Bitter sweet imaginings: Form, gender, and religion in Bhai Vir Singh's Sundarī.

This paper undertakes a detailed reading of BVS' novel Sundarī. Commenting on the as yet uncertain and experimental form of the modernist novel, the essay demonstrates how fiction and history, genealogy and folksong, contribute to the heteroglossia and polysemy of this much read and analyzed book. Through characters like Lakhpat Rai and his own ancestor Kaura Mal, BVS explores the relations between Hindus and Sikhs. Through Sundari, her multiple abductions and escapades, he constructs notions of Muslimness, but also of purity of Sikhness, besides creating a character representing an ideal Sikh woman, invested in her own chastity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]