Mapping Male Power and Fragility: Representation of Masculinity in Khushwant Singh's Delhi: A Novel

This paper analyses how Khushwant Singh’s Delhi: A Novel depicts the changing faces of masculinity across different moments in history. Moving through centuries of Delhi’s evolution, the novel interlinks together political conflict, sexual desire and spiritual longing to show how power and vulnerability coexist within male experience. Singh’s men, emperors, rebels, saints and storytellers, embody the frail balance between power and reliance. Sketching on R. W. Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity, Michael Kimmel’s concept of crisis in manhood, and Judith Butler’s theory of gender performance, this study examines how male identity in Delhi is bound to the structures of caste, nation and authority. The male figures, from Mughal emperors to modern politicians, show a cycle of control and collapse: power maintained through aggression but haunted by guilt and loss. The narrator himself becomes a symbol of the postcolonial man who is torn between lust and loneliness, pride and self-mockery. Finally, Delhi deconstructs masculinity not as a native truth but as a fragile, shifting performance, enlightening the emotional costs of patriarchy and history.