Violence in Modern Indian Thought in the Mirror of World War II

The turmoil at the end of the long 19th century and the aftermath of the World War I inspired many Indian political thinkers to reflect upon violence as a means of attaining statehood. Revolutionary violence brought about abrupt social tra...

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Gentle Violence

The article examines narratives on domestic violence in middle-class families in selected novels of an acclaimed Indian author, Bani Basu, who writes in Bengali. Svetpātharer thālā (1990) and Khārāp chele (2002), set in the second half of...

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How to Speak of the Unspeakable?

To date generations of people from South Asia grapple with traumatic experiences of havoc and violence prior to, during and in the aftermath of the Partition of British India. Writings in Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi, and English, i.e. in language...

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Reading Between the Lines

A decades long attempt by the central government to control dissent in Punjab culminated in a military operation codenamed Bluestar (June 1984). Overtly aimed at flushing militants from the Golden Temple, it led to the desecration of the s...

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Grief, Anger, and In-between

Śurpaṇakhā from the Rāmāyaṇa, though she plays a pivotal role in the epic, is often neglected in the main discourse. The character’s exclusion from the central narrative typically positions her as the “other” and reduces her to a flat, vil...

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Violence and the Marginalized

Adivasi or tribal communities in contemporary India are no strangers to violence. The incidence of violence within the tribal world requiresa multifaceted analysis. While much of the contemporary violence arises out of contestations over...

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Shades of Violence in South Asia

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Rural Violence and Warfare in Medieval South India

This paper explores the problem of rural violence in medieval South India through a study of hero-stones collected from the districts of lower Karnataka between the 9th and 13th centuries. These documents reveal a world of everyday violenc...

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Bombs and Shrapnel Drawing Verses

      

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Indigenous People, Environmental Issues and a Reinterpretation of the Indian Epic Tradition in the Bengali Short Story A Bird’s Mother (Pākhir Mā) by Sunil Gangopadhyay

This paper deals with the Bengali short story A Bird’s Mother (Pākhir Mā) by Sunil Gangopadhyay (1934–2012). First published in 1964, the story must have been inspired by the recent mass attacks on the indigenous Lodha ethnic group in the...

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Poetry on Combat for Secularism and Democracy

The tragic events that followed the demolition of Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992 in Ayodhya were the culmination of a conflict simmering for almost the entire period of independent India, especially after the 1980s, striking at democracy...

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