Volume IV Issue III July-September 2024

Name of Author : Dr. Anju Bala

Title of the paper : Bapsi Sidhwas Ice Candy Man: Subjugation of Women

Abstract: Ice Candy Man, also known as Cracking India, is a classic text by Bapsi Sidhwa that gives a traumatic account of the 1947 Partition of the Indian sub continent, with a specific focus on how geopolitical fissures are embodied as systemic gendered trauma. This research paper applies the feminist and postcolonial critical approaches to the structural, physical, as well as symbolic subjugation of women in the text. Working within the naive and yet astute perspective of the child narrator, Lenny, Sidhwa peels nationalistic romanticism to reveal the utilization of the female body as a literal and metaphoric battlefield of communal pride, patriarchal control and territorial hostility. Using close examination of the lives of such characters as Ayah Shanta, Papoo, and the relegated women in the Hira Mandi of Lahore, this paper posits that the atrocities of Partition were not a singular failure of the social order, but a manner of accelerated expression of the already existing structures of patriarchy. Moreover, the article assesses the role of female solidarity such as the character of Godmother as a localized site of subversion and recovery against the systematic oppression. Finally, this paper shows how Sidhwa uses marginalized female subalternity to challenge monolithic male historiographies of Partition.

Keywords : Subjugation of Women, Partition Literature, Feminist Historiography, Gendered Violence, Bapsi Sidhwa.

DOI :

Page No. : 49-53