DOCSLIB.ORG

(Re-)Imagining the Nation: the Indian Historical Novel in English, 1900-2000

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
(Re-)Imagining the Nation: the Indian Historical Novel in English, 1900-2000 Negotiating History, (Re-)imagining the Nation: The Indian Historical Novel in English, 1900-2000 by Md. Rezaul Haque Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics (The University of Sydney, 2004) Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English, Creative Writing and Australian Studies Flinders University, South Australia June 2013 1 Table of Contents Introduction (6-45) Chapter 1 (46-92) Fiction, History and Nation in India Chapter 2 (93-137) The Emergence of Indian Historical Fiction: The Colonial Context Chapter 3 (138-162) Revivalist Historical Fiction 1: Padmini: An Indian Romance (1903) Chapter 4 (163-205) Revivalist Historical Fiction 2: Nur Jahan: The Romance of an Indian Queen (1909) Chapter 5 (206-241) Nationalist History Fiction 1: Kanthapura (1938) Chapter 6 (242-287) Nationalist History Fiction 2: The Lalu Trilogy (1939-42) Chapter 7 (288-351) Feminist History Fiction: Some Inner Fury (1955) Chapter 8 (352-391) Interventionist History Fiction: The Shadow Lines (1988) Chapter 9 (392-436) Revisionist Historical Fiction: The Devil’s Wind (1972) Conclusion (437-446) Bibliography (447-468) 2 Thesis Summary As the title of my project suggests, this thesis deals with Indian historical fiction in English. While the time frame in the title may lead one to expect that the present study will attempt a historical overview of the Indian historical novel written in English, that is not a primary concern. Rather, I pose two broad questions: the first asks, to what uses does Indian English fiction put the Indian past as it is remembered in both formal history and communal memory? The second question is perhaps a more important one so far as this project is concerned: why does the Indian English novel use the Indian past in the ways that it does? There is as a consequence an intention to move from the inner world of Indian historical fiction to the outer space of the socio-political reality from which the novel under consideration has been produced. In other words, I read the literary text in the light of the social text. Like several other sub-genres of Indian fiction in English, the Indian historical novel emerged first during the colonial period. Both its formal and thematic concerns are thus to a large extent shaped in the pre-independence period by the long shadows of the British colonisation of India. The two types of historical fiction written under an oppressive colonial regime—revivalist and nationalist—are geared to regenerating and constructing cultural/national identity/self. That is to say, the pre-independence Indian historical novel uses Indian history/past to imagine the nation. Many of the inequalities that the political birth of the Indian nation-state was expected to remove have remained. Even more than half a century after the British had 3 left India, minorities are still ill-treated; casteism is still rampant; discrimination against women is still commonplace. Post-independence Indian historical fiction engages with Indian history/past to retrieve the voices of these subalterns. In challenging the bourgeois-patriarchal hegemony of the nation, the historical novel of the post-independence period sets out to re-imagine the nation in two notable ways, generating in the process the two most remarkable varieties of post-independence historical fiction: feminist and interventionist. A third type is revisionist which focuses on the politics of colonial representation rather than the re-imagining of the nation. From a contextual reading of seven historical novels in this study, I conclude that Indian historical fiction in English uses Indian history/past both to construct and deconstruct the Indian cultural/national self. 4 Acknowledgements This research project has been a long journey. Without the kind advice, sharp criticism, constant encouragement, insightful guidance, and ready help from my immediate family here in Adelaide (Momo, Rhidia, and Mubtasim) and my extended family overseas (parents, brothers, and sisters); friends and well-wishers (Diana, Gillian, Nena, Rumi, Savvy, Shahjahan, Shamu, Sue, and Syd); a number of decision-makers and implementers at Flinders University, South Australia, notably Karen Jacobs, Jeri Kroll, Richard Maltby, and Robert Phiddian; the lovingly efficient Veronica at the Central Library; my wonderful supervisors (Rick Hosking and Kate Douglas); my teachers (Debra Aarons, Fakrul Alam, A.K.M. Rezaul Karim, Ingrid Piller, and the late Aali Areefur Rehman), it would have been impossible to come out unscathed through all the confusions, misgivings, and setbacks on the way home. I thank them all, sincerely. An earlier version of chapter 5 appeared as an article titled ‘The Nation and One of Its Fragments in Kanthapura’ in Transnational Literature (vol. 4, no. 1, November 2011) and went on to win the Best Student Research Paper Award 2011 in the Faculty of Education, Humanities and Law at Flinders University, South Australia. I am deeply indebted to my principal supervisor, Rick Hosking, and the anonymous reviewers of the article whose astute comments and suggestions went a long way towards shaping the argument I have finally been able to construct in both the article and the chapter in which it appears. 5 Declaration I certify that this thesis does not incorporate without acknowledgement any material previously submitted for a degree or diploma in any university; and that to the best of my knowledge and belief it does not contain any material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the text. Signature: _______________ Date: __________ 6 Negotiating History, (Re-)imagining the Nation: The Indian Historical Novel in English, 1900-2000 INTRODUCTION Since the interpretation of history is itself historically situated, the historical reference of the historical novel is double: not only is the past seen through the prism of the present, it also serves present interests. David Roberts1 The academy, media and political arena have been all shaped in recent times by the ‘history wars.’2 Although I believe I am a peace-loving person, though not exactly a Gandhian pacifist, my research requires I come to grips with this particular kind of war in some detail. I am doubly obliged to embark on such an undertaking because both my research location (an Australian public university) and research focus (representation of history in Indian English fiction) have been sites of some of the fiercest battles over the question of history and historiography. That it should be so comes as no surprise, for both history and historiography have always been contested terrains whose capture has been of 1 David Roberts, ‘The Modern German Historical Novel: An Introduction,’ in The Modern German Historical Novel: Paradigms, Problems, Perspectives, eds. David Roberts and Philip Thomson (New York and Oxford: Berg, 1991) 3. 2 The term ‘history wars’ was coined in the US and became popular on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary in 1995 of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For an overview of the ‘history wars’ in the US, see History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past, eds. Edward T. Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1996). 7 crucial importance to totalitarianism in all its shades.3 At the same time, however, engaging history is no less empowering. If anti-colonial nationalisms all over the world had one common political agenda, it was the rewriting of the history produced by the colonial masters. At the turn of the nineteenth century, for example, the Bengali/Indian nationalist, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, was heard clamouring for a history of/for the Bengalis. Without history, according to Bankimchandra, there was no way out for the Bengalis from colonial subjugation. In wanting a historical discourse of, by, and for the Bengalis/Indians, as Vinay Lal has succinctly put it: [. .] Bankim was giving expression to the sentiments of many nationalists and modernizers who agonized over India’s enslavement and the lack of a historical literature, and who saw in those twin deficiencies, which had to be overcome, an inescapable connection.4 And the centrality of revisionist history in feminist movements is too well known to bear repetition.5 3 In her memoir, Bryher, cited in Diana Wallace, The Woman’s Historical Novel: British Women Writers, 1900-2000 (Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) 2, notes the ban that Benito Mussolini imposed on the study of history by women at the universities in pre-war fascist Italy. 4 Vinay Lal, The History of History: Politics and Scholarship in Modern India (2003; New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2007) 80. See also Ranajit Guha, An Indian Historiography of India: A Nineteenth-Century Agenda and Its Implications, S.G. Deuskar Lectures on Indian History (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Co., 1988); Sudipta Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India (Delhi: Oxford UP, 1995). 5 See, for example, Judith M. Bennett, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). 8 History Wars in Australia In most countries that have witnessed history wars, these wars have been fought along three shared fronts. First, a dominant and reassuring myth was challenged and gave way to a less savoury one, or just fell apart. In the Australian context, for instance, the heartening image of European settlement beginning in the late eighteenth century was cracked open to expose how it had meant the deprivation and displacement of the Indigenous population. In his six-volume History of Australia, Manning Clark demolished a whole set of what Graeme Turner calls ‘national fictions,’ so much so that a reviewer of the fifth volume of History published in 1981 went so far as to remark that it was a ‘bitter and cynical’ history produced by ‘a man who hates his own society.’6 The controversy reached its peak as the nation arrived at celebrating the Bicentenary of the white occupation of Australia in 1988.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Anthoney Udel 0060D
    INCLUSION WITHOUT MODERATION: POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION BY RELIGIOUS GROUPS by Cheryl Mariani Anthoney A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science and International Relations Spring 2018 © 2018 Cheryl Anthoney All Rights Reserved INCLUSION WITHOUT MODERATION: POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION BY RELIGIOUS GROUPS by Cheryl Mariani Anthoney Approved: __________________________________________________________ David P. Redlawsk, Ph.D. Chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations Approved: __________________________________________________________ George H. Watson, Ph.D. Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Approved: __________________________________________________________ Ann L. Ardis, Ph.D. Senior Vice Provost for Graduate and Professional Education I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: __________________________________________________________ Muqtedar Khan, Ph.D. Professor in charge of dissertation I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: __________________________________________________________ Stuart Kaufman,
    [Show full text]
  • Cr24-Mishra.Pdf
    The Cairo Review Interview The Modernity Trap Indian writer Pankaj Mishra probes imperialism’s legacy, liberalism’s failure, and the spreading global disorder lately the rise of the political right has turned some of the coolest heads into the gloomiest of prophets. Indian novelist and essayist Pankaj Mishra takes the long view. his new book, Age of Anger: A History of the Present, traces violent discontent with our modern world from the European Romantics to the Islamic State’s rule of terror. Mishra argues that the persistent fail- ure of modern society to deliver on its promises—freedom, wealth, and equality—has again and again encouraged hateful and militant politics, from messianic revolutionaries in Tsarist Russia to the cultural nationalism of Germany’s nazi era. As Mishra sees it, technology and the pursuit of wealth have shattered traditional societies across the globe, setting adrift mil- lions of people who are “uprooted from tradition but far from modernity.” For Mishra’s withering critiques of imperialism, the Economist called him the “heir to Edward Said.” Mishra’s book From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia declared Asia’s political awakening the twentieth century’s central event, and rebuked the notion that the West offers a benign one-size-fits-all model for modernity. Raised in Jhansi, in Uttar Pradesh, Mishra, 47, started as a travel writer documenting the quiet changes in India’s small towns wrought by economic and technological growth. his first book, Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India, was a hilarious portrait of India’s upwardly mobile classes in the era of globalization.
    [Show full text]
  • Missions and Film Jamie S
    Missions and Film Jamie S. Scott e are all familiar with the phenomenon of the “Jesus” city children like the film’s abused New York newsboy, Little Wfilm, but various kinds of movies—some adapted from Joe. In Susan Rocks the Boat (1916; dir. Paul Powell) a society girl literature or life, some original in conception—have portrayed a discovers meaning in life after founding the Joan of Arc Mission, variety of Christian missions and missionaries. If “Jesus” films while a disgraced seminarian finds redemption serving in an give us different readings of the kerygmatic paradox of divine urban mission in The Waifs (1916; dir. Scott Sidney). New York’s incarnation, pictures about missions and missionaries explore the East Side mission anchors tales of betrayal and fidelity inTo Him entirely human question: Who is or is not the model Christian? That Hath (1918; dir. Oscar Apfel), and bankrolling a mission Silent movies featured various forms of evangelism, usually rekindles a wealthy couple’s weary marriage in Playthings of Pas- Protestant. The trope of evangelism continued in big-screen and sion (1919; dir. Wallace Worsley). Luckless lovers from different later made-for-television “talkies,” social strata find a fresh start together including musicals. Biographical at the End of the Trail mission in pictures and documentaries have Virtuous Sinners (1919; dir. Emmett depicted evangelists in feature films J. Flynn), and a Salvation Army mis- and television productions, and sion worker in New York’s Bowery recent years have seen the burgeon- district reconciles with the son of the ing of Christian cinema as a distinct wealthy businessman who stole her genre.
    [Show full text]
  • Impassive Modernism in Arabic and Hebrew Literatures
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Against the Flow: Impassive Modernism in Arabic and Hebrew Literatures A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature by Shir Alon 2017 © Copyright by Shir Alon 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Against the Flow: Impassive Modernism in Arabic and Hebrew Literatures by Shir Alon Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature University of California, Los Angeles, 2017 Professor Gil Hochberg, Co-Chair Professor Nouri Gana, Co-Chair Against the Flow: Impassive Modernism in Arabic and Hebrew Literatures elaborates two interventions in contemporary studies of Middle Eastern Literatures, Global Modernisms, and Comparative Literature: First, the dissertation elaborates a comparative framework to read twentieth century Arabic and Hebrew literatures side by side and in conversation, as two literary cultures sharing, beyond a contemporary reality of enmity and separation, a narrative of transition to modernity. The works analyzed in the dissertation, hailing from Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Egypt, and Tunisia, emerge against the Hebrew and Arabic cultural and national renaissance movements, and the establishment of modern independent states in the Middle East. The dissertation stages encounters between Arabic and Hebrew literary works, exploring the ii parallel literary forms they develop in response to shared temporal narratives of a modernity outlined elsewhere and already, and in negotiation with Orientalist legacies. Secondly, the dissertation develops a generic-formal framework to address the proliferation of static and decadent texts emerging in a cultural landscape of national revival and its aftermaths, which I name impassive modernism. Viewed against modernism’s emphatic features, impassive modernism is characterized by affective and formal investment in stasis, immobility, or immutability: suspension in space or time and a desire for nonproductivity.
    [Show full text]
  • Guru Tegh Bahadur
    Second Edition: Revised and updated with Gurbani of Guru Tegh Bahadur. GURU TEGH BAHADUR (1621-1675) The True Story Gurmukh Singh OBE (UK) Published by: Author’s note: This Digital Edition is available to Gurdwaras and Sikh organisations for publication with own cover design and introductory messages. Contact author for permission: Gurmukh Singh OBE E-mail: [email protected] Second edition © 2021 Gurmukh Singh © 2021 Gurmukh Singh All rights reserved by the author. Except for quotations with acknowledgement, no part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or medium without the specific written permission of the author or his legal representatives. The account which follows is that of Guru Tegh Bahadur, Nanak IX. His martyrdom was a momentous and unique event. Never in the annals of human history had the leader of one religion given his life for the religious freedom of others. Tegh Bahadur’s deed [martyrdom] was unique (Guru Gobind Singh, Bachittar Natak.) A martyrdom to stabilize the world (Bhai Gurdas Singh (II) Vaar 41 Pauri 23) ***** First edition: April 2017 Second edition: May 2021 Revised and updated with interpretation of the main themes of Guru Tegh Bahadur’s Gurbani. References to other religions in this book: Sikhi (Sikhism) respects all religious paths to the One Creator Being of all. Guru Nanak used the same lens of Truthful Conduct and egalitarian human values to judge all religions as practised while showing the right way to all in a spirit of Sarbatt da Bhala (wellbeing of all). His teachings were accepted by most good followers of the main religions of his time who understood the essence of religion, while others opposed.
    [Show full text]
  • An Introduction to Indian English Literature
    www.ijcrt.org © 2020 IJCRT | Volume 8, Issue 2 February 2020 | ISSN: 2320-2882 An Introduction to Indian English Literature Sweta J. Barot Ph.d. Scholar, Gujarat University, Ahmedabad. ABSTRACT Indian English literature (IEL) is the body of work by writers in India who write in the English language and whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of India. Its early history began with the works of Michael Madhusudan Dutt followed by R. K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao who contributed to Indian fiction in the 1930s. It is also associated with the works of members of the Indian diaspora who are of Indian descent. It is frequently referred to as Indo-Anglian literature. (Indo-Anglian is a specific term in the sole context of writing that should not be confused with Anglo-Indian). As a category, this production comes in the broader realm of postcolonial literature—the production from previously colonized countries such as India. Key Word : Literature, History, Later history, Poetry, Writers Introduction : Indian writing in English has a relatively short but highly charged history. In 1793, Sake Dean Mahomed wrote perhaps the first book by an Indian in English, called The Travels of Dean Mahomed. However, most early Indian writing in English was non-fictional work, such as biographies and political essays. This began to change in the late 1800s, when famous Indian authors who wrote mostly in their mother tongue, began to try their hand at writing in English. In the early 1900s, Rabindranath Tagore began translating his works from Bengali to English.
    [Show full text]
  • The Greek and the Roman Novel. Parallel Readings
    Leering for the Plot: Visual Curiosity in Apuleius and Others KIRK FREUDENBURG Yale University Winkler’s Auctor and Actor taught us to pay close attention to how listeners listen in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, and how readers (featured as charac- ters) go about the act of interpreting, often badly, inside the novel’s many inset tales. Scenes of hermeneutical activity, he shows, have implications for readers on the outside looking in. My approach in this paper is largely in the same vein, but with a different emphasis. I want to watch the book’s inset watchers, not ‘rather than’ but ‘in addition to’ reading its readers. Expanding upon two recent articles by Niall Slater, I will focus on how their watching is figured, and what it does to them, by transfixing and transforming them in various regular (as we shall see) and suggestively ‘readable’ ways.1 My main point will concern the pleasures of the text that are produced and set out for critical inspection by the novel’s scenes of scopophilia, scenes that invite us to feast our eyes on characters happily abandoned to their desires. They draw us in to watch, and secretly enjoy the show. And in doing that they have the potential to tell us something not just about the bewitching powers of the book as a lush meadow of enticements, but about ourselves as stubborn mules who are easily enticed by its many pleasurable divertissements. Curi- osity is a problem in the book, something we load on Lucius’ back as his famous problem. That is clear enough.
    [Show full text]
  • The Imperial and the Colonized Women's Viewing of the 'Other'
    Gazing across the Divide in the Days of the Raj: The Imperial and the Colonized Women’s Viewing of the ‘Other’ Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philosophischen Fakultät der Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg Vorgelegt von Sukla Chatterjee Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Hans Harder Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Benjamin Zachariah Heidelberg, 01.04.2016 Abstract This project investigates the crucial moment of social transformation of the colonized Bengali society in the nineteenth century, when Bengali women and their bodies were being used as the site of interaction for colonial, social, political, and cultural forces, subsequently giving birth to the ‘new woman.’ What did the ‘new woman’ think about themselves, their colonial counterparts, and where did they see themselves in the newly reordered Bengali society, are some of the crucial questions this thesis answers. Both colonial and colonized women have been secondary stakeholders of colonialism and due to the power asymmetry, colonial woman have found themselves in a relatively advantageous position to form perspectives and generate voluminous discourse on the colonized women. The research uses that as the point of departure and tries to shed light on the other side of the divide, where Bengali women use the residual freedom and colonial reforms to hone their gaze and form their perspectives on their western counterparts. Each chapter of the thesis deals with a particular aspect of the colonized women’s literary representation of the ‘other’. The first chapter on Krishnabhabini Das’ travelogue, A Bengali Woman in England (1885), makes a comparative ethnographic analysis of Bengal and England, to provide the recipe for a utopian society, which Bengal should strive to become.
    [Show full text]
  • Mukhopadhyay, Aparajita (2013) Wheels of Change?: Impact of Railways on Colonial North Indian Society, 1855-1920. Phd Thesis. SO
    Mukhopadhyay, Aparajita (2013) Wheels of change?: impact of railways on colonial north Indian society, 1855‐1920. PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/17363 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. Wheels of Change? Impact of railways on colonial north Indian society, 1855-1920. Aparajita Mukhopadhyay Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD in History 2013 Department of History School of Oriental and African Studies University of London 1 | P a g e Declaration for Ph.D. Thesis I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the School of Oriental and African Studies concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work that I present for examination.
    [Show full text]
  • Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India
    Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India Gyanendra Pandey CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Remembering Partition Violence, Nationalism and History in India Through an investigation of the violence that marked the partition of British India in 1947, this book analyses questions of history and mem- ory, the nationalisation of populations and their pasts, and the ways in which violent events are remembered (or forgotten) in order to en- sure the unity of the collective subject – community or nation. Stressing the continuous entanglement of ‘event’ and ‘interpretation’, the author emphasises both the enormity of the violence of 1947 and its shifting meanings and contours. The book provides a sustained critique of the procedures of history-writing and nationalist myth-making on the ques- tion of violence, and examines how local forms of sociality are consti- tuted and reconstituted by the experience and representation of violent events. It concludes with a comment on the different kinds of political community that may still be imagined even in the wake of Partition and events like it. GYANENDRA PANDEY is Professor of Anthropology and History at Johns Hopkins University. He was a founder member of the Subaltern Studies group and is the author of many publications including The Con- struction of Communalism in Colonial North India (1990) and, as editor, Hindus and Others: the Question of Identity in India Today (1993). This page intentionally left blank Contemporary South Asia 7 Editorial board Jan Breman, G.P. Hawthorn, Ayesha Jalal, Patricia Jeffery, Atul Kohli Contemporary South Asia has been established to publish books on the politics, society and culture of South Asia since 1947.
    [Show full text]
  • Equality (Samya)
    Equality (Samya) Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay Classics Revisited Equality (Samya) Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay Translated by Bibek Debroy Liberty Institute New Delhi © 2002 LIBERTY INSTITUTE, New Delhi All rights including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof except for brief quotations, are reserved. Rs 100 or US$ 5 PRINTED IN INDIA Published by: Liberty Institute E-6, Press Apartments, Patparganj Delhi-110092, India Tel.: 91-11-26528244, E-mail: [email protected] Contents Preface—Barun S. Mitra 7 Chapter 1 11 Chapter 2 22 Chapter 3 32 Chapter 4 42 Chapter 5 54 Conclusion 69 Bengali Wordnote 70 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay (1838-1898) Preface We are very pleased to publish this English translation of Samya ~ Equality, which is one of the lesser known essays of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, the 19th Century Bengali author. In 1882, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay (1838-1898) published the historical novel Anandamath containing his most famous verse and created a wave. The resounding echo of ‘Vande Mataram’ (Glory to Motherland) could be heard from young nationalist heroes headed for the gallows, leaders who addressed political rallies and barefoot children running the streets. More than a hundred years later, in 2002, this ‘second national anthem’ is being sung in school prayer halls and by fervent Hindu revivalists. However, if we accord to Bankimchandra the brand of nationalism that Vande Mataram has come to signify today, we’d be telling only half the story. The 19th century author who lived in the heydays of the intellectual revolution in Bengal ranks high amongst the historical figures who have contributed to the notions of liberalism and freedom.
    [Show full text]
  • Exploring Social Responsibility and Ways of Attracting Greater Readership: an Eclectic Approach to Pankaj Mishra's Selected Wo
    2012 International Conference on Language, Medias and Culture IPEDR vol.33 (2012) © (2012) IACSIT Press, Singapore Exploring Social Responsibility and Ways of Attracting Greater Readership: An Eclectic Approach to Pankaj Mishra’s Selected Works + Mohsen Masoomi 1 1 Department of English, Sanandaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj, Iran Abstract. This study reads the selected works of the Indian writer, Pankaj Mishra, in the light of an eclectic approach which aims to explore his social responsibility through his works and also to make a survey on his implementation of certain tools for expanding his readers. The central argument the present study seeks to demonstrate is that, by rendering factual evocations of people through real figures and their social voice, Pankaj Mishra tries to reply an inner call of social responsibility toward Indian community. It is through mediums of mass media, literary institutions, English language and translation that Mishra attains a marked level of readership globally. Two major works of Mishra considered for this research are the mixture of memoir, history, and philosophy, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World, and the travel book Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond. Keywords: Pankaj Mishra, eclectic approach, social responsibility, attracting greater readership 1. Introduction After India’s Independence in 1947 and fundamental changes occurring in the country's structural foundations, a new capacity was created for a different trend of literary creation. Indian writers inclined towards a different type of literature that could best depict their new status as partly detached from their colonial past.
    [Show full text]