https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/1090 Mon, 27 Apr 2026 04:16:54 GMT 2026-04-27T04:16:54Z https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/6255 Title: Reconstructing the excluded voices: The politics of resistance in Arundhati Roy’s non-fictional essays Authors: Chaudhury, Avishek Abstract: Arundhati Roy got phenomenal success with her maiden Booker Prize winning novel, The God of Small Things (1997) and became the poster child of an emerging power. However, the interesting thing is that instead of exploring the genre further she soon fused her ‘aesthetic sensibility’ with the ‘political entity’ and became an author-activist, a vigorous voice of the global dissent. This transformation - from a literary sensation to a polarizing polemist - is largely due to her painful consciousness of a world where ruthless exploitation of the poor is done in the name of progress and development. And thereby, the obligation she felt as a writer to forge an alliance – a direct link between the personal and the public, between art and activism, first, to promote cultural awareness of the exploitation and marginalization of the poor people by providing physical evidence of the civil and terrestrial injustices inflicted upon them; and then to narrativize the possible methods of resistance and the subsequent reconstruction by contesting and re-shaping the ‘western ideologies of development’ pursued at present. The present study, therefore, investigates the interface between the discourses of resistance viz Marxism, Feminism, Post Colonialism and Subaltern Studies in the non-fictional essays of Roy as her generic mobility, her art and activism, amalgamates within her narrative the multiple minoritarian perspectives. As such, this research paper consists of five chapters. The introduction serves as the necessary backdrop for the rationale of this research work. It traces the evolution and transformation of Arundhati Roy from the much-hyped prestigious Booker Prize winner to an author-activist whose sole concern is to narrate the untold and unheard tales about the pathetic plight of the socially excluded people from the multiple minoritarian perspectives. The first chapter concerns Reconstruction and Roy’s role in reconstructing the excluded voices by confronting the dominant and oppressive structures on both, the global and the local level. The second chapter, ‘Reaction Against Environmental Injustice’ penetrates into the representations of eco-consciousness of Roy’s texts from an eco-critical standpoint. It deals with the issues of environment – its exploitation and degradation due to the pursuance of the flawed developmental policies of corporate globalization and the terrible plight of a large number of people displaced and dispossessed to make room for the mega projects. The third chapter, ‘Resistance Against Neo-Imperial Injustice’ relates and limits to the injustices inflicted upon the laymen by neo-imperialism that operates through the overt and covert means of corporate globalization and neo-liberalism. An in-depth analysis of Roy’s texts has been done to understand how she problematizes the issues of corporate globalization, neo-liberalism and the catastrophic effect of America’s global war on terror. The fourth chapter, ‘State Sponsored Communal Violence and Genocide: A Critique’ emphasizes on communal violence and genocide - both in India and abroad – to understand how they are used by the power as effective tools of hegemonic expansion. The fifth chapter, ‘A Review of Maoist Insurrection’ critiques at length the impact of India’s New Economic Policy upon the tribal heart-land of India, the Maoist insurrection and the subsequent launching of Operation Green Hunt – fuelling a serious internal crisis in the country. The conclusion is based on the findings and inferences that are derived and wrested from the research work of her non-fictional endeavours. Fri, 20 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/6255 2021-08-20T00:00:00Z https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/6203 Title: Representation of Indigeneity in the Select Works of Verrier Elwin Authors: Bhowmick, Arpita Abstract: This thesis entitled “Representation of Indigeneity in the Select Works of Verrier Elwin” deals with various facets of indigeneity in the Indian context. The significant parameters of nature, women and community are discussed with reference to the literary works of Verrier Elwin. The recent critical approaches to nature, women’s issues and communitarian identity are also included in the core chapters. Various influences upon Elwin have also been traced in course of discussion. The influences of British Romantic poets, Indian tribal folkloric traditions and the leaders of Indian Freedom struggle have been charted with factual details. Many significant indigenous cultural registers are identified, annotated and analyzed in the context of indigenous identity. The third, fourth and fifth chapters of this thesis deal with the core argument of my research. I have attempted to show how Elwin’s reading of the indigenous reality was a pioneering attempt to discover the true spirit of indigeneity. Compared to the mainstream construct of indigenous identity it’s a discovery of an alternative worldview. I have endeavoured to highlight how Elwin identified the politics of representation of indigeneity and coined a new rhetoric of appreciating indigenous literature. Thu, 12 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/6203 2021-08-12T00:00:00Z https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/6145 Title: Cultural identity and the problematics of colonial modernity: A study of the select novels of Amitav Ghosh Authors: Rana, Pabitra Kumar Abstract: The dissertation is intended to examine the representation of colonial modernity vis-à-vis cultural identity in the select novels of Amitav Ghosh. In his novels Ghosh has dealt with various postcolonial issues in the context of Southeast Asia. A particular thread that runs through most of his works is the complex phenomenon known as colonial modernity. Colonialism and modernity are mutually constitutive. Colonialism projected modernity as its justificatory logic for ruling the colonised. Apparently, modernity was supposed to bring progress and liberation in the colonies; but it was actually the tool of the colonisers to subjugate the colonised. Colonialism and modernity collaborated in forming what Walter D. Mignolo calls ‘the colonial matrix of power’ which exerts strong influence upon the colonised in four fields: epistemology, sexuality and gender, economy and authority. ‘The colonial matrix of power’ propagates the Western ideas and practices in these four domains as universal paradigm, and at the same time, discredits non-Western ideas and practices. But the implementation of modernity in the colonies is not a smooth, one-dimensional process. Modernity is accepted as well as questioned, resisted, subverted and undermined by the colonised. Even the colonisers themselves violated the much-touted principles of modernity. In his novels Amitav Ghosh has addressed some of these concerns relating to the complex processes of internalisation, rejection, subversion, dismantling and undermining of colonial modernity. In other words, Ghosh’s novels offer a critique of colonial modernity. Being a writer who is preoccupied with human predicament, Ghosh has presented his critique through the subjectivity and identity of his fictional characters. An analysis of the subjectivity and identity of his characters shows how modernity is problematised in the Third World scenario. This study aims to unfold Ghosh’s critique of colonial modernity in the domains of epistemology and sexuality and gender with reference to his select novels. Wed, 11 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/6145 2021-08-11T00:00:00Z https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/5586 Title: Representation of Transgressive Women in Late 18th and Early 19th Century Select British Gothic Fiction Authors: Chakraborty, Suman Abstract: Fred Botting in his book Gothic (1996) has defined Gothic as a site of excess and transgression though he has refused to consider Gothic fiction as an “unrestrained celebration of unsanctioned excesses” (8). For him, it is a site of struggle between two opposing forces of propriety and excess. Transgression in the Gothic novels, for him, gives an opportunity to interrogate and re-examine the accepted boundaries and limits. How far did transgression help women to interrogate the limits? Were they really empowered to transgress the accepted gender roles? Whether did Gothic novels offer the woman characters any agency to speak for themselves? These questions have stirred my interest to find their answers through the present research. There have been several critical works by the feminist critics on the representation of women in the Gothic novels written in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Most of the critics are less optimistic about the feminist potentials of the Gothic fiction of this time. In the Terror mode of writing popularized by Ann Radcliffe and the others, the heroines were endowed with passive strength and courage while facing patriarchal aggression. Their limited strength and their partial resistance to patriarchal aggression reflect the compromised status of their autonomy. On the other hand, the novels, which were written in the Horror mode, are often treated as misogynists for their depiction of women as seductive, dangerous, and even demonic. As far as I know, there are very few researches and critical works that have attempted to substantiate feminist potentials of these novels written in the Horror mode. Besides this, the novelists and the novels I have taken for detailed analysis is a relatively less explored area. Excepting M. G. Lewis’ The Monk, a few articles and essays have been written on the other novels (Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya and The Passions, William Beckford’s Vathek), but any full-length study on them has hardly been attempted. In this study, I have made a humble attempt to show that how the demonization of women in the selected Gothic novels written in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in England actually enables them to transgress the gender roles prevailing in the society. Per Faxneld in his book, Satanic Feminism (2015) has defined Satanic Feminism as a tactic of reading that involves “a reinterpretation of Satan, and especially his role in the Edenic myth” (29). Following Faxneld’s approach, I have tried to relate the biblical myth of the Great Fall to my reading of the selected Gothic novels written in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Besides this, Marquis de Sade’s theory of counter-ethic where conventional virtue becomes vice, and vice becomes virtue and its feminist interpretation by Angela Carter in The Sadean Women (1979) have helped me to show that demonization of women actually empowered women, helped them to transgress the accepted gender roles and thus boomeranged on patriarchy. Mon, 19 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/5586 2020-10-19T00:00:00Z