Dil Se and Gulaab Gang — “Me-Too” by the Women at the Margins

ABSTRACT

Through a reading of Gulaab Gang and Dil Se, the paper examines how underrepresentedwomen from the margins of the post-independent Indian society understand genderedviolence and intercept the mainstream political and nationalistic events. The two filmsrevolve around females that occupy marginal positions in ethnic, caste, and ideologicalterms. They are juxtaposed for understanding how they differently consider the questions 35of bodily love and violence, agency of the oppressed female body or its lack thereof, andthe position of the female antagonist in a counter-authoritarian space. The study looksinto the ideas of death desire and retribution through suicide and killings and the ways inwhich they shape “me-too” responses for women in both the films.

KEYWORDS:

• Dil Se
• Gulaab Gang
• suicide
• agency
• body
• victim
• me-too

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarbani Banerjee

Sarbani Banerjee earned her Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Western Ontario (2015). Her areas of specialization include postcolonial literature and theory, Canadian literature and culture, post-partition Bengali literature and cinema, diasporic literatures, and women’s studies. She worked as Dr. S. Radhakrishnan Post Doctoral Fellow (University Grants Commission, 2017–2020). Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of English in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT, Roorkee.