An Alternative Reading of the Other in The Mahabharata: Celebrating the Marginal

This book studies gender, sexuality, and representation in The Mahabharata. Drawing on Feminist theory, Queer theory and Deconstructivist theory, it revisits the epic as a saga of agency, empowerment, and subversion, and examines how it gives the gendered marginal — the women and the queer — a voice.

The authors argue that in a fluid text like The Mahabharata, there is ample scope for contradiction and conformation, as well as conflict and resolution, which gives the marginal an opportunity ...