Dr Syantan Thakur, Assistant Professor at the Department of Literature and Languages in the Easwari School of Liberal Arts, analyses the Bāull Philosophy through its stories and songs, which project women as a vessel for spiritual realisation and at the same time subject her individuality so as to idealise patriarchal norms. Read the interesting excerpt about his paper to learn more about the topic.

A Brief Abstract of the Research

This research explores how the Bāul tradition of Bengal represents the female body within its mystical and countercultural spiritual philosophy. Central to Bāul belief is deho-tattva—the philosophy that the human body, especially the female body, is the vessel through which spiritual realization is possible. The paper critically examines how women’s bodies are portrayed as sites of divine power (śakti) but are simultaneously idealized in ways that risk reinforcing patriarchal structures. By drawing on feminist theorists like Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, and Rita Gross, the study interrogates whether the Bāul tradition’s symbolic reverence of women genuinely affirms women’s agency or instead reduces them to metaphors for male spiritual advancement. Using Bengali Bāul songs, ethnographic insights, and comparative references to other South Asian mystical traditions, this research argues that the Bāul approach embodies both liberatory and constraining elements for women. The paper calls for an intersectional feminist lens to reconcile these contradictions and to imagine a spiritual practice that fully recognizes the lived experiences and autonomous subjectivity of women within the Bāul cosmos.

Explanation of the Research in Layperson’s Terms

This study looks at a group of mystical singers and spiritual practitioners in Bengal called the Bāuls. They believe that the human body, especially a woman’s body, is sacred and full of divine power. Unlike some other religious traditions that say we should reject the body to find God, the Bāuls say we should honor the body because it connects us to the divine. However, there’s a twist: while the Bāuls praise women’s bodies as powerful and holy, they often do this in ways that turn real women into symbols instead of seeing them as people with their own voices and choices. My research asks: does calling a woman “divine” really help her in everyday life, or does it just make her part of someone else’s story? By studying Bāul songs and talking about feminist ideas, my work tries to show both sides of this spiritual practice—how it can free women from some social limits but also how it might quietly keep old inequalities alive. In the end, it’s about finding a fair balance between spiritual ideas and real-life respect for women

Practical Implementation and Social Implications

This research has important implications for how we think about gender, religion, and cultural traditions today. First, it encourages scholars, artists, and spiritual communities to look critically at how women are represented—not just as sacred symbols but as real people with voices and choices. For Bāul practitioners and followers, the study invites reflection on how to preserve the liberating parts of their tradition while addressing parts that may still reflect patriarchal ideas. Socially, the paper highlights the need for conversations about how spirituality and feminism can work together, especially in India where women often face both religious and cultural restrictions. By showing how the Bāuls both challenge and sometimes uphold old gender roles, this research can help communities, policymakers, and educators find better ways to support women’s rights within cultural practices. Practically, it suggests that empowering female Bāuls—called Bāulinīs—to share their own stories, perform publicly, and teach in their own voices can shift the tradition toward greater gender equality. Overall, this study shows that spiritual traditions can be part of modern conversations about gender justice if we approach them with openness, respect, and critical thinking.

Future Research Plans

• Regional Literature in Translation
• Tantric Tradition and Eastern Indian Literature
• Folk Music of Bengal
• Indian Philosophy, Aesthetics & Literature

The Link to the Article

A handbook is a complex and demanding genre, it must offer a comprehensive overview of a field, articulating its foundational principles, charting ongoing debates, and identifying potential future directions. Such volumes are often judged as much by what they exclude as by what they include. Within this context Dr Soni Wadhwa, Assistant Professor in the Department of Literature and Languages, approached “The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities” in her review essay published in the Q1 journal “DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly”.

Abstract

The Bloomsbury Handbook, edited by James O’Sullivan is framed as a forward-looking resource aimed at fostering further developments in the field of digital humanities (DH). In his introduction, O’Sullivan notes that the volume is designed to serve three categories of readers: DH experts, the DH-curious, and skeptics. The collection is divided into five thematic sections: “Perspectives & Polemics,” “Methods, Tools, & Techniques,” “Public Digital Humanities,” “Institutional Contexts,” and “DH Futures.” Each section features chapters that provide overviews of key subfields while engaging with specific methodological and theoretical issues.

In her review, Dr Wadhwa refrains from summarising all 43 chapters. Instead, she evaluates what the handbook offers to the different categories of readers it aims to serve. She highlights the volume’s self-critical tone and its ability to generate meaningful dialogue about the contributions and challenges of digital humanities in analysing culture and text.

Dr Wadhwa also addresses the misconceptions and hesitations that often surround digital humanities, particularly among scholars from humanities and social sciences who may feel excluded due to a lack of technical expertise. Her review seeks to demystify the field by showcasing exemplary work from leading scholars, thereby offering guidance to researchers interested in exploring DH.

Practical Implementations and Future Research plans:

She hopes that her essay will encourage aspiring researchers to delve deeper into the various subdomains of digital humanities and engage with the field with greater confidence. Dr Wadhwa emphasises the need for more accessible resources and institutional support for digital humanities, asserting its growing relevance within academia.

Looking ahead, she intends to build further on her work in the area of digital archiving which is a vital subdomain within digital humanities. She plans to write more extensively about the projects she has undertaken, contributing to the evolving discourse and practice of the field.

Dr Partha Battacharjee, Assistant Professor from the Department of Literature and Languages, and his PhD scholar Mr Rounak Gupta have published a research article titled “Traversing through Transmedia: Dynamism of Augmented Reality Comics and Gender-based Violence in Ram Devineni’s Priya Series” in the Q1 journal, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics.

The paper points out how augmented reality can enhance the reading and receptive experience of comics that can address, teach, and educate people on complex social problems like gender-based violence.

Abstract

This article looks at how Ram Devineni’s comic series—Priya’s Shakti, Priya’s Mirror, and Priya and the Lost Girls—use augmented reality and Hindu mythology to raise awareness about gender-based violence in India. It shows how these comics break traditional storytelling methods to engage readers on serious issues like rape, acid attacks, and trafficking.

Practical Implementation/ Social Implications of the Research

It is an analytical research that helps understand how basic building blocks towards gender sensitisation can be developed using comics and augmented reality technology to ‘educate’ people in a much more immersive and interesting way.

The team will continue to develop a theoretical foundation for addressing transmedia approaches in comics and other seemingly static art forms.

Collaboration

Dr Priyanka Tripathi, Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Patna

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Very often, it is assumed that the “vernacular” language texts in India do not undergo any anxiety of proving themselves Indian while works written in English do. In her research paper, “A Literature of Frustration and Failure”: The Anxiety of Indianness in the Making of Sindhi Literature as an Indian Literature”, published in the esteemed Q2 journal Journal of Sindhi Studies, Dr Soni Wadhwa, Assistant Professor, Department of Literature and Languages, focuses on Sindhi post literary activity that unfolded in the first 20 years after independence to show that Sindhi has a history of going through anxiety of belonging in India.

Abstract

Studies of Partition frequently turn to literature to understand how displacement processes, among other things, impact aesthetics and representation. The article takes a broader view of aesthetics as representation: it demonstrates how turning to the literary archive of a moment and a community gives rise to questions about the politics of individual texts and literary historiography. Centred on Sindhi literature produced in India after Partition, it shows that examining the literary productivity of the community needs to involve questions of literature as political survival. It focuses on the earliest essays from the Sindhi literary scene in India (published in the Sahitya Akademi journal Indian Literature). The article argues that these essays register anxiety about the survival of a language trying to come into being in an already existing and complicated language-nation relationship. It unpacks three registers of anxiety visible in the literary archive to broaden the scope of the conversations around the Sindhi language and its literature.

This research has been conducted to advance interest in and conversations around Sindhi literature in India. Since Sindhi does not have a state in India, most people are not aware that it exists as a language and that it has a rich literary tradition.

After this article, Dr Soni Wadhwa intends to explore different writers, themes, and movements in Sindhi literature.

Collaborations

The research has been funded by George Mason University.

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Translation often serves as a vital bridge between languages and cultures and Translators are often poised as “gatekeepers” who preserve the authenticity and richness of a text. Dr Bidisha Pal, Assistant Professor at the Department of Literature and Languages in her research paper, “From Transregional to Global Space: Translating Dalit Autobiography and Bridging the Boundaries” speaks of the power of translation in safeguarding and raising awareness of caste. Her work also illustrates how translation smoothens the divide between language and enables the voice of the marginalised to be heard.

Abstract:

The present research brings forward some standpoints. First, the translation of Dalit autobiographies creates transnational solidarity. Second, the translators play the role of gatekeepers to show that translation sustains the literary and cultural essence ingrained within the texts and initiates and engages dialogic discussions among the audience and readers on the global platform. Third, the translation of Dalit autobiographies arrests the attention of those global readers who barely nurture any idea on caste, class, and casteist politics and deep-rooted issues like untouchability in India and constructs a distinct literary geography.

Explanation in layperson’s terms:

The research deals with the idea of literary translation and its necessity. These two autobiographies are written in regional Bengal. When translated, the boundary of regions gets dissolved, and the essence of the texts reach the global arena. Besides, translation also acts as the bridge to the outer world. However, oftentimes the act of translation is not an innocent act anymore; rather it interferes with the original meaning to transcreate.

Practical/ Social Implications:

The research talks about translation and its necessity to bridge boundaries. The texts that the article focuses on are from the people of the marginalized communities of Bengal who write to voice their concerns and who feature in a considerable period of history that should be known to people. Since, linguistic regionalism is the main constraint for the literary texts, translation provides the desired space and opportunity to help them reach the global platforms and their history and literature become part of the larger repertoire of World Literature.

The link to the article:

Journal of World Literature Volume 9 Issue 4 (2024)

Minor languages face many challenges in India and elsewhere. With most of these languages on the verge of extinction, preservation efforts using technology need to develop a different vision for helping these languages and their communities. Dr Soni Wadhwa, Assistant Professor from the Department of Literature and Languages, has published her research in the article “Digital Technology for Literature Revitalisation: A Framework for Sindhi Libraries in India” in the Q1 journal Preservation, Digital Technology and Culture, highlighting on overcoming these challenges. Her research emphasises a five-point framework to revive Sindhi literature.

Abstract

Linguistic diversity does not find adequate space in LIS discourses around libraries in India and other regions with similar kinds of linguistic heritage. This study focuses on the state of Sindhi literature in India through a look at the libraries that house the works of Sindhi literary activity in post-Partition India. The objective is to highlight the role of libraries within language revitalization efforts. This study puts forth a five-point framework for digital transformation of Sindhi libraries in India which can help broaden the digital transformation efforts elsewhere in the Global South especially with minor languages and dialects. While the five-point framework is customized to the specific challenges faced by Sindhi regarding its script (and includes designing solutions for OCR, transliteration, and text to speech interaction), its principles could be applied to several other linguistic contexts, especially in the Global South. It, thus, seeks to bring LIS into sharp focus within the social imagination of communities of readers and as speakers of a language, and not just as academic institutions alone.

Practical Implementation/Social Implications of the Research

1. Using this five-point framework, scholars from various fields (history, partition studies, language, literature, digital humanities, digital archiving, etc) can identify different ways of preserving the Sindhi language.
2. The use of technology for this purpose can lead to technological innovation, which in turn can accelerate preservation efforts.
3. Similar models and frameworks can be developed for other minor languages.

Collaboration

The project is funded by IIT Indore.

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Dr Partha Bhattacharjee, Assistant Professor from the Department of Literature and Languages, along with his scholar Mr Rounak Gupta has published their paper titled “Fractured Identities and Wounded Memories in Indian Comics on Partition: A Decolonial Reading of Frame and Panel” in the esteemed Q1 journal Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. This paper explains comics as a medium whose panels, frames, and stylistic aspects can be interpreted in the Indian context. This interpretation has been read as a decolonial intervention into the medium’s history and the established aesthetic theories.

Abstract

Within the liaison of decoloniality studies and comics studies, this paper investigates how the decolonial visual style in the comics anthology This Side That Side (2013) has been used to locate the traumatised past and violation of human rights due to the “b/ordering” practices of partition of India (Rifkind 2017; Bhattacharjee and Tripathi 2022). “The Taboo” by Malini Gupta and Dyuti Mittal, “An Afterlife” by Sanjoy Chakraborty, and “Making Faces” by Orijit Sen cultivate the stories of the inhumane condition of the migrants and victims during and after the Indo-Pakistan and Indo-Bangladesh-Pakistan partition. These narratives exemplify decolonised counter comics narratives on collective and personal memories (Chute 2016; Mickwitz 2016; Ahmed and Crucifix 2018) inflicted upon and against the dominant partition discourse. They help churn out the human stories of the interminable psychological violence of partition and post-partitioned reality.

The paradigm established in this research can later be used to interpret different formations within comics, especially pertaining to decolonial aesthetics, dialogue, and attitude.

Collaborations

This paper has been published as a part of a continuing study that began with the preceding paper – Bhattacharjee, Partha, and Priyanka Tripathi. 2022. “Penning the Pain of Partition: Refugee Camp Narratives in Indian Comics.” Studies in Comics 12(2): 179-200. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00062_1.

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