"26 12","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136233713","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Partition in Bangla Little Magazines: Trajectories of Politics and Culture","authors":"Ayan Choudhury, Akshaya K. Rath","doi":"10.1080/02759527.2023.2267831","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2023.2267831","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractThe partition of India in 1947 that transgressed both the geographical and cultural boundaries left millions of people homeless and victims of communal violence. Like other media that presented the horror of partition, little magazines, too, responded to the post-partition socio-cultural upheaval. Despite being the “Other” to mainstream printing practices, little magazines became socially pungent and attentive critique of the socio-political milieu of the state. Bangla little magazines promoted a body of partition literature which was often side-lined by the mainstream magazines and academia. This article explores the trajectories of politics and culture in which these small presses conceptualized “partition” both as a historical event and literary representation that revived the cultural amnesia to reproduce an alternative storehouse of counter narratives. Moreover, focusing on the paratexts, it decodes the esthetic paradigms of these “advance guard” magazines to understand their representational politics. In short, this article relocates “partition” within the network of Bangla little magazines and its alternative printing cultures.Keywords: PartitionBangla little magazinesprinting cultureparatexts AcknowledgementsWe are thankful to and would like to acknowledge everyone who has given consent to reproduce the images/illustrations used in this article. We express our gratitude to Prasun Barman, the editor of Ninth Column, Mahfuz Ripon, the editor of Batting Zone, Uttam Purkait, the editor of Ujagar, Biswajit Ghosh, the editor of Ebong Anyakatha, Mani Manjusha Basu, proprietor of Nakshatra, and Adhir Ray, Secretary of Ishan for their timely help in giving permission to reproduce the images in the article and for their cooperation.Notes1 See Train to Pakistan (1956) by Khushwant Singh, and “Toba Tek Singh” (1955) by Sadat Hassan Manto.2 See https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,854810,00.html.3 See Ambedkar’s Pakistan or the Partition of India (2017) for further details.4 See N. G. Rajurkar’s “The Partition of India in Perspective” (1982, 34–35), and Bidyut Chakrabarty’s The Partition of Bengal and Assam, 1932-1947 (2004, 79).5 In Philosophical Arguments (1995), Charles Taylor argues that meta-topical space is a public sphere “in which members of society could exchange ideas and come to a common mind” (271).6 On 23 March 1947, Amrita Bazar Patrika published its intention to conduct a poll to discern “as far as possible, public opinion on the question of proposed partition of Bengal for the creation of a separate homeland for Bengal Hindus.” The poll closed on 15 April and the result was published on 23 April 1947. It reported that 99.6% Hindus and 0.6% Muslims casted their votes and most of them supported the division.7 Focusing on Anandabazar Patrika, Dainik Basumati, Jugantar and Swadhinata, Arpita Basu anthologized articles on refugee and resettlement in Udbastu Andolon o Punarbasati (2013).8 Charles Allen suggests in","PeriodicalId":85563,"journal":{"name":"South Asian review","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135803197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Anti-Dravidian Politics, Anti-Caste Tamil Nationalism and the VCK’s Lost Track: Reading the Politics of <i>Madras</i>","authors":"Sree Govind Bharatvaraj","doi":"10.1080/02759527.2023.2267833","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2023.2267833","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractDuring the 1990s, the VCK evolved as a radical Dalit movement. Pledging to revolutionize the history of Tamil politics, Thirumavalavan, an icon of new generation Dalit activists, mobilized the lower castes of Tamil Nadu. The party emerged as a representative of Dalits, since Dravidian politics turned ineffective in handling Dalit concerns and caste issues. The main Dravidian parties—DMK and AIADMK—have moved a long way from the self-respect movement of Periyar. The Dravidian leaders, while abandoning Periyar’s social radicalism, introduced a philosophical tradition, Tamil nationalism—inspired by the Tamil literary tradition. However, this linguistic nationalism deserted caste issues while romanticizing the antiquity of the Tamil language and culture. In contrast, the VCK vociferously campaigned on a concept of anti-caste Tamil nationalism in the early times. It engages on the liberative Tamil Buddhism—advocating the need for a collective identity, caste-less-Tamilians. However, in the latter stage, Thirumavalavan focused much on Tamil Eelam politics, turning into in an explicit supporter of LTTE. The VCK has almost lost track of the anti-caste Tamil nationalist politics in the present times. This article focuses on how these political shifts and dimensions are represented in a Tamil film, named Madras, directed by Pa. Ranjith. Through an effective screenplay with strong symbolisms, Madras discusses one of the significant histories and trajectories of Tamil politics. The film commemorates the social movement politics of VCK during the 1990s. It counters the Tamil literary tradition of Dravidian parties and criticizes their linguistic nationalism. It portrays VCK’s anti-caste Tamil nationalism. Further, it criticizes the VCK for losing-track from the anti-caste politics. This article examines how Madras represent these political shifts. It explores how Madras presents a Dalit criticism of the Dravidian parties and also on the Dalit party.Keywords: Dravidian politicsVCKcasteDalitsRanjithTamil nationalism AcknowledgmentsI convey my gratitude to my spouse Ashima Jose. Without her love and support, this article is truly impossible. Her suggestions are extremely helpful for the development of this article. I also convey my thanks to the anonymous reviewers whose comments were very encouraging and insightful. I extend my sincere thanks to the editors for their valuable suggestions.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1 The anti-caste Tamil nationalism is a radical political ideology that VCK once propagated as a key for both Dalit liberation and anti-casteism. A detailed section of this politics is exclusively provided after the end of the film analysis portion.2 Iyothee Thass was a nineteenth century Tamil anti-caste activist. He is the forerunner to Tamil nationalism politics. Iyothee Thass believed Buddhism is the solution to achieve caste-free Tamil society. He spearheaded the Buddhist movemen","PeriodicalId":85563,"journal":{"name":"South Asian review","volume":"8 9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136358542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Entangled by Borders: Bodies, Citizenship, and Gender in Assam","authors":"Ragini Chakraborty","doi":"10.1080/02759527.2023.2262151","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2023.2262151","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractThis paper will scrutinize the politics of border construction in Assam through the lens of Border Studies and Memory Studies. The unique geo-political location of Assam vis-à-vis its crisis of identity and belonging as a result of the 1947 Partition, makes it a complex site of study. My scrutiny of the literary and cultural memory of this region will be based on a comparative reading of a selection of short fiction entitled Barbed Wire Fence: Stories Of Displacement From The Barak Valley Of Assam (2012) by Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee and Dipendu Das, and Debendranath Acharya’s Assamese novel Jangam on the 1942 Indo-Burmese exodus (Sahitya Akademi award, 1984). My intervention is driven by the persistent need to deconstruct the 1947 Partition as a monolithic history of violence and disruption, and to draw attention to the many instances where multiple borders and multiple forms of disenfranchisement took place. The texts that I am close-reading, focus on such similar histories of disjuncture that shaped the history of Assam vis-à-vis issues of bodies, citizenship, and gender. Using news articles and commentaries from 2019 to 2022, I will subsequently connect the traumatic events surrounding the 1942 exodus and the 1947 Partition to the current state apparatuses that are using biomarkers to discriminate against perceived others and eliminate them from the protection of the nation-state. I will connect the past trauma with the insecurities and (im)possibilities that have cropped up surrounding the implementation of a Citizenship Amendment Bill, and creation of a National Register of Citizens (NRC).Keywords: Bodiesbordersmigrationgendertraumapartitionexodus Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 The CAA and NRC have been instrumental in controlling and shaping India’s population vis-à-vis refugee settlement. While CAA was an amendment of the 1955 Citizenship Act, NRC was implemented post 1951. To read more, visit: https://scroll.in/article/930482/explainer-what-exactly-is-the-national-register-of-citizens.2 Sanjay Barbora talks about migration patterns, settlement, and representation in Assam in his Citation2022 publication Homeland Insecurities: Autonomy, Conflict, and Migration in Assam.3 This strategic move to divide the state, and hence the community, was met with enormous resistance from both the Hindus and Muslims in Bengal, and the Partition was annulled later in 1911. This initial attempt at border construction caused anxieties regarding the political status of Assam and its identity, as the Bengali-speaking district of Sylhet was incorporated into the Bengal province. This would continue to create conflict among Bengali-Assamese people in terms of linguistic, cultural, and economic dominance.4 Baishya uses the word chakrabehu, which refers to Chakravyūha or the labyrinth/maze like formation in Mahābhārata, where the entrance was accessible, but it was impossible to make an exit.5 Ay","PeriodicalId":85563,"journal":{"name":"South Asian review","volume":"144 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136296348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Grooving on at Seventy-Five: Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Rushdie, and the Indian Muslim’s Ecstatic Return","authors":"Ananya Jahanara Kabir","doi":"10.1080/02759527.2023.2262789","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2023.2262789","url":null,"abstract":"This essay examines two high profile creative producers of Indian Muslim heritage: the actor Shah Rukh Khan and the writer Salman Rushdie. Even as each faced attacks (of different kinds) in 2022, early 2023 saw the triumphant resurgence of their creativity with the film Pathaan, starring Khan in the eponymous role, and Rushdie’s new novel Victory City. I argue that the film and the novel together offer a complementary manifesto for the Indian Muslim as a minority subject 75 years after Partition. To understand the stakes at play in this minoritization process, I conduct the analysis against two essays on minority subjectivities in India, particularly that which crystallizes through Indian Islam—one from the 1960s, by Humayun Kabir, and the other from the contemporary moment, by Aamir Mufti.","PeriodicalId":85563,"journal":{"name":"South Asian review","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135484101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Trauma and Storytelling in Arundhati Roy’s <i>The Ministry of Utmost Happiness</i>","authors":"Pier Paolo Piciucco","doi":"10.1080/02759527.2023.2262791","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2023.2262791","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractThe graveyard in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017) may be interpreted as the quintessential place that communicates traumatic loss, so that the present paper purports to analyze this fictional work from the perspective of trauma studies. I will first demonstrate how the text abounds with all the typical elements on which this field of study focus their attention, from dissociative disorders to the obsession of repeated images, and more. Another section of my work analyses how the impact of trauma results in the surfacing of a death-wish that dominates Anjum’s frame of life, as well as the whole narration. Differently from what had happened in The God of Small Things, this pessimistic view however is countered in The Ministry, where an instinct for survival reacts against the prevailing gloomy atmosphere. In this context, the roles of storytelling and social commitment acquire a central role as agents able to neutralize psychic suffering and restore social connection. Finally, particular attention has also been made to offering a range of possible interpretations to the meaning of the term “happiness,” a key word for this text.Keywords: TraumaArundhati Roy The Ministry of Utmost Happinessstorytellingdeath-wishinclusiveness Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1 Henceforth, abbreviated as The Ministry.2 See Anne Whitehead. Trauma Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004.3 See his Living in the Borderland: The Evolution of Consciousness and the Challenge of Healing Trauma, and particularly chapter 11, entitled “Borderland/Borderline” (102–118), where the notion of Borderland overlaps with that of the borderline personality disorder.4 See, for instance, Baines (Citation2020), Rajan (Citation2021), or Kuiti (Citation2021) for a discussion on the novel in terms of a utopian narration.Additional informationNotes on contributorsPier Paolo PiciuccoPier Paolo Piciucco is an Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages, University of Turin, where he regularly teaches courses on English Literature. He took a Ph.D. from the University of Bologna in 1999, working on contemporary Indian fiction in English. Over the years he has mainly focused his concern on contemporary, postcolonial and postmodern literatures being these the most recurrent topics analyzed in his research works. His monograph, The Two Souls, is a theory on the negotiations and compromises which gave rise to a totally marginalized form of art in South African Theater during the Apartheid years. He has edited 9 books and is the author of about 50 articles. Contemporary Vulnerabilities, his last edited book, is out since August ’23.","PeriodicalId":85563,"journal":{"name":"South Asian review","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135387916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Indigenous Ecocentrism, Jungle Satyagraha and the “Judgment Imaginary”: Mahasweta Devi’s “Madhu: A Fairy Tale”","authors":"Sk Tarik Ali","doi":"10.1080/02759527.2023.2257950","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2023.2257950","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractMahasweta Devi’s short story “Madhu: A Fairy Tale” is an eco-dystopian narrative that tells the story of ecocidal violence and cultural crisis experienced by a forest-dwelling community owing to the clear-cutting of trees in an Adivasi-populated area in Maharashtra to facilitate the expansion of rail network by the British. The story recounts how the destruction of the local forest on which the Korju community depends for shelter, sustenance and survival, causes an existential crisis for them and how the ecology-economy disintegration leads these “ecosystem people” to start a “silent satyagraha,” a nonviolent resistance to interventionist politics and context-insensitive developmentalism, in the form of self-imposed starvation. This story representing indigenous plight and the crisis of traditional ecocentric culture takes an apocalyptic turn when Madhu, the titular character, was transformed into a gigantic figure swallowing almost the entire city of Mumbai after the experiment with his famished body in a scientific laboratory to decode the mystery of the death of the Korjus due to malnutrition. This paper reads Mahasweta Devi’s “Madhu: A Fairy Tale” to show how the reckless felling of trees in colonial India threatened the existence of certain forest resource-based indigenous communities with gradual extinction. It focuses on how the Korjus’ silent protest against the destruction of their immediate natural forest embodies the practice of jungle satyagraha which is an important component of the forest protection movement in both colonial and postcolonial India. It also looks into how the uncanny metamorphosis of Madhu into a monstrous figure is an ecohorror trope in suggesting the revenge of nature against its reckless appropriation and exploitation.Keywords: Ecocentrismadivasijungle satyagrahamonstrousecohorror Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 For details, see https://www.newsroot.in/rights/tribal/Adivasis-set-for-a-long-court-battle-against-mining-on-Tila/cid8594896.htm. Accessed on May 27, 2023.2 For details, see https://www.thehindu.com/news/explained-the-coal-mining-protests-in-the-hasdeo-aranya-region/article65726814.ece. Accessed on May 27, 2023.3 People who depend upon direct access to natural resources of their immediate environment for their sustenance and shelter have been called the “Ecosystem People” by Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha in their book Ecology and Equity: The Use and Abuse of Nature in Contemporary India (Gadgil and Guha Citation1995). According to Gadgil and Guha, these poor and disadvantaged people are always deprived and dispossessed by the capitalist-politician-bureaucracy nexus in independent India.4 In their book Ecology and Equity: The Use and Abuse of Nature in Contemporary India (Gadgil and Guha Citation1995), Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha call the real beneficiaries of resource-intensive and socially unjust development in independent Ind","PeriodicalId":85563,"journal":{"name":"South Asian review","volume":"78 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134912276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}