The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

Unveiling Diasporic Contrast in the Select Poetry of Derek Walcott, Satendra Nandan and Sujata Bhatt

Ms Radhika Dhasmana

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.45

History has seen many people torn between two identities as they adapt to new lands, cultures, languages, environments, and societies. On the other hand, there are cases in which an individual is affected by an unfortunate event or incident. Numerous writers have expressed their feelings of being a Diaspora and identity issues through literature after migrating to a distant nation. Such diaspora writers are Derek Walcott, Satendra Nandan and Sujata Bhatt. Derek Walcott is a Caribbean writer, Satendra Nandan is an Indo-Fijian writer, and Sujata Bhatt is an Indian writer who migrated to America in her teens and married a German. All three poets share a similarity: their histories or identities been influenced by colonialism. Derek Walcott's A Far Cry from Africa demonstrates the turmoil of an identity crisis. Satendra Nandan's poetry, Lines Across Black Waters, illustrates themes of identity and migration. Sujata Bhatt's Search for My Tongue depicts the poet hanging in the balance between English and Gujarati.
The paper contrasts their diverse historical backgrounds in the poems, in which they either miss their hometowns or forge new identities in foreign lands. It will highlight the distinct historical backgrounds in the poems, depict the themes of identity, migration, history, and belonging, and also bring to light differences in their writing styles.

Ms Radhika Dhasmana. “Unveiling Diasporic Contrast in the Select Poetry of Derek Walcott, Satendra Nandan and Sujata Bhatt.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 740-754. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.45.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

Singing The Unconscious: A Psychoanalytic Look at Bhojpuri Music

Jayant Kumar

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.44

Bhojpuri music is often dismissed as vulgar, low or sensational, existing discussions have rarely examined how various figures and images function to express, displace and sublimate psycho-sexual desires. For instance in many songs, the image of “Bhauji” is presented not merely as a family member but as an object of teasing, fantasy, and attraction, occupying a position between familiarity and prohibition. The paper addresses this gap by analysing how such figures allow socially restricted desires to find displaced expression.
Drawing on Freudian psychoanalysis, the study treats the lyrics of Bhojpuri songs as cultural texts through which unconscious and repressed desires are articulated. The analysis focuses on two interrelated dimensions. First, it examines the image of “Bhauji” as a sublimated sexual object whose liminal position within the familial structures enables the displacement of Oedipal desire. Second, it explores the repeated use of mouth-related imagery, such as kissing, tasting, and consumption, which Freud described as the oral stage of psychosexual development. These motifs are read as symbolic forms through which desire persists without direct genital union.
Methodologically, the paper undertakes a close textual analysis of selected lyrics of Bhojpuri songs, chosen for their recurrent use of kinship-based erotic figures and oral imagery. The paper argues that Bhojpuri songs function not simply as reflections of social relations but as sites where repression, displacement, and sublimation give form to unconscious fantasy within popular culture.

Jayant Kumar. “Singing The Unconscious: A Psychoanalytic Look at Bhojpuri Music.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 727-739. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.44.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

Reclaiming Adivasi History Through Verse: A Study of Select Poems of Anuj Lugun

Preeti Maurya, Prof. Deepak Kumar Singh

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.43

Through the poetry of Anuj Lugun, an Adivasi poet from Jharkhand, this paper delves into his unique historiographical approach. Traditionally, poetry in both Western and South Asian literature has been associated with imagination, romanticism, and artistic fancy. However, Lugun subverts these conventions by employing poetry as a medium to present the stark, grim realities faced by the Adivasi community and to testify to their lived reality. His poetry can be seen as a continuation and expansion of this effort, offering a deeply personal and community-centred perspective to history that challenges dominant narratives. Through selected poems of Anuj Lugun, this paper highlights the lived experiences, struggles, and resilience of the Adivasi people. His verses serve as a powerful medium of historical documentation, preserving oral traditions, cultural heritage, and social injustices that are often overlooked in mainstream historiography. Lugun not only preserves the Adivasi narrative but also reclaims their place in the historical discourse. His poems are an invaluable contribution to both literature and history. The present study aims to underscore the importance of integrating diverse voices and forms of expression in our understanding of the past. In this paper, Lugun’s selected poems are examined within the broader framework of subaltern historiography, Hayden White’s Metahistory, Gayatri Spivak’s epistemic violence, and Miranda Fricker’s concept of Epistemic Injustice.

Preeti Maurya, Prof. Deepak Kumar Singh. “Reclaiming Adivasi History Through Verse: A Study of Select Poems of Anuj Lugun.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 709-726. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.43.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

Verses Across Borders: A Study of Vikram Seth’s Three Chinese Poets

Dr Divya Pradhan

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.42

The paper is a study of a unique text in the corpus of Indian writing in English that has been overlooked by academia. Vikram Seth’s Three Chinese Poets, published in 1992, is a translation by an Indian writer from Chinese into English. The study will adopt a qualitative textual analysis to examine Vikram Seth’s translation of the three classical Chinese poets, Li Bai, Wang Wei, and Du Fu, by situating Seth’s text within the framework of translation’s role in world literature. It will employ a close reading of the translated poems through a historical and contextual paradigm, highlighting their contribution to the movement of these ancient poems across temporal and cultural borders. A post-colonial critique of the history of literary translation, focusing on Western writers’ translations of Chinese poems, will be used to uncover the literary hierarchies that have shaped the texture of these translations. The analysis will also draw on paratextual references from Vikram Seth’s prefaces and notes to emphasise Seth’s attempt to cosmopolitanise world literature.

Dr Divya Pradhan. “Verses Across Borders: A Study of Vikram Seth’s Three Chinese Poets.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 680-708. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.42.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

Reimagining the Past: Queer Historiography in R. Raj Rao’s Mehmud and Ayaz

Ms. Rinku, Dr. Tripti Choudhary

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.41

R. Raj Rao’s Mehmud and Ayaz (2024), a queer reworking of history, is examined in this research paper. Heteronormative historiography is questioned by highlighting the novel's themes of homoerotic Desire, affection and repressed longing. Using queer theory and history writing as tools of critique, the study examines how the novel subverts the prevailing notions of masculinity, power, and sexuality. The novel Mehmud and Ayaz as counter history is supported in this study by analysing the text closely as a way of affirming the consciousness of queer and of opposing the denial of non-heteronormative Desire in Indian history.

Ms. Rinku, Dr. Tripti Choudhary. “Reimagining the Past: Queer Historiography in R. Raj Rao’s Mehmud and Ayaz.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 667-679. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.41.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

The Pen and the Gavel: Understanding the Interconnection of Law and Literature

Prof. Smita Bangal-Khirode, Mahesh Deshpande

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.40

Law and Literature bring together the two overlapping bodies of thought, the legal and the literary. Literature is important for the students of Law because it teaches them innovative and creative ways of thinking. This paper aims to encourage law students to become better readers, writers, and thinkers in order to enhance their skills in legal argumentation and understand Literature as a cultural phenomenon and its relationship with Law. This study employs qualitative content analysis methodology to examine and interpret the two disciplines, Law and Literature. Law and literature share a close relationship that dates back to ancient Greek dramatists and extends to contemporary novelist John Grisham. Law and Literature have a strikingly symbiotic relationship in that one partakes to protect the society rigidly, and the other accounts for the emotions of the very people who live in this society, bringing in a shade of flexibility and morality. The literary classics, such as Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Kafka’s The Trial, have enriched the field of Law and vice versa. Law and Literature have gained attention as an academic movement, which was initiated by James Boyd White. Both fields contribute to social transformation and development. Both fields depend on a narrative arc. Law creates Literature, and Literature expresses the Law. Over the centuries, Literature has contributed immensely to the process of lawmaking and at the same time, Law has inspired numerous works of Literature. Both Law and Literature are intellectual pursuits so interconnected and interdependent that it is well-nigh impossible to separate them.

Prof. Smita Bangal-Khirode, Mahesh Deshpande. “The Pen and the Gavel: Understanding the Interconnection of Law and Literature.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 647-666. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.40.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

Locating the “uncanny” in Neel Mukherjee’s A Life Apart

Mr. Niku Chetia

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.39

Neel Mukherjee’s A Life Apart is a novel about Ritwik’s transnational transit from Calcutta to London. He migrates to the West, laden with the hope that it would detach and liberate him from the childhood trauma and problems of his life in Calcutta. The paper attempts to investigate how childhood trauma remains inextricably tethered to his new space in the First World nation. Taking the theoretical framework of Homi Bhabha’s “unhomeliness” and Sigmund Freud’s “uncanny” as the entry point, the paper locates the uncanny in the character's sheer incomprehensibility of his surroundings and situations that unfold through a close reading of the text. The paper endeavours to locate the uncanny in the fictional writing of Ritwik, which possesses an uncanny isomorphism with his life in England.

Mr. Niku Chetia. “Locating the “uncanny” in Neel Mukherjee’s A Life Apart.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 633-646. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.39.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

Bodies at the Edge of Law: Bare Life, Sovereign Abandonment, and Intimacy in Anuk Arudpragasam’s The Story of a Brief Marriage

Miss Ankita Boruah

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.38

This paper examines Anuk Arudpragasam's The Story of a Brief Marriage through Giorgio Agamben's concepts of bare life, sovereign power, and the state of exception. Set during the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War, the novel portrays the lives of Tamil civilians trapped within a so-called “No Fire Zone,” a space that ostensibly promises protection while exposing its inhabitants to extreme sovereign violence and death. Through a close reading of the experiences of the protagonists, Dinesh and Ganga, this study argues that the novel represents civilians as figures of “homo sacer”. Moreover, drawing upon Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's concept of the subaltern, the paper explores how war transforms human beings into vulnerable bodies governed by sovereign violence. Particular attention is given to the refugee camp as a space of exception, and to the symbolic significance of marriage as an attempt to reclaim humanity amidst political abandonment.

Miss Ankita Boruah. “Bodies at the Edge of Law: Bare Life, Sovereign Abandonment, and Intimacy in Anuk Arudpragasam’s The Story of a Brief Marriage.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 620-632. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.38.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

Memory, Erasure, and Trauma: Deconstructing the Symbolism of the Violet Vein in “The Vein of Memory”

Ms. Drisya K.

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.37

The paper examines how memory plays a remarkably significant role in the development of the plot of the short story “The Vein of Memory” by K. R. Meera. In the story, Meera portrays an elderly woman writer who could not make use of her creativity productively because of her familial duties and marital bondage. The old woman is presented as a person who has lost her memory in an attempt to commit suicide. Thus, memory plays a substantive role, creating an abrupt turning point in this story. Here, the paper attempts to deconstruct the storyline by probing the woman writer’s psychology and examining the status of her memory through a profound examination of the narration of her experiences in her suppressed marital life. The paper states that the protagonist is pretending memory loss or erasure of memory to mitigate the psychological trauma of the experiences she underwent as well as the pain of her unfulfilled ambitions.

Ms. Drisya K.. “Memory, Erasure, and Trauma: Deconstructing the Symbolism of the Violet Vein in “The Vein of Memory”.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 605-619. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.37.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

The Gambler’s Shadow: Addiction and Shadow Integration in The Pig Flip

Dr. Finitha Jose

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.36

This paper examines Joshy Benedict’s debut graphic novel, The Pig Flip, through Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow, the repository of all the repressed and disowned aspects of the self. Through a close textual analysis of the psychological transformation of the protagonist Babycha, a gambling addict, the paper argues that his redemption is closely linked to the integration of the shadow. Situated within the cultural context of the Kerala Christian community, the story intertwines personal transformation with familial expectations and social and religious values. The study underscores the unique potential of sequential art to visualise complex psychological states and positions The Pig Flip as a valuable addition to the growing tradition of Indian graphic novels.

Dr. Finitha Jose. “The Gambler’s Shadow: Addiction and Shadow Integration in The Pig Flip.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 590-604. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.36.

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