Imaging the Folkloric Devi in Anti-Colonial Indian Fiction: A Case Study of Three Litterateurs
Keywords:
Indian folk tradition, Folk culture, Women characters, Bisham SahniAbstract
There is a trend among the imperialist to use culture in order to legitimise their imperialistic design. The natives of the environs initially feel like pariahs in their own native land. Nationalism provides the chief motivating force for projecting ‘cultural difference’ and ‘identity’, against colonial authority. The colonised writers and other literary campaigners find folk culture a useful source to depend on for their resistance against the imperialistic culture. People accept women to be an embodiment of this nature and they worship nature in the form of a woman as a saviour to protect them from any danger. Raja Rao made it clear in the Foreword of his novel Kanthapura while referring to Sthalapurana and about the goddess Kenchamma in the novel as the saviour-deity and as the source of inspiration of the village. Manik Bondyopadhaya never made any announcement but he too gave an impression of destroyer and preserver to his women characters- features that are embodied in goddess Durga. My reading of Bisham Sahni gives me a similar impression.
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