Authority, Fear, and Moral Growth in Bhabendranath Saikia’s Maramar Deuta (Dear Father) : Parenting and Punishment

Abstract

Bhabendranath Saikia’s Assamese adolescent novel Maramar Deuta (1998), translated as Dear Father, examines how a family and a community try to correct a defiant, violent boy, and what these attempts reveal about the adults who make them. Reading the novel through Diana Baumrind’s work on parental control and Albert Bandura’s social learning theory, this article argues that the narrative stages a series of corrective strategies, each of which manages Bipul instead of addressing him honestly, and each of which compromises the person who uses it. The father moves from material indulgence, through a ritual performed under an invented dream, to a concealed beating that injures his son’s leg. The doctor exaggerates the injury to induce repentance, and the detective names an innocent boy to provoke a reaction. The article also argues that the novel’s form reproduces the concealment its characters practise, since the narrative withholds the culprit’s identity from the reader for most of its length. Bipul’s remorse, when it comes, follows fear and exposure. Whether it marks lasting change, the ending leaves open.