Phoolan Devi, popularly known as the Bandit Queen, was an Indian dacoit (bandit) who became a politician, serving as a member of parliament until her assassination. She was a woman of the Mallah subcaste who grew up in poverty in a village in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where her family was on the losing side of a land dispute which caused them many problems. After being married off at the age of eleven and being sexually abused by various people, she joined a gang of dacoits. Her gang robbed higher-caste villages and held up trains and vehicles. When she punished her rapists and evaded capture by the authorities, she became a heroine to the Other Backward Classes who saw her as a Robin Hood figure. Phoolan Devi was charged in absentia for the 1981 Behmai massacre, in which twenty Thakur men were executed, allegedly on her command. After this event, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh resigned, and calls to apprehend her were amplified. She surrendered two years later in a carefully negotiated settlement and spent eleven years in Gwalior prison, awaiting trial.
Suzanna Arundhati Roy is an Indian author best known for her novel The God of Small Things (1997), which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and became the best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. She is also a political activist involved in human rights and environmental causes.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1997.
The BFG is a 1982 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. It is an expansion of a short story from Dahl's 1975 novel Danny, the Champion of the World. The book is dedicated to Dahl's late daughter, Olivia, who died of measles encephalitis at the age of seven in 1962.
The MeenachilRiver or Meenachilaar, also known as Kavanar, Valanjar, is a river in Kerala. It is one of the most treacherous rivers in Kerala due to its flash floods, heavy undercurrents and woods and debris it carries from the mountains. It flows through the heart of Kottayam district, Kerala state in southern India. 78km long, originates in the Western Ghats main tributaries are Theekoy aaru from Vagamon hills, Poonjar Aaru and Chittar, flowing westward through the city of Kottayam and other towns like Poonjar, Teekoy, Erattupetta, Bharananganam, Pala, Mutholy, Cherpunkal, Kidangoor and Kumarakom before emptying into the Vembanad Lake on the shore of the Indian Ocean.
Indian English literature (IEL), also referred to as Indian Writing in English (IWE), is the body of work by writers in India who write in the English language but whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of India. Its early history began with the works of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio and Michael Madhusudan Dutt followed by Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo. R. K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao contributed to the growth and popularity of Indian English fiction in the 1930s. It is also associated, in some cases, with the works of members of the Indian diaspora who subsequently compose works in English.
Thrithala is a town and a village in Pattambi taluk in Palakkad District of Kerala state, South India. The town is located along the banks of Bharathapuzha and is famed for its Shiva temple.
The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2001) is a collection of essays written by Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy. The book discusses a wide range of issues including political euphoria in India over its successful nuclear bomb tests, the effect of public works projects on the environment, the influence of foreign multinational companies on policy in poorer countries, and the "war on terror". Some of the essays in the collection were republished later, along with later writing, in her book My Seditious Heart.
Mary Roy was an Indian educator and women's rights activist known for winning a Supreme Court lawsuit in 1986 against the gender biased inheritance law prevalent within the Syrian Malabar Nasrani community of Kerala. The judgement ensured equal rights for Syrian Christian women as with their male siblings in their ancestral property. Until then, her Syrian Christian community followed the provisions of the Travancore Succession Act of 1916 and the Cochin Succession Act, 1921, while elsewhere in India the same community followed the Indian Succession Act of 1925.
Anita Nair is an Indian novelist who writes her books in English. She is best known for her novels A Better Man, Mistress, and Lessons in Forgetting. She has also written poetry, essays, short stories, crime fiction, historical fiction, romance, and children's literature, including Muezza and Baby Jaan: Stories from the Quran.
Namita Gokhale is an Indian writer, editor, festival director, and publisher. Her debut novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion was released in 1984, and she has since written fiction and nonfiction, and edited nonfiction collections. She conceptualized and hosted the Doordarshan show Kitaabnama: Books and Beyond and is a founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival. She won the 2021 Sahitya Akademi Award for her novel 'Things to leave behind'.
Olympian Anthony Adam is a 1999 Indian Malayalam-language action thriller film written and directed by Bhadran. It stars Mohanlal, Meena and Nassar with Jagathy Sreekumar, Seema, in supporting roles. The film was produced by Mohanlal through the company Pranavam Arts. The music was composed by Ouseppachan. The plot follows an investigation by Chakkummoottil Varghese Antony IPS (Mohanlal) about a planned terrorist attack in India.
Navayana is an independent anti-caste Indian publishing house based in New Delhi, strongly influenced by Ambedkarite ideas. It was founded by S. Anand and D. Ravikumar in 2003. The first book it published was Ambedkar: Autobiographical Notes priced at Rs 40. Since then it has published acclaimed fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels and poetry anthologies. From 2009 onwards, Navayana broadened its publishing outlook to include social issues other than caste because ‘the struggle against caste cannot happen in isolation from other struggles for justice and equality’ as a statement on the website reads.
The Shape of the Beast: Conversations with Arundhati Roy (2008) is a collection of fourteen interviews of Indian author Arundhati Roy, conducted between January 2001 and March 2008. In these interviews, Roy speaks, among other things, about people displaced by dams and industry, the genocide in Gujarat, Maoist rebels, the Kashmir issue and American imperialism. In the final interview, Roy speaks about herself as a person, a writer and a celebrity.
Talkhiyaan is a 2013 Pakistani drama serial written by Bee Gul and directed by Khalid Ahmed. It highlights a stereotypical mentality of men that live by their ancestral pride and deep-rooted notions of a caste system. It depicts the frustrations of a mother, wife and daughter provoked by society.
Priya A. S. is an Indian writer of Malayalam literature. She writes short stories, children's literature, translations and memoirs. She has translated Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things into Malayalam under the title Kunju Karyangalude Odeythampuran of which Roy herself has said that although there have been translations in several languages, no other translation is as important to her as this, as it is the language of the novel's central characters. She is a three-time recipient of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award.
Neelabh Ashk was an Indian Hindi language poet, journalist, and translator. He published various poetry collections. He is best known for translating the works of notable authors like Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, William Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, and Mikhail Lermontov.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is the second novel by Indian writer Arundhati Roy, published in 2017, twenty years after her debut, The God of Small Things.
Aymanam John is a Malayalam–language short-story writer. He hails from Aymanam, a small village in Kerala's Kottayam district which was made famous by Arundhati Roy through her 1997 novel The God of Small Things.
Walking with the Comrades (2011) is an eyewitness account of the Naxalite–Maoist insurgency by Indian author Arundhati Roy. The book covers her time in 2010 spent living with Naxalite communist guerillas deep within the forests of rural Chhattisgarh. She argues that India's counter-insurgency, known as Operation Green Hunt, is a front for mining corporations to clear away tribal people, and to make profits exploit India's natural resources.
