Intersecting Women’s Identities, Injustice, and Resistance to Power Structures in Ritwik Ghatak’s Partition Trilogy

Abstract

This article examines the three women protagonists of Ritwik Ghatak’s Partition Trilogy through intersectionality and Collins and Bilge’s four domains of power. Comparative close readings of Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960), Komal Gandhar (1961), and Subarnarekha (1965) consider how displacement interacts with gender, class, caste, and familial authority. Drawing on Fricker’s epistemic injustice and Medina’s epistemic resistance, the analysis distinguishes struggles for credibility and self-definition from suffering alone. Attention to framing, sound, performance, and theatricality demonstrates that Neeta, Anusuya, and Sita encounter markedly different possibilities for resistance. Their stories expose how structural inequalities operate within everyday relationships after Partition.