Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

@article{201092,
        author = {Sri Panchadarla Appala Konda},
        title = {Uruvi’s Swayamvara: A Feminist Re-Reading of the Mahabharata’s Silenced Princess},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {12},
        pages = {2809-2810},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=201092},
        abstract = {The Mahabharata, as canonized by Vyasa and popularized through centuries of retellings, relegates most women to the margins of epic action. Uruvi, the princess of Pukhiya and the only wife of Karna, is one such figure absent from the Jaya, barely mentioned in Bharata, yet resurrected in modern literary reconstructions. This paper examines Uruvi’s swayamvara as depicted in Kavita Kané’s Karna’s Wife: The Outcast’s Queen (2013), arguing that the episode functions as a site of female agency, political defiance, and caste critique. By choosing Karna, a sutaputra rejected by Kshatriya society, Uruvi subverts patriarchal and varna-based expectations of a princess. The paper contrasts Vyasa’s silence with Kané’s articulation, positioning Uruvi as a counter-narrative to Draupadi’s traumatic swayamvara. It concludes that Uruvi’s choice redefines swayamvara from a patriarchal spectacle to an assertion of stri-svatantrya female autonomy.},
        keywords = {Uruvi, Karna, Swayamvara, Mahabharata, Kavita Kané, Feminist Retelling, Caste, Female Agency, Epic Literature, Subaltern Voice},
        month = {May},
        }