©ARC Page | 31 Communalism and the Discourse of Minority Women in Select Indian English Fictions

Abstract: Communal discourse in present-day India has had a momentous impact on women belonging to minority ethno-religious communities. Either as victims of rape, mutilation and murder whose bodies and identities emerge as sites of revenge, or as pawns in the hands of a patriarchal and opportunistic state, identitarian politics and violence has diversely affected the social, political, economic and psychological status of minority women in the present milieu. However, despite the highly nuanced nature of their subjugation, dominant socio-political narratives have been conspicuous in their inability to enunciate the peculiar predicament of minority women in the nation. On the other hand, contemporary fiction has sought to sensitively map the inner terrain of the minority women caught in a vortex of gender and religion. In the process, it emerges as a forum that assiduously articulates and at same time challenges the silence and the invisibility that has largely come to symbolize their existence within the nation. Through an analysis of postcolonial fictions that emanate from the collective violence unleashed in the anti-Sikh massacre of 1984, the demolition of Babri masjid in Ayodhya in1992 and the Gujarat pogrom in 2002, this paper attempts to examine the representation of women belonging to minority religious communities in India. In what can be regarded as a powerful and radical feminist critique, these narratives use myriad strategies of representation and technique to foreground the complex and multi-faceted nature of thei