Reclaiming Voice and Agency through Resistance in Meena Kandasamy's Poetry

Abstract

One of the leading voices of Indian English Literature, Meena Kandasamy is a candid activist, fierce poet, critically acclaimed novelist, and noteworthy translator of the current era. As a writer, she excels in the stark portrayal and deconstruction of caste and gender-based violence in contemporary Indian society. Her poetry reflects aggressive resistance towards oppressive hierarchy promoted by the champions of casteism and cultural supremacy. With her unique and raw style, she covers the shocking atrocities engineered against underprivileged beings in her poetic collections like Touch and Ms Militancy. She deftly examines sexual politics and unapologetically questions the norms of a male-dominated society. With blatant rawness, she dissects the power dynamics of patriarchy and challenges certain taboos & stereotypes about femininity. This paper examines how her poetry seeks to reclaim the voice and agency of the silenced and underprivileged women, destined to live on the fringes. It explores the fierce spirit of resistance in her discourse of subversion. It also traces how she reinterprets and dismantles the instruments of colonization and constructed dominance of the female body by the power institutions of patriarchy.