Gender Renaissance: Uncovering Queerness in t he Characters of Devdutt Pattanaik’s The Pregnant King

Queer studies as an interdisciplinary is gaining a status as a vogue due to its increasing relevance in this modern era. The Pregnant King (2008) written by Devdutt Pattanaik, comes under the category of LGBTQ novels and is a fictional retelling of selected episodes from the Mahabharata that challenges the heteronormative and extremely conservative approach of the Vedic society on queerness and queers. The paper titled Gender Renaissance: Uncovering Queerness in the Characters of Devdutt Pattanaik’s The Pregnant King is done with a queer approach. The main intention of this paper is to prove the presence of queer theory in the selected novel The Pregnant King. It is a humble attempt to bring out the characters of the novel crawling in the whirlpool of dilemma caused by their gender identity, sexual orientation and transgender identity. The paper has also brought out androgynous and eunuch characters to the light. There is an analysis of the characters’ perspectives on their gender fluidity too. Most of these characters find themselves standing in a line blurred with the breakage of binaries such as male/female and mother/father. Thus, Devdutt Pattanaik is trying to convey the point that gender and sexuality are the subjects with great relevance and scope that needs to be further researched and the binaries are something that should be remained blurred for at least the ones who need it to be blurred.