Performing gender in liminal spaces: Subversion and negotiation in Rajkumar Hirani’s Dunki (Donkey Route) and Anurag Singh’s Dil Bole Hadippa! (The Heart Cries “Hurray!”)

The article traces cinematic representations of rural Punjab’s gendered social landscapes that depict women performing heterogeneous gender roles through textual analyses of Rajkumar Hirani’s (2023) Dunki and Anurag Singh’s (2009) Dil Bole Hadippa!. It examines narratives of subversive female protagonists in postcolonial Punjab who challenge archetypal gender norms and construct self-empowering identities shaped by historical trauma, sociopolitical turbulence, and patriarchy. Culturally complex female characters are read as embodying hybridity and contradiction as they remain rooted in Indian culture while discarding prejudices and resisting social restrictions, yet overthrowing western epistemology and its enduring cultural hegemony. Using an intersectional analytical framework, the article draws on Judith Butler’s concept of gender as performative to show that cinematic subversion of roles in Dunki and Dil Bole Hadippa! renders gender identity as fluid and socially constructed. These representations are situated in the specific sociopolitical contexts of rural Punjab that enable shaping and contesting gendered performances.