Inscribing Our Times in an Epic: Arun Kolatkar's Sarpa Satra

Pakistan Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2021

People believe that ideologies work for their betterment by showing them a path of prosperity. However, they fail to understand the consequences of blindly following a specific ideology. In their debut novels, the contemporary writers of Pakistan depict the working of one of these ideologies: religion. The present study aims to analyze the projection and exploitation of power in the name of religion: how people suffer for the sake of faith, and the manipulation that follows it in these selected novels: The Prisoner, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, How it Happened, and Agency Rules. The study also highlights the link between religious ideology and the conditioning of the minds of people. The analysis takes place in the light of Marxist theory. The study discovers the role of religious ideology in overpowering helpless people with the belief that following a certain path will reward them in life after death.

2010

Nepal Journal of Multidisciplinary Research (NJMR), 2024

Background: Bangladeshi poet Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976) and modern Nepali poet Bairagi Kainla (1939-) invent their unique position to envision the contour of the rebel in “The Rebel” (1922) and “Drunk Man’s Speech to the Street after Midnight” (1960) respectively: their rebels voice for complete annihilation of the old order in search of the new one. Methods: Using Marxist dialectics as implied in later Foucault and David Jeffer’s concept of resistance, this study examines the modes of resistance that enable creative writers to uphold the contour of the rebellious self-seeking of the space of creative anarchy. Results: The rebellious self recognizes the space akin to the primordial universe which both the poets assert sets the ground for an entirely new order. As nonconformist poets, Islam and Kainla delve into the structure until they uncover the last remnant of the oppressive order to expose the inequalities such structures promote in each society. Conclusion: The mode of resistance that the poetic persona adopts to view the existing social order presents a novel way of responding to the tyranny of their contemporary time. Islam’s rebel takes up the form of anarchist, debunking the firm structure of the British Raj. On the other hand, Kainla’s persona poetically gets intoxicated to issue an order to the intellectuals to walk out on the street in search of change. Kainla knows that the society is well-prepared to ward off the ghost of the existing tyranny of King Mahendra. In both cases, the revolting self emerges larger than the political order. Novelty: Approaching the poetic texts from the perspective of resistance helps understand the attempts and vision of creative genius to fight against the oppressive power structure of their times.

isara solutions, 2020

There are two sorts of threats that are looming over mankind – the ones emanating from ecological imbalance and the others which are direct results of violence on a global scale. The first kind has often been discussed and highlighted by environmentalists, scientists, poets, celebrities and political leaders on world level summits, and has proportionately received its audience but the second one has not been given its due attention. Ever since the world has become a global village (sorry for the cliché), the confrontation of opposing notions of cultures, nationality, race, language etc has become its undeniable feature and from which any time an extremist voice pops up and starts recruiting its adherents. In such a world, a new civil wisdom, a cosmopolitan tolerance needs to be debated. In my opinion and I hope others will agree, India is a metaphor for the world, given its sheer diversity of language, culture, food habits, ethnicity, race, colour, religion, aesthetics, geography, topography seasons etc. Studying and analysing it may give us some insight in its continuity and therefore some lessons for the contemporary world to ward off the evil of extremist notions. For this purpose, I have chosen Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and will analyse the portrayal of India, the questions that surround her and her way of overcoming.

Higher Education and Research Society, 2018

C.S. Lewis said " ... you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad. "A light hearted manner of indicating just how indispensable change is, for progress and that the lack of it could lead to stagnation or regression. Societies around the world, their governing systems, systems of trade and commerce, civic bodies, their setup and working are all open to gradual change and review, for their proper and sustained functioning. But all these societies have had unique legacies from their past that is their culture, that they hold on to and try to shield from change, in order to retain their identity in a world becoming increasingly similar due to the phenomenon of globalization and neocolonialism. Religion is the social institution which is probably the most fiercely guarded from all external influences or rather impurities. Despite all the efforts to keep them pure and pristine, are religions really healthy or are they decaying, cut off as they are from any vital supply from outside. The incessant growth of fundamentalism in the world, would suggest that the religions or their modes of practice have gone wrong somewhere. In otherifying and segregating others, have they managed to separate themselves from the essence of their own tenets and lost the plot somewhere? This paper looks into the loopholes in the basic construction of the institution which make it vulnerable to extremism and being used as a pretext for terrorism. It would also look into possible ways to avoid such situations and the role of literature, religious or otherwise, in all of this.

The introduction to our online journal Sanglap Inaugural Issue on The Terror and the Literary, 2014; written jointly by friend and fellow editor Sourit Bhattacharya and me.

The twentieth century is one of the most significant periods in the history of the Indian subcontinent. With too much happening on the political, economic, religious fronts, there also seems to have been a fervent effort for social reform. It is this century that exposed to philosophical Indian minds the vacuity and shallowness of many of our customs, and helped them locate the ills flourishing in the name of religion. Where on one hand nationalism and patriotic sentiment ruled our hearts, there was a growing consciousness of flaws and awareness of ways to better our society. The post-Independence period likewise saw both an attempt to fight economic and administrative battles of Independent India and a desire to wipe off the ills in the society. This paper is an attempt to identify and acknowledge efforts made by Indian writers in this direction. Untouchability, orthodoxy, religious intolerance, hypocrisy, gender bias, caste bias are few of the issues that were marring the piety of Indian life. An overall effort was needed and Literature efficiently contributed to the cause.Keywords

Mina, Mohabbat and ishq are three pashto words used to name two kinds of love. The first is more human while the second is divine or mystical. In this paper I have tried to analyse the poetry of the Taliban, paying special attention to the question of the aforementioned kinds of love: human, divine and religous. I decided to do that because until now most of the researchers working on the Talibanʼs songs have focussed more on their political, propaganda and religious message, with very little work dedicated to its 'human' character. This is why I have presented several poems selected from the collection Poetry of the Taliban by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn (Gurgaon 2012) and enhanced my study with some comments.

Routledge, 2024

Review of the book, Religion in South Asian Anglophone Literature Traversing Resistance Margins and Extremism