Subverting the tyranny of the nation state through the Grotesque body imagery: A Bakhtinian Reading of O Vijayan’s The Saga of Dharmapuri

Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) is one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. His concepts of polyphony, heteroglossia and carnival have provided analytic tools to articulate the nature of differences and diversity in the world. In his Rabelias and his World (1968), Bakhtin argues grotesque realism and lower body imagery as the expression of the carnival, which subverts dominant hierarchical structures. The Saga of Dharmapuri (Dharmapuranam in the original) , the second novel of the Malayalam novelist O V Vijayan utilizes stark and graphic images of the body to launch a scathing criticism of the modern nation state. This paper analyses O V Vijayan’s The Saga of Dharmapuri in the light of Bakthin’s grotesque realism as argued in his Rabelias and his World, to argue that while Bakthin’s formulation of the body has been essentially positive and regenerative, Vijayan uses the imagery of the grotesque body to question and subvert the grand narratives of the nation.