Abstract

In Amitav Ghosh’s The Ibis Trilogy an ordinary Bengali Brahmin male named Baboo Nobokrishna Panda becomes androgynous in course of his life after the death of his spiritual guru Ma Taramony who promised him to return to his body after leaving mortal life. After his transformation he becomes an extraordinary person. Though he works as a clerk of Mr. Burnham, a racist colonial business tycoon, he covertly resists colonial oppression and subverts colonial authority in multiple occasions. The surge of maternal feeling in him propels him to extend his protective sympathy to the victims of colonialism. He shows how the dismantling of strict boundaries of heteronormative gender enjoined by colonial Modernity can be a means of empowering the natives against colonial authority. The article is intended to examine, from the decolonial perspectives of Walter D. Mignolo as well as the theoretical perspectives of Ashis Nandy and Sudhir Kakar, the transformation of Baboo Nobokrishna as well as his subversive activities as an embodiment of the traditional Indian concept of ardhanariswara. It aims to analyse how the notion of divine androgyny enshrined in Indian tradition as well as in Bengali Bhakti movement is a potent source to resist colonial hegemony which functions by prioritising masculinity over feminity.