Rohimmi Noor

Honour killing as engendered violence against women in Amit Majmudar’s Partitions (2011)

The 1947 Partition of British India, otherwise simply known as Partition, marked not only the births of India and Pakistan, but also one of modern history’s largest human mass migrations, in which an estimated million died and thousands of women were subjected to horrifying acts of engendered violence. Scholars, such as Menon and Bhasin (1998) as well as Butalia (2000), have conceptualised engendered violence during Partition as a violation of women’s bodies, sexualities and psyches by men in general, manifested in various forms ranging from abduction and rape to honour killing and bodily mutilations. However, this study is limited to examining how honour killing is depicted as a form of such violence in the novel Partitions (2011) by Amit Majmudar. More importantly, it examines how depictions of the honour killing of women during Partition in the selected text can also be read as manifestations of the negative underside of the concept of biopower conceptualised by Foucault, in which mass death and destruction are necessary to ensure the survival of future generations. This study reveals, based on textual evidence surrounding the botched honour killing of the character Simran Kaur, that the honour killing of women during Partition is due to the perception of the time, place and society that women, as well as their sexuality, are symbolic constructions of male honour. This subsequently leads to women being viewed by their own men-folk as threats against the honour of their respective religions and communities in times of communal strife. Keywords: honour killing; 1947 Partition; engendered violence against women; Partition fiction in English; biopower DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2016-2201-17

Hybridity in Bapsi Sidhwa’s an American Brat

As immigrant fiction continues to emerge from the South Asian diaspora across the globe, theories of gender and identity that mostly treat such novels as bildungsromans are often used to bring to light the plight of literary characters caught between two different cultures. Similar is the case with Bapsi Sidhwa’s An American Brat, which is often read through the lens of the identity crisis that is experienced by Feroza, the protagonist in the novel. Taking Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of hybridity as an analytical tool, however, this essay uses mimicry, ambivalence, and unhomeliness, concepts under hybridity, to facilitate the understanding of Feroza’s experiences in An American Brat. Besides studying if the three selected elements of hybridity can be found in the protagonist, this work also investigates whether or not they are responsible for her decision to choose to stay either in Pakistan or in the United States at the end of the novel. Keywords: hybridity; mimicry; ambivalence; unhomeliness; An American Brat DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2016-2201-11