ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Indian strain of such a global 'mardaani' or feminist masculinity, which purports to demolish the Man with payback in his own coin: killing, in the climactic sexual act, the monster with bare hands. This complex, as disposed in Sarkar's film, is an intertextual thematic in Indian feminist dissent. Mardaani harks to the Rani of Jhansi, a major historical muse for Subhadra Kumari Chauhan, poet-laureate of anti-colonial Hindi literature. Informed and abetted by the urgency palpable in these scholars' thoughts, the chapter examines the promise of liberation and limitations of liberalization that underline the film's premise. Mardaani appeals to call for an urgent and long-overdue revision needed in discursive practices relating Indian women to performance of power. The feminist performative herein expresses a central paradox: state-approved, citizen-sanctioned vigilante violence ultimately brings "freedom" and "futures" to forsaken subjects commodified in the global sex market.
