Land, Language, Body: Representations of Feminine Autonomy in Krishna Sobti’s Mitro Marjani

Abstract

This paper reads Krishna Sobti’s novella Mitro Marjani (To Hell with You, Mitro, 1966) in the context of the Partition of India, with attention to its use of a hybrid Hindi and its representation of the female bodies. I argue that Sobti’s experimental use of Hindi allows her to replace patriarchal, nation-centric forms of relationality with ones that are based in feminine sexual and financial autonomy. Her representation of a non-reproductive and sexually desiring feminine subjectivity, further, problematizes language debates that relied on tropes of virtuous femininity to emphasize the supremacy of Hindi, and the national imaginary that was embedded within this discourse of supremacy.