Gendered Experiences of Recovery: Exploring Gulzar Singh Sandhu's "Antla Teela" in the Post-Partition Context

The present paper explores how women are victimized and how patriarchal, masculine hegemonic discourse about nationalism is performable, with women ultimately serving as silent, submissive objects of male authority. The term motherland serves a symbolic meaning for evoking a dominant, phallic story. The intertwining of the necessary fate of individuals situated within the historical textuality of the nation is highlighted in Gulzar Singh Sandhu’s story “Antla Teela.” The analysis attempts to read the subtle power structures in the story. The story's peculiar aspect is how a legal framework—designed to settle ownership claims in human relations—smoothly resolves a question that could otherwise become unsolvable or deadlocked.