Holistic Report: Sexual Abuse & Social Exploitation in Anilchandra Thakur’s Works with Comparisons to Taslima Nasreen’s Lajja and Mahasweta Devi’s Mother of 1084

 

Holistic Report: Sexual Abuse & Social Exploitation in Anilchandra Thakur’s Works
with Comparisons to Taslima Nasreen’s Lajja and Mahasweta Devi’s Mother of 1084

Executive Summary

This report surveys key writings by Anilchandra Thakur that foreground domestic abuse, sexual exploitation, and the vulnerability of women within caste–class hierarchies. It offers a comparative lens with Taslima Nasreen’s *Lajja* (1993) and Mahasweta Devi’s *Mother of 1084* (1974) to contextualize how South Asian prose documents gendered violence across private, communal, and state terrains.

Scope & Sources

Primary corpus includes Thakur’s short stories and prose available in the provided archive: “जब भगवान मर गया”, “शव-साधना”, “धर्मसंस्थापनार्थाय”, “रोग”, “उत्तरपिता” (Hindi), alongside biographical and editorial material. Comparative corpus includes Taslima Nasreen’s *Lajja* and Mahasweta Devi’s *Mother of 1084* (English translation of *Hajar Churashir ki Ma*).

Thematic Map of Thakur’s Works on Abuse & Exploitation

Work (Language/Genre)	Primary Theme(s)	Core Situation	Salient Narrative Features
“जब भगवान मर गया” (Hindi, short story)	Domestic & familial abuse; sexual exploitation	Young woman ‘गमकी’ abused within family; poverty & patriarchal control	Intimate third-person realism; sensory detail; moral indictment of kinship power
“शव-साधना” (Hindi, short story)	Sexual vulnerability; abduction; policing failure	A girl’s disappearance triggers communal panic; suspicion of abduction	Collective-voice narration; village ecology & fear; critique of law enforcement
“धर्मसंस्थापनार्थाय” (Hindi, story/novella)	Religion/caste as tools of oppression; youth manipulation	Local elites exploit faith & identity politics for power; women/youth at risk	Sociological texture; political allegory; generational conflict
“रोग” (Hindi, story)	Desire & social illness as metaphors for abuse; gendered precarity	Woman (चानो) left vulnerable by migration/absence; harassment by local authority	Psychological interiority; metaphor of ‘disease’ for social rot
“उत्तरपिता” (Hindi, story)	Patriarchal inheritance & sexualized labour relations	Woman (‘कुंतीमाय’) stigmatized/exploited in work & marriage markets	Backstory mosaics; caste–class realism; critique of ‘respectability’ control

Detailed Analyses

“जब भगवान मर गया” — Domestic & Familial Abuse

Through the character ‘गमकी’, Thakur depicts how poverty, step-parental neglect, and a father’s predation collapse the sanctity of home. The story anatomizes grooming within kin, and how women’s labour—selling pottery or managing the household—becomes a lever of coercion. The tonal register is intimate yet unsparing: small sensory cues (scented oil, kohl, nicknames) heighten the contrast between childhood innocence and adult violation. The piece indicts not just the offending parent but the village economy that normalizes male entitlement.

“शव-साधना” — Sexual Vulnerability & Abduction

The village-wide search for a missing girl, ‘बिन्दी’, becomes an x‑ray of rural insecurity. The narrative tracks rumor, panic, and the humiliations families face at the police station—where institutional contempt replaces protection. The title’s mortuary undertone hints at the ritualization of violence, as if the community is forced to rehearse grief in advance. The result is a bleak portrait of how quickly a child’s body can be folded into the terrain of fear.

“धर्मसंस्थापनार्थाय” — Faith as Political Technology

Set against a turbulent village politics, the story shows religion and caste deployed as instruments of control. Charismatic men weaponize ‘dharma’ to discipline youth and women, rebranding obedience as virtue. Thakur’s method is sociological—tracking shifts in authority, language, and aspiration—revealing how identity becomes a pretext for gendered policing and exclusion.

“रोग” — Desire, Disease, and Patriarchal Harassment

‘रोग’ literalizes social decay as a pathology: in the absence of the migrant husband, Chano navigates gossip, hunger, and the local headman’s leers. The piece exposes how economic dependency magnifies risk of sexual coercion. Thakur’s choice of quotidian scenes (well, field, post office) maps the daily choke points where power traps women.

“उत्तरपिता” — The Father After / The After-Father

‘कुंतीमाय’ negotiates work with a local ‘बाबाजी’ and the stigma of multiple marriages; the story shows how guardianship, monastic power, and male ‘charity’ are sexualized economies by other names. Inheritance here is not just property but the inheritance of fear—women inherit precarity, scrutiny, and blame. Thakur’s structure (past folded into present) builds a dossier on respectability politics and caste-class desire.

Comparative Lens: Lajja and Mother of 1084

Taslima Nasreen’s Lajja (1993) documents a Hindu family’s persecution in post‑Babri‑Masjid Bangladesh. Sexual violence, including rape, is depicted as a communal‑political weapon. The prose is confrontational and documentary, indicting religious nationalism and urging secular humanism.

Mahasweta Devi’s Mother of 1084 (1974; trans. Hajar Churashir ki Ma) centers on a mother who uncovers the state’s murder of her Naxalite son. The novel probes state violence, class hierarchy, and the gendered toll of mourning. While rape is not its central focus, the book maps how patriarchal and state power crush dissent and feminize grief.

Synthesis Matrix: Points of Convergence & Divergence

Dimension	Thakur: Domestic/Local (e.g., “जब भगवान मर गया”, “शव-साधना”)	Thakur: Structural/Allegorical (e.g., “धर्मसंस्थापनार्थाय”, “रोग”, “उत्तरपिता”)	Nasreen: Lajja	Mahasweta Devi: Mother of 1084
Form of Violence	Domestic abuse; incestuous exploitation; abduction	Religious/caste policing; economic coercion; reputational violence	Communal pogroms; rape as weaponized terror	State repression; custodial killings; psychological warfare
Agents of Harm	Family members; neighbors; complicit community	Local elites; clerics; employers; headmen	Mob, extremists, and complicit authorities	State apparatus; party cadres; informants
Victim Lens	Young rural women; girls; the poor	Women/youth caught in identity-politics and poverty	Minority women; secular citizens; families in flight	Mothers; political dissidents; the urban poor
Narrative Mode	Intimate realism; close‑third perspective	Allegorical sociological realism; mosaic structure	Confrontational, documentary realism	Investigative grief narrative; political realism
Moral Argument	Home can be a site of predation; community silence abets abuse	Faith/class can be weaponized; patriarchy is systemic	Religious nationalism dehumanizes; secularism as refuge	State power dehumanizes; grief becomes resistance

Ethical & Pedagogical Notes

• Content advisory: discussions include sexual violence, domestic abuse, and state repression.
• Teach with care: foreground consent, survivor‑centric perspectives, and historical context.
• Encourage comparative reading: pair Thakur with Nasreen/Devi to map private vs. public violence.