ABSTRACT
This chapter undertakes a detailed reading of Bhai Vir Singh's (BVS') novel Sundarī. Commenting on the uncertain and experimental form of the modernist novel, it demonstrates how fiction, history, and genealogy contribute to the heteroglossia and polysemy of this much read and analyzed novella. 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, that play on a loop in the novel, he constructs notions of Muslimness, but also of purity of Sikhness. He creates a character representing an ideal Sikh woman, invested in her own chastity, a chastity that signifies the moral uprightness of her community. How gender and sexual politics were at the core of reformist modernism is demonstrated. The chapter highlights the multiple stories that BVS wishes to tell here, the circularity of the text, and the ambiguous messages that his representations and narration unfold.
