Overlapping Grids of Oriental Language and Critique of Masculinities in S Hareesh's Moustache.

Asians; British occupation of India, 1765-1947; Classical literature; Colonial administration; Caste discrimination; Masculinity

Subversion of Sanskrit literature is a trope in Dalit literature that allows the exploration of Dalit identities in territories of discourse that were forbidden to them. The 2021 Kerala Sahitya Academy Award-winning novel Moustache by S Hareesh inverts the epic Ramayana by writing an immoral, ignoble, and superhuman Dalit man as its protagonist. This novel critiques the classical tropes by satirizing glorious happy endings of classical Sanskrit literatures. It presents the reality of casteism as a folly to the epic. This novel is also a commentary on the inglorious nature of masculinity in intersection with caste to deride the failings of masculinities as a hegemonical structure. But the language of this criticism has derivatives from colonial tropes of caste communities written into the memory of Indian society through sociopolitical institutions for governance in colonial India. This hampers the criticism of Indian social structure by intercepting the language of criticism. This paper is a study of language used to describe masculinities in the novel Moustache, with the purpose tracing the tropes and oriental constructs of Asian men in the novel to reveal the overlap between a colonial criticism of Oriental society and intersectional criticism of caste and gender in Moustache. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]