Home as a Site of Resistance: A Study on Agunpakhi by Hasan Azizul Huq

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to investigate Hasan Azizul Huq’s much awaited novel Agunpakhi to explore the potencies and potentials of home as an empowering site of resistance. The novel commonly studied as a counter narrative on the Partition of India has multilayered implications embedded in it. One such dimension is the exploration of home place by contesting the common ideas to redefine its scopes. Home is normally studied as a sequestered space of deprivation and gendered marginalization. The inhabitants inhibited there by the social apparatuses are simply seized mentally. The consequent ideas built around home as a site showcase it impotence, and imposing character with no productive aspects. But the lived experiences of the inhabitants and their resultant practices if studied out of the box exhibit the excellences of home as a nurturing ground for raising resistances against the oppressors. To concentrate on these empowering aspects of the space, I will draw on bell hooks for her insights on home as a site of resistance. The research will advance the argument that home is a place of care and nurturance in the face of harsh realities facilitating the emergence of voices and subjectivity leading to emancipation from exigencies of marginalization.