Narrating the New India: Globalization and Marginality in Post-Millennium Indian Anglophone Novels
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NARRATING THE NEW INDIA: GLOBALIZATION AND MARGINALITY IN POST-MILLENNIUM INDIAN ANGLOPHONE NOVELS A dissertation submitted to the Kent State University College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Swaralipi Nandi August, 2012 Dissertation written by Swaralipi Nandi B.A., University of Burdwan, 2002 M.A., University of Hyderabad, 2004 M.Phil, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2006 Ph.D., Kent State University, 2012 Approved by Babar M’Baye Co- Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Masood A Raja Co- Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Tammy Clewell Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Judy Wakabayashi Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Accepted by Robert W. Trogdon Chair, Department of English John R.D. Stalvey Dean, College of Arts and Sciences* ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………... iv INTRODUCTION: Globalization and Indian Literature…..…………...1 CHAPTER 1: Globalization and Postcolonial Studies...……………… 32 The Lacuna of Postcolonialism……………………………… 34 Literature Review and Methodology …………………………. 60 CHAPTER 2: The Homo œconomicus: Rags- to-Riches Stories and the Self-Made Man ... ………………...………………..……………………. 70 The White Tiger and the Self Made Man………………………. 72 Q&A and the New Subject of Reality TV…………………........112 CHAPTER 3: The Neoliberal City: Urban Space, Noir Fiction and Criminal Subject …………………………………….…………………… 138 The Divided City in The Story of My Assassins……….……… 142 Crime Fiction and the Panopticon in Sacred Games……….…. 179 CHAPTER 4: “The People of Apokalis”: Globalization, Environment and the Marginal ………………………………………………………… ..214 Corporations and the Environment in Animal’s People………..216 Global Conservation and Marginal Groups in The Hungry Tide………………………………………………. 254 CONCLUSION: Summarizing Marginality under Globalization…….. 288 WORKS CITED……………….……………………………….…….. 308 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am greatly indebted to my dissertation directors, Dr. Babacar M’Baye and Dr.Masood A. Raja for their guidance and support at every stage of this dissertation. They have been the sources of constant encouragement; and working with them has been a great learning experience. My sincere gratitude to my committee members, Tammy Clewell and Judy Wakabayashi, for their dedicated reading, suggestions and comments; and to James Tyner for serving as the moderator for my defense. Thank you to all of the librarians, students, university staff, and colleagues who aided my research, especially Dawn Lashua and Christine Strock. Thank you Kent State University for making my study abroad experience worth it; and special thanks to the Office of Global Affairs for handling my immigration formalities with such cooperation, even in my absence. My special thanks to my Kent State friends and to Sayantani, Sohomjit, Amrita, Jihasa, and Esha, who took active interest in my work; engaged in productive discussions on the topic and contributed with valuable suggestions, materials, and motivation for work. I am most grateful to my family, especially my parents in law, Sukumar Das and iv Ratna Das, and my brother, Akashnil for their constant support and encouragement. No word of gratitude is enough for my parents, Anadi Nandi and Uttara Nandi, whose love, inspiration and determining influences have guided me throughout my life. Finally, and most importantly, thanks to my husband Sayan Das for being my rock. If I have successfully staged the dissertation, it’s only because of your tireless efforts and support behind the scenes. I could not have done this without you. v INTRODUCTION: Globalization and Indian Literature “I’ve been asking colleagues in several departments and disciplines whether they’ve ever come across the term “neoliberalism” and whether they know what it means. A small number acknowledged having heard the word; a very much smaller number ventured a tentative definition. I was asking because I had been reading essays in which the adjective neoliberal was routinely invoked as an accusation, and I had only a sketchy notion of what was intended by it…I thought I’d better learn more.” --Stanley Fish, “Neoliberalism and Higher Education” In his article “Neoliberalism and Higher Education,” Stanley Fish expresses his bewilderment with the term ‘neoliberalism’ that he seems to have come across quite frequently in many recent publications. Fish’s puzzlement with the term reveals two very important facts about literary studies today. Firstly, the term ‘neoliberalism’ has become a significant theoretical concept in academics, especially in social sciences and globalization studies, to discuss the social, political and cultural developments of our times. Secondly, this is still a relatively new term in the field of literary studies applied to interpret the literatures of a post-globalized world. ‘Neoliberalism’ is a political and economic philosophy specifically associated with the processes of economic 1 2 liberalization and globalization of the free market, which constitutes the reality of our contemporary world. Since the concept is more appropriate in interpreting the political and economic policies of the participating globalizing nations, the use of the term in literary studies might raise pertinent questions as to how do we integrate ‘neoliberalism,’ as a socio-political-economic philosophy, into the analysis of literary and cultural texts? How can the field of postcolonial literary analysis be revised through an engagement with the materialist aspects of globalization and interdisciplinary interventions? This dissertation seeks to answer some of these questions through a reading of selected Anglophone novels of post-liberalization India, which are also representative of the new trends in postcolonial literature.1 The novels I read closely in this project are novels that depict the local realities of a new, changing, and globalized India that is in the process of metamorphosing itself under the forces of economic globalization. Attempting to study the new literatures of India, this dissertation aims to pursue three primary objectives: i) To analyze the novels’ representation of the new modes of neoliberal subjectivity and citizenship in post-liberalized India ii) To study the new socio-economic settings of the novels that reflect the structural changes taking place in India after liberalization 1 I use the term ‘post-liberalization’ to denote the specific period of Indian history after major economic changes towards free trade, increased foreign investment, open markets and neoliberalism were implemented in 1991 by the then Finance minister Manmohan Singh. These economic policies officially marked the transition of India’s economic and political system from a proto-socialist model conceptualized by Nehru, to a model that more prominently leans towards many capitalistic policies, if not a complete conversion to capitalism. 3 iii) To analyze the representation of the underclass in the novels and theorize on the perception of marginality in post-liberalized India Through the above objectives, this project contributes to the recent developments in postcolonial studies regarding the concept of globalization. As the late twentieth century globalization becomes an important theoretical notion in postcolonial studies—whereby ‘globalization’ has been included in the list of core postcolonial concepts by the pioneers of postcolonial theory, Ashcroft, Griffith and Tiffin, in their recent Postcolonial Studies Reader— it is imperative that we understand the new changes in the postcolonial nations of the global South through the specific lens of economic globalization2. To explore the central debates of globalization, this dissertation looks at novels on a variety of themes on current Indian realities, especially focusing on how the material and ideological aspects of economic globalization affect the marginal subjects within the nation. I study novels, like The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga and Q&A by Vikas Swarup, that portray protagonists from the socio-economically marginalized sections, who rise up to immense financial success in the new India, proclaiming globalization as an emancipatory power. Contrarily, the other novels I focus on, like The Story of My Assassins by Tarun Tejpal and Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra, tell stories of protagonists from the underbelly of the neoliberal city; and their consequent dispossession and criminalization in the process of current urbanization. Finally, the third group of novels that I study, namely Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People and Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, brings up the crucial 2 Almost a substitute to the term “Third World”, which has now become obsolete and politically incorrect, the term “global South” refers to the developing and underdeveloped countries of the world, most of which are erstwhile colonies, and are incidentally located in the Southern hemisphere of the globe. 4 debates about environment in the context of globalization, and depict how global forces affect the local people and the Indian environment. In a nutshell, this dissertation attempts to analyze the conventional postcolonial issues of power and marginality but in the context of a contemporary world reshaped by the forces of global capitalism. To understand the ‘new’ Indian fiction on globalization it is important to look at some of the major characteristics of the contemporary Indian novels that are distinctively different from the earlier postcolonial novels, which are commonly associated with the canonical Indian