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International
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International Journal of English Literature and Culture Vol. 2(7), pp. 104-108, July, 2014 ISSN: 2360-7831 DOI: 10.14662/IJELC2014.011
Review Re Reading Namboodiri Ideology: An analysis of Devaki Nilayamgode’s Antharjanam
Chirekkekaran Mary George
Department of English, Mercy College, Palakkad, Kerala, India. E-mail: mayreegeorge@gmail.com
Accepted 3 July 2014
India is a country
which is deeply rooted in Caste system. Majority of the people are
followers of Hinduism. Though India claims of the concept of ‘Unity in
diversity’, the disparity that divides each caste into multifarious
categories is very much part of the country espacially in Kerala, the
southernmost state of India. Antharjanam is a work written by an upper
caste Hindu woman who belongs to the caste called ‘Namboodiri’. The work
is a documentation of Namboodiri culture, claims Devaki Nilayamgode, who
does so for the upcoming generations of Kerala. This paper “Re Reading
Namboodiri Ideology: An analysis of Devaki Nilayamgode’s Antharjanam”
attempts at an analysis of Devaki Nilayamgode’s Antharjanam using
“Althusser’s Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus”. Ideology is the
conviction that what people accept as being natural is in fact an
illusory reality constructed in order to mask the real structures of
power that exists in a society. The argument of the paper is that
Nilayamgode tactfully plays the role of an Agency and wants to maintain
for the Namboodiris a significant position in society which she feels
that her caste has lost. Sensing that the aura of superiority their
class of people enjoyed has slowly begun to lose its significance in the
present scenario, the need to preserve her culture as the ultimate
becomes quite pressing. In short the paper aims at presenting the idea
that Antharjanam is a conscious, deliberate and compulsive sketching of
the Namboodiri culture as privileged.
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