Department of Literature and Languages

This article examines the state of transition at which Sindhi-language libraries in India are located. These have become archives without being recognised as such within state or institutional frameworks. These libraries run by cultural organisations or academic institutions, house rare books and magazines, most of which no longer exist in print circulation. With a decline in readership and physical deterioration of print and other materials and the disappearance of language from contexts of governance/administration, education, and private space such as the family, these spaces deserve to be seen as housing archival material of rare value and immense importance to history and heritage, and as sites of cultural memory and language preservation. Their current condition of in-betweenness, or rather, nowhereness, has been conceptualised in this article as archiving frictions. These frictions are tensions that arise when these institutions encounter bureaucratic labyrinths, infrastructural isolation, and uncertain digital futures. The article draws on publicly circulated oral testimonies recorded with custodians of these libraries to identify three interrelated frictions: belonging, isolation, and anticipation. The concept of “archiving frictions” extends archival theory while thinking with the spectrum of archival theory that includes Derrida’s idea of archive as law/origin and Steedman’s idea of archive as dust, by bringing in a minority language context of a stateless community in India. It is offered here as an example of hope that can be extended to elsewhere in the Global South, especially in the context of preservation of minority, multiscriptal, cultural, and linguistic preservation.

This article seeks to investigate how Ram Devineni and his team’s productions–Priya’s Shakti (2014), Priya’s Mirror (2016), and Priya and the Lost Girls (2019)–break the coveted layers of frames and panels of comics and go beyond them to sensitise the readers on the nuances of gender-based violence in India with the incorporation of augmented reality. Within the fields of comics studies and gender studies, the article also explores how augmented reality in graphic narratives encourages and facilitates its readers in being sensitised to the gender roles and gender-based issues pertinent in South Asian societies. Before the series’ origin as an outcome of the protest against the 2012 Delhi-Rape Case, Devineni locates the diverse nuances of gender-based violence (rape, acid attack, sex trafficking) and addresses them in their comics using Hindu Mythology as a tool.

In this interview, Richard McGuire talks about his creative process as a cartoonist and illustrator. With a special emphasis on his books Here and Sequential Drawings, McGuire elaborates on his experiments with the notions of ‘space’ and ‘time’ through graphic narratives.

In this interview, Haleema Badar and Partha Bhattacharjee discussed with Somesh Kumar on his significant contributions as an illustrator and graphic designer. Recently, he published an online graphic novel called ‘Little by Little,’ where he shares stories from his family and childhood. Somesh Kumar’s graphic novel ‘Little by Little’ is memoir that tells him growing up in different parts of the Indian state of Bihar and his journey of becoming an illustrator and graphic designer. In this series, Kumar also sheds light on his evolving relationship with his father who eventually turns into an alcoholic. Readers can access his graphic novel via the given link: http://www.littlebylittle.online/. This interview was conducted via email. The questions were e-mailed to Somesh Kumar and he typed down his answers in reply to the sent email.

Within the intersection of decolonial studies and comic studies, this paper examines how decolonial visual styles have been employed in two comics narratives, ‘Someday’ by Samidha Gunjal and ‘Ever After’ by Priyanka Kumar. The specific formal styles have been used to locate the traumatised reality and monotonous life due to the gendering practices prevalent in India. The comics cultivate the everyday stories of the Indian middle-class women, both inside and outside of their domicile. In the light of ‘pornotroping’ and ‘coloniality of gender’, they show how gendered practices relegate the feminine self to the level of a ‘disciplined body’, making them invisible and mute. This paper will ascertain how these narratives exemplify decolonised counter comics narratives on personal sufferings. These narratives are then inflicted upon and against the dominant gender discourse based on heteronormative performativity in India. They help churn out the possibilities of feminine liberation from the shackles of interminable psychological and physical violence created within a gendered reality.

The paper explores the nexus between rhyme, rhythm and happiness in Bengali chharas while justifying the latter as the defining attribute of the verses. Chharas are short, happy Bengali rhymes. Elementary chharas, particularly, are designed for children yet to grow language and social awareness and manifest as affectionate interpersonal interactions between a caregiver and a child. The children's positive responses to these verses, despite their maturity, indicate the embedded joy being well grasped. Given this background, rhyme and rhythm are observed to make the language playful, enhancing the children's appreciation and involvement with the verses while contributing to the chharas’ happiness quotient. Through a discourse pragmatic methodology that emphasizes the speaker, listener and their interpersonal relationships, the various sources of fun and happiness in elementary chharas are analyzed, and the crucial contribution of rhyme and rhythm in determining pleasure and delight in elementary chharas is thus established.

This paper examines the representation of women’s bodies within the framework of Bāul philosophy, focusing on its spiritual, cultural, and gender dynamics. The primary objective is to explore how Bāul songs and literature depict the female body as both a medium for spiritual liberation and a site of societal control. Through critical engagement with theories from Foucault, Butler, Irigaray, Spivak, and de Beauvoir, the study analyzes the duality of women’s bodies being symbolized as empowering yet objectified in Bāul tradition. The research also addresses the subversive or reinforcing nature of patriarchal structures in these representations. By comparing Bāul with other South Asian mystic traditions, the paper offers insights into the intersection of gender, spirituality, and body politics while highlighting the contemporary relevance of these themes within feminist discourses.

Affect towards islands is a unique approach to engage with in discussions of the phenomenology of fictional islands. This affect complements the already identified tropes within island poetics: those of sensorial exploration, spatial practices, and textural detailing of islands. This article turns to a work of fiction about a fictional island based on the island city of Kochi in south India to unpack an alternative aesthetic of spatiality, the kind that changes the personal/ political relationship to personal/spatial one. We argue that the novel, Litanies of Dutch Battery (the novel in question) by N.S. Madhavan, expands inquiries into phenomenology of fictional islands by making space for corporeal memory and collective memory in storytelling. These memory-oriented narrative devices, we suggest, “provincialize” island poetics to add a hermeneutic of postcolonial angst to the repertoire of formal features of literary islandness.

While the traumatic impact of Partition on Punjab has been extensively examined, this paper undertakes a reading of Masoom Reza’s novels, Aadha Gaon (1960) and Os ki Boond (1970) to examine UP Muslims trauma of Partition in terms of homelessness and their minoritization in postcolonial India. Against a background of historical facts, the paper demonstrates how these novels as literary-testimonies mediate questions of belongingness and nationalism. By reimagining identity in terms of affective place-based belongingness to home, they show how conceiving nationalism in terms of communal identities engenders trauma through home becoming an unheimlich space. Depicting the community's life in the 1940s until the early years of independence, Aadha Gaon paints a poignant picture of loss of home and the reduction of the community to minorities in their own home. Os ki Boond carries forward the narrative in the 1950s and against the backdrop of rise of right-wing Hindu nationalism and growth of Jana Sangh, further probes the socio-political processes of making minority citizen-subjects in independent India. The paper draws upon postcolonial studies of trauma to posit the local genre of anchalik-upanayas (loosely, regional novel) as the medium through which the texts engage with the community's trauma of long Partition.

As a concept within applied linguistics, areal linguistics concerns itself with investigating the nature of structural similarities among languages produced by contact rather than by history or by genetic similarities. A critical look at its descriptive linguistic agendas reveals that the domain needs to be revisited in terms of questions of power relations and linguistic inequalities within specific linguistic areas. Such investigations reconfigure the dynamics of geography and regionality within language as a site of power. This study seeks to make an intervention into India as a linguistic area with a focus on Sindhi, a non-regional language in India. Given that the language and the community do not have a state or a linguistic territory within India, the condition of Sindhi is characterized by a sense of precarity. Seen through the prism of India as a linguistic area, this precarity is not quite visible. In revisiting the celebrated concept of India as a linguistic area, this study suggests ways of asking contemporary questions about areal linguistics that go beyond describing the nature of contact among languages, and instead ask how this contact impacts the markers of hegemony over minor languages in terms of technological, epistemological, and aesthetic leverage.

Motherhood, a familiar yet complex phenomenon, is informed by many factors whose consequences for women are often detrimental yet undermined. Particularly in India, discourse surrounding mothers' health often disregards the social and familial expectations and impositions that threaten women's authority over their own bodies. Amidst this, postpartum disorders, particularly the concept of postpartum psychosis, embody the anomalies of medical and social knowledge bases. Addressing the ambiguities and interconnectedness of motherhood and madness, this paper discusses the simplification of postpartum concerns as a biological condition alone and explores the complexities of diagnosis based on Em's aetiologies. Addressing the psychopathological and social nuances of postpartum psychosis, this paper also advocates for destigmatising women's apprehensions regarding the structural obligation of motherhood and broadening the discourse surrounding their reproductive autonomy.

This paper delves into an in-depth exploration of Lalon’s conceptualisation of ‘Moner Manush’, transcending the conventional confines of ‘Jaat’ (caste) and Dharma (religion). Through a nuanced analysis of Lalon’s evolving perspectives, the study traces the transformative journey of the idea of ‘Moner Manush’. By dissecting the lyrical and philosophical aspects, the paper illuminates how Lalon’s spiritual musings challenge societal norms, promoting a universal ethos that goes beyond distinctions. This inquiry aims to unravel the evolving nature of Lalon’s concept of ‘Moner Manush’ and its enduring significance in fostering inclusivity and spiritual interconnectedness, surpassing the limitations of caste and religion.

In this interview, Partha Bhattacharjee, Rounak Gupta, and Priyanka Tripathi will interview Karin Hauser. Karin is a freelance illustrator and graphic designer who illustrated her graphic narrative, Über das Treiben von Knospen.

Within the liaison of decoloniality studies and comics studies, this paper investigates how the decolonial visual style in the comics anthology This Side That Side (Ghosh 2013) has been used to locate the traumatised past and violation of human rights due to the ‘b/ordering’ practices of partition of India. ‘The Taboo’ by Malini Gupta and Dyuti Mittal, ‘An Afterlife’ by Sanjoy Chakraborty, and ‘Making Faces’ by Orijit Sen cultivate the stories of the inhumane condition of the migrants and victims during and after the Indo-Pakistan and Indo-Bangladesh-Pakistan partition. These narratives exemplify decolonised counter comics narratives on collective and personal memories inflicted upon and against the dominant partition discourse. They help churn out the human stories of the interminable psychological violence of partition and post-partitioned reality.

The paper addresses the irreverence and disregard towards the ma(d)isabled bodies in Indian texts and contexts. It focuses on the relation between notions of disability and madness to examine the constructed nature of such terms. The basic proposition is that persons with disability are examined as bodies on the boundary: It is the boundary that defines normalcy. However, it is the same boundary that brings together those elements that challenge the boundary. What defines disability or madness is not its nature, but its relation to what has been institutionalized. The paper examines Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom (2013) to analyze what terms like ‘disability’ and ‘madness’ are invested within the Indian context. It is interesting to note the multivalent meanings that ensue and how they are peculiar to a culture.

The evolving discourse of health among indigenous people, subject to the influence of both traditional wisdom and contemporary practices, remains elusive. Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s novel The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey (2013) explores the complex dynamics of these concepts within India’s Santhal community. The narrative provides a lens to explore the complexity prompted by the process of assimilation and marginalization in understanding Santhal history and its profound impact on their perceptions of health and healing. The paper contends that the incapacity of both traditional and modern knowledge bases to understand and remedy concerns related to women’s health and disability emphasizes the need for both a medical and a sociocultural comprehension of ailments. Advocating the necessity of a more inclusive approach that respects individual experiences and the knowledge systems of indigenous communities, this paper explores the intricacies of linking mysticism with health and challenges the oversimplistic categorization of illness and disability.

Traditionally (in)famous for their grandeur, melodrama, and archetypical portrayal of family units, Indian soap operas have rarely represented neurodiversity and mental disorders sensitively. Barring a few Over-The-Top (OTT) media series and emergent productions that expose the Indian audience to globalised sensibilities, neurodivergent characters and those living with mental disorders are (mis) represented either by stigmatisation or romanticisation. The on-screen portrayal of people living with psychiatric disorders oscillates between the reinstating and demystification of stereotypes, reflecting the vacillations of contemporary Indian society, which inconsistently balances modern and traditional perspectives and, though increasingly aware, does not completely display a sincere effort towards sensitisation. Without undermining the practice of psychiatric diagnosis and cure, this paper studies the representations of mental disorders and neurodiversity in select Hindi series of the 21st century and locates them in the Indian context. It identifies predominant archetypes, such as the simpleton and the “psycho” criminal, which immensely influence the discourse surrounding atypical behaviour and thereby public perception. The paper concludes that psychological categorisation and diagnosis also factor into the representation and creation of archetypes, where certain conditions, like anxiety and depression, are more sensitively portrayed than madness or psychosis. Furthermore, while contemporary representation has increasingly leaned towards being informed and sensitive, the depictions of mental disorders remain predominantly incongruent.

The study analyzes two Bengali Dalit autobiographies in both original and translated versions. One is Itibritte Chandal Jiban (2012) by Manoranjan Byapari (trans. Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit in 2018), and the other is Amar Bhubane Ami Benche Thaki (2013) by Manohar Mouli Biswas (trans. Surviving in My World: Growing Up Dalit in Bengal in 2015). The present research brings forward some standpoints. First, the translation of Dalit autobiographies creates transnational solidarity. Second, the translators play the role of gatekeepers to show that translation sustains the literary and cultural essence ingrained within the texts and initiates and engages dialogic discussions among the audience and readers on the global platform. Third, the translation of Dalit autobiographies arrests the attention of those global readers who barely nurture any idea on caste, class, and casteist politics and deeprooted issues like untouchability in India and constructs a distinct literary geography.