COMMUNAL VIOLENCE, TRAUMA AND INDIAN WOMEN COMMUNAL VIOLENCE, TRAUMA AND INDIAN WOMEN: FICTIONAL REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN IN

ii This thesis examines fictional representations of Indian women’s responses to trauma in the background of communal violence. It argues that fiction allows for the reimagination of women’s conditions during communal riots, and their responses to trauma as a result of those riots. While ethnographic research seeks answers from traumatized victims, a fictional text can open up spaces for debates about conditions of women and their responses to trauma in the background of communal violence. Through Manju Kapur’s A Married Woman and Anita Rau Badami’s Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?, this project examines women’s negotiations of their religious and national identities within the private and the public and their responses to trauma caused by communal violence. The Introduction draws on texts on gender and diaspora theory as well as scholarly work on the evolution and history of communalism in India. It also looks at the historical backgrounds of two events of communal violence that underpin Kapur’s an