Resistance and Identity: A Postcolonial Feminist Study of Ismat Chughtai’s Fiction

Abstract

Postcolonial feminism has streamed out from the mainstream feminism in the latter half of the 20th century. It is a critique too and the reaction against the mainstream feminism. Postcolonial feminism deals with the social, political and economic marginalization of the third world women which has been overlooked and subsided by the European or mainstream Feminism. It disseminates the struggles and resistance of the “doubly marginalized” woman of the colonized nations. The postcolonial female writer believes that the feminist (mainstream) narratives have failed to bring the overall issues of third world women in their discourse. The woman, according to them does not share the common identity globally and there is a deep sense of dissatisfaction among them with patriarchy, colonization, and also with the mainstream feministic narratives. Postcolonial feminism seeks to address colonial oppression and turns down the idea of ‘global sisterhood’ as propagated by Western feminism. Whenever one talks about the feminism or post colonialism, they restrict themselves either to the unfair treatment of patriarchal forces in the western and the oppression of the imperial powers. Further they never paid attention to the ground realities of race, ethnicity, coercion, and intimidation of postcolonial cum patriarchal culture of downtrodden and less educated women of underdeveloped nations. The major concern of this paper is to look into Ismat Chughati’s works in the lens postcolonial feminist. And an attempt to deconstruct the patriarchal culture by looking the socio- political and economic conditions of the women and by reconstructing the lost identity of third world women in her work.