The Power of

THE POWER OF SPECULATIVE FICTION

Women’s writing in the genre in South Asia has always been a tool for imagining worlds where they are powerful

PRATIKA YASHASWI

Speculative fiction is a wide and wonderful genre. It welcomes everything: magic, horror, fantasy, science fiction, climate fiction and so much more. For authors, this is an attractive arena of exploration. Any reader will attest that fiction itself is a form of truth-telling, and when you can construct your own world, the possibilities are endless. As author Tashan Mehta puts it,: “Made a baby novel monster that no one else will take? Come, speculative fiction will give it a home.”

SOUTH ASIAN SPECULATIVE FICTION, PAST

In South Asia, the roots of speculative fiction run deep. “Contrary to what we

AUTHOR TASHAN MEHTA

might assume, the genres of science fiction and fantasy are not recent imports from the West.” says academic and author Nudrat Kamal, who has extensively studied the genre. “We have rich traditions such as the dastaans and epics of the past which can be viewed as the precursors of the genre as we know it today.”

Almost anyone who has grown up with Amar Chitra Katha comics or even just listened to their grandmothers tell them folktales can identify elements of fantasy and horror in South Asian stories. Remember King Vikramaditya and the talking corpse, Vetal? Or even Kapish, the monkey who could grow his tail to any length. Filmmaker and polymath Satyajit Ray is also known for his bone-chilling horror writing.

South Asian speculative writing isn’t just fun to read though. Over the last two hundred years there are many examples where it has been used as a tool to respond to the concerns of the time. Enjoyable speculative elements exist alongside a keen engagement with the zeitgeist. The earliest example of this is from 1835 by a young university student. Titled “A Journal of Forty-Eight Hours of the Year 1945,” it imagines the story of a battle between the Englisheducated, urban elite revolutionaries in British India, and their colonizers years before the historic Sepoy Mutiny in 1857. In the story, British leaders are humorously named Governor Lord Fell and Colonel John Blood-Thirsty.

WOMEN’S SPECULATIVE FICTION

Women’s writing in the genre has always been a tool for imagining worlds where they are powerful. `````````` n this regard, authors like Bangladeshi authors Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and Leela Majumder were ahead of their times. Hossain’s short story “Sultana’s Dream,” written in 1905, imagines a world where men are secluded into “mardanas” and women rule.

“Men, who do or at least are capable of doing no end of mischief, are let loose and the innocent women, shut up in the zenana! How can you trust those untrained men out of doors?” asks a character named Sister Sara.

“Earlier women writers consider[ed] more than what it would mean for women to be powerful, in their speculative fictions: what we today call an intersectional perspective, considering some or all of class, ethnicity, human-animal relations, and environmental issues inter alia,” says Indian feminist advocate, historian, and utopian studies scholar Dr. Barnita Bagchi. Today, she adds, “Themes around humanity, nature, and technology, climate change and disasters, extremisms combine with critiques of patriarchy in the most loved South Asian women’s speculative fiction from recent times.”

Vandana Singh is a physicist and one of the earliest sci-fi and fantasy authors in the South Asian literary scene. In her worlds, characters who are marginalized in more ways than just their gender, take center stage. For example, the protagonist of her story “Reunion” is a workingclass Adivasi woman. According to Kamal, their perspectives allow for richer and more textured worlds in her stories.

While Singh has been writing since the early oughties, several new South Asian authors are creating some fantastic work of speculative writing today, especially women.

In her literary debut, “The Liar’s Weave,” for instance, Tashan Mehta imagines a world in 1920s Bombay, where birth charts are real and one’s life is mapped in the stars. In this world, protagonist Zahan Merchant is born without a future but the power to change reality with his lies. In author Vauhini Vara’s recent novel

ACADEMIC AND AUTHOR NUDRAT KAMAL

“The Immortal King Rao,” a Dalit boy, rises in the world to become the leader of a global, corporate-led government in the age of climate change— and his daughter has access to his dreams. Vara frequently engages questions about AI and technology, even using these tools in her work.

Other notable women writing with roots in the subcontinent include Mimi Mondal, Fatima Taqvi, Kehkashan Khalid and many, many more. For those who are new to the genre, however, Dr. Bagchi has some advice. Apart from urging readers to catch up on women’s speculative fiction from the past and present, she says it is vital that readers read works published in other local languages from South Asia. “In the past of SA-specific we have so many figures whose works when translated feel (like they) refresh the repertoire of the field,” she says, citing the work of Leela Majumdar, who wrote in Bengali.

While the worlds they spin may be make-believe, the truths they ask us to reckon with couldn’t be more pithy, poignant and real. As India’s first Hugo-nominated sci-fi and fantasy author Mimi Mondal says, “All science fiction is political.”

DR BARNITA BAGCHI, FEMINIST ADVOCATE, HISTORIAN, AND UTOPIAN STUDIES SCHOLAR

RECOMMENDATIONS

Want to read women’s spec fic but don’t know where to start? Here are some recommendations (put together with help from Tashan Mehta and Nudrat Kamal):

“Magical Women,” an anthology edited by Sukanya Venkatraghavan

“Analog/Virtual” by Lavanya Lakshminarayan

“Machinehood” by S.B Divya

“Sultanpur Chronicles” by Achala Upendran

“Clone” by Priya Sarukkai Chhabria

“Gollancz book of South Asian Fiction, Volumes I and II” edited by Tarun K. Saint

“One Arm Shorter than the Other” by Gigi Ganguly