Secularism in the Postcolonial Indian Novel

Secularism in the Postcolonial Indian Novel

Author: Neelam Srivastava

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-10-01

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 113414220X

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This study explores the connections between a secular Indian nation and fiction in English by a number of postcolonial Indian writers of the 1980s and 90s. Examining writers such as Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Shashi Tharoor, and Rohinton Mistry, with particularly close readings of Midnight‘s Children, A Suitable Boy, The Shadow Lines and The Satanic Verses, Neelam Srivastava investigates different aspects of postcolonial identity within the secular framework of the Anglophone novel. The book traces the breakdown of the Nehruvian secular consensus between 1975 and 2005 through these narratives of postcolonial India. In particular, it examines how these writers use the novel form to re-write colonial and nationalist versions of Indian history, and how they radically reinvent English as a secular language for narrating India. Ultimately, it delineates a common conceptual framework for secularism and cosmopolitanism, by arguing that Indian secularism can be seen as a located, indigenous form of a cosmopolitan identity.


Book Synopsis Secularism in the Postcolonial Indian Novel by : Neelam Srivastava

Download or read book Secularism in the Postcolonial Indian Novel written by Neelam Srivastava and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-10-01 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study explores the connections between a secular Indian nation and fiction in English by a number of postcolonial Indian writers of the 1980s and 90s. Examining writers such as Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Shashi Tharoor, and Rohinton Mistry, with particularly close readings of Midnight‘s Children, A Suitable Boy, The Shadow Lines and The Satanic Verses, Neelam Srivastava investigates different aspects of postcolonial identity within the secular framework of the Anglophone novel. The book traces the breakdown of the Nehruvian secular consensus between 1975 and 2005 through these narratives of postcolonial India. In particular, it examines how these writers use the novel form to re-write colonial and nationalist versions of Indian history, and how they radically reinvent English as a secular language for narrating India. Ultimately, it delineates a common conceptual framework for secularism and cosmopolitanism, by arguing that Indian secularism can be seen as a located, indigenous form of a cosmopolitan identity.

Secularism in the Postcolonial Indian Novel

Secularism in the Postcolonial Indian Novel

Author: Neelam Srivastava

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-10

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 1134142218

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First Published in 2007. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.


Book Synopsis Secularism in the Postcolonial Indian Novel by : Neelam Srivastava

Download or read book Secularism in the Postcolonial Indian Novel written by Neelam Srivastava and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-10 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2007. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Secularism and the Crisis of Minority Identity in Postcolonial Literature

Secularism and the Crisis of Minority Identity in Postcolonial Literature

Author: Roger McNamara

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-06-06

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 1498548946

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Secularism and the Crisis of Minority Identity in Postcolonial Literature examines how writers from religious and ethnic minority communities (Anglo-Indians, Burghers, Dalits, Muslims, and Parsis) in India and Sri Lanka engage secularism through novels, short stories, and autobiographies. Given the rise of Hindu nationalism in India and Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka, it would seem obvious that minorities would rally around secularism (the separation of church and state). However, this bookargues that the relationship between minorities and secularism is extremely ambivalent. On the one hand, it shows how writers belonging to oppressed communities can deploy secularism as a mode of critique (secular criticism) to challenge the ideologies of dominant groups—the nation, upper-castes, and religious hierarchies. On the other hand, it examines how these writers reveal that other aspects of secularism (secularization and secular time) are responsible for creating essentialized identities that have not only exacerbated relationships between majorities and minorities and between minority groups, but have also created tension within minority groups themselves. Turing to aesthetics and religious faith, these writers attempt to undermine secular social and cultural structures that are responsible for this crisis of minority identity.


Book Synopsis Secularism and the Crisis of Minority Identity in Postcolonial Literature by : Roger McNamara

Download or read book Secularism and the Crisis of Minority Identity in Postcolonial Literature written by Roger McNamara and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-06-06 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Secularism and the Crisis of Minority Identity in Postcolonial Literature examines how writers from religious and ethnic minority communities (Anglo-Indians, Burghers, Dalits, Muslims, and Parsis) in India and Sri Lanka engage secularism through novels, short stories, and autobiographies. Given the rise of Hindu nationalism in India and Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka, it would seem obvious that minorities would rally around secularism (the separation of church and state). However, this bookargues that the relationship between minorities and secularism is extremely ambivalent. On the one hand, it shows how writers belonging to oppressed communities can deploy secularism as a mode of critique (secular criticism) to challenge the ideologies of dominant groups—the nation, upper-castes, and religious hierarchies. On the other hand, it examines how these writers reveal that other aspects of secularism (secularization and secular time) are responsible for creating essentialized identities that have not only exacerbated relationships between majorities and minorities and between minority groups, but have also created tension within minority groups themselves. Turing to aesthetics and religious faith, these writers attempt to undermine secular social and cultural structures that are responsible for this crisis of minority identity.

The Postcolonial Indian Novel in English

The Postcolonial Indian Novel in English

Author: Geetha Ganapathy-Doré

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2011-01-18

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 1443828181

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Indian writers of English such as G. V. Desani, Salman Rushdie, Amit Chaudhuri, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Allan Sealy, Shashi Tharoor, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Chandra and Jhumpa Lahiri have taken the potentialities of the novel form to new heights. Against the background of the genre’s macro-history, this study attempts to explain the stunning vitality, colourful diversity, and the outstanding but sometimes controversial success of postcolonial Indian novels in the light of ongoing debates in postcolonial studies. It analyses the warp and woof of the novelistic text through a cross-sectional scrutiny of the issues of democracy, the poetics of space, the times of empire, nation and globalization, self-writing in the auto/meta/docu-fictional modes, the musical, pictorial, cinematic and culinary intertextualities that run through this hyperpalimpsestic practice and the politics of gender, caste and language that gives it an inimitable stamp. This concise and readable survey gives us intimations of a truly world literature as imagined by Francophone writers because the postcolonial Indian novel is a concrete illustration of how “language liberated from its exclusive pact with the nation can enter into a dialogue with a vast polyphonic ensemble.”


Book Synopsis The Postcolonial Indian Novel in English by : Geetha Ganapathy-Doré

Download or read book The Postcolonial Indian Novel in English written by Geetha Ganapathy-Doré and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2011-01-18 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indian writers of English such as G. V. Desani, Salman Rushdie, Amit Chaudhuri, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Allan Sealy, Shashi Tharoor, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Chandra and Jhumpa Lahiri have taken the potentialities of the novel form to new heights. Against the background of the genre’s macro-history, this study attempts to explain the stunning vitality, colourful diversity, and the outstanding but sometimes controversial success of postcolonial Indian novels in the light of ongoing debates in postcolonial studies. It analyses the warp and woof of the novelistic text through a cross-sectional scrutiny of the issues of democracy, the poetics of space, the times of empire, nation and globalization, self-writing in the auto/meta/docu-fictional modes, the musical, pictorial, cinematic and culinary intertextualities that run through this hyperpalimpsestic practice and the politics of gender, caste and language that gives it an inimitable stamp. This concise and readable survey gives us intimations of a truly world literature as imagined by Francophone writers because the postcolonial Indian novel is a concrete illustration of how “language liberated from its exclusive pact with the nation can enter into a dialogue with a vast polyphonic ensemble.”

Postcolonial Modernity and the Indian Novel

Postcolonial Modernity and the Indian Novel

Author: Sourit Bhattacharya

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-05-27

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 3030373975

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This book argues that modernity in postcolonial India has been synonymous with catastrophe and crisis. Focusing on the literary works of the 1943 Bengal Famine, the 1967–72 Naxalbari Movement, and the 1975–77 Indian Emergency, it shows that there is a long-term, colonially-engineered agrarian crisis enabling these catastrophic events. Novelists such as Bhabani Bhattacharya, Mahasweta Devi, Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Nabarun Bhattacharya, and Nayantara Sahgal, among others, have captured the relationship between the long-term crisis and the catastrophic aspects of the events through different aesthetic modalities within realism, ranging from analytical-affective, critical realist, quest modes to apparently non-realist ones such as metafictional, urban fantastic, magical realist, and others. These realist modalities are together read here as postcolonial catastrophic realism.


Book Synopsis Postcolonial Modernity and the Indian Novel by : Sourit Bhattacharya

Download or read book Postcolonial Modernity and the Indian Novel written by Sourit Bhattacharya and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-05-27 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that modernity in postcolonial India has been synonymous with catastrophe and crisis. Focusing on the literary works of the 1943 Bengal Famine, the 1967–72 Naxalbari Movement, and the 1975–77 Indian Emergency, it shows that there is a long-term, colonially-engineered agrarian crisis enabling these catastrophic events. Novelists such as Bhabani Bhattacharya, Mahasweta Devi, Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Nabarun Bhattacharya, and Nayantara Sahgal, among others, have captured the relationship between the long-term crisis and the catastrophic aspects of the events through different aesthetic modalities within realism, ranging from analytical-affective, critical realist, quest modes to apparently non-realist ones such as metafictional, urban fantastic, magical realist, and others. These realist modalities are together read here as postcolonial catastrophic realism.

Humanity and The Global Odyssey: Cosmopolitanism in Postcolonial Fiction

Humanity and The Global Odyssey: Cosmopolitanism in Postcolonial Fiction

Author: Dr.Anjutha Ranganathan

Publisher: Notion Press

Published: 2024-05-15

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13:

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Humanity and the Global Odyssey: Cosmopolitanism in Postcolonial Fiction explores the diverse ingredients of cosmopolitanism as the need of the hour in the globalised era. It is a qualitative study that includes sociological (socio-cultural and socio-political), philosophical (moral and existential), and diasporic perspectives. It addresses the key questions of inequality, justice, belonging, freedom, and democracy in the postcolonial world. The book is positioned in postcolonial literature as it paves the way to analyse the set of issues that shape our socio-cultural and political environment of the present day. This book holds an introduction to the various literatures and the epistemology of the sister concepts associated with cosmopolitanism. It also contains an exclusive chapter on cosmopolitanism by first delving into human reasoning, cosmopolitanism —its origin, its practice in different societies, as a literary theory, its application in literature, postcolonial literature, fiction, and its positioning in other disciplines from various theorists, its types, implementation, cosmopolitan life, various personalities’ views, and its relevance in contemporary society. The three core chapters examine the selected postcolonial novels of Aravind Adiga, M.G. Vassanji, Chinua Achebe, Hanif Kureishi, and Arun Joshi, thrusting on the different types of moral, existential, political, diasporic, and cultural cosmopolitanism as the theoretical framework to bring to the fore various social issues, including casteism, familial determinism, politics, hegemony of power, cultural convergence, diasporic exclusions, and its brunt to engender a cosmopolitan future.


Book Synopsis Humanity and The Global Odyssey: Cosmopolitanism in Postcolonial Fiction by : Dr.Anjutha Ranganathan

Download or read book Humanity and The Global Odyssey: Cosmopolitanism in Postcolonial Fiction written by Dr.Anjutha Ranganathan and published by Notion Press. This book was released on 2024-05-15 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanity and the Global Odyssey: Cosmopolitanism in Postcolonial Fiction explores the diverse ingredients of cosmopolitanism as the need of the hour in the globalised era. It is a qualitative study that includes sociological (socio-cultural and socio-political), philosophical (moral and existential), and diasporic perspectives. It addresses the key questions of inequality, justice, belonging, freedom, and democracy in the postcolonial world. The book is positioned in postcolonial literature as it paves the way to analyse the set of issues that shape our socio-cultural and political environment of the present day. This book holds an introduction to the various literatures and the epistemology of the sister concepts associated with cosmopolitanism. It also contains an exclusive chapter on cosmopolitanism by first delving into human reasoning, cosmopolitanism —its origin, its practice in different societies, as a literary theory, its application in literature, postcolonial literature, fiction, and its positioning in other disciplines from various theorists, its types, implementation, cosmopolitan life, various personalities’ views, and its relevance in contemporary society. The three core chapters examine the selected postcolonial novels of Aravind Adiga, M.G. Vassanji, Chinua Achebe, Hanif Kureishi, and Arun Joshi, thrusting on the different types of moral, existential, political, diasporic, and cultural cosmopolitanism as the theoretical framework to bring to the fore various social issues, including casteism, familial determinism, politics, hegemony of power, cultural convergence, diasporic exclusions, and its brunt to engender a cosmopolitan future.

Enlightenment in the Colony

Enlightenment in the Colony

Author: Aamir R. Mufti

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-01-10

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1400827663

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Enlightenment in the Colony opens up the history of the "Jewish question" for the first time to a broader discussion--one of the social exclusion of religious and cultural minorities in modern times, and in particular the crisis of Muslim identity in modern India. Aamir Mufti identifies the Hindu-Muslim conflict in India as a colonial variation of what he calls "the exemplary crisis of minority"--Jewishness in Europe. He shows how the emergence of this conflict in the late nineteenth century represented an early instance of the reinscription of the "Jewish question" in a non-Western society undergoing modernization under colonial rule. In so doing, he charts one particular route by which this European phenomenon linked to nation-states takes on a global significance. Mufti examines the literary dimensions of this crisis of identity through close readings of canonical texts of modern Western--mostly British-literature, as well as major works of modern Indian literature in Urdu and English. He argues that the one characteristic shared by all emerging national cultures since the nineteenth century is the minoritization of some social and cultural fragment of the population, and that national belonging and minority separatism go hand in hand with modernization. Enlightenment in the Colony calls for the adoption of secular, minority, and exilic perspectives in criticism and intellectual life as a means to critique the very forms of marginalization that give rise to the uniquely powerful minority voice in world literatures.


Book Synopsis Enlightenment in the Colony by : Aamir R. Mufti

Download or read book Enlightenment in the Colony written by Aamir R. Mufti and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enlightenment in the Colony opens up the history of the "Jewish question" for the first time to a broader discussion--one of the social exclusion of religious and cultural minorities in modern times, and in particular the crisis of Muslim identity in modern India. Aamir Mufti identifies the Hindu-Muslim conflict in India as a colonial variation of what he calls "the exemplary crisis of minority"--Jewishness in Europe. He shows how the emergence of this conflict in the late nineteenth century represented an early instance of the reinscription of the "Jewish question" in a non-Western society undergoing modernization under colonial rule. In so doing, he charts one particular route by which this European phenomenon linked to nation-states takes on a global significance. Mufti examines the literary dimensions of this crisis of identity through close readings of canonical texts of modern Western--mostly British-literature, as well as major works of modern Indian literature in Urdu and English. He argues that the one characteristic shared by all emerging national cultures since the nineteenth century is the minoritization of some social and cultural fragment of the population, and that national belonging and minority separatism go hand in hand with modernization. Enlightenment in the Colony calls for the adoption of secular, minority, and exilic perspectives in criticism and intellectual life as a means to critique the very forms of marginalization that give rise to the uniquely powerful minority voice in world literatures.

Confronting Secularism in Europe and India

Confronting Secularism in Europe and India

Author: Brian Black

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2014-06-19

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1780936079

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Can secularism continue to provide a foundation for political legitimacy? It is often claimed that one of the cultural achievements of the West has been its establishment of secular democracy, wherein religious belief is respected but confined to the sphere of private belief. In more recent times, however, political secularism has been increasingly called into question. Religious believers, in numerous traditions, have protested against the distortion and confinement that secularism imposes on their faith. Others have become uneasily aware of the way in which secularism no longer commands universal assent in the way it once did. Confronting Secularism in Europe and India adds to this debate by staging a creative encounter between European and Indian conceptions of secularism with a view to continuing new and distinctive trajectories of thought about the place and role of secularism in contemporary times. Looking at political secularism, the relationship between secularism and religion, and religious and secular violence, this book considers whether there are viable alternatives to secularism in Europe and in India.


Book Synopsis Confronting Secularism in Europe and India by : Brian Black

Download or read book Confronting Secularism in Europe and India written by Brian Black and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-06-19 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can secularism continue to provide a foundation for political legitimacy? It is often claimed that one of the cultural achievements of the West has been its establishment of secular democracy, wherein religious belief is respected but confined to the sphere of private belief. In more recent times, however, political secularism has been increasingly called into question. Religious believers, in numerous traditions, have protested against the distortion and confinement that secularism imposes on their faith. Others have become uneasily aware of the way in which secularism no longer commands universal assent in the way it once did. Confronting Secularism in Europe and India adds to this debate by staging a creative encounter between European and Indian conceptions of secularism with a view to continuing new and distinctive trajectories of thought about the place and role of secularism in contemporary times. Looking at political secularism, the relationship between secularism and religion, and religious and secular violence, this book considers whether there are viable alternatives to secularism in Europe and in India.

The Postsecular Imagination

The Postsecular Imagination

Author: Manav Ratti

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0415480973

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The Postsecular Imagination presents a rich, interdisciplinary study of postsecularism as an affirmational political possibility emerging through the potentials and limits of both secular and religious thought. While secularism and religion can foster inspiration and creativity, they also can be linked with violence, civil war, partition, majoritarianism, and communalism, especially within the framework of the nation-state. Through close readings of novels that engage with animism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism, Manav Ratti examines how questions of ethics and the need for faith, awe, wonder, and enchantment can find expression and significance in the wake of such crises. While focusing on Michael Ondaatje and Salman Rushdie, Ratti addresses the work of several other writers as well, including Shauna Singh Baldwin, Mahasweta Devi, Amitav Ghosh, and Allan Sealy. Ratti shows the extent of courage and risk involved in the radical imagination of these postsecular works, examining how writers experiment with and gesture toward the compelling paradoxes of a non-secular secularism and a non-religious religion. Drawing on South Asian Anglophone literatures and postcolonial theory, and situating itself within the most provocative contemporary debates in secularism and religion, The Postsecular Imagination will be important for readers interested in the relations among culture, literature, theory, and politics.


Book Synopsis The Postsecular Imagination by : Manav Ratti

Download or read book The Postsecular Imagination written by Manav Ratti and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Postsecular Imagination presents a rich, interdisciplinary study of postsecularism as an affirmational political possibility emerging through the potentials and limits of both secular and religious thought. While secularism and religion can foster inspiration and creativity, they also can be linked with violence, civil war, partition, majoritarianism, and communalism, especially within the framework of the nation-state. Through close readings of novels that engage with animism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism, Manav Ratti examines how questions of ethics and the need for faith, awe, wonder, and enchantment can find expression and significance in the wake of such crises. While focusing on Michael Ondaatje and Salman Rushdie, Ratti addresses the work of several other writers as well, including Shauna Singh Baldwin, Mahasweta Devi, Amitav Ghosh, and Allan Sealy. Ratti shows the extent of courage and risk involved in the radical imagination of these postsecular works, examining how writers experiment with and gesture toward the compelling paradoxes of a non-secular secularism and a non-religious religion. Drawing on South Asian Anglophone literatures and postcolonial theory, and situating itself within the most provocative contemporary debates in secularism and religion, The Postsecular Imagination will be important for readers interested in the relations among culture, literature, theory, and politics.

Metaphor and Diaspora in Contemporary Writing

Metaphor and Diaspora in Contemporary Writing

Author: J. Sell

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2012-01-06

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 0230358454

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Choose ten major contemporary diasporic writers (from Abdulrazak to Zadie), ask ten leading authorities to write about their use of metaphor, and this is the result: a timely reassertion of metaphor's unrivalled capacity to encompass sameness and difference and create understanding and empathy across boundaries of nationality, race and ethnicity.


Book Synopsis Metaphor and Diaspora in Contemporary Writing by : J. Sell

Download or read book Metaphor and Diaspora in Contemporary Writing written by J. Sell and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-01-06 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Choose ten major contemporary diasporic writers (from Abdulrazak to Zadie), ask ten leading authorities to write about their use of metaphor, and this is the result: a timely reassertion of metaphor's unrivalled capacity to encompass sameness and difference and create understanding and empathy across boundaries of nationality, race and ethnicity.