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This paper analyzes the Indian English novel The Lowland (2012) by Jhumpa Lahiri and examines its representation of the Naxalbari movement's (1965-1975) gendered history to locate women, their roles, their marginalized position, and the growth of their individual independent identities. The Naxalbari movement is the first major peasant protest within 20 years of Indian independence. (2) Though the first actions of the movement were in a village of North Bengal, this paper mainly concentrates on the movement's activities after it was urbanized and joined by the middle class. It, therefore, tries to locate the position of middle-class women within the movement. In the endeavor to engage with the different narratives regarding the roles of 20 (th) century Bengal middle-class women in the movement, the paper historically views and assesses two contradictory perspectives regarding the involvement of women. While a few narratives stress how the participation of women enabled them to attain a certain degree of emancipation from the confinement of the patriarchal society, my detailed study revealed a counter-narrative that stresses the androcentric underpinning of the movement. Hence, this paper analyzes how Lahiri's novel The Lowland engages with this problematic and contradictory location of women within the Naxalbari movement. Though there have been few studies on the gendered historical narrative of the Naxalbari movement, (3) as discussed briefly in the following sections, its representation has not yet been significantly explored within the scholarly studies of Indian English Literature. I address this gap by analyzing the text through the lens of the movement's gendered historical narratives to foreground the representation of women's experiences in it. Thus, my goal is to analyze women as a subversive force within the movement who represent both the dissenting voice of the Naxalbari movement as well as the critical voice against the gender hierarchy within it. Keywords: Gendered history, Naxalbari movement, Jhumpa Lahiri, Institutionalization of patriarchy, Patriliny, Sexual division of labor, Political widowhood, Protest movement Women in the Movement, The movement began in a small village named Naxalbari, situated in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal. According to historical records, the movement's first action occurred after the Tarai Krishak [...]

The objective in this paper is to identify the roots of patriarchy in the Naxalbari movement (1965-1975) through one of the texts in Indian English Literature. The Naxalbari movement is the first peasant revolution within twenty years of Indian Independence that initiated in a small village named Naxalbari situated in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal. Through Lives of Others (2014) by Neil Mukherjee the paper analyses the patriarchy of the 20th century urban Bengal society and how it seeped into the movement. Therefore, it exposes the androcentric underpinning of a movement dedicated to creating an egalitarian society. While the scholarly studies on the movement have recognized the dominating gender inequality, its cause has not yet been traversed upon. This paper addresses the gap by exploring the source of this patriarchy. Thus, it tries to examine the seeds of the concealed patriarchal framework within the dissenting Naxalbari movement. Keywords: Patriarchy, Women, 20th century Bengal, Movement, Introduction In this paper, the objective is to explore the gender hierarchy in the urban middle-class families of the late 20th century Bengal and its intrusion within the Naxalbari movement [...]