Volume IV Special Issue I January 2024

Name of Author : Parvathy Varma

Title of the paper : The Toy Prince A Disguised Refugee: Recapitulating History in Chitra Banerjee Divakarunis The Last Queen

Abstract: Stories are often the retelling of reality. Socio political scenarios, cultural differences, geographical variances, memories etc are significant in literature as every work can be related to one or more of these. History is one such element that can never be ignored as far as literature is concerned because it is the past which paved the way to the present and that which can lead to the future. Chitra Banerjee Divakarunis The Last Queen is one such retelling of history coated in a slight layer of fiction. The story of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the greatest Sikh ruler in history and of his queen, Rani Jindan Kaur originally Rani Jind Kaur, the last queen of Punjab and their son Maharaja Dalip Singh originally Maharaja Duleep Singh in history is not just an ordinary story but a heart touching tale of the fate of a queen and her beloved son, displaced and separated under the British colonial rule. Born to a royal family and becoming king of a great land at the age of five did not help Maharaja Dalip Singh fight his fate to become a mere puppet in the hands of the colonisers. The novel, as the title suggests, is the story of the last queen of Punjab and her traumatic life which is indeed a part of the real history. The fall of a great kingdom to the fate of the remaining royal family, the novel travels through different time periods. The paper primarily focuses on the life of Maharaja Dalip Singh as a disguised refugee in a foreign land but it also attempts to shed some light on how the migration of Rani Jindan Kaur differs from that of her son and how their identities were entirely different in two unfamiliar lands.

Keywords : Discrimination, displacement, history, refugees, colonisation

DOI :

Page Number : 89-92