Spectre of Scarcity and Hunger Indian Literature and the Idea of Famine

List of contributors
Foreword
SUPRIYA CHAUDHURI
Acknowledgements

Introduction
SHUBHANKU KOCHAR AND SHEHNAZ KABIR
PART I
Mythology, Morality, and Faith
1 Good Ruler, Good Earth: An Analysis of the Representation of Famine as Karmic Effect in Select Texts From Ancient India
P. ANARGHA
2 Famished Ground, Hungry Being: Udgītha and Selfhood in Chāndogya Upanishad
ARNAV GOGOI
3 Ethical Dilemmas and Desperation During Famine: Exploring Moral Choices in Desperate Circumstances in the Mahabharata
MAYUKH MONDAL
4 Food and crying for food in the Bengali Maṅgal Kābyas of the 18th century
MICHAL PANASIUK

PART II
Alternative Approach to Plays and Paraliterature
5 Famine, Tughlaq, and Girish Karnad: A Historical Analysis
RITAM DUTTA AND VED MITRA SHUKLA
6 Reclaiming the Memories of Famine in India Through the Writings of Mughal Court Writers
SHREYA SINGH
7 Representation of Entitlement and Deprivation: Reading Bengal famine through Bijon Bhattacharya’s plays
SUCHETANA BANERJEE

PART III
Statehood and Community Trauma
8 Bankimchandra’s Anandamath and the Spectre of the Bengal Famine of 1770
SIRSHENDU MAJUMDAR
9 Alimentary Catastrophes and Tragedies of Hunger on Screen: Exploring Mrinal Sen’s Baishey Srabon (1960) and Akaler Sandhane (In Search of a Famine, 1980) as a Visual Study of Famine Through a Postcolonial Lens
NEEPA SARKAR
10 Hungry Man, Reach for the Book: It Is a Weapon! The Political Economy of Famine, Caste, Class, and Imperialism in Bhabani Bhattacharya’s So Many Hungers and He Who Rides a Tiger
DAVID ANSHEN
11 Bamboo Flowering and Rat Flood in Mizoram: Description of the Mautam Famine in Malsawmi Jacob’s Zorami: A Redemption Song
SRIJANI BHATTACHARJEE

PART IV
Voice of the Marginalised
12 Chronicles of the Na’anka Durbhikshya: Understanding Famines and Social Realism in Odisha Through the Writings of Kanhu Charan Mohanty
SAKTI SEKHAR DASH
13 Where Famine Is Life: A Study of the Select Karisal Short Stories
SAURAV KUMAR
14 An Exploration of Kalahandi Famine as “New Famine”: Depiction of Hunger, Mass Starvation, and Death in Post-Independence Odia Literature
PRATIKSHYA SAHOO AND ASHNA MARY JACOB
15 “Palamau Is a Mirror of India”: Famine, Seed, and Making the Subaltern Matter
PAUSHALI BHATTACHARYA ACUÑA

Afterword: Activism Against Famine
ASIS DE

Index

Biography

Shubhanku Kochar teaches at the University School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi. He specialises in African literatures in English and eco-criticism. His latest publications are Environmental Post-Colonialism: A Literary Response (2021, Lexington Books), Literature from the Peripheries: Refrigerated Culture and Pluralism (2023, Lexington Books), and Pastoral and Anti-Pastoral: Representation of City and Village in Literature (2024, Ibidem/Columbia University Press). His forthcoming books are Beyond the Ocean: Literature History and the British Empire and Poverty and Pollution: Environmental Casteism and Dalit Literature, both to be published by Springer. His poems have been published in Protagonist, a popular literary magazine.

Shehnaz Kabir has been awarded with a doctorate degree by the Department of English at Jadavpur University. Her latest publications include “Negotiating Identities in the Indo-Caribbean Diaspora: Queer Bildungsroman and Gendered Spaces in Select Novels of Shani Mootoo” (The IACLALS Journal, 2020) and “Commodification of Identity: Dissecting the Coolie Body in the Indo-Caribbean Diaspora” (New Literaria, 2021). Her paper “Gendered Negotiations and Role of Female Agency in Select Indo-Caribbean Fiction” is published by Springer. Her areas of interest include hydro-colonialism, indenture trade, diaspora literature, material cultures, and postcolonial studies.