Paper short abstract:

The paper analyzes Kuṇāl Siṃh’s Romiyo Jūliyaṭ aur aṁdherā (Romeo, Juliet, and darkness) through Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of minor literature, as an example of deterritorialization of language.

Paper long abstract:

Romiyo Jūliyaṭ aur aṁdherā (Romeo, Juliet, and darkness) is a long short story/short novel by Kuṇāl Siṃh drawing its title from Jan Otčenášek's novel (1958), that was made available in Hindi by Nirmal Varmā in 1964. The explicit reference to Jan Otčenášek and Nirmal Varmā asks for a reading of the story also as a re-telling of the original plot. I will analyze this text through Deleuze and Guattari's concept of minor literature, as an example of deterritorialization of language. While Hindi is generally considered a majority language, having a hegemonic position due to its high status as official language, in this text it is contextualized in a totally different way, as the story is set in Assam. Issues of identity construction, multilingualism and minority subjectivity will be dealt with in the paper.