Gender and communal politics in Shama Futehally’s Reaching Bombay Central  

Oleh:

Jackson, Elizabeth

Jenis: Article from Article
Dalam koleksi: The Journal of Commonwealth Literature vol. 46 no. 3 (Sep. 2011), page 475-491.
Topik: communal politics; feminism; gender; Indian fiction; Muslim women; Reaching Bombay Central; religious minorities; Shama Futehally; social class
Fulltext: Gender and communal politics in Shama.pdf (185.34KB)

Isi artikel

Most of the best-known women writers of anglophone Indian fiction have been Hindu, and in the context of the intensification of communal politics in India, it is important to also consider the voices of their Muslim counterparts. Shama Futehally’s novel Reaching Bombay Central (2002) engages with both gender and communal politics from a Muslim perspective, and this article examines the ways in which the narrative implicitly challenges a number of popular perceptions about the disadvantaged position of Muslim women in India. The novel dramatizes the environment of inter-communal tension but conspicuously downplays the role of religious ideology and legal disadvantage, both of which have been prominent in public debates about Muslim women in India. In its dramatization of the power dynamics within a middle-class Muslim marriage, the narrative suggests that women’s disempowerment is located above all in the domestic sphere and in interpersonal relationships, and that their subordinate status is not specific to particular religious communities.

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