Hegemony in Taslima Nasrin’s shame: A Portrait of Government’s Hegemony over the society in Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

Among hundreds of social phenomena and problems, hegemony has significant role to form society structure. Throughout history and in all societies, hegemony is the most complicated social problem which causes an endless conflict between the majority people and the minority people. Discussions concerning hegemony are widely elaborated in many scientific books, references, and literary works. One of the literary works which exposes such phenomenon is Taslima Nasrin’s Shame.

Taslima Nasrin’s Shame tells us about the demolition on 6th December 1992 of the 16th century Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, U.P., India, and its devastating fallout in Bangladesh where, in reputed vengeance, temples were destroyed and the (minority) Hindus overnight became victims of insensitive and barbaric violence at the hands of Muslim ruffians on prowl. Even the Bangladesh’s government as though does not care and ignores that injustice for its folk.

Thus, this study is aimed to find what the government’s hegemony over the society and its effect in Taslima Nasrin’s Shame novel. Then, to achieve the problem of the study, the researcher use Gramsci’s hegemony theory as one method of this research. The data of this research are collected from Taslima Nasrin’s Shame. The researcher himself becomes the research instrument in the process of data collection and data analysis.

Based on the researcher’s analysis, the hegemony causes the violence for minority people in Bangladesh. Muslim as majority people almost never gives a space for Hindu to taste the beauty of living together and full of peace. There are some violence occurred between those majority people and minority people. There are two kinds of violence, first is structural violence, here the novel shows some discrimination that done by the government such as discrimination against law and administration, discrimination against education, and discrimination against religion. the second is direct violence; it consists of demolition, torture and homicide, abduction and rape, and the last is eviction.