SOUTH-ASIAN CULTURAL SCENARIO IN SELECTED WORKS OF TEHMINA DURRANI, TASLIMA NASREEN AND SHASHI DESHPANDE

Abstract [English]

The novels of Tehmina Durrani, Taslima Nasreen and Shashi Deshpande have brilliantly and powerfully project women-centred issues in the South-Asian Cultural Scenario. As they have inherited a shared legacy of the Pre-Independent India, they weave a rainbow (to speak metaphorically) of issues, concerns and difficulties experienced by women in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh that obstruct their growth in developing as fuller human beings. They meticulously project and define traditions values, taboos and socio-cultural constraints that make their living precarious in society. These women novelists hold patriarchy and its different manifestations responsible for the marginalisation of women in South Asian societies. The psychological delineation of women characters in the novels is superb. Their place in society, their motivation-level, their resistance to suffocating patriarchal norms and their sacrifice and compromise find expression through their interaction with other characters in the texts.