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Abstract

Standpoint feminism, based in second-wave feminist theory, insists that knowledge is situated in the social world and contends that marginalized groups, through their experiences of oppression and struggle, hold experiential understandings of power relations. This paper examines R. K. Narayan’s complex depiction of a young woman actively involved in India’s freedom struggle in his novel, Waiting for the Mahatma (1955/2004), through the lens of Sandra Harding’s feminist standpoint theory. The novel’s central character, Bharati, through her varied trajectories of resistance and accommodation within patriarchal structures, illustrates marginalized women’s understandings and their mirroring of social inequalities and power relations that are invisible to agents of power. In a patriarchal society where women are confined to domestic spaces, Bharati exceeds the roles expected of her, demonstrating strength and an investment in political movements. Bharati, as a member of a predominantly male freedom movement, is what Harding calls an “outsider within” the nationalist movement and in the larger society, as she is subject to gendered marginality. This double consciousness of belonging and marginalization equips her with a unique epistemic position and standpoint as she transgresses against patriarchal strictures and actively engages in the public sphere. Unlike Narayan’s previous women protagonists, Bharati demonstrates autonomy and a resistance to societal limitations that make her an icon of women’s liberation. This essay explores how Narayan’s depiction of a woman activist in the Indian independence movement illuminated new possibilities for gender, nationalism, and social change.

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