Female sexuality: an intertextual analysis of Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray

• Published in: Intersections (Perth, W.A.) W.A.), 2011-02, Vol.25 (25)
• Main Author: Chakravarty, Saumitra
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 19th century; 20th century; Awards; Children; Females; Hinduism; India; Nineteenth Century; Polygyny; Social Reform; Twentieth Century; Victimization
• ISSN: 1440-9151; 1440-9151

As we approach the one hundred and fiftieth birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, it is necessary to re-define and reiterate the far-sightedness and comprehensiveness of his work on our own terms. If the Nobel Prize carried his words beyond Indian shores as early as the second decade of the twentieth century, the cinema as a visual medium popularised in the later decades, was instrumental to a large extent in exposing him at various international forums. In this essay, I will attempt an exposition through the meeting point of the two men -- India's first Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore and her only life-time Oscar winner, Satyajit Ray. The question to be raised in this essay is how do these two geniuses Tagore and Ray, complement (or confront?) each other in the exploration of the status of women in the upper class society of Bengal? The changing status of women, a product of the social reform movements of the nineteenth century, must be viewed against the emergence of the monotheistic Brahmo Samaj, its protest against Hindu polytheism, orthodoxy and the concomitant social evils like the caste system, the victimisation of women in a patriarchy through the practices of sati (immolation of a widow on the husband's funeral pyre), child marriage and kulin (polygyny). Adapted from the source document.