Queering Dharma: Gender Fluidity and the Politics of Desire in Devdutt Pattanaik’s The Pregnant King

Abstract

Devdutt Pattanaik’s The Pregnant King (2008) reimagines an obscure episode from the Mahabharata to interrogate the intersections of gender, dharma, and desire in Indian cultural consciousness. Through the story of King Yuvanashva, who accidentally becomes pregnant, Pattanaik reconfigures myth as a dynamic site for negotiating questions of identity, power, and moral order. Drawing on queer theory and feminist thought; particularly Judith Butler’s notion of gender performativity, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s understanding of queer subjectivity, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s idea of the subaltern and this paper argues that The Pregnant King queers both kingship and dharma. It exposes how patriarchal epistemologies shape the limits of recognition, while myth itself becomes a space of resistance and fluidity. By queering cultural memory, Pattanaik recovers suppressed voices and destabilizes binary constructions of masculinity and femininity. Ultimately, the novel reveals the radical potential of mythic retelling to question normative moral frameworks and to contribute to contemporary discourses of gender justice and inclusivity.