Deepa Mehta’s Elemental Trilogy and the Depiction of Indian Culture in Select Filmic Adaptations A Thesis Submitted to For the award of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLISH Submitted by: Supervised by: Ishfaq Ahmad Tramboo Dr. Nipun Chaudhary Reg. No. 11512772 Assistant Professor Department of English LOVELY FACULTY OF BUSINESS AND ARTS LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY PHAGWARA-144411 (PUNJAB) 2019 Declaration I hereby declare that the thesis entitles Deepa Mehta’s Elemental Trilogy and The Depiction of Indian Culture in Select Filmic Adaptations submitted for the partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of degree of Doctor of Philosophy is entirely my original work. All the ideas and references are duly acknowledged. It does not contain any other work for the award of any other degree or diploma at any university or institution. I hereby confirm that I have carefully checked the final version of printed and softcopy of the thesis for the completeness and for the incorporation of all the valuable suggestions of Doctoral Board of the University. I hereby submit the final version of the printed copy of my thesis as per the guidelines and the exact same content in CD as a separate PDF file to be uploaded in Shodhganga. Place: Phagwara Ishfaq Ahmad Tramboo Date: 31 July 2019 (11512772) ii Certificate By Advisor I hereby affirm as under that: 1) The thesis presented by Ishfaq Ahmad Tramboo entitled “Deepa Mehta’s Elemental Trilogy and The Depiction of Indian Culture in Select Filmic Adaptations” is worthy of consideration for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 2) He/she has pursued the prescribed course of research. 3) The work is original contribution of the candidate. 4) The candidate has incorporated all the suggestions made by the Department Doctoral Board during Pre -Submission Seminar held on 18 July, 2019. Advisor Place: Phagwara Dr. Nipun Chaudhary Assistant Professor Date: 31 July 2019 Department of English School of Social Sciences and Languages Lovely Professional University Phagwara Punjab (144411) iii Acknowledgements All thanks to Almighty Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful. The constant grace and mercy of Allah have made me able to accomplish this research journey successfully. The writing journey of this thesis would have been burdensome if I had not been supported by number of scholars, professors and friends whom I want to express my gratitude to their everlasting guidance and support. I am honored to express my earnest gratitude and thanks to my supervisor Dr. Nipun Chaudhary (Assistant Professor, Department of English) for his scrupulous support, magnificent supervision and constancy which compelled me to shape this thesis into a well-crafted manner to be fit for the presentation. His vast experience and splendid tutelage boosted me at every step to complete this task. His constancy, encouragement and confident imbibing attitude have always been a moral support for me. I am also grateful to Dr. Ajoy Batta, Professor and Head, Department of English, Dr. Shreya Chatterji, Associate Professor, Dr. Sunij Kumar Sharma Assistant Professor, Dr. Sanjay Prasad Pandey Associate Professor Department of English and Dr. Balkar Singh Associate Professor and Head, Department of Verbal Ability whose optimistic attitude, ideas, support and advice pushed me to step up a ladder to accomplish the task. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Sanjay Modi, Executive Dean, LFBA, Dr. Pavitar Prakash Singh, Head of School, Social Sciences and Languages and the entire team of faculties, Department of English for their enormous concern and sympathies right from the inception of this research journey to its culmination. iv I am also grateful to my batch mates, research scholars and friends who were always there for me whenever I felt the need of their opinion and support. I am almost feeling the short of words to design the cordial thanks to my friends specially Dr. Bilques Farooq whose concern and sympathy have always served me in triggering my morale. And special thanks and gratitude goes to my beloved parents and other family members who are always there for. I am really grateful to Allah who has bestowed me such a kind, generous and loving parents and siblings. It is their unconditional conviction in me which influenced me to go for higher studies. It would have been impossible to complete this journey without their support, love and trust. May Allah bless them and keep them content. (Ishfaq Ahmad Tramboo) v Table of Contents Sr. No. Title Page No. 1 Introduction vii-xvi 2 Chapter 1 : Brief Candle 1-69 3 Chapter 2 : Historical Roots of the Great Elements 70-87 of Human Body 4 Chapter 3 : Fire: A Study of Socio Cultural 88-137 Identity and Gender Performativity 5 Chapter 4 : Earth: A Study of the Contents 138-179 Inscribed to the Materiality of the Body 6 Chapter 5 : Social Seclusion, Cultural Deprivation 180-220 and Objectification in Water 7 Conclusion 221-239 8 Bibliography 240-253 vi Introduction The introductory part of the thesis brings into the limelight the title of the thesis, the research objectives, the research methodology and the glimpse of the chapters. The present thesis entitled “Deepa Mehta’s Elemental Trilogy and The Depiction of Indian Culture in Select Filmic Adaptations” aims to investigate the reasons, issues, backlash and awakening of the cultural and traditional oppression. The trilogy has its location in India and the history from past to present. The characters in the trilogy are mostly national and there is hardly any foreign character portrayed in the trilogy. However, Fire deals with the contemporary issues of postmodern feminism, Earth has the focus on nineteen forties and the division of subcontinent into two different countries and Water has its focus on the social institutions and deprivation of women especially widows of nineteen thirties of India. All the films deal with the women centric issues such as body, individuality and sexuality. The Indian society gives the resonance to the trilogy as the stories are beautifully crafted and woven together under the India cultural and traditional structure. The present thesis explores the issues and reasons of objectification, materialization of body, gender construction, and suppression of desires, physical violence and sexuality in Fire, Water, and Earth through the lens of Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" and Ti-Grace Atkinson’s Radical Feminism. The objectives of the study are: 1) To critically analyze the elemental trilogy of Deepa Mehta against the back drop of Indian cinema. vii 2) To look at Indian culture as portrayed in elemental trilogy through Indian cinema and the variations made in order to cater to the western gaze. 3) To evaluate Deepa Mehta’s trilogy with reference to cultural studies. 4) To explore the characters of elemental trilogy in relation to the mythology and religion. In the present thesis, the theory of gender studies and feminism given by Judith Butler and Ti-Grace Atkinson have been applied to the select films in order to achieve the objectives. It has been examined that the theories of gender studies and the feminism are not fresh ideas and concepts, but the different critics and writers have not concentrated much on these theoretical perspectives to analyze the select films of Deepa Mehta. The application of Judith Butler’s gender performativity, materiality of the body, gender identity and Ti-Grace Atkinson’s radical feminism which traces the reasons of class in the society and the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed. Ti-Grace Atkinson is a philosopher, author and an American radical feminist whose writings deal with the oppression of women in the society. Inspired by Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex which led her to meet Betty Friedan who along with Atkinson founded the National Organization for Women. According to Ti-Grace Atkinson, society is dominated with the ideology of men and society and men both act as an oppressor which constantly oppress the women. The category of men is itself a society which is an enemy of women individuality and continuously suppresses the other half of the society which are women. There are established institutions in the society to control and subordinate the women and since the society and the men are synonymous to each other, women have always scared to face off viii the men. The fear of face off and not seeking the detailed perception of the ideological strategies of men have kept the women subordinated to men which brought the stagnation to the progress of women in the society. While the displease amongst the women in the society and to address this displease and unhappiness, it states that women in the society make a separate class, but there has never been any casual or political analysis of class in the society. For the political analysis of the society, the affliction and oppression of women have never been taken into consideration. If women have ever tried to solve the problems, they have offered the dilemmas rather than the solutions. Women who supported the traditional feminism, debated and fought for the equality in the society which gave birth to the dilemma because of the reason that women are entirely different from the men in functionality and equality in the society with men would impact the rights of women. It offers equality in treatment in the unequal functionality. The dilemma offers the affliction and oppression of women in the society as the masters persecute the slaves. Judith Butler is a famous American philosopher and gender theorist who developed the theory of gender and performativity in her notable works Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" which influenced the feminist theory and these notable works are mostly studied in the field of cinema studies to emphasize the gender and performative discourses.