Destroying and Recreating Myths: A Subversive Response to Caste Ideology

Abstract

Centred on a famous canonical Hindi fiction by Munshi Premchand (1880–1936), Godān (1936), which means ‘a gift of a cow’ and on contemporary Dalit fiction by Roop Narain Sonkar, Sūardān (2010), which means ‘a gift of a pig’, the present article discusses how the hegemonic Indian myths are destroyed and recreated as a subversive response to caste ideology. Godān, which can have a parallel to a popular Hindu myth of a ritual of gifting a cow which, as it is believed, guarantees moka (salvation) after mtyu (death), is condemned by Sūardān, which, in its turn, backs its assault by presenting a parallel myth of pig. Thus, the present article illustrates how the canonical literary texts are revisionized and re-appropriated by the vidrh writers using adaption techniques similar to the postcolonial strategies of ‘writing back’.