Digital Narrative : Sultana's Dream

SUNDAY READING

Sultana's Dream and Sultana's Reality

This blog is a response to a reading task given by Yesha Bhatt Ma'am. On the very first day of MA semester 3 class Ma'am introduced us to a ‘Digital Narrative’ in the class.

Women writers were not so celebrated in Literature. Reading female writers gives us insight to their life, we can read their situations and way of living in a specific period. ‘Sultana's Dream’ is a short story by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880 - 1932) which was originally published in The Indian Ladies' Magazine, Madras, 1905, in English.

Rokeya Hossain was a prominent Bengali feminist thinker, writer, educator and political activist from British India (present day Bangladesh). She is widely regarded as a pioneer of women's liberation in South Asia.

She advocated for men and women to be treated equally as rational beings, noting that the lack of education for women was responsible for their inferior economic position. Her major works include:

1. Matichur (A String of Sweet Pearls, 1904 and 1922), a collection of essays in two volumes expressing her feminist thoughts;

2. Sultana’s Dream (1908), a feminist science fiction novella set in Ladyland ruled by women; 3. Padmarag ("Essence of the Lotus", 1924) depicting the difficulties faced by Bengali wives;

4. Oborodh Basini (The Confined Women, 1931), a spirited attack on the extreme forms of purdah that endangered women's lives and self-image.

Afrah Shafiq is a multi/new media artist based out of Goa, India. Using the process of research as an artistic playground, Afrah intertwines archival findings, history, memory, folklore and fantasy to create a speculative world born of remixed culture. Afrah Shafiq has retold the story of Sultana from Rokeya Hossain’s story ‘Sultana’s Dream’ and presented her imaginative creative work which tries brings out the real situation which might be faced by Sultana or Rokeya Hossain in her life with the name ‘Sultana’s Reality’. ‘Sultana’s Reality’ is an interactive multimedia story that explores the relationship between women and the colonial education movement in India using archival imagery, women’s writing and history.

You can visit her Digital Narrative ‘Sultana’s Reality’- https://www.entersultanasreality.com/

Below I am answering the assigned question.

Concept of Andar mahal – the universe of Women

Beginning with the meaning of what is Andar mahal; Andar mahal or inner chambers is also known as Zenana, it is a part of a house for the seclusion of Women. The very first chapter of ‘Sultana’s Reality' talks about Andar mahal ‘an inner world of their own’.

The concept of Andar mahal was at its peak in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. It was a completely secluded place for women, the only contact with the outside world was working women who did household jobs in Andar mahal and had freedom to roam the world. It was the place from where women cannot step out and it was only the place where men can not step- in. in a small bonded place but women were all free to do what they wished. They used to live their best life singing, dancing, jokes, partying etc.

While reading a short story ‘Sultana’s Dream’ we realize that she also might be caged in an Andar mahal and it is giving her an imagination of the ladyland where women were free and men were caged in Mardana instead of Zenana. One can interpret the craving of women in Andar mahal to be free, roam unveiled.

Andar mahal can be considered to be a universe of women because it was the only place where they were safe from the men. In a compact, caged place, they were free to dance, sing, enjoy, writing poetry, gossip about husbands and making jokes on them.

Observation of females and their connection with books.

(Colonial education movement)

Sultana’s Reality explores the inner lives of the first generation of women to be educated in pre-independent India. Following an Alice in Wonderland style adventure the interactive multimedia installation brings to life accounts of different women.

On 14th August 1856. Koyla Schumer Bose gave a speech on ‘Education of Hindu Females’ in Calcutta. He appealed to the wealthiest people of Bengal to rally around for female education. He was the one to give a famous line “ She must be re-organized, refined, recast, regenerated.” In the second chapter of ‘Sultana’s Reality’ I Got my Eye on You’ we get an idea about why female education began. It seems like before this period no men paid attention to what happened inside the Andar mahal. Later, men felt that women were loose and men were embarrassed. So they decided to give education and hand books to them but not for their development and growing, for cultivating women’s true nature, their stri- bhava. Good books to improve their religious sense, being suitable for domestic work, to be more amiable and high principled, more faithful and devoted to men’s services, to have a modeled English women; men believed the only duty/ dharma of women is to serve their husband. The books ‘Stri- Dharma Padhti’ and ‘Bahishti Zewar’ were the two famous publications of the time.

The third chapter ‘Straighten Things Out’ clearly states that men wanted to bring women on line through education. Even in this system some women were happily accepting books but some were annoyed by it. Some would rather nap than read, Some were stoned in the streets for wearing shoes and carrying umbrellas, Some read forbidden texts in secret at night, Some read and then challenged the very ideas they read and some went on to write books - telling their story in their own words. The books they wrote reveal a universe of women’s lives as they were actually lived – outside the confines of bad and good behavior. The women in the books and the books in the women were full of messiness, intimacy, cynicism, humor, anger, dreams, beauty and love - and all of it together makes up their history. Men wanted a modeled woman for the show piece but for some getting books worked as a boon.

But later for all the women the savior women came and talked for women and their growth.

Compare both narratives of Sultana's Dream and Reality.

Sultan's Dream is the story of the utopian world, while Sultana's reality is the prequel of Sultana’s Dream. Sultana’s Dream is a story of dreamland, it has a wonderful feminist point of view of a ladyland. Sultana’s Dream is based on an imagined Ladyland where women Can access public spaces unrestricted by social or religious customs. A feminist utopia imagines a world without gender binaries and gender discrimination. women seem to have access to public spaces without being restricted by social or religious customs in Sultana’s Dream which is an unrealistic idea. But it gives us a feel for women’s urge to be free, live life like men. The story reveals various emotions felt by women facing patriarchal oppression. In the story, women are shown as more rational and scientific than men, wherein Sara (the protagonist’s imaginary friend) is a scientific researcher who considers women as superior to men. Women and men work in a completely opposite manner than sultana’s world. While the Sultana’s reality gives a view of Sultana’s world and their suffering. Complete opposite concepts are seen in both the stories like of Mardana and Zenana, Women ruling and growing faster in Dream and Reality. The story of Sultana’s Dream also gives a hope that only in a world of women, women ruling is far more better, organized, refined, regenerated, progressive than ruled by men.

Sultana’s Reality is told through animated video, graphics, gifs, comics, collages and other digital art forms made by collating, re-mixing, re-interpreting and re-imagining traditional visual imaginations of the female form. It tries to explore the multiplicity of women’s history and also image making – the ways in which it is told and remembered. Sultana’s Reality is perhaps an exercise in questioning history. Not the history of the image, but a history that is constructed with the image.

I hope my blog was useful to you. Thanks for visiting.

Relevance of ‘The Plague’ in contemporary Covid-19 crisis- Paper Presentation

 Relevance of ‘The Plague’ in Contemporary Covid-19 crisis

English Dept. of MK Bhavnagar university organised two days webinar in this lock-down period.The topic of webinar was 'Literature and epidemic'. This webinar gave a great chance to hear the views of expert speakers and to grow our thoughts and ideas on this particular topic. Some topics were so unique that we would have never thought about it. I presented a paper for the first time, My topic for this presentation was 'Relevance of 'The Plague' in contemporary covid-19 crisis'. I took reference from the novel 'The Plague' written by Albert Camus which was about the plague condition in Oran in 1940. It is awful that literature has already suggested epidemics and steps to prevent it but yet human beings fail to learn historical lesson from the historicity of the literature. This Seminar was broadcasted live of Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad's Facebook page and you tube Channel. 

This is my Presentation I presented in the seminar

Relevance of ‘The Plague’ in contemporary Covid-19 crisis. from Jheel Barad

This is video recording of my presentation.

Thank you for visiting I hope my this presentation and video recording are useful to you.

ELT and Mobile Technology- Paper Presentation

ELT and Mobile Technology

One day UGC National Seminar was organised by Gujarat University on Exploring ELT: innovative strategies in Pedagogy. I presented on the theme 'ELT and Mobile Technology'. 

The first plenary session was by Atanu Bhattacharya sir. He discussed 'Emerging Trends in ELT Research and Pedagogy', dividing in four parts Corpus Linguistics, History of English Language Education, Multi-modal analysis and Teacher research. Personally, It was a difficult session to understand. The second plenary  session was by Paresh Joshi  sir (Veer Narmad University). He discussed 'Social Media and ELT'. It was a really useful and enriching session for us.

After Corona Pandemic, the education world is having a drastic change and it has started relying greatly on technology. In this presentation i have dealt that how a regularly used communication app can be considerably used for education.

ELT and Mobile Technology.pptx from Jheel Barad

This is my paper presentation Certificate.

Thank you For visit. I hope it will be helpful to you. 

GIAN course- Forensic Linguistics

FORENSIC LINGUISTICS

Recently I attended 'GLOBAL RELEVANCE OF FORENSIC LINGUISTICS a Short Term GIAN Course' hosted by Department of Linguistics, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh' in a virtual mode, from 24/05/2022 to 28/05/2022. The program was coordinated by Dr. Noman Tahir. Lectures were on various topic by Prof. Tej K. Bhatia, Prof . M.J. Warsi, Dr. Sweta Sinha, Dr. Abhinav K. Mishra and Dr. Grace Sunnetha. It was really an enlightening course. This blog deals with my course learning outcome.

Forensic Language can be known as legal language or the language of the law. It is a method and insights to the forensic context of law, language, crime, investigation, trial and judicial procedure. According to National Geographic, Forensic Science is emerging as a new science of solving crime and the vibrant field. Looking in a broader way, Forensic Science bridges between forensic science and psychiatrist.

Studying human language scientifically is called linguistics. When applied to a particular social setting, in this case the legal forum, it is termed as Forensic Linguistics. Forensic linguistics emerged in two paths: one, Miranda Vs Arizona case (1966) in US. And in the UK when Svartvik proved that language itself can be forensic evidence. Before the emergence of FL, the major focus of argument was only police statements. Suspects were supposed to dictate their statements which were never interrupted or interrogated by police.

Finally in 1988 FL came into limelight, when Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt) organized a two- day FL conference. IT pioneer Phonetic Acoustic method of speaker identification. Later various FL conferences were organized like in France (1991), Britain (1992) Australia (1995) and US (1997). Later in !990s FL began as a teaching stream but still it was not as formal schooling.

The discipline of FL does consistently improve its methodology in investigating information. There is heavy emphasis on people's ability to recall information. While today it faces problems because of burgeoning and frequently changing cyber fields.

Forensic linguistics is considered to be a game changer solution. Many times it happens that while a case study there is complete absence of physical evidence like DNA, hair, blood sample, saliva etc. in such a situation use of FL is activated. FL evidences human lives, evidences like manifestos, ransom notes, Letters and in the digital world mails, messages etc. are preferred. Example for the use of digital evidence is the Michelle Carter case. Also the case of El Loco was evidenced by FL, in this case there was presence of physical evidence but were distorted. It brings unreliability of physical evidence. Also to have physical evidence from criminals is a difficult task, it is not volunteered by criminals while in case of FL it is completely opposite. In FL working of the human mind works as a catalyst.

In FL language is prominent, and it is very much necessary to know the normal, natural and system of rules of language and sentences. There are languages like Urdu, Hindi which use the object before the verb while in English there is the object after the verb. Use of FL helps to profile suspects without seeing it through its accents, anatomy of language, speaking skills etc.

Forensic Linguistics do threat assessment, they decode identities, look at deceptions, trademark infringement, 911 emergency, secret codes/ linguistics cryptography are the situations or cases they look after. FL is not about reading minds.

The Major case, Unabomber, which is a pioneer of FL. It is the most expensive case spanning 17 -18 years. There are various methods used by Forensic Linguistics and in this case the FBI used Document analysis method. In this case the FBI compared 14 Docs of Unabomber and 178 Docs by his family. Unabomber’s own handwriting tracked him down to his arrest. Unabomber was compassionate in his childhood but his life experience, loneliness and isolations brought an apocalyptic vision. Also in Stacy Caster’s case Documentation analysis method was helpful to understand the deception By Stacy after murdering her own step daughter.

Forensic Linguistics is highly dependent on language, voice, words, written data etc. It is necessary to detect the behavior of a suspect from their voice. There are two types of stress in voice in FL investigation. Psychological stress, it is what reflects the sort of psychological state of human beings. To analyze an individual's behavior under stress it is necessary to know how it behaves when he/ she is not stressed. Another is linguistic stress. The challenges faced in finding out the stress is that it is often difficult to obtain exact recorded speech when the speaker is actually stressed and even if one gets a sample it's difficult to gauge the exact intensity of psychological stress.

The speech correlates stress through changing voice intensity. Our fundamental frequency is F0 and it is raised when emotions like fear or anger or stress are felt. E.g. Anger is reflected by rapid speaking. Linguistics is an indicator of false confessions also. Deceptive speech might have suppressed/ elaborated subjectives, repetitive patterns in recalling details could be false confession. The influence of anxiety and grammatical categories are the markers of lying. But it is very much necessary to know, understand and read the voice of suspects, to know their mental state. The reading says that a depressed person uses the most negative words. It's necessary to look at the mental state of the suspect and read his voice to get the truth.

Deception means the message distortion or omission of information. An intended to foster an understanding in another person which the deceiver considers to be false is deception. Linguistic tools for deception include two types of interviews- accusatory interview and investigative interview. Accusatory interview includes answer in yes/no condition and investigative interview has open ended questions. Person can deceive in conditions like stress, cognitive load, and emotional arousal. In deceptive behavior, fundamental frequency increases, intensity increases, speak rate decreases, pause increases, voice has creakiness and breathiness. When a person is in deceptive behavior, he tries to be normal which results in hiccups in between the speech.

Person has an unconscious and conscious mind. Psycholinguistics of forensic linguistics states that the psychology of a person can be known by the way s/he writes. The frequent use of punctuation marks, number of words in a sentence, conscious and unconscious language used can help to know the person’s mind. 911 Emergency calls have a small set of data which helps to know what’s going on in a person's mind. Questions asked by the caller are of- what is called about, theme of call, and how the call was made. If a person on call talks about saving himself or herself, it means s/he is guilty. And if the call is around the victim rather than themselves, it means s/he is innocent. There is variation in language from segment to sentence, speech features of individuals vary from situation to situation variations are systematic and non-systematic. There is no such thing as free or random variations. Systematic variations talk about sociolect form of language whereas unsystematic variation talks about idiolect variation.

The example of racial profiling is case of Clifford v. Kentucky. Social categories profiling includes the case of Stacy Castor. Multilingual mind includes language activation, language matching, language switching, language processing, and language comprehension.

Linguistic stylometric in authorship is a field where we can do profiling of a person based on styles used by that person. Authorship analysis includes identification, verification and profiling of authors. Stylometric (styles + measurements) analysis is called “linguistic fingerprints”. These styles are a reflection of habits. Text can be written and digital. In digital text, factors analyzed are bold, italic, use of abbreviations, spelling, number and symbols. Features of stylometric are line quality, word and letter spacing, size of letters, connecting strokes, slant in letter etc. Factors affecting handwriting are mood, age, time, instrument, illness, drugs and drink. Case of Mahant Narendra Giri is best example where linguist has tried to prove a point that it can be murder. The suicide note was of four pages which is against the fact that a person in stress can not write more than 300-400 words. The way suicide note was written was not in a way that an illiterate person writes.

Not only the style of writing but also the words written can help in victim and criminal profiling. Violent words written in a letter helped to know the intention of murderer in mass murder cases of Seung Hui Cho and Jiverly Wong. Manifests of both the murderer on analysis told about the sentiments of that persons. Cho was very negative and Wong was positive to some extent. Some more cases of master receptors are Sheila Eddy and Ted Bundy. Shiela with her another friend killed her third friend. And on asking the reason she said, “we didn't like her”.

Ted Bundy had kidnapped and killed more than 30 girls.

Forensics phonetics is identifying criminals based on speech and voice analysis. Every person has a different voice based on pitch, vibrations, and vocal folds. Anatomical factors, physiological factors and environmental factors play a major role for uniqueness of voice. Tape authentication done in JNU video clips, signal analysis in the case of gunshots, speech decoding by use of different filters and auditory illusion, speaker profiling and identification are the works that forensic phonetics deals with. Monolingual courts of the USA have 4 varieties- formal, standard English, colloquial English, and subcultural variations.

Thus, forensic linguistics is a wide field with various applications. It needs lots and lots of data and time for solving a case. In Indian courts also, the evidence is not given priority as in the USA and UK. Nowadays, AI is used for investigation which can give us results faster and better.

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