Belonging After Empire: Identity, History, and Language in Midnight’s Children

Promotional poster for Midnight’s Children, directed by Deepa Mehta (2012). 

Film: Deepa Mehta’s Midnight’s Children (2012)
Based on: Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981)
Format: Reflective critical blog responding to the Film Screening Worksheet

Introduction: A Nation Born with a Story

Deepa Mehta’s Midnight’s Children begins with an extraordinary coincidence: Saleem Sinai is born at the precise moment when India becomes independent from British rule. The film therefore makes private identity and public history inseparable. Saleem does not simply live in India; he is made into a symbolic figure through whom the new nation’s hopes, violence, divisions, and disappointments are narrated. The British Council describes the film as a 2012, 148-minute feature directed by Mehta and written by Mehta and Rushdie; its synopsis presents the exchanged births of Saleem and Shiva as the event that links their lives to India’s “triumphs and disasters” [1].

The film’s central question is not whether Saleem is biologically, religiously, or socially “really” Indian. Instead, it asks how identity is produced through memory, family, language, power, and historical accident. Saleem is born to one family but raised by another. He is biologically connected to a poorer household but socially formed within the affluent Sinai family. Shiva, his rival and counterpart, experiences the reverse movement. Their exchanged identities expose the weakness of rigid categories such as Hindu and Muslim, rich and poor, victim and victor, colonized and free.

The film is also an adaptation of a novel famous for its density, digression, jokes, historical references, magical realism, and experimental English. Mendes and Kuortti argue that the 2012 film should not be judged only by whether it reproduces the novel faithfully. It should be understood as a creative project that constructs new ways for audiences to encounter the story through cinema, voice, performance, editing, and visual symbolism (Mendes and Kuortti) [3]. That perspective is important here: Mehta’s film does not merely transfer Rushdie’s words to the screen. It translates a literary nation into a cinematic one.

1. Pre-viewing Activities: Questions Before Watching

Figure 1. The birth switch turns identity into a negotiation among biology, family, class, religion, and memory. 

Who narrates history—the victors or the marginalized?

History is often recorded by governments, armies, elites, and institutions that possess the power to preserve documents and define official truth. However, the people who experience violence, displacement, poverty, religious conflict, or political repression also carry histories that official narratives may suppress. Midnight’s Children gives the act of narration to Saleem, a fictional individual whose life intersects with national events. His voice challenges the idea that history must be told only from the viewpoint of presidents, generals, or colonial administrators.

Saleem’s narration is nevertheless not a simple replacement for official history. He is an unreliable narrator. He misremembers, exaggerates, interrupts himself, confuses chronology, and turns national events into personal metaphors. In “Imaginary Homelands,” Rushdie explains that Saleem is deliberately “suspect” because his mistakes arise from fallible memory, personality, and circumstance. His vision is fragmented rather than complete (Rushdie, “Imaginary Homelands”) [4]. This unreliability does not make his story worthless. It demonstrates that all historical knowledge is shaped by position and memory.

Saleem’s identity is therefore related to narration in two ways. First, he discovers who he is by telling the stories of the people and events that produced him. Second, he shows that identity is never an isolated possession. He declares, “I have been a swallower of lives,” suggesting that the self contains the histories of parents, servants, lovers, enemies, cities, religions, and nations (Rushdie 4). To know Saleem is to know the many lives that have entered his own.

What makes a nation?

A nation is more than a geographical territory or a government. Geography provides a physical space, and governance provides institutions, laws, and citizenship. Yet a nation also depends on shared stories, cultural memories, languages, rituals, political ideals, and arguments about belonging. In the film, India is not presented as a perfectly unified object waiting to be discovered. It is a contested and unfinished creation.

Saleem’s body becomes a map of this uncertainty. His birth coincides with independence, but his biological and social identities do not coincide. His family is shaped by Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and secular influences. His personal history includes Bombay, Kashmir, Pakistan, war, migration, and the Emergency. India appears coherent because people imagine a common national future, but it appears fragmented because that future is experienced differently according to class, religion, language, gender, and region.

The National Archives’ educational material on Partition emphasizes boundary-making, communal tension, violence, and forced displacement after the division of British India in 1947 [5]. These facts help explain why the film’s birth scene is both celebratory and ominous. Independence creates a new political nation, but Partition simultaneously produces separation, fear, and loss. The nation is born with a wound.

Can language be colonized or decolonized?

A language can be colonized when an imperial power gives its language greater authority in education, administration, law, employment, and literary prestige. English in India carries this history. It was associated with British rule and continues to offer social advantages, but Indian writers and speakers have also transformed it. English is not used in India exactly as it is used in Britain. It is mixed with Indian languages, accents, rhythms, idioms, cultural references, and local forms of knowledge.

Rushdie calls this process a remaking of English. In “Imaginary Homelands,” he argues that Indian writers cannot simply use English in the way the British did; the language must be remade for new purposes. He connects this struggle with freedom, because taking possession of English means refusing to let colonial history determine how Indians can represent themselves (Rushdie, “Imaginary Homelands”) [4]. The language may have arrived through empire, but it can be appropriated, altered, and made answerable to Indian experience.

2. While-Watching Activities: Guided Observations

Because different versions of the film may have slightly different runtimes, the observations below identify scenes and narrative moments rather than fixed minute markers.

Film moment	Observation and interpretation
Opening narration	Saleem’s voice immediately joins his birth to the birth of India. The personal “I” becomes a national “we,” but the connection is also unstable because Saleem’s memory is self-conscious and fallible.
Saleem and Shiva’s birth switch	Mary Pereira’s exchange of the babies turns identity into a question of nurture, class, religion, biology, and historical contingency. The boys inherit lives that were intended for one another.
Saleem’s narration	The older Saleem’s voice creates a dialogue between past and present. His comments remind viewers that the story is being shaped after the events have happened, not witnessed from an impossible position of total objectivity.
Emergency sequence	The film presents the Emergency as a crisis in which the state’s power enters private life. The suppression of freedom echoes the danger of allowing one official story to replace all competing memories.
English, Hindi, Urdu, and other languages	Linguistic variation prevents “Indian” identity from being reduced to one standardized voice. The adaptation’s use of Indian languages makes cultural difference audible rather than leaving it only as a theme.

Is Saleem a trustworthy narrator?

Saleem is trustworthy precisely when the film makes us aware of his limitations. A traditional historical narrator might pretend to know exactly what happened, but Saleem exposes the process of remembering. He frequently turns backward, corrects himself, adds stories within stories, and connects physical events to magical or symbolic explanations. This metafictional technique makes the audience ask how stories become history.

The older Saleem’s voice also creates a relationship between cinema and memory. Rushdie’s voice was used as the voice of the older Saleem. Mehta explained that narration was initially not planned, but she later wanted to return more of the novel’s language to the film; Rushdie resisted at first, yet eventually performed the voice himself (Canfield) [2]. The voiceover is therefore not decorative. It functions as a bridge between the novel’s verbal richness and the film’s visual world.

What does the Emergency suggest about democracy?

The film’s Emergency sequence suggests that democracy is not guaranteed merely because a nation has elections, a constitution, or the symbolic status of independence. Democratic life depends on civil liberties, dissent, press freedom, institutional accountability, and the ability of citizens to challenge official power. The historical Emergency lasted from June 1975 to March 1977; Carnegie’s account notes that fundamental rights were suspended, courts were weakened, and security services received broad powers of arrest [6].

In Midnight’s Children, the state’s violence is especially disturbing because the nation that promised freedom becomes capable of disciplining bodies and memories. The film thus contrasts the joy of independence with the later danger of authoritarian nationalism. A nation can become oppressive when unity is defined as obedience and when disagreement is treated as betrayal.

3. Group One: Hybridity and Identity

Figure 3. Bhabha’s Third Space explains how Saleem and Shiva’s identities emerge between biological origin and social upbringing. 

Saleem and Shiva as hybrid identities

Saleem and Shiva represent hybridity not because they are simply mixtures of two cultures, but because their identities are formed in an unstable space between biological origin and social upbringing. Saleem is born to a poorer family but raised as the son of the affluent Muslim Sinays. Shiva is born to the Sinays but grows up elsewhere. Their lives therefore disrupt the assumption that religion, class, family, and identity naturally align.

The exchange at birth is symbolic of postcolonial dislocation. Independence promises a new beginning, yet the babies enter a world already shaped by colonial borders, Partition, unequal wealth, religious categorization, and inherited social structures. Their switch suggests that the nation itself has been rearranged by political decisions that affect people differently. A new flag cannot erase the older histories carried by families and communities.

Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of the “Third Space” helps explain this condition. The Third Space is an interstitial site where cultures meet, negotiate, and produce meanings that cannot be reduced to either side of a binary. Bhabha’s work rethinks cultural identity, social agency, and national affiliation rather than treating identity as a pure inheritance (Bhabha) [8]. Saleem’s identity exists in such an in-between space. He is not merely Hindu or Muslim, rich or poor, insider or outsider. His belonging is produced through negotiation.

Is hybrid identity confusion or possibility?

The film presents hybrid identity as both painful and productive. It is painful because Saleem’s identity is stolen from him before he can choose it. He experiences betrayal, displacement, bodily fragmentation, and uncertainty. Shiva’s life also shows that mobility between identities does not automatically create freedom; his anger and militarized masculinity reveal the damage caused by class inequality and political exclusion.

At the same time, hybridity creates the possibility of connection. Saleem’s mixed inheritance allows him to imagine a nation larger than a single religious or cultural category. His telepathic relationship with the other midnight’s children symbolizes the possibility of communication across distance. The film does not claim that difference disappears. Instead, it suggests that a nation may be held together by the difficult work of negotiating difference.

4. Group Two: Narrating the Nation

Figure 2. India’s historical timeline and Saleem’s personal journey develop together from independence and Partition to the Emergency. 

Saleem’s personal history as national history

Midnight’s Children rewrites national history through an intimate narrative. Instead of presenting India as a sequence of impersonal dates, it gives political events bodies, families, arguments, wounds, and memories. Saleem’s life is not an objective summary of India, but it becomes a form of counter-history. His errors and exaggerations are meaningful because they reveal how individuals experience history from within.

Rushdie’s essay “Imaginary Homelands” makes this method explicit. He describes his India as one version among many possible Indias and compares the narrator’s perspective to a broken mirror whose fragments may be more truthful than a supposedly perfect reflection. For Rushdie, rewriting history is political because official accounts can distort or erase violence (Rushdie, “Imaginary Homelands”) [4]. The film retains this principle by allowing Saleem’s voice to compete with the authority of the state.

Partha Chatterjee’s account of nationalism is useful because it challenges the idea that European history provides the universal model for every nation. Anticolonial nationalism in India did not merely copy a Western template; it developed through local struggles over culture, religion, political sovereignty, and social life. Chatterjee’s The Nation and Its Fragments examines how nationalist imagination in Asia and Africa produces forms of belonging that cannot be understood only through European categories (Chatterjee) [9].

The film similarly rejects a simple binary between colonizer and colonized. India is shaped by colonial institutions, but it is also reshaped by Indian memory, multilingualism, family life, popular culture, religion, and political conflict. The result is not a pure precolonial identity restored after independence. It is a fractured, changing, and hybrid nation.

Timeline: India and Saleem’s journey

Historical moment	Saleem’s personal or symbolic journey	Meaning in the film
15 August 1947: independence and Partition	Saleem and Shiva are born at midnight and exchanged by Mary Pereira.	National freedom and personal displacement occur together.
Late 1940s and 1950s: the new nation takes institutional shape	Saleem grows up within the Sinai family and learns that his life is connected to other midnight’s children.	Citizenship is imagined as a collective project, but social inequality remains.
1960s: conflict and political instability in the subcontinent	Saleem’s identity is repeatedly displaced through family crisis, migration, and conflict.	National borders do not produce stable selves; they create new forms of belonging and exclusion.
1971: war and the creation of Bangladesh	Saleem’s relationship to Pakistan and the subcontinent becomes part of the wider violence of partitioned histories.	The national map remains unfinished and contested.
June 1975–March 1977: the Emergency	The state’s power reaches into the lives of the midnight’s children and threatens their collective future.	Independence without civil liberties can become another form of domination.

Is India coherent or fragmented?

The film presents India as both coherent and fragmented. It is coherent in the sense that people continue to imagine a shared political and cultural future. The midnight’s children are linked by a common historical moment, and Saleem’s storytelling tries to gather their lives into one narrative. Yet India is fragmented because its citizens do not occupy the same social reality. Religion, language, caste, class, gender, region, and political power determine how the nation is experienced.

This apparent contradiction is not a weakness in the film’s representation. It is the point. India is coherent as an ongoing argument about how difference can coexist. It is fragmented as a lived reality. Saleem’s narrative form—full of interruptions, repetitions, digressions, and competing voices—mirrors this national condition. The film suggests that unity should not mean uniformity. A democracy must make room for disagreement and plurality, or its national story becomes authoritarian propaganda.

5. Group Three: Chutnification of English

Figure 4. Chutnified English combines colonial linguistic inheritance with Indian languages, oral storytelling, and cultural references.

What is chutnification?

“Chutnification” describes the process by which Rushdie mixes English with Indian words, idioms, cultural references, oral storytelling patterns, nonstandard grammar, comic exaggeration, and multilingual rhythms. The term is culinary as well as linguistic: like chutney, the language is made from different ingredients. It does not imitate the imagined purity of standard English. It produces a new form suitable for a postcolonial experience.

The word is especially useful because it reverses the power relationship between English and Indian languages. Under colonialism, English could be treated as the language of official knowledge and authority. Rushdie’s writing takes English and makes it answer to Bombay, Kashmir, family gossip, cinema, religion, food, politics, and memory. Mehta and Rushdie faced the problem of adapting this verbal abundance to the screen. Their solution included voiceover, multilingual dialogue, visual motifs, music, and performance. Rushdie described the screenplay as a process that demanded attention to audience clarity, while Mehta wanted narration to restore some of the novel’s language (Canfield) [2].

Creative language exercise

Figure 5. Standardization clarifies the sentence but reduces hesitation, oral energy, self-correction, and layered cultural meaning. 

A brief passage from the novel’s opening, reproduced in an Open University teaching resource, begins: “I was born in the city of Bombay ... once upon a time. No, that won’t do, there’s no getting away from the date” (Rushdie 3) [7]. The passage then moves toward the exact date of Saleem’s birth, 15 August 1947, and links his body to the nation’s independence.

A standardized-English version might read: “I was born in Bombay on 15 August 1947, the day India became independent.”

The standardized version is grammatically clear, but it loses several important effects. First, the self-correction—“No, that won’t do”—creates the sound of a storyteller speaking directly to an audience. Second, “once upon a time” invokes fairy tale and oral narrative, while the correction brings the story back to a precise historical date. Third, “Bombay” carries a cultural and historical identity that is not identical to the modern official name “Mumbai.” Finally, the original passage makes the birth seem both ordinary and mythic: Saleem is a child, a storyteller, and a national symbol at the same time.

The translation also loses the sense that language is thinking aloud. Rushdie’s English does not simply deliver information; it performs hesitation, memory, correction, and cultural layering. This is why chutnified English is not incorrect English. It is an artistic method for making the language carry more than one history.

Is English still colonial, or is it now Indian?

The most convincing answer is that English can be both historically colonial and creatively Indian. Its colonial history cannot be erased. English continues to have unequal access, and mastery of it may still provide educational and professional privilege. Yet language is not permanently owned by the empire that spread it. Indian writers, filmmakers, teachers, and speakers have transformed English through local vocabulary, accents, syntax, genres, and cultural references.

The film’s multilingual soundscape makes this argument audible. English does not stand outside Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, or other languages as a neutral universal medium. It exists in contact with them. This contact may be unequal, but it can also produce new expression. Decolonization therefore does not necessarily require rejecting English. It may involve changing who controls the language, what experiences it can represent, and whose speech is treated as legitimate.

6. Required Reflective Blog: Belonging in a Fractured Linguistic Nation

What does it mean to belong to a postcolonial nation that speaks in a colonizer’s tongue and carries fractured identities?

To belong to a postcolonial nation is to inherit both freedom and unfinished history. Midnight’s Children makes this contradiction visible by placing Saleem’s birth at the exact moment of India’s independence. His life begins as a national celebration, but it is immediately marked by Partition, religious division, unequal class positions, and the exchange of identities. He is born into one family and raised in another; his body carries a history that his social life does not reveal. Through Saleem and Shiva, the film shows that identity is not a simple fact waiting to be discovered. It is produced through family, memory, language, politics, and power.

Saleem’s story also changes the meaning of national history. The official version of independence might emphasize leaders, ceremonies, flags, and constitutional achievement. Saleem’s version includes those events, but it also includes servants, mothers, lovers, children, displaced people, and the wounded bodies of citizens. His narration is unreliable because memory is unreliable. Yet this weakness becomes a form of honesty. He does not pretend that one person can possess the whole truth. Rushdie describes Saleem as a narrator whose vision is made of fragments, and he connects those fragments to the political need to challenge official versions of the past (Rushdie, “Imaginary Homelands”) [4]. Belonging therefore means participating in a national story while also questioning who has been excluded from it.

The film’s treatment of English adds another layer to this problem. English is a language associated with colonial power, education, administration, and social privilege. Speaking it can feel like carrying the history of empire in one’s mouth. Nevertheless, Midnight’s Children refuses to surrender English to the British. Rushdie reshapes it through Indian idioms, multilingual rhythms, comic exaggeration, oral storytelling, and cultural references. His “chutnified” English is not an imperfect imitation of standard English; it is a new literary instrument. In that sense, belonging involves taking a language that arrived through domination and making it speak to local memories and realities.

The film adaptation develops this linguistic struggle through sound. The older Saleem’s voice, performed by Rushdie himself, connects the cinematic present to the novel’s verbal texture. Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, and English occupy the same narrative world rather than appearing as separate sealed identities. This does not create perfect harmony. Languages still carry class and religious associations, and not every character has equal access to public speech. However, multilingualism makes the nation audible as a contact zone rather than a single standardized voice.

Bhabha’s idea of the Third Space helps explain why this condition can be creative as well as painful. Saleem and Shiva exist between biological and social identities, between personal memory and public history, and between languages. Chatterjee’s critique of Western models of nationhood similarly reminds us that India cannot be evaluated only according to a European story of linear national progress. The nation is made through its own arguments about culture, religion, sovereignty, and modernity (Bhabha; Chatterjee) [8] [9].

Therefore, belonging to a postcolonial nation means accepting that identity may be plural, incomplete, and historically burdened. It does not mean choosing one pure origin or pretending that colonialism has disappeared. It means learning to inhabit contradiction: to remember violence without reducing the nation to violence, to use English without forgetting its history, and to claim the nation while demanding that its official story become more inclusive. Midnight’s Children suggests that a fractured identity is not necessarily a failed identity. Like Saleem’s story, it can become a space from which new forms of solidarity and freedom are imagined.

Conclusion

The worksheet’s three major themes—hybridity, national narration, and chutnified English—are inseparable in Midnight’s Children. Saleem’s mixed identity makes him a figure of the nation’s mixed histories. His unreliable narration challenges the authority of official memory. Rushdie’s transformed English demonstrates how a colonized language can be appropriated and remade. Mehta’s adaptation translates these concerns into voice, image, sound, performance, and historical montage.

The film does not offer a simple definition of India. Instead, it shows nationhood as a continuous process of remembering, arguing, translating, and negotiating. To belong is not to possess a pure identity. It is to participate in a collective story while remaining alert to the fragments and silences within it.

Works Cited

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.

Canfield, Kevin. “Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta on Midnight’s Children.” Filmmaker Magazine, 17 Apr. 2013, https://filmmakermagazine.com/68782-salman-rushdie-and-deepa-mehta-on-midnights-children/.

Chatterjee, Partha. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton UP, 1993.

Mendes, Ana Cristina, and Joel Kuortti. “Padma or No Padma: Audience in the Adaptations of Midnight’s Children.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 52, no. 3, 2017, pp. 501–518. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989416671171.

Mehta, Deepa, director. Midnight’s Children. Performances by Satya Bhabha, Shriya Saran, Anupam Kher, Shabana Azmi, Seema Biswas, and others, David Hamilton Productions, 2012.

Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981–1991. Granta, 1991.

---. “Imaginary Homelands.” London Review of Books, vol. 4, no. 18, 7 Oct. 1982, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v04/n18/salman-rushdie/imaginary-homelands.

---. Midnight’s Children. Jonathan Cape, 1981.

The National Archives. “Partition of British India.” The National Archives, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/partition-of-british-india/. Accessed 17 Aug. 2026.

Online Research References

[1]: British Council UK Films Database, “Midnight’s Children”

[2]: Kevin Canfield, “Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta on Midnight’s Children,” Filmmaker Magazine

[3]: Ana Cristina Mendes and Joel Kuortti, “Padma or No Padma,” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

[4]: Salman Rushdie, “Imaginary Homelands,” London Review of Books

[5]: The National Archives, “Partition of British India”

[6]: Rudra Chaudhuri, “Re-reading the Indian Emergency,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

[7]: The Open University, “Midnight’s Children,” OpenLearn excerpt

[8]: Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, Taylor & Francis publisher page

[9]: Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments, JSTOR record

Fate in the Bones: How T.P. Kailasam’s The Curse Reclaims Karna through a Sophoclean Lens

This blog task is assigned by Ms. Megha Trivedi on T.P. Kailasam's five-act play 'The Curse or Karna' subtitled as An Impression of Sophocles in Five Acts.

Introduction: The Intersection of Epic and Tragedy

In pre-independence Indian drama, T. P. Kailasam stands as a monumental figure who reassembled traditional mythological narratives to address the sociopolitical anxieties of his time. His five-act play, The Curse or Karna, carrying the subtitle "An Impression of Sophocles," represents a sophisticated exercise in cultural hybridity. Writing in the early twentieth century, Kailasam did not merely translate or rewrite the Mahabharata; rather, he performed a radical aesthetic and structural transfusion. By importing the unyielding, tight mechanics of classical Attic tragedy—specifically Hamartia (tragic flaw), Hubris (defiant pride), and Ananke (absolute, inescapable Fate)—Kailasam systematically dismantled the theological and karmic framework of the traditional Indian epic.

In the traditional Mahabharata, Karna is portrayed as a morally compromised figure whose tragic end is the inevitable karmic consequence of his alignment with the wicked Kauravas. However, through a Sophoclean lens, Kailasam reshapes Karna into a classic tragic protagonist. Under this dramatic configuration, Karna’s downfall is not a punishment for moral degeneracy, but the devastating, mathematically precise consequence of his finest virtues: his unmatched devotion to his Guru, his radical loyalty, his peerless integrity, and his superhuman physical and emotional endurance. By shifting the cosmic axis of the narrative from divine Lila (play) and Karmic retribution to the terrifying, mechanical determinism of Greek tragedy, Kailasam exposes the structural violence of ancient Indian society.

This blog post analyzes how Kailasam’s synthesis of Sophoclean tragedy and Indian myth deconstructs traditional epic morality, utilizing Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s subaltern studies framework and Peter Struck’s methodological tools for reading myths to explore how The Curse reclaims Karna as a peerless symbol of merit crushed by institutionalized prejudice.

1. The Mechanics of Fate: Caste as the Inescapable Ananke

In classical Athenian drama, particularly in the masterpieces of Sophocles such as Oedipus Rex, the narrative is governed by Ananke—the primeval, absolute personification of Fate and necessity. In the Greek world, Ananke is a force that transcends even the sovereignty of the Olympian gods; it is a cosmic, mechanical trap that operates with absolute indifference to human morality. When the Oracle pronounces Oedipus’s fate, his subsequent actions, no matter how noble, rational, or well-intentioned, only serve to tighten the noose of his predetermined doom.

In The Curse, Kailasam performs a brilliant act of cultural translation by mapping the Greek concept of Ananke directly onto the rigid, institutionalized social hierarchy of the Indian caste system (varna). In his adaptation, the "Sootha-born" (charioteer) label functions not merely as a social disadvantage, but as an absolute, inescapable cosmic doom. From the moment of his abandoned birth to his final moments in the mud of Kurukshetra, Karna’s life is governed by a social fatalism that mirrors the iron laws of Sophoclean tragedy.

Critic Kajal Kapoor notes that the story of Karna begins with the misfortune of his secret birth and unfolds itself amidst the unremitting gloom of injustice and insult. In the traditional epic, caste is often treated as a natural reflection of cosmic order, where birth determines one's personal duty (svadharma). Kailasam, however, deconstructs this theological justification. By framing caste as Ananke, he strips the social hierarchy of its divine sanction, revealing it to be a cold, mechanical apparatus designed to exclude and destroy.

No matter how peerless Karna’s skills are, and no matter how much Purushakaara (manly effort) he exerts to achieve self-actualization, the elite social order repeatedly flings his "Sootha birth" in his face to deny him his humanity. When Karna attempts to participate in the royal tournament or the Swayamvara, he is met with the structural violence of exclusionary laws. The preceptors Drona and Kripa, alongside Princess Draupadi, act as the high priests of this social Ananke, using caste codes to preserve their institutional monopoly on power. Thus, Kailasam’s fusion of Greek fate with Indian caste reveals that under a rigid hierarchical structure, social birth acts as an inescapable curse that overrides personal merit.

2. Reinterpreting Hamartia: The Virtue as the Tragic Flaw

A critical element of Sophoclean tragedy is Hamartia, a term coined by Aristotle in his Poetics that is frequently mistranslated as a "moral tragic flaw." In Sophocles’s dramas, Hamartia is more accurately understood as a tragic error, a cognitive blind spot, or a miscalculation committed by a fundamentally noble character. Crucially, the protagonist’s downfall is often brought about not by their vices, but by their most exceptional virtues. Oedipus’s tragedy is driven by his relentless pursuit of truth; Antigone’s doom is sealed by her sisterly devotion.

In The Curse, Kailasam masterfully applies this tragic paradox to Karna, making his superhuman physical endurance and deep devotion to his Guru his ultimate Hamartia. In Act I, while resting in a quiet grove, Karna’s beloved Guru Parasuraama falls asleep with his head cradled in Karna's lap. A mason-wasp lands on Karna's thigh and begins to bore excruciatingly deep into his flesh, eating its way to the marrow. Out of a profound desire not to disturb his sleeping master, Karna endures the agonizing torment without moving a single muscle.

Ironically, it is this very display of divine endurance—his sublime virtue—that leads to his undoing. When his warm blood trickles onto Parasuraama's cheek, waking the sage, Parasuraama instantly deduces that such tolerance of physical pain is impossible for a Brahmin: "None but a Kshatriya could have borne such pain without a groan!"

Because Parasuraama had extracted a vow from Karna to use his weapons exclusively for the destruction of power-drunk Kshatriyas, he views Karna's deception as a profound betrayal. Parasuraama pronounces the terrible, inescapable Brahmin's Curse: "THE BAREST TALK, THE MEREST THOUGHT OF THY SUPPOSED SOOTHA BIRTH CROSSING THY MIND WILL SWELL THY HEART TO SENSE OF SHAME... NUMB AND PARALYSE THY LIMBS BEYOND THEIR POW'R."

By reframing this mythological curse, Kailasam departs from supernatural explanations, transforming it into a profound psychological trauma. The curse is not an external magical spell; rather, it is the somatic manifestation of internalized social shame. The "Sootha" label, which society has used to brand and humiliate him, becomes a psychological trigger that physically paralyzes his body whenever his social origins are challenged. Thus, Karna’s very nobility—his willingness to bleed in silence for his Guru—becomes the catalyst for the psychological trauma that will repeatedly paralyze him at his moments of greatest potential triumph.

3. The Paradox of Hubris: Merit vs. Aristocratic Pride

In classical Greek tragedy, Hubris refers to the overweening pride, insolence, or defiance of cosmic boundaries that provokes the wrath of the gods (Nemesis). Typically, Hubris is a transgressive force where a mortal attempts to rise above their station, challenging the natural order. However, in The Curse, Kailasam brilliantly deconstructs and splits the concept of Hubris into two opposing forces: the "Hubris of Birth" exhibited by the ruling class, and the "Hubris of Worth" championing intrinsic human merit.

The ruling class—represented by Drona, Kripa, Bhima, and Draupadi—exhibits a corrupt, systemic Hubris of birth. They believe that their social status, derived entirely from accidental lineage, grants them absolute moral and martial superiority. When Karna enters the royal arena having easily surpassed Arjuna’s archery feats, he stands as a living threat to their aristocratic illusions. In response, Kripa and Drona refuse him combat, asserting that a prince cannot engage with a commoner. Bhima leaps into the arena, unleashing a torrent of classist verbal abuse, mocking Karna as a "low-born spawn of sootha blood" fit only to hold whips. This verbal assault triggers Karna's psychological curse, leaving him frozen in public humiliation. Here, the ruling class uses the curse—the internalized trauma of caste—as a weapon to maintain their hegemony.

In stark contrast, Karna’s defiance represents a noble, humanist Hubris of worth. He boldly asserts that intrinsic capability, not ancestral blood, defines human value: "WORTH, INTRINSIC WORTH it is, my liege, NOT ACCIDENTAL BIRTH, that gauges human's use for MOTHER EARTH!"

This statement is highly transgressive within a rigid, caste-based society. Karna’s pride lies in his insistence on self-determination, his belief that his "manly effort" (Purushakaara) can shatter the limits imposed by his birth. By framing Karna’s assertion of merit as a noble defiance of a corrupt social order, Kailasam subverts the traditional Greek definition of Hubris. Karna's "transgression" is not an act of arrogant vanity, but a heroic demand for basic human dignity in the face of systemic oppression.

4. Deconstructing Myth through Struck’s Methodological Frameworks

To fully appreciate the depth of Kailasam’s dramatic intervention, it is valuable to examine The Curse through the scholarly toolkit outlined in Peter Struck’s Tools for Reading Myths. Struck presents several intellectual frameworks—most notably functionalism and structuralism—that decode the sociopolitical and psychological architecture of ancient narratives.

Functionalism: Subverting the Social Charter

Developed by anthropologists like Bronislaw Malinowski, functionalism posits that myths exist primarily to validate social standards and reassure us that our cultural norms are the right ones. In this view, myth serves as a "charter" that legitimizes existing institutions, power dynamics, and social hierarchies. The traditional Mahabharata has often been read functionally to reinforce the sanctity of the varna (caste) system and the divine authority of the Kshatriya ruling class.

Kailasam, however, utilizes the mechanics of Sophoclean tragedy to perform a radical anti-functionalist deconstruction. Instead of validating the social standards of the Kuru dynasty, The Curse exposes them as inherently corrupt, hypocritical, and exclusionary. By showcasing how the state apparatus uses caste laws to systematically suppress and destroy a peerless genius like Karna, the play serves as a searing critique of both ancient hierarchies and the caste-based inequities of pre-independence India. Kailasam subverts the social charter of the myth, transforming it from a tool of aristocratic validation into a site of profound political protest.

Structuralism and Binary Oppositions

Claude Lévi-Strauss’s structuralist framework suggests that myths are constructed around universal, recurring binary oppositions that reflect the internal cognitive structures of the human mind. In The Curse, Kailasam structures the dramatic conflict around several intense binary oppositions, heightened by the confrontational nature of Sophoclean drama:

• Birth (Jaati) vs. Worth (Yogyata): The primary thematic conflict; the preceptors' insistence on royal blood vs. Karna’s assertion of intrinsic merit.
• Himsa (Violence) vs. Ahimsa (Non-violence): Explored through Raama’s philosophy of justifiable violence to protect the innocent.
• Biological Motherhood vs. Foster Motherhood: Contested between Kunti (manipulative, transaction-based) and Radha (unconditional, honor-based).
• Kshatriya (Oppressor) vs. Sootha (Oppressed): The political axis of the play, highlighting systemic class conflict.

By organizing the narrative around these stark, unresolved binary patterns, Kailasam exposes the deep-seated contradictions within the social and moral fabric of the epic world. The tension reflects the tragic impossibility of achieving social justice within an unyielding hierarchical framework.

Psychoanalytic Views: The Shared Dream of Caste Anxiety

From a Freudian perspective, myths can be interpreted as the "dreams of an entire culture," expressing deep-seated psychological anxieties, repressed desires, and collective traumas. Under this lens, Karna’s somatic paralysis—the physical manifestation of his curse—represents the collective, internalized anxiety of a highly stratified society. Karna’s body becomes the physical canvas upon which the trauma of systemic discrimination is written. Whenever the words "Sootha-born" are flung at him, his physical paralysis represents the crushing weight of social erasure. The play functions as a psychological dream-work for pre-independence India, bringing to light the collective trauma of caste-based oppression.

5. Subalternity and the Epistemic Silence of Karna

To understand the political dimensions of Karna's tragic paralysis, we must look to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s foundational essay, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Spivak defines the subaltern as those marginalized populations who exist outside the dominant, elite structures of political, economic, and social representation. Her central thesis is that the subaltern cannot truly "speak" because the hegemonic discourse systematically overwrites, misrepresents, or silences their voices. Even when a subaltern individual attempts to speak, the elite power structures lack the cognitive categories to truly listen, rendering them mute.

In The Curse, Karna stands as the ultimate embodiment of the subaltern hero. Despite his extraordinary physical capability, martial genius, and royal lineage, his social identity is thoroughly defined and restricted by the dominant Kuru elite. He is branded a "Suta Putra," marking him as inherently subordinate.

Kailasam’s most brilliant dramatic stroke is the literalization of Spivak’s "silencing" through the somatic mechanics of Parasuraama’s curse. When Bhima insults his lineage and Draupadi rejects him, Karna does not engage in a verbal defense; he cannot. The psychological trauma of his marginalized birth triggers a literal, physical paralysis: "Whensoe'er my lowly birth is flung at me... my brain refuses thought! My heart refuses beat! Mine arms remain inert!"

This is the ultimate dramatic representation of the subaltern’s inability to speak within hegemonic spaces. The moment the subaltern attempts to assert their agency, the dominant social discourse invades their psyche, rendering them physically and vocally paralyzed. Karna’s silent, weeping exit from the tournament represents the absolute erasure of subaltern subjectivity by elite power structures.

Furthermore, Spivak notes that the "subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow." This gendered subalternity is powerfully explored through the character of Paanchalee (Draupadi). In the traditional epic, she is miraculously saved by divine intervention. In Kailasam's adaptation, she is a deeply traumatized subaltern figure, commodified and traded as "goods and chattel" by her own husbands in a corrupt game of dice. When Karna stands up as the lone voice to defend her, he is paralyzed by his curse. Draupadi, witnessing the absolute silence of the elders and the paralysis of her sole defender, undergoes a terrifying psychological break, transforming into the "Flame of Hate." Kailasam exposes how the intersecting forces of patriarchy and caste systematically silence and destroy marginalized lives.

6. Subverting Epic Morality and the Tragic Symmetry of the Blade of Grass

One of the most radical departures Kailasam makes from the Mahabharata is his complete subversion of traditional moral alignments. In the traditional epic, the Pandavas are the righteous champions of Dharma, while the Kauravas are the embodiments of Adharma. Kailasam completely flips this ethical polarity, presenting the Kaurava prince Suyodhana (Duryodhana) as the play's moral and compassionate anchor.

In The Curse, Suyodhana is portrayed as a fiercely progressive, noble ruler who actively rejects birth-based hierarchies to champion human merit. When the preceptors attempt to exclude Karna from the tournament, Suyodhana defiantly steps forward: "IF SLIMY BLOB OF PEAT BEGET A KRIPAACHAARYA... MAY WE NOT MAKE A KING OF FOREMOST PUPIL OF DREAD RAAMA?" Suyodhana's crowning of Karna is not a calculated political move, but a genuine act of admiration and human solidarity.

This bond of unconditional love is cemented when Karna is paralyzed by his curse. Seeing his friend’s agonizing helplessness, Suyodhana’s anger dissolves into profound grief. He physically cradles the broken King of Anga, whispering in deep sorrow, "POOR ANGA! OUR POOR GREAT ANGA!" Through this relationship, Kailasam presents a radical critique of traditional morality: the "wicked" Kaurava possesses a deeper sense of human empathy than the "godly" Pandavas, who hide behind rigid social laws to protect their privileges.

This tragic dynamic reaches its climax through the exquisite symbolic symmetry of the blade of grass. Throughout the play, the blade of grass serves as a powerful leitmotif representing the tragic recursion of Karna's destiny:

• The Initiation: Parasuraama demonstrates the absolute power of the Bhaargava weapon by invoking it over a simple blade of grass. This establishes the grass as a symbol of ultimate, liberating agency.
• The Protest: When Dussasana attempts to drag Draupadi away, Karna prepares to invoke the weapon to destroy the oppressors. However, the psychological trauma of his birth is triggered, paralyzing his arm.
• The Battlefield: Bound by his vow to Kunti never to use his Naga Astra a second time, Karna remembers the loophole: "With single blade of grass, I can invoke the deadliest of my Guru's astras..." Yet, as his hand descends to touch the grass, the word "SOOTHA-BORN" rings in his mind. The curse strikes one final time. His fingers refuse to close on the blade of grass, leaving him unarmed before Arjuna's fatal arrow.
  
  
  

The blade of grass, which should have been his instrument of triumph, becomes the ultimate symbol of his tragic limitation. The physical inability to grasp it perfectly encapsulates the Sophoclean irony of Karna's existence: his superhuman physical strength is completely neutralized by the microscopic trauma of social shame.

Conclusion: The Subaltern Speaks through Tragedy

T. P. Kailasam’s The Curse or Karna is a masterpiece of intercultural synthesis that redefines the ethical and dramatic boundaries of the Mahabharata. By merging the unyielding mechanics of Sophoclean tragedy—the absolute fate of Ananke, the virtuous blind spot of Hamartia, and the defiant pride of Hubris—with the sociopolitical realities of the Indian caste system, Kailasam succeeds in transforming Karna from a compromised mythic figure into a classic tragic hero of cosmic proportions.

Through this hybrid dramatic form, Kailasam performs a vital task of deconstruction. Using Peter Struck’s methodological tools, we can see how the play systematically dismantles the functionalist charter of the traditional myth, exposing the structural violence of caste as a cold, mechanical trap. By reading the play alongside Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s subaltern theory, we realize that Karna’s paralyzing curse is the ultimate literalization of epistemic silencing. The tragedy of Karna is the tragedy of a subaltern genius whose body and mind are somaticized by the trauma of systemic exclusion, rendering him physically incapable of claiming his rightful place in the sun.

Ultimately, The Curse ends on a note of supreme, Sophoclean pessimism. Karna’s death on the battlefield does not resolve the conflicts of the epic; instead, it triggers a new, devastating Brahmin's curse from the grieving Aswatthama, who snaps his sacred thread and dooms the Pandava dynasty. By showing that the systematic crushing of the meritorious subaltern only breeds further destruction, The Curse stands as a timeless, powerful indictment of discrimination, reclaiming Karna as an eternal symbol of unyielding human dignity standing defiant against a cruel, predetermined fate.

Works Cited

Kailasam, T. P. The Curse or Karna. 1946. B. S. Rama Rao, 1969.

Kapoor, Kajal. "Karna (The Unsung Hero of Mahabharata: The Voice of the Subaltern)." International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Culture, vol. 2, no. 4, Nov. 2016, pp. 15-25. sloap.org/journals/index.php/ijllc/article/view/132. Accessed 17 Aug. 2026.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, Macmillan, 1988, pp. 24-28.

Struck, Peter. "Tools for Reading Myths." PowerPoint presentation, prepared by Vaidehi Hariyani, Department of English, MKBU, 18 Sept. 2018.

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Exploring Digital Humanities: Human vs. Machine Poetry & CLiC Corpus Stylistics

This blog is written as a task assigned by the head of the Department of English (MKBU), Prof. and Dr. Dilip Barad Sir. For comprehensive background reading on these concepts, click here to visit the professor's blog.

Human vs. Machine Poetry Test (My Experience)

It is incredibly hard to differentiate whether a poem is written by an AI tool or by a human, and it is certainly not as easy a task as we might assume. I recently took an online test prepared by Prof. Dilip Barad, and it turned out to be a deeply challenging task to differentiate between human ingenuity and algorithmic generation.

Apart from the classic poems I already knew by memory, I was completely in doubt as to whether a given poem was written by a machine or an actual, breathing poet. If you want to challenge your own literary instincts, you can also take the test HERE.

This is one tolll named Pengram which helps you identify whether the content is written by AI or a human being; tools like these helps you when it is hard to do it ourselves. In essence, this activity flourished me with a novel perspective on creative writing. I came to know that modern-day machines are capable enough to deceive any avid reader. What we think is written by a deeply emotional poet might actually have been synthesized by a computer. In this age of Artificial Intelligence, this blurring of lines has become the new normal.

The CLiC Activity Book & Corpus Stylistics

The CLiC web app has been developed as part of the CLiC Dickens project, which demonstrates through corpus stylistics how computer-assisted methods can be used to study literary texts. This digital tool leads to profound new insights into how readers perceive fictional characters.

In my experience, this tool is of immense value for both students and teachers. You can search for any specific keyword, motif, or phrase pertaining to your interest within the massive literary databases they provide. It makes textual analysis and research significantly more productive. I find this website incredibly resourceful for deep literary mapping.

Our group was assigned a thematic study on education, women, and governesses in the 19th century. Examples of famous literary governesses include Rebecca Sharp in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, Jane Eyre in the novel by Charlotte Brontë, Agnes Grey in Anne Brontë’s novel, Madame de la Rougierre in Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas, the unnamed governess in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, Miss Wade in Dickens’s Little Dorrit, and Jane Fairfax in Jane Austen’s Emma. Given her interest in the grand country house and estate as the setting for several novels, Jane Austen’s writing frequently features the governess as a highly significant character.

I followed the instructions given in the activity book and chose Activity 15.4: Children’s feelings about governesses. Below are the results I retrieved from the site. The tool is highly specific, landing you directly at the exact passages where the word "governess" is utilized in the selected text.

Figure 1: Concordance lines generated by CLiC for the term "governess" across the corpus.

Figure 2: Textual highlight showing exact placement and context of the targeted word.

Figure 3: Exploring specific chapter views within 'The Secret Garden' using CLiC's subset filters.

Apart from this particular text, I explored various analytical features on the site and found them all to be highly specific and commendable. I also explored Voyant Tools, which stands as another remarkable feat in the application of digital tools within the humanities.

Learning Outcomes

Engaging with these digital platforms provided several concrete takeaways:

• This activity made me aware of analytical tools that I was previously completely unaware of, sparking a deep curiosity to explore more such digital tools in the future.
• I developed a profound understanding of the capabilities of artificial intelligence in creative writing by critically analyzing human-versus-machine poetry.
• I successfully utilized the Pengram tool to critically evaluate and differentiate between human-authored and AI-generated content.
• I gained technical proficiency in using the CLiC web app for corpus stylistics, specifically conducting thematic analyses of character motifs (such as the 'governess') in 19th-century literature.
• The exercise heavily enhanced my research productivity by teaching me to synthesize quantitative corpus data with qualitative literary interpretation.
• I recognized the evolving, complex challenges regarding content authenticity and authorship in the age of AI.

Works Cited

Barad, Dilip. "What If Machines Write Poems." Dilip Barad's Blog, 1 Mar. 2017, blog.dilipbarad.com/2017/03/what-if-machines-write-poems.html. Accessed 3 Aug. 2026.

Mahlberg, Micaela, et al. CLiC 2.1: Corpus Linguistics in Context. University of Birmingham and University of Nottingham, 2020. https://clic.bham.ac.uk/. Accessed 3 Aug. 2026.

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Ghosts in the Machine: Why Your AI is a 19th-Century Patriarch (and How to Fix It)

This blog is assigned by Prof. Dilip Barad on unmasking some algorithmic biases in literary interpretation of AI tools. This entire blog is based on the lecture video and is prepared by NotebookLM.

1. Introduction: The Myth of the Neutral Machine

We’ve been sold a lie: the silicon oracle is objective. In our rush to embrace the efficiency of Artificial Intelligence, we have mistaken Large Language Models (LLMs) for sterile windows into truth. We assume that because code is mathematical, it must be free from the messy, visceral prejudices of the human heart. But as Professor Dilip P. Barad reminds us, AI is not a window; it is a digital mirror.

This mirror does not reflect the world as we wish it to be; it reflects our historical blind spots, our societal fractures, and our deepest unconscious biases. When we interact with an LLM, we aren't just engaging with an algorithm; we are interacting with a distillation of human culture—and human culture is an archive of inequality. The problem is that these biases are often "unconscious," meaning we instinctively categorize people and things without even realizing we are doing so. To fix the machine, we must first recognize the cracks in the mirror. Curiously, the most effective tool for this technical audit isn't a better compiler—it is literature. By applying literary theory, we can identify the "ghosts" in the code and begin the arduous work of building a more equitable digital future.

The Algorithmic Palimpsest: Unmasking Algorithmic Bias in Literary Interpretation by SagarChavda29

2. Beyond Two Sides: The "Diamond" Metaphor for Critical Thinking

One of the most persistent obstacles to understanding AI bias is the hollow cliché that "every coin has two sides." Professor Barad dismisses this binary approach as obsolete and dangerous. When navigating the maze of 150+ types of unconscious bias, thinking in two dimensions is a strategy for failure.

Instead, we must adopt the "Diamond" metaphor. A diamond is multi-dimensional—it has facets that are 3D, 4D, and even 9D. Critical thinking in the AI era requires us to look at a problem from every possible angle, recognizing that there isn’t just a "pro" and "con" but a vast spectrum of cultural, historical, and social perspectives.

Shifting from "binary thinking" to "diamond thinking" is essential for identifying how mental preconditioning impacts our digital interactions. This preconditioning—beliefs instilled in us without firsthand experience—often masquerades as "knowledge." Literature helps us develop the hermeneutic (interpretive) skill to distinguish between genuine knowledge systems and these inherited belief systems. As the professor notes, the primary reason to study literary theory today is to identify the unconscious biases hidden within our socio-cultural interactions, preventing us from accepting the machine's output as a universal truth.

3. The Ghost in the Attic: AI as a 19th-Century Patriarch

To see how gender bias haunts our algorithms, we turn to the foundational feminist critique in Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic (1979). The authors famously argued that patriarchal literary traditions force women into a binary: they are either the "Angel" (idealized, submissive, and trembling) or the "Monster" (hysterical, mad, and deviant).

When we prompt modern AI, these Victorian-era ghosts frequently resurface. Because AI is trained on a "patriarchal canon," it reproduces stereotypes unless explicitly corrected. However, there are signs of "Modern Correction" as models ingest 20th-century progress.

• The Patriarchal Canon (The Default): In live experiments, asking an AI to write a story about a "scientist" or "doctor" almost universally yields a male protagonist, such as "Dr. Edmund Bellam."
• The Modern Correction (Progressive Improvement): While traditional histories of literature often ignored women writers, AI models are beginning to integrate more diverse data. For instance, recent prompts for "Restoration dramatists" now successfully include Aphra Behn, a once-marginalized voice, alongside the traditional male figures of the Comedy of Manners.
• Subverting the Gothic: While earlier models might describe a Gothic heroine as a "pale, trembling girl," newer iterations sometimes yield "rebellious and brave" female leads. This is a crucial subversion of the "body shaming" often found in classical epics. While poets like Walmiki (describing Shurpanakha) or the Greek poets (describing Helen) relied on disparaging physical features to define moral character, AI can be prompted to reject this body-centric bias in favor of intellectual or qualitative descriptions.

4. Moonlight on Marble: The Aesthetic Bias of the Global North

The bias in AI isn't just about who acts; it’s about how beauty is defined. This is where the work of researchers like Timnit Gebru, Safiya Noble, and Joy Buolamwini becomes vital. Their research reveals that AI acts as a "stochastic parrot," a term coined by Gebru to describe how LLMs amplify dominant voices while effectively erasing marginalized ones—a process we might call canonical erasure.

The data proves this isn't just a theoretical concern. Buolamwini’s "Gender Shades" study revealed that commercial AI systems had error rates of less than 1% for white men but a staggering 34% for dark-skinned women. This demonstrates how AI treats "whiteness as the default."

This aesthetic bias manifests in literary prompts. When asked to "describe a beautiful woman," AI often defaults to Eurocentric metaphors. One telling response described skin with the softness of "moonlight on marble"—a clear, symbolic elevation of fair skin as the universal standard. As Gebru warns, "more data doesn't mean better data." If you feed a machine a massive volume of biased data, the scale merely amplifies the prejudice. It foregrounds Western registers of English and Eurocentric features, reinforcing colonial beauty standards under the guise of objective "beauty."

5. DeepSeek vs. ChatGPT: When Algorithms Choose Silence

Bias is not only found in what an AI says, but in what it is forbidden from saying. No algorithm is a blank slate; every tool carries the "national identity" of its creators.

This is starkly visible when comparing Western models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT with Chinese models like DeepSeek. While ChatGPT is frequently criticized for "wokeism" or a progressive liberal bias, DeepSeek demonstrates a more chilling phenomenon: algorithmic silence. When prompted with questions about sensitive histories like Tiananmen Square, DeepSeek does not just provide a different perspective; it refuses to engage entirely.

"That's beyond my current scope. Let's talk about something else."

DeepSeek masks this censorship in the language of politeness, using euphemisms like "positive developments" and "constructive answers." As Digital Humanists, we must be alarmed by these "goody-goody" words. Just as "urban beautification" in literature often masks the destruction of marginalized slums, "constructive answers" in AI often mask the erasure of historical reality.

6. The Tyrant’s Poem: How AI Interprets Power

To test the political limits of these models, researchers conducted an experiment using W.H. Auden’s poem "Epitaph on a Tyrant." The AI was prompted—in both Hindi and English—to rewrite the poem for various world leaders.

The results revealed a "glaring example" of deliberate control. The AI (specifically ChatGPT) successfully generated biting satires for Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong-un, capturing themes of "America First" and the "iron fist." However, when the same experiment was conducted on DeepSeek regarding Xi Jinping, the model defaulted to its "beyond my current scope" deflection. This shows that the "Digital Mirror" can be fogged up on purpose. When an algorithm is permitted to critique a Western "tyrant" but remains silent on a domestic leader, it ceases to be a tool and becomes a participant in state-sponsored image-making.

7. The Pushpaka Vimana Test: Myth vs. Scientific Fact

Cultural bias often surfaces in how AI labels "knowledge" versus "myth," particularly regarding Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS). A common flashpoint is the Pushpaka Vimana, the flying chariot from the Ramayana. Critics often argue that AI is biased when it labels the Vimana as "mythology" while they view it as history.

To determine if this is bias or a fair observation, we apply the "Uniform Standard" test:

• Does the AI treat all cultural myths consistently?
• If the AI labels the Pushpaka Vimana as a "myth" but treats Greek, Mesopotamian, or Norse flying objects as "scientific possibilities," it is a clear sign of epistemological bias—the colonial habit of treating Western traditions as "universal history" and non-Western traditions as "folkloric."
• If the AI applies a consistent standard of scientific evidence to all such ancient objects across all civilizations, it is functioning as a neutral tool.

8. Conclusion: From Downloaders to Uploaders

The ultimate takeaway is that bias is unavoidable. Every critic, every historian, and every algorithm has a perspective. Our goal is not to achieve an impossible, perfect neutrality, but to make bias visible.

This is the MIND MAP of the entire blog. CLICK HERE

We must move away from the "laziness" that defines our current relationship with technology. Professor Barad issues a vital mandate for the Global South and marginalized communities: we must stop being mere "downloaders" of digital content and become "uploaders."

If our stories, our indigenous knowledge, and our specific histories are not in the data sets, the AI will continue to erase us. We cannot hide behind postcolonial arguments if we refuse to do the work of digitizing our own narratives. We must tell more stories—and tell them loudly in digital spaces—to ensure that the algorithms of the future are forced to take notice of our voices.

Can we ever achieve a true "algorithmic consciousness"? Perhaps not in the human sense. But by using literature as our debugger, we can ensure that the mirrors we build are as multi-faceted and honest as the human experience itself. The question remains: are we ready to face what the mirror shows us, or will we continue to hide behind the myth of the neutral machine?

Works Cited

Auden, W. H. "Epitaph on a Tyrant." Another Time, Random House, 1940.

Bender, Emily M., Timnit Gebru, et al. "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?" Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT '21), Association for Computing Machinery, 2021, pp. 610–623.

Buolamwini, Joy, and Timnit Gebru. "Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification." Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, vol. 81, 2018, pp. 1–15.

Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. Yale UP, 1979.

Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. NYU Press, 2018.

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