Second Semester M.A.

Degree Examination
English Language and Literature
(from 2022 admission onwards)
Model Question Paper
Paper VI – EL.522: Literatures of India
Time: 3 Hrs Max Marks: 75

I.Answer any five of the following questions in about 50 words

1. Explain the term ‘Subalternity’

2. Write about the “gay minstrel of the Indian clime”
3. Discuss Prakrit Literature
4. What is the theme of Kalidasa’s “Meghadutam”?
5. Describe the speaker in “The Gambler’s Lament”
6. Where do you place Subramania Bharati in the sociopolitical and literary context of
India?
7. Exlpain R.K Narayan’s visualization of ‘Bharat English’ as presented in “Toasted
English”
8. How is nature presented in “The Voice of the Mountain” ?

(5x2=10)

II. Answer any five of the following questions in about 100 words

9. Discuss the role of translation as a tool of appropriation in Indian literatures

10. Comment on the journeys in the poem “Madras Central”
11. Discuss Mirabai as a Bhakti poet
12. Attempt an ecocritical reading of Mamang Dai’s “The Voice of the Mountain”
13. Write a note on the peasant movements in India
14. Write a brief note on the Partition Literature from India
15. How does Badal Sircar convey the absurdity of human life and the failure of language
through the play Evam Indrajith?
16. Explain “Postcard from Kashmir” as a poem of nostalgia
(5x5=25)
III. Answer any two of the following questions in about 300 words choosing one from each
group

Group A

17. Elucidate the key arguments presented by P.P. Raveendran regarding the category of Indian
literature and the limitations of mapping Indian literature

18. How do the facets of nationalism affect the attempts made by scholars to theorize Indian
literature?

19. How does Premchand expose the abuse of women and sexism in the story “Shroud”?

Group B

20. Analyse the conflict between the classes and the idea of democracy as presented in the Year
of the Weeds

21. What role does translation play in the study of Indian literature and how does it facilitate a
better understanding across different languages?

22. Mahasweta Devi’s “Kunti and the Nishadin” is an alternative to the dominant discourse of
patriarchy and a sharp critique of gendered inequality. Comment

(15x2=30)

IV. Critically analyse and answer any one of the following questions in about 150 words

23. What are the implications of jettisoning or deferring the idea of Indian literature as a
category? Comment critically

24. Present the main arguments in the given passage in not more than two sentences and
attempt a one-page critical note on the passage.

Caste is a very important element of Indian society. As soon as a person is born, caste
determines his or her destiny. Being born is not in the control of a person. If it were in one’s
control, then why would I have been born in a Bhangi household? Those who call
themselves the standard-bearers of this country’s great cultural heritage, did they decide
which homes they would be born into? Of course, they turn to scriptures to justify their
 position, the scriptures that establish feudal values instead of promoting equality and
freedom

25. Discuss the theme of the Indian diasopra and its literature with the following passage as a
point of reference:

But nothing feels normal to Ashima. For the past eighteen months, ever since she’s arrived
in Cambridge, nothing has felt normal at all. It’s not so much pain, which she knows,
somehow, she will survive. It’s the consequence: motherhood in a foreign land. For it was
one thing to be pregnant, to suffer the queasy mornings in bed, the sleepless nights, the
dull throbbing in her back, the countless visits to the bathroom. Throughout the experience,
in spite of her discomfort, she’d been astonished by her body’s ability to make life, exactly
as her mother and grandmother and all her great grandmothers had done. That it was
happening so far from home, unmonitored and unobserved by those she loved, had made
it more miraculous still. But she is terrified to raise a child in a country where she is related
to no one, where she knows so little, where life seems so tentative and spare.

(10x1=10)