Negotiating Nation and Cosmopolitan Identity: Nationalism, Synchronicity and Transcendentalism in Bhupen Hazarika’s Selected Songs in Bengali

Contested Sovereignties: The Pakistani idiom, Subalternity and the Narrative Development of Nationhood in the Early Pakistani English Poetry

This research examines early post-independence Pakistani Anglophone poetry as an active cultural arena for the discursive formation, negotiation, and contestation of national identity. This paper transcends traditional interpretations that regard early English-language poetry in Pakistan as merely uncritical patriotism or a mimicry of Western modernism, employing qualitative textual analysis to explore how the founding generation adapted and localized the imperial medium to express a sovereign postcolonial identity. The main collection consisting of the writings of Taufiq Rafat, Daud Kamal, Alamgir Hashmi, Maki Kureishi, Adrian Husain, Moniza Alvi, and Kishwar Naheed is assessed using a cohesive framework that incorporates Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, Homi Bhabha’s Hybridity, Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism, and Gayatri Spivak’s Feminist Subalternity. The results indicate that the initial nation-building efforts in Pakistan under the Anglophone framework are marked by a tension of "contested sovereignties. Canonical male voices associate national identity with territorial ties (the "Pakistani Idiom") and lineage or spiritual heritage, whereas feminist and transnational diasporic identities challenge these rigid boundaries. Focusing on gendered marginalization and spatial dislocation, Naheed and Alvi reveal the systemic exclusions inherent in elite state-building, reconceptualizing identity as a dynamic debate of cultural memory. This study ultimately reveals that early Pakistani English poetry played a significant role in shaping post-Partition discourse, providing essential perspectives on the continuous reconstruction of the nation-state.

Indigenous Selfhood and Spiritual Identity: Rethinking Ātman in Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar's The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey

This paper investigates the conceptual and philosophical resonances between the Vedantic notion of Ātman the eternal, inviolable self and the construction of indigenous selfhood and spiritual identity in Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar's novel The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey (2014). Drawing on Advaita Vedanta, postcolonial theory, and indigenous studies, the paper argues that Shekhar's text performs a cultural and ontological negotiation, reinterpreting classical Hindu metaphysics through a distinctly Santali cosmological lens. The novel's protagonist, Rupi Baskey, embodies a form of selfhood that is simultaneously communal, ecological, and transcendent qualities that both align with and critically deviate from Brahmanical articulations of the Ātman. By situating the text within the broader discourse of Adivasi literature and decolonial epistemology, this study demonstrates how Shekhar recovers indigenous spiritual frameworks as sites of resistance and identity formation. The paper contributes to the growing field of Adivasi literary studies and to interdisciplinary conversations between Indian philosophy and postcolonial literary criticism.

Vindicating Communism Against Postcolonialism and Postmodernism: Reimagining Class, Caste, and Gender Solidarities in Meena Kandasamy’s The Gypsy Goddess (2014)

In The Gypsy Goddess (2014), Meena Kandasamy offers a searing retelling of the 1968 Kilvenmani Massacre, in which at least forty-four lower-caste agricultural workers, including women and children, were brutally murdered while mobilizing for better living conditions under the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Distinguishing her novel from earlier representations, Kandasamy employs a non-linear and self-reflexive narrative that satirically draws on multiple voices and genres. My paper argues that the novel’s summoning of Kilvenmani’s specters serves a dual function. First, it exposes the limits of Western postcolonial and postmodern academic discourses in the neoliberal era. Second, by resurrecting a foundational episode in post-colonial India’s communist movement, it advances a case for reimagining communism as a credible alternative to intertwined structures of caste, class, and gender oppression. I demonstrate that Kandasamy accomplishes this through an inward critique of her own postmodern form deployed in The Gypsy Goddess, ultimately gesturing toward solidarities later articulated as Social Reproduction Theory.

Hidden Flames of Nationhood: Polyphonic Vernacular Nationalism and Poetic Resistance in Rana-Era Nepal

Located between India and China, Nepal has experienced several uprisings over democracy especially against the autocratic Rana regime (1846-1951). This paper examines how the nationalism, rebellion and freedom were negotiated in mid-twentieth-century Nepali poetry by three leading Nepali poets: Lekhanath Paudyal, Laxmi Prasad Devkota and Siddhicharan Shrestha. It states that their poetry promotes a polyphonic nationalism beyond the state ideology and appeals to ethical, existential, and agrarian aspects of freedom. Using the concepts of Imagined communities by Benedict Anderson, Third space by Homi Bhabha and Hidden transcripts by James C. Scott and the recent South Asian vernacular modernity and poetic of resistance scholarship, the paper places Nepali poetry within the global postcolonial discourses. Paudyal’s Tarun Tapasi, Devkota’s “Pagal”, and Shrestha’s” Mero Pyaro Okhaldhunga” are an allegorical expression of moral nationalism, humanist rebellion, and agrarian sovereignty respectively. The current analysis underscores poetry as a cultural depository and political instrument, which adds to the rigor of inclusive South Asian literary study by specifying the transformative images of equality and imagination.  

Becoming Oneself in the Age of Polycrisis and Digital Alienation: A Reinterpretation of Jacques Attali’s Devenir Soi through a Buddhist Perspective

This study aims to analyze the relevance of Jacques Attali’s concept of devenir soi (becoming oneself) in responding to global social transformations during the 2015–2025 period. This inquiry is important because the last decade has been marked by interconnected crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, climate change, and the rise of digital alienation that has influenced individual processes of self-formation. The study employs a qualitative approach using a critical philosophical inquiry design and a critical literature review method. The data consist of Jacques Attali’s works, literature on Buddhist philosophy, and contemporary studies on polycrisis and social media. The findings indicate that the challenge of becoming oneself in 2025 is significantly more complex than it was in 2015. These challenges emerge in two primary dimensions: external obstacles in the form of pandemics, geopolitical conflicts, and climate change that generate various forms of structural alienation, and internal obstacles in the form of digital identity performativity, technological addiction, attention fragmentation, and dependence on external validation. The study further finds that key Buddhist principles, particularly pratītyasamutpāda (interdependence), karuṇā (compassion), and anātman (non-self), provide relevant ethical and psychological frameworks for responding to these forms of alienation. The implications of this study suggest that self-realization in the age of polycrisis requires relational awareness, ethical responsibility, and reflective capacity rather than individual freedom alone. The originality of this study lies in its critical reinterpretation of devenir soi through a synthesis of Jacques Attali’s thought and Buddhist philosophy to explain self-realization in the context of contemporary polycrisis and digital alienation

Contesting the Mawla: A Comparative Study of Hadith Framing and Sectarian Authority in the Indonesian Islamic Digital Sphere