Rajni Singh

Khortha, a Dying Language and Urgency to Retain its Pure Variety

Languages are repositories of history, they express identity and contribute to the sum of human knowledge. (David Crystal, 2000). The linguistic diversity is really a benchmark of cultural diversity. Language, knowledge and culture are intricately woven. If a language is lost, the knowledge and cultural aspects of that community becomes extinct. The present study discusses about language death and the factors that leads to the language death in the world and in India. The prime focus of the study is to consider Khortha, a tribal language being spoken in Jharkhand and its neighboring states, as an endangered language. Khortha is fading away and is on the verge of losing its identity, the paper hence discusses some of the preventive measures to revitalize the language and safeguard it from getting extinct. The study has been presented through the data collected from the communities living in the outskirts of Dhanbad and the linguistic variation has been shown based on various parameters.

From the Inferior Other to the Becoming Being: a Reading of Dracula from Haddon’s Frame

The paper aims to analyze the vampiric figure Dracula as portrayed in the television series by Cole Haddon to understand the nature of identity and the socio-political constructions and constrictions that constitute the self. An individual’s characteristics are often typecast by the projection of a ‘singular affiliation view’. Through the character of Dracula, an attempt will be made to demonstrate how ‘singular affiliation view’ can be deconstructed through ‘alternative identification’. In the process, it will also examine the agencies, such as knowledge, power, and relations that make Dracula a functioning individual who lives with the ambition to empower the self.

Representing and Resisting Rape: Re-appropriation of the Female Body in Usha Ganguly’s Hum Mukhtara

ABSTRACT Women, from time immemorial, are always considered subservient to men, and they have remained at the disposal of the head of the family, the father. They are denied their basic human rights and the ‘biological control over their bodies’ as woman is the sexual property of her family and at the same time her body is negotiated for sustaining family honour. The female body is subjected to regulation and control in order to achieve the intended docility, a process through which power is dissociated from the body. The guardianship of women’s bodies make men proud possessor of property rights as well as self-acclaimed protector from their enemies. The body of the woman is the site for contesting where men can take revenge upon other men by violating her sexuality, thus, taking revenge on her ‘owner.’ Usha Ganguly’s play, Hum Mukhtara, an adaptation of Mukhtar Mai’s sensational and inspirational autobiography, In the Name of Honor: A Memoir, registers the protest of a victim of an institution sanctioned gang rape who later became one of the foremost figures of women empowerment in one of the most hostile countries for women in the world, Pakistan. Although the play brings out the inhuman brutality of the patriarchal society, it is a play of hope and inspiration as the protagonist emerges victorious by transcending the notions of ‘izzat’ (honour) and stigma to fight back against her tormentors, turning her docile body into a site of resistance. The present paper seeks to interrogate Usha Ganguly’s use of the theatrical space in the play to protest against the materialisation and objectification of female body by advocating forcefully for the empowerment of women and emancipation from their bodily constrictions.