This article examines the literary celebrity of Indian author Chetan Bhagat and his paratextual articulations in India's English-language media. It seeks to deconstruct the role of these paratexts in occluding how upper-caste masculinity operates as the normative script in mainstream media discourse. Critically examining Bhagat's utterances in English-language television news, print newspapers, and social media, I argue that the paratexts enable his authorial persona to be continually constructed in ways that consolidate his caste-patriarchal authority. In the process, these paratexts val-orize neoliberal entrepreneurship and narratives of ascent, rendering existing caste hegemonies in India invisible. Bhagat's use of English also reflects the complex politics of the English language in colonial history, where upper-caste men in service of the empire utilized the linguistic hegemony of English to consolidate their patriarchal and caste dominance. However, I suggest that pockets of awareness operate among Bhagat's readers and audiences, where subaltern groups have strategically negotiated using this upper-caste masculinized English to forge their own social mobility and empowerment. Bhagat's performance of celebrity has to thus be seen as being enacted within a complex English-speaking milieu, which is rife with caste and gender power struggles.
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The Oxford Handbook of Modern Indian Literatures
This chapter is based on the premise that language is both expressive and constitutive of caste. It is in language that the most embedded and almost invisibly settled ideologies of caste can be seenglimpses of which become evident if quotidian language is examined closely. Caste often lies in the
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South Asian Review
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Abstract The contemporary Indian social and cultural scenario does not offer any scope to debate on the importance of English language. English, which was introduced by the colonial masters in India for their own interest, has crossed many barriers and controversies, ultimately establishing its prominence in varied aspects of day-to-day life. Chetan Bhagat, one of the recent writers in the arena of Indian English Writings, depicts the position of English language and its connection to the transitions in the cultural scenario and establishment of identity in today’s context. This paper is an attempt to explore issues of language, culture, and identity in Chetan Bhagat’s Revolution 2020 (2011) and Half Girlfriend (2014). The paper would also study how Bhagat looks at the importance of English in different contexts. The study would go to an in-depth analysis of these two books to understand how Bhagat identifies the ‘new lingo’ of the Gen Y, at the same time concentrating on the many ‘Englishes’ that can be identified in a country like ours. Finally, the paper would explore the possibilities of looking at Bhagat’s literary texts as appropriate materials to be used in the Indian teaching-learning scenario. Keywords: language, culture, identity, Indianisms, youth language, humour, Hinglish, chat
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Media industry in India has witnessed hegemony of dominant castes since its very inception. Such hegemony has had a huge impact on our everyday lives and how we come to experience the world. This paper attempts to analyze how caste operates in the media sector, from its composition to content and argues that Indian media has played a catalytic role in inflicting epistemic violence over the oppressed castes as it helps dominant discourses to prevail and shapes popular perceptions and culture. After going over journalism, the paper examines cinema and television as both- a tool of maintaining the status quo and also as a medium of resistance and assertion. An analysis of the feminist discourse in media reveals a linear and somewhat exclusionary approach that bars the agency of Dalit women from media representation. At the end, it explores the power of the Internet with respect to the emerging Ambedkarite voices that are strengthening a liberatory framework while reclaiming their world.
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In this dissertation, I trace the contours of state control and capital in India, starting from the 1970s and see how the state’s increasingly centralizing tendencies and authoritarianism, in the service of capital, creates cultures of violence, fatalism, desperation, and ultimately, even more desire for authoritarianism. I study male stardom in Bombay cinema, beginning withAmitabh Bachchan (who was the reigning star in the 1970s and 80s), and following up with Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan (who have been successful stars from the early 90s), to understand how changing subjectivities, responding to changing socio-economic reality, were formulated and expressed through these star texts by the film industry. Through the study of these stars, I try to understand how dominant ideas of masculinities were being formulated and how misogyny came to be a prominent aspect of those formulations, because of social structures of caste and patriarchy as well as neoliberal precarity. I also study.
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Literature represents life and life is a social reality. A writer, who is a member of a society, is possessed of specific social status and he / she receives some degree of social recognition and reward. De Bonald considers “literature is an expression of society”. In a world when issues relating to human rights have been under critical focus, literary depictions of the experiences of marginalized groups have acquired great significance. The modern spurt in Dalit literature in India is an attempt to bring to the forefront the experiences of discrimination, violence and poverty of the Dalit. Expression of these experiences have long been buried in silence, often with religious and social sanction and relegated to the margins as non-literary. More recent is the trend to deny their existence altogether. The growing corpus of Dalit texts, poems, novels and autobiographies, however, seek to rectify this phenomenon by examining the nuances of Dalit culture. Dalit literature is one of the most important literary movements to emerge in post-independence India. The transformation of the stigmatized identity of these so called ‘untouchables’ to a self-chosen identity as Dalit is a story of collective struggle waged over centuries. Mahatma Jyotirao Phule and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, two towering figures in the pantheon of Dalit history, were the first to appropriate the word. The voice of the marginalized and the oppressed is a great tool to recognize the obscured conditions that exist in the world around. With the knowledge gained from marginalized literature, we will be able to fight ignorance surrounding the lives of these people and the prejudice that is a result of that ignorance. One of the important objectives of Indian English writers of fiction has been the creative interpretation of Indian society and its culture and the ‘formulation and projection of the Indian image. The Indian society is broadly classified into three main communities, namely, the upper-caste, the non-upper-caste and the depressed classes. Among them, there existed many castes and sub-castes, which followed numerous practices and usages; surprisingly each of them is unique. The influence of upper-castes is greatly felt in the socio-religious and cultural lives of the marginalized sections over the years.
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Men and Feminism in India, eds Romit Chowdhury and Zaid Al Baset, 214-36. Oxon and New York: Routledge
The relationship between men and feminism is frequently assumed to be antagonistic. This volume confronts this assumption by bringing critical attention to men's engagement in feminist research, pedagogy, and activism in India. The chapters in this collection respond to two broad thematic concerns: theoretical implications of men producing feminist knowledge and the history of men's participation in feminist endeavours. The volume also explores the undocumented contributions of men to three domains of feminist activity: institutionalization of feminism in the academy, social movements aimed at gender justice, and male writings on gender and sexuality. Delving into an important yet overlooked aspect of the social sciences, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of gender studies, masculinity studies, modern Indian history, sociology, and social anthropology. Romit Chowdhury is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. His research interests are in feminist studies, urban sociology, ethnography, and cultural studies. He has published on masculinity in the contexts of men's rights movements, feminist methodology, urban sociability, male feminism, sexual violence, and care-giving. He held a visiting position at the Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam, for three months in 2016. Zaid Al Baset is Assistant Professor of Sociology in St. Xavier's College, Kolkata. His research interests are in feminist studies, sexuality studies and sociology of religion. He has published on queer identities in India. He has co-edited a special issue of Economic and Political Weekly on the theme of men and feminism in India (2015). He was a DAAD PhD fellow at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS) at the University of Göttingen (October to December 2016).
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Muses India: Essays on English-Language Writers from Mahomet to Rushdie
