The contours of communalism in the Indian subcontinent have altered with the advent of globalizat... more The contours of communalism in the Indian subcontinent have altered with the advent of globalization, advanced technology and the information revolution. Literary representations of communal violence have also registered a shift from intimate emotional and psychological portraits of victims and from vignettes detailing primarily the effects of communal violence; to a more inclusive exploration of the socio-cultural, political and economic underpinnings of its causative realities. Contemporary Indian English women’s poetry is a multi-focal, multi-local and multi-vocal discourse engaged with the dynamics of the communal problem in order to generate more nuanced understandings of the historical religious divide and its current political exploitation. This paper analyses the strategies of protest adopted by women poets against religious polarization, staged rioting and fundamentalist fascism. The poetic interventions in the public sphere encode an implicit appeal for transformative social practices that foster a multicultural social ethos. The poetry serves as witness to social trauma, as a repository against public amnesia, to alleviate personal despair and as an imaginative refuge in a world of escalating violence.
Uploads
Papers by Amrita Mehta