EXEGESIS OF VARNA THROUGH THE LENS OF SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY IN SUNJEEV SAHOTA’S THE YEAR OF THE RUNAWAYS
Keywords:
Indian Literature, Conflict Theory, Caste System, Exploitation, Unconscious.Abstract
Sunjeev Sahota’s thematic concerns border on immigrant literature, identity crisis and Indian roots. The aim of the research is to explore the exploitation of Varna Casteism in South Asian writer Sunjeev Sahota’s novel The Year of the Runaways published in 2015. The researcher probes the role of casteism in a post-capitalistic world to assess how much it has seeped in the financial sector. The objectives are to unravel the hegemonic casteism; and to gauge the extent of conditioning through textual events and characters’ fates.
To analyze the primary text, Lewis Coser and Ralf Dahrendorf’s Conflict Theory and, Jim Sidanius and Felecia Pratto’s Social Dominance Theory with specific focus on Legitimizing Myths have been employed. As secondary sources, literary reviews, online journals, print and written material have been used. The novel has hitherto been merely studied as Dalit Literature. However, the research undertaken expands the meagre research by bringing in the complete social model of Varna system. Research findings strongly endorse the role of Indian community itself in sustaining Varna Casteism through mythmaking strategies employed.
