From Domestic Brutality to State Power: Mapping Multidimensional Violence in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and Nayantara Sahgal’s Storm in Chandigarh

Abstract

This paper explores how different kinds of violence-from pressures within families to the power of the state-are connected in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (2007; trans. 2015) and Nayantara Sahgal’s Storm in Chandigarh (1969). In Kang’s novel, a woman’s choice to stop eating meat leads to increasing abuse that begins at home and ends in a mental hospital, showing how patriarchal rules justify violence in both private and public spaces. In Sahgal’s novel, the 1966 division of Punjab affects marriages and friendships, suggesting that political separation and personal conflict share the same grammar of domination and exclusion.

By closely studying the texts, the paper shows how personal violence-especially men’s control over women’s bodies-spreads into emotional, social, and political areas. Both novels portray violence as a continuous process where the woman’s body and the divided region become comparable targets of control and struggle. Although acts of resistance-such as choosing vegetarianism or leaving a marriage-are fragile and incomplete, they still reveal weaknesses in the power structures that try to suppress them.