Papers by Professor Dr. Md. Momin Uddin
This paper makes an attempt to analyze the portrayal of woman characters in the writings of R. K.... more This paper makes an attempt to analyze the portrayal of woman characters in the writings of R. K. Narayan (1906 – 2001), Nayantara Shagal (1927) and Anita Desai (1937). Although Narayan was senior to Shagal and Desai in age, as a writer he was contemporary to Shagal and Desai and wrote many of his important pieces when Shagal and Desai were writing. These three litterateurs have written with special focus on women's causes but the portrayal of woman characters in their writings is conflicting and varies from person to person. While Shagal and Desai seem to have based their woman characters on their autobiographical experiences and imagined other women's condition like theirs, Narayan's portrayal of woman characters is found based on his objective observation of the matter-of-facts of the Indian women's social status. R. K. Narayan, Nayantara Shagal and Anita Desai have dealt, in their writings, with Indian women's problems and their efforts to be emancipated from patriarchal domination but the attitudes of their woman characters to their problems are conflicting. While Shagal's women are decisive, courageous and indifferent to the societal reactions and traditions, Desai's women are caught in a serious predicament: they are torn between the need for conformity to the age old tradition of India and the need for a separate existence for women. And Narayan's women move steadily from their age-old tradition defined subordinate position to a secular position where they are women but not heavily chained by patriarchal shackles. India's historical and sociological studies on women's condition of the writers' time show that Narayan's portrayal of women in his novels is, no doubt, fictionalized, but not imagined, rather based on his observation of the matter-of-facts of the prevalent condition of women in India's age-old tradition bound patriarchal society and Shagal and Desai, instead of reflecting the actual condition of women in their writings, have imagined the condition of women on the basis of their own personal social status. According to Asha Choubey, these woman writers moved toward an ideal situation and out of imagination created such women as were much unreal. The personal
Faculty of Arts, Jagannath University, Dhaka, 2011
[Abstract: This paper seeks to understand how a corrupt tourist guide Raju playing the central ro... more [Abstract: This paper seeks to understand how a corrupt tourist guide Raju playing the central role in R. K. Narayan's The Guide is metamorphosed into a saint. Conceptually-ethically, morally, lawfully-a tourist guide is not desired to misguide the tourists but in The Guide Raju instead of showing the right path to the tourists follows the wrong means to guide his visitors. However, things related to unethical means do not continue and consequently he gets exposed as a criminal in the context of forging Rosie's signature. His imprisonment ending to his career as a tourist guide makes a turning point in his life and the turning phase of Raju's life is the point of study in this paper. The jailbird Raju, after his release from the prison cell, is mistaken for a spiritual guide and later made to sacrifice his life to save the lives of the whole nation. Raju's life—his transformation into a sage from a rogue—seems to correspond to the lives of many Indian mythical sages. This study attempts to show whether Narayan portrays Raju's transformation in terms of the myth of spiritual saints in relation to the prevalent myths of India.] R. K. Narayan's The Guide (1958) is a novel written in such a socioeconomic context when India was still a tradition based country with the majority of her population living in the villages. People of these villages were mostly uneducated, simple, gullible and superstitious. Children here grew up hearing legends and myths of many gods, goddesses and sages, which entered into their intelligentsia and developed their aesthetic senses and moral values. Narayan himself may have heard many such stories from her grandmother and thus may have had a first hand experience of these beliefs of the village people. Hence, he chooses such a village to unfold the story of the novel in point. The Guide is set in Malgudi (a fictional town created by Narayan), and it opens with its protagonist, recently released from prison, sitting on a granite slab beside an ancient shrine on a bank of the river Sarayu, on the other bank of which is situated the village Mangala, where people are so simple and gullible as to be made to accept for granted even the most unbelievable things. It is a man called Velan from this
Both men and women constitute the species of human beings but men have dominated over women since... more Both men and women constitute the species of human beings but men have dominated over women since time immemorial and have neglected and seem to have denied their rights altogether in many situations. Women very often have been deprived of human rights and society seems to have played with them as if they were cards or puppets to serve the purpose their superior 'others' have liked. This reductionist position of women has been reflected in literature, firstly, by male writers and then by female writers. Unfortunately the portrayal of women in the hands of many male writers appears to have been either more reductionist than what it is/was in reality or more exaggerated while most of the female writers appear emotional and over sentimental in their portrayal of women characters. This paper attempts to briefly study the condition of women as reflected in literature in relation to the actual condition of women of different times. Women did not have much scope for institutional education and very few had the opportunity of reading at home because of conservative society in the past. The male dominated conservative society did not think that women were human beings and they needed education. Society understood by human beings only men who would earn and dominate the others serving them. As women were kept confined to homes and hearths and did not earn, they had the status like that of servants. To make and keep women subordinate and subservient to men, men had concocted different texts and associated them with religion. The uneducated women, brought up under the shade of religion, believed those texts without questioning their authenticity and the more they believed the more they became subservient. Any deviation on the part of a woman was treated with physical cruelty, and women tolerated in silence even being bitten by their
[Abstract: This essay is a critical attempt to situate R. K. Narayan as a writer voicing the eman... more [Abstract: This essay is a critical attempt to situate R. K. Narayan as a writer voicing the emancipation of women in the Indian orthodox Hindu society where men hold a superior position and women are confined to the home and heath with all sorts of taboos and traditions clamped on them. But it would be wrong to consider Narayan a feminist in terms of western feminism because his attitude is shaped with a strong Indian sensibility that stands to resist the possibility of any foreign cultural aggression in the movement that he launches to bring about a change in the status of Indian women. It is true that Narayan admits the inevitability of western notion of liberated women, but he does not forget to depict the perils of following western wave of movement for women's freedom in India. He shapes the movement in India's own traditional and religious perspectives.]
Abstract: India has made a distinct place in the arena of literature written in English. Beginnin... more Abstract: India has made a distinct place in the arena of literature written in English. Beginning with Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, fairly a large number of Indian writers have so far written in English and this huge bulk of literature produced in English language in India has been named Indian English literature. Colonial experiences, colonial legacy, postcolonial reactions and realizations, diasporic consciousness, exchange of culture between nations, etc. have functioned in the production of this Indian English Literature. Although produced by Indian writers, the readership of this literature is not limited only to India, it has gained international readership. R. K. Narayan played the most significant role in creating international readership for this literature of India. This essay attempts to show what made R. K. Narayan a world-class fictionist and how much he contributed to the internationalization of Indian English literature.
Swami and Friends is R. K. Narayan’s first novel that presents the Indian society of the 1920s an... more Swami and Friends is R. K. Narayan’s first novel that presents the Indian society of the 1920s and the 1930s when the British had already ruled over the country for over one and a half centuries and when the anti-British movement was at the highest drive. The novel shows how the long British rule transformed the century-old Indian culture into a hybrid one making its people accept certain aspects of the colonizer’s culture even as they were struggling against the colonial rule politically for the country’s freedom. This paper attempts to show that Narayan’s showing in the novel the incorporation of some aspects of the colonizer’s culture into the lives of the natives—a fact that has caused controversies in assessing the writer’s stance regarding the presence of the British in India—is not an effort of his slighting the nationalist movement or a way of his displaying liking for the colonial power, but an objective way of showing how the native culture had to inevitably absorb certain facets of the English because of their long presence in the country. Theoretically, this paper will endorse the issue from postcolonial perspective which will show that Narayan has upheld in the novel a negative picture of the colonial administration, even though he has shown the natives getting Anglicized in outlook.
R. K. Narayan has written fifteen novels and in all his novels, except A Tiger for Malgudi in whi... more R. K. Narayan has written fifteen novels and in all his novels, except A Tiger for Malgudi in which he has not dealt with any mundane theme, he has shown that a woman who is educated is a strong, self-dependent, and independent person. She is a person capable of doing all things that a man can do. An educated woman cannot be subdued and cannot be made subordinate to man by any means.
Abstract
This paper makes an attempt to look into the position of women in the pre and post indep... more Abstract
This paper makes an attempt to look into the position of women in the pre and post independent India and shows how Narayan portrayed women characters in his novels written during this period. Born and brought up in a conservative, orthodox Hindu society Narayan saw the miserable plight of women locked up within the confines of houses. They were denied the rights of speech and choice and were treated as if they had been puppets, not human beings. Narayan chose his women characters from this male dominated orthodox society which had developed a completely male favoured ideological structure to keep women subordinate and subservient to men. But since Narayan wanted to bring about a change in the status of women, he did not portray all of his women characters as completely silent and blindly loyal to all old values of society indiscriminately. While the old women in his novels are loyal to the age old customs, the young ones question some practices. Against the male favoured ideological structure which bereft women of their freedom, individuality and strength, Narayan wanted to develop a different set of principles for women to emancipate them from the male servitude. This paper shows how his women deconstruct the culturally accepted beliefs about women’s position in India and reconstruct a new position to establish them as human beings in their own light.
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Papers by Professor Dr. Md. Momin Uddin
This paper makes an attempt to look into the position of women in the pre and post independent India and shows how Narayan portrayed women characters in his novels written during this period. Born and brought up in a conservative, orthodox Hindu society Narayan saw the miserable plight of women locked up within the confines of houses. They were denied the rights of speech and choice and were treated as if they had been puppets, not human beings. Narayan chose his women characters from this male dominated orthodox society which had developed a completely male favoured ideological structure to keep women subordinate and subservient to men. But since Narayan wanted to bring about a change in the status of women, he did not portray all of his women characters as completely silent and blindly loyal to all old values of society indiscriminately. While the old women in his novels are loyal to the age old customs, the young ones question some practices. Against the male favoured ideological structure which bereft women of their freedom, individuality and strength, Narayan wanted to develop a different set of principles for women to emancipate them from the male servitude. This paper shows how his women deconstruct the culturally accepted beliefs about women’s position in India and reconstruct a new position to establish them as human beings in their own light.
This paper makes an attempt to look into the position of women in the pre and post independent India and shows how Narayan portrayed women characters in his novels written during this period. Born and brought up in a conservative, orthodox Hindu society Narayan saw the miserable plight of women locked up within the confines of houses. They were denied the rights of speech and choice and were treated as if they had been puppets, not human beings. Narayan chose his women characters from this male dominated orthodox society which had developed a completely male favoured ideological structure to keep women subordinate and subservient to men. But since Narayan wanted to bring about a change in the status of women, he did not portray all of his women characters as completely silent and blindly loyal to all old values of society indiscriminately. While the old women in his novels are loyal to the age old customs, the young ones question some practices. Against the male favoured ideological structure which bereft women of their freedom, individuality and strength, Narayan wanted to develop a different set of principles for women to emancipate them from the male servitude. This paper shows how his women deconstruct the culturally accepted beliefs about women’s position in India and reconstruct a new position to establish them as human beings in their own light.