• Sudarshana Bishnoi
• Dr. Sonu Shiva Gaur

Water investigates the relationship between the colonialist, patriarchal nationalist, and religious ideologies which enact control upon widows’ bodies and sexualities in the historical contexts of reform and nationalist movements in India, Mehta’s film addresses the following areas: the colonial and upper-caste nationalist aspects of the repression of widows, nationalist and reform movements regarding widow's remarriage, and the controlling of widow's sexuality and body, the construction of widowhood as social and sexual death, as object by upper-caste Hindu patriarchy, the role of Dharmashastra (religious scriptures) to reinforce and legitimize widows' social vulnerability, the economic aspect of religion in disciplining widows' bodies, dominating their sexualities and identities and widows' identity, agency, and resistance against Hindu patriarchy and religious normativity. Along with Mehta's analysis of patriarchal nationalist and religious domination of widows' bodies and sexualities, this research paper elucidates the ways in which Mehta chooses not to romanticize the issue of widows' remarriage, nor does she construct widows as 'victims'; rather, she depicts the social, cultural, religious and political violence inflicted on widows, which affect all women's lives and identities, but do not, necessarily, eliminate all their agency to destabilize the patriarchal nationalist and religious discourses.

widow, woman, identity, sexuality.

"Widows’s identity and sexuality in Deepa Mehta’s Water", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 1, page no.309-320, January-2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1901E37.pdf

"Widows’s identity and sexuality in Deepa Mehta’s Water", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 1, page no. pp309-320, January-2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1901E37.pdf