• Nandita Krishna

The Indian film industry, being one of the active agents in promoting the image of the ideal submissive Indian women, has always been a topic of concern among feminists and women activists alike. However, with the turn of the century, an alternative approach where women are portrayed from a gynocentric perspective has slowly and steadily, gained momentum within the commercial Indian film sector. And a major genre, where female protagonists take the lead with their grit and grace, is cinema that is centred on women in sports. There is a strong libratory message at work in these sports films where the central woman protagonist by embracing her sports, a manifestation of physical feminism, poses an athletic challenge to the patriarchal forces prevalent in the Indian social scenario. Further, films on sportswomen that focus on games such as boxing, wrestling, mountaineering and the likes not only destabilize the assumed inferences about gender performance but also deconstructs the gendered nature of sports. This paper seeks to carry out a methodical study of how the Indian sportswomen film narratives, with special emphasis to the film Dangal, aids to re-decipher the concept of single polar identities like male and female through the theoretical framework of post-structural feminism. In other words, it is a study of how these sports films aids to promote the construction of multiple femininities within the spectrum of what is universally assigned as man and woman.

Athletic challenge – Sportswomen - Gender performance - Post-structural feminism- Discursive nature

"Narratives of Sportswomen in Indian Cinema - A Post-structural Feministic Perspective", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 3, page no.37-40, March-2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIRAF06011.pdf

"Narratives of Sportswomen in Indian Cinema - A Post-structural Feministic Perspective", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 3, page no. pp37-40, March-2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIRAF06011.pdf