Tales of oppression and liberation in feminine fiction and film texts from the Indian subcontinent

484 Pages·2017·3.72 MB·English

by  Asim Aqeel

Tales of Oppression and Liberation in
Feminine Fiction and Film Texts from
the Indian Subcontinent: Case Study
of the Works of Arundhati Roy, Bapsi
Sidhwa, Deepa Mehta, and Sharmeen
Obaid Chinoy

Asim Aqeel
20416286
Masters in English Language and Literature
G.C.U., Lahore (2001)

This thesis is presented for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy of
The University of Western Australia

School of Humanities
English and Cultural Studies
2015
Abstract

This research interrogates the issues of subalternity and marginality in
the Indian Subcontinent through in-depth analyses of the works of four post-
colonial women artists: Arundhati Roy and Deepa Mehta; and Bapsi Sidhwa
and Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, each pair representing a filmmaker and a writer
from India and Pakistan, respectively. Mehta and Chinoy are diasporic
filmmakers, whereas Roy and Sidhwa are writers from minority communities.
Roy is a Syrian Christian, and Sidhwa is a Parsi. The dissertation covers Roy’s
The God of Small Things, Sidhwa’s five novels, Mehta’s films of her famous
Elements trilogy, and Chinoy’s two award-winning documentary films, Saving
Face, and Pakistan: The Children of Taliban.
Although English fiction texts from India and Pakistan have been
studied together, yet no elaborate academic investigation has, so far, been
carried out to analyse representative film texts from the two neighbouring
countries. This thesis, however, envisages enquiry into the socio-cultural
mores of India and Pakistan through the study of symbolic fiction and film
texts which have adopted complex post-colonial subject-categories and
discursive positions. The texts analysed in this thesis adopt a transnational
perspective which reflects on the corresponding socio-cultural and
historiographic developments in the countries after the Partition in 1947.
Seemingly very different in their medium and content, the works of Roy,
Sidhwa, Mehta, and Chinoy uncover the complicity between Western
Imperialism and the Third Worldist nationalism/neo-colonialism in their
countries. The thesis argues that this particular perspective enables these
women novelists and film-makers to devise new representational strategies or
to improvise on certain creative paradigms adopted in popular fiction and
film forms in India and Pakistan by the artists who primarily work within the
nation space.
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It further shows that Roy, Sidhwa, Mehta, and Chinoy go beyond
traditional chronotopes to critically examine the political imperatives of day-
to-day religious, cultural and domestic activities which are meant to define
specific communal identities in India and Pakistan. In that problematization of
the general and the particular, these artists educate and enlighten their
protagonists as to what oppresses them from within and from without. Their
objective focus obtains from an acute consciousness of approaching and
detailing through art a virtually inseparable geography, history and culture
that in both India and Pakistan is tried to be (re)articulated through
nationalist/religious/communal rhetoric. The knowledge of the intricacies of
culture, and politics of their countries and of the region imparts to their works
an emotional relevance. The works of these women artists share certain
thematic and representational perspectives also in being temporally context-
specific, as they explore the fundamentalist trends in their respective societies
either working in or reverting to the vulnerable decades of the 1970s and
1980s, or revealing impact of the politics of these decades on current politico-
cultural situations. It also leads us to understand how these women artists
negotiate the difficult terms of their art to describe/cultivate subversive
alternative ethos of/in their respective societies, and address globally heated
subjects from their peculiar minority or diasporic perspectives.
The research draws on the strategy of the Subaltern Studies group of
Indian scholars and historians who adopted Italian Marxist Antonio
Gramsci’s concept of ‘subaltern classes’ during the 1980s for their
interventionist enquiry in the South Asian historiography. In post-colonialism,
studying marginality and subalternity is a complex enterprise because the
theory imposes epistemic limitations to approach both these concepts. The
issues of subaltern identity and agency have particularly been discussed as
contentious in Bhabha’s and Spivak’s works and in responses to these works.
For clarity in this regard, the thesis conscientiously retains critical focus on the
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agency of Eurocentric colonialism, which to begin with was the theorists’
advice when they launched their literary undertaking to keep track of one’s
real concern as a post-colonial critic. Also, the theorists still aspiringly
maintain that the discourse has the potential to provide ‘the language and the
conceptual categories with which the subaltern voice speaks’.
The texts chosen for this thesis, therefore, represent the tangible
evidence that the post-colonial critics stress is crucial to foreground the fresh
claims about the abiding relevance and currency of the post-colonial discourse
in the current scenario. In its critique, this thesis relies primarily on the
deconstructionist strategies suggested by the exponents of the cultural
contexting approach in post-colonialism, as they advise to study the subaltern
as a ‘shifting signifier’ which ‘does not inhabit a continuous space at all’.
Interestingly, the works of Roy, Sidhwa, Mehta, and Chinoy already
dramatize the social and political implications of imperialist agendas for even
those ordinary beings as well as working classes who previously remained
unrecognised among the subaltern categories.
The thesis uses Roy’s and Sidhwa’s fiction not to read specifically the
pathos of alienation, which the discourse of minority artists generally evokes,
but to embrace the humanist critique of domination in their majoritarian
societies that both these women launch from a position of objective non-
identity. Sidhwa and Roy risk putting the image of their own communities at
stake by showing characters which represent the privileged and beleaguered
sensibility like that of the members of their majoritarian societies to urge
people that they may reflect on the societal ills and take their share of blame.
Likewise, the film texts of Mehta and Chinoy have been studied not from the
perspective of aesthetics but for the cultural and political functions that film as
a popular social practice performs to shape up the public imaginary. In view
of post-colonial film theory being an evolving paradigm, the observations of
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certain critics such as Vijay Mishra and Fauzia Afzal Khan, who strategically
adopting nationalistic as well as post-colonial positions offer crucial insights
regarding Indian Hindi cinema and Pakistani cultural productions, fairly
complement the theoretical underpinnings of the subaltern scholars to
provide the requisite interpretive formations for this thesis.
Moreover, the gendered consciousness of the works of Roy, Sidhwa,
Mehta and Chinoy poses a direct challenge to the oppressive patriarchal
attitudes, and phallocentric material and symbolic cultural structures in their
respective societies. It is considered virtually impossible in post-colonial
theory to artistically enunciate the agency of the gendered subject, especially
of the female subaltern. Avoiding several pitfalls in this regard, Roy, Sidhwa,
Mehta and Chinoy approach patriarchy as a manifestation of religion and
culture. This again is an artistic venture into an interpellated liminality where,
it is demonstrated, new-found collaboration between post-colonial and
feminist scholarships offers complementing assumptions for a proper
purview.
Settling the argument as to how well these women artists have
performed their post-colonial and feminist responsibilities, therefore,
necessitated a thorough enquiry into the corresponding politico-cultural
developments in India and Pakistan that evolved contemporaneously to these
artists’ works. Such in-depth analysis of individual texts unearths startling
affinities in the material conditions of production and consumption of their
works, and reveals subaltern and feminist awakenings in the region that have
skipped critical attention so far.
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For

Shaukat Ali
Shabbiran Bibi
Mohammad Bilal
Anaya Aqeel

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Acknowledgements
In the name of The Almighty, the beneficent, the merciful.
I wish to express my heartiest gratitude to the University of
Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan and the University of Western Australia for
providing funds (UAF-Pakistan-SIRF Scholarship, and PhD Completion
Scholarship) for my PhD. My gratitude is also due to the School of
Humanities, and the department of English and Cultural Studies for
providing the ideal facilities and environment for conducting research. I shall
always remain indebted to Prof. Siddique Kadambot, who extended much
needed support throughout my stay in UWA.
I do believe that gratitude to the people, who break their bodies to
nurture us, and faith in the persons, who remain our ideals through the
strength of their characters and abilities, must be cherished like religion while
we pursue our destinations. But this religion falters, too. There is surely
something divine in the benevolence of particular beings that the ordinary
humans cannot pay their favours back. This is what comes to mind when I
recount the efforts of my parents, siblings, and of my teachers who made my
life so different. The support and faith I got throughout from my sisters
Shahida Parveen, Shamim Akhtar, Asma Noreen, and Tahira Jabeen turned
my ordinary life into an extraordinary one. They are my strength. My parents
gave to me all they had, of wisdom, of love, of care, of morality, and of
resources. I could never ask for more, neither from them nor from God. I feel
greatly honoured and extremely lucky that I am a student of Emeritus
Professor Gareth Griffith (English and Cultural Studies). I cannot find words
to praise him for his knowledge and personal attributes and suffice to say: ‘I
love him like a son’. I shall always regard Assistant Professor Shalmalee
Palekar (English and Cultural Studies), my second supervisor, for the
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kindness and patience she showed and for her invaluable feedback on my
work.
Assistant Professor Tony Hughes-D’Aeth, Professor Van Ikin, and
Professor Kieran Dolin from English and Cultural Studies also supported me
at various tough times during the course of my studies, and I humbly thank
them for their help. Kieran Dolin’s sincerity as a mentor inspired me right at
the moment when I could appreciate and capitalize on it the most. I must
mention that I hate borders. I shall leave Australia with a very heavy heart
because my amazing friends Danau Tanu, Cathryne Sanders, Richard Martin,
and Leah Maund will be here. Tariq Moj, Danau and Cathryne, and my office
mates Charmaine Fernandez, and Amy Hilhorst also deserve special thanks
for proofreading my thesis. Rizwan Zeb has been very kind to offer his books.
And I found a younger brother in Mian Umair Khalid.
It is not possible to enumerate the names of all those individuals who
have contributed to my success-story. I feel blessed when I recall the names of
my mentors, Sister Ruqqayah (who taught me to recite The Quran), Miss
Mehmooda Butt (at Government Christian Primary School), Mr. Tahir
Mehmood, Mr. Hafiz Rasheed, Mr. Nawaz Akhtar, Mr. Chaudhary Sultan,
Mr. Chaudhary Haji Muhammad Yousaf, Mr. Obaid Ullah Gondal (at
Government Taleem-ud-Din High School), Mr. Syed Shazada Muhammad Ali
Shah, and my most beloved Mr. Khalid Farooq (my English tutor), who gave
me knowledge not only of books but also of my natural talents. Some of them
are dead and others in old age. They devoted their so precious time, and
energy just to see that I may shine in life. I owe them for every word of
wisdom that I know, and for every comfort that came my way.
Stay at Government College University, Lahore, association with
Nazir Ahmad Music Society, the patronage by inspiring individuals like Mr.
Naseem Asghar Ginai, Mr. Sahibzada Faisal Khursheed, Mr. Tariq Salman
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Farani, Mr. Yousaf Bashir, Mr. Ashfaq Sarwar, Mr. Khwaja Imtiaz, Madam
Nabeela Kayani, and Madam Surrayya Shafi Mir, and friendship with very
learned friends from GCU mark the brightest patch in my life, for which my
gratitude grows every single day. As the bigger dreams are still ahead, I
would like to end stating my conviction that I will retain ‘the courage to
know’ and will continue ‘to seek wisdom’.

Asim Aqeel
University of Western Australia
March 2015

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Table of Contents

ABSTRACT i
DEDICATION v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi

INTRODUCTION 1
CASE FOR THE METHODOLOGY OF RESEARCH 11

CHAPTER 1
TRADITION AND THE TRAGEDY: LIFE IN FICTION,
THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS 42
1.1 Roy and Her Art 42
1.2 The God of Small Things 50

CHAPTER 2
ENLIGHTENED THROUGH SUFFERING:
THE VISIONARY SUBALTERNS OF DEEPA MEHTA 94
2.1 Mehta and Her Art 94
2.2 Water: (2005 Film) 103
2.3 1947: Earth 119
2.4 Fire 142

CHAPTER 3
DECIPHERING HISTORY; RELIGIO-CULTURAL POLITICS:
THE PHYSICAL ROOTS AND SPIRITUAL PURSUITS
OF BAPSI SIDHWA’S FICTION 169
3.1 Sidhwa and Her Art 169
3.2 The Bride 178
3.3 The Crow Eaters 205
3.4 Ice-Candy-Man / Cracking India 252
3.5 An American Brat 272
3.6 Water: A Novel 319

CHAPTER 4
A PLACID PAKISTANI’S EXCURSION IN THE NARCISSISM
AND EXTREMISM OF HER SOCIETY: SHARMEEN OBAID
CHINOY REINVENTS THE FACE OF HISTORY 336
4.1 Chinoy and Her Art 336
4.2 Saving Face 341
4.3 Pakistan: Children of The Taliban 358

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