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

Induja Mazumder; Oinam Bedajit Meitei

doi:10.5195/cinej.2026.1144

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

Authors

Induja Mazumder Central University of Karnataka https://orcid.org/0009-0002-9244-1462
Oinam Bedajit Meitei Central University of Karnataka https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1192-7392

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2026.1144

Keywords:

Ritwik Ghatak, Partition Trilogy, intersectionality, domains of power, epistemic injustice, epistemic resistance, Partition of Bengal, Bengali cinema

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.

References

Akmeşe, E., & Erçetingöz, A. (2026). Between Marxist melodrama and left melodrama: Gendered labor and suspended political possibility in Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960). CINEJ Cinema Journal, 14(2), 807–827. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2026.1007

Allen, A. (1998). Rethinking power. Hypatia, 13(1), 21–40. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.1998.tb01350.x

Arslan, R. (2026). Counter-memory and gendered trauma in Ritwik Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara: Melodrama, sound, and Partition. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 14(2), 703–729. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2026.992

Banerjee, S. (2023). Reading bhadralok cultural memory, kitsch and culture industry in Ritwik Ghatak’s films. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 11(2), 21–49. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2023.422

Barman, B. (2025). The city space in Ritwik Ghatak’s films. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 42(5), 1330–1349. https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2023.2261360

Biswas, M. (2021). Limits of representation: Ritwik Ghatak’s Subarnarekha. Philosophy East and West, 71(1), 151–172. https://doi.org/10.1353/pew.2021.0008

Cho, S., Crenshaw, K. W., & McCall, L. (2013). Toward a field of intersectionality studies: Theory, applications, and praxis. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 38(4), 785–810. https://doi.org/10.1086/669608

Chowdhury, S. (2015). The Indian partition and the making of a new scopic regime in Bengali cinema. European Journal of English Studies, 19(3), 255–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/13825577.2015.1091220

Collins, P. H. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Collins, P. H., & Bilge, S. (2020). Intersectionality (2nd ed.). Polity Press.

Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139–167.

Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039

Davis, A. Y. (1983). Women, race, and class. Vintage Books.

Emmanuel, G., & Rego, R. (2026). The postcolonial and matrixial gaze in Ritwik Ghatak’s Partition Trilogy. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 14(2), 779–806. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2026.1073

Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford University Press.

Ghatak, R. (Director). (1960). Meghe Dhaka Tara [Film]. Chitrakalpa.

Ghatak, R. (Director). (1961). Komal Gandhar [Film]. Chitrakalpa.

Ghatak, R. (Director). (1965). Subarnarekha [Film]. Bijoyini Films.

Ghatak, R. (2000). Rows and rows of fences: Ritwik Ghatak on cinema. Seagull Books.

Gupta, N. (2020). Trauma expressed pathologically: Unpacking the use of tuberculosis as a metaphor in Ritwik Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara. Studies in South Asian Film & Media, 12(1), 35–48. https://doi.org/10.1386/safm_00036_1

hooks, b. (1981). Ain’t I a woman? Black women and feminism. South End Press.

Medina, J. (2013). The epistemology of resistance: Gender and racial oppression, epistemic injustice, and resistant imaginations. Oxford University Press.

Medina, J. (2017). Varieties of hermeneutical injustice. In I. J. Kidd, J. Medina, & G. Pohlhaus Jr. (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of epistemic injustice (pp. 41–52). Routledge.

O’Donnell, E. (2004). “Woman” and “homeland” in Ritwik Ghatak’s films: Constructing post-Independence Bengali cultural identity. Jump Cut, 47. https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc47.2005/ghatak/text.html

O’Donnell, E. (2010). The Indian People’s Theater Association (IPTA) on film: (Con)testing memory and history in the Bengali theaterscapes of Ritwik Ghatak’s Komal Gandhar (E Flat, 1961). South Asian Popular Culture, 8(3), 261–275. https://doi.org/10.1080/14746689.2010.501545

Patil, V. (2013). From patriarchy to intersectionality: A transnational feminist assessment of how far we’ve really come. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 38(4), 847–867. https://doi.org/10.1086/669560

Ray, S. (1987). Foreword. In R. Ghatak, Cinema and I (pp. 11–12). Ritwik Memorial Trust.

Raychaudhuri, A. (2009). Resisting the resistible: Re-writing myths of partition in the works of Ritwik Ghatak. Social Semiotics, 19(4), 469–481. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330903361158

Sutherland, J.-A., & Feltey, K. M. (2017). Here’s looking at her: An intersectional analysis of women, power and feminism in film. Journal of Gender Studies, 26(6), 618–631. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2016.1152956

Trivedi, G. (2026). The nation’s unfinished business: Caste, exile, and postcolonial betrayal in Ritwik Ghatak’s Subarnarekha. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 14(2), 730–746. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2026.1022

Downloads

Published

2026-10-15

How to Cite

Mazumder, I., & Meitei, O. B. (2026). Intersecting Women’s Identities, Injustice, and Resistance to Power Structures in Ritwik Ghatak’s Partition Trilogy. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 14(2), 828–850. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2026.1144

Download Citation

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 2 (2026): Fall

Section

Ritwik Ghatak: The Visionary of Cinema

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
1. Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
with the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
The Author represents and warrants that:
1. the Work is the Author’s original work;
2. the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
3. the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
4. the Work has not previously been published;
5. the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
6. the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.