Postcolonial Reflections in South Asian Literature (original) (raw)
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Postcolonial Literature With Special reference to Salman Rushdie
Post-colonial studies have been with us for the last many years and at present they are foremost in any curriculum of Literature in English. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that the current literature in English is heavily relying on the literature coming from post-colonial topics and post-colonial writers living in British ex-colonies or living in Britain or the United States but were born and bred in colonized countries. Writers as diverse as Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka from Nigeria, Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy from India, Derek Walcott from the Caribbean, Seamus Heaney from Ireland, Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje from Canada, Peter Carey and Patrick White from Australia, and J. M. Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer from South Africa have been prominent when major literary awards such as the Booker Prize or the Nobel Prize have been announced. The novels of Salman Rushdie are the true representative of postcolonial fiction. He embodies in his own life and in his writings the riddle of the postcolonial author, writing within the traditions of Indo-English literature while simultaneously appealing to the conventions and tastes worldwide, especially a Western audience. In his novels, Rushdie deals with various National and International themes, but his primary focus is his motherland and its subcontinents. Themes such as migration, exile, diaspora, nationalism, multiculturalism, dualism etc. appear in his novels from the very first page. His writings have become the focus of a certain kind of struggle for cultural identity in Britain and other Western states. He is the spokesperson for the people of the subcontinent who are living in their migrated countries. Key words: postcolonial writers; narrative; theory; diaspora; transculturation; disruption; magical realism.
2021
Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British writer whose works combining magical realism with historical fiction, is primarily concerned with the many connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, with much of his fiction being set on the Indian subcontinent. On the other hand, V.S Naipaul is a Trinidadian writer of Indian descent known for his pessimistic novels set in developing countries. Postcolonial literature is a body of literary writings that reacts to the discourse of colonization. Post-colonial literature often involves writings that deal with issues of de-colonization or the political and cultural independence of people formerly subjugated to colonial rule. The present study attempts to apply a postcolonial approach to V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Both these novels draw the reader’s attention to various traits of Postcolonial literature such as appropriation of colonial languages, col...
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR INNOVATIVE RESEARCH IN MULTIDISCIPLINARY FIELD (IJIRMF), 2023
This research paper explores Salman Rushdie’s novel, Midnight’s Children, as a significant work of postcolonial literature that delves into the intricate relationship between postcolonial perspectives and socio- political realities in India. Employing a postcolonial lens, the paper aims to unravel the complex web of colonial legacies, national identity formation, and the socio-political landscape of post-independent India. It provides an overview of the novel’s historical context, set against the backdrop of India’s struggle for independence, partition, communal tensions, and the subsequent challenges of nation-building. Through an in-depth analysis of the characters’ experiences, the paper examines themes such as hybridity, identity negotiation, and the impact of colonialism on individual and collective consciousness. Furthermore, it investigates the portrayal of political leaders and their ideologies, highlighting their influence on the country’s socio-political trajectory. The paper also explores the role of magical realism as a narrative technique, employed to challenge dominant colonial discourses, reimagine historical narratives, and offer alternative perspectives on postcolonial experiences and socio-political realities. By critically examining Rushdie’s novel, this paper contributes to the broader discourse on postcolonial literature, shedding light on the intricate connection between personal narratives, collective memory, and the formation of a postcolonial society.
ANALYSING THE POST COLONIAL ASPECTS OF MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN BY SALMAN RUSHDIE Sanjana Parisaboina
Salman Rushdie, a prominent Indian writer through his magnum opus Midnight's Children, recounts the modern colonial history that culminates at the protagonist Saleem's birth, when India has gained independence from its British masters. Midnight's Children is a perfect example of a postcolonial novel that integrates magical realism elements into it to dig out the truth that has been swept under the carpet due to selfish motives. The paper attempts to examine the deployment of the book's postcolonial aspects as one cannot help but notice the dominant theme of intermingling of the public and personal histories between India and the three generations of Saleem Sinai's family. This paper attempts to analyse the characteristics of a postcolonial novel and also find out why the authors of the postcolonial era deployed such metanarratives.
FROM PERIPHERY TO THE CENTRE: POST-COLONIAL FICTION VS. COLONIALIST FICTION
Journal of Social and Cultural Studies, 2021
Discourse written in the aftermath of the colonial practice reverts the colonial discourse of the British authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries during which the colonial venture was in its highest peak. The colonialist discourse that used to be in the cultural centre of the literatures written in English marginalised the discourse of the colonised peoples, their language and culture; and pushed it to the peripheries. However, postcolonial discourse in the fiction of postcolonial writers who wrote in the aftermath of colonization forces the limits and comes to the centre from the peripheries. By due references to the traditional colonial novels, postcolonial texts create a reverse structure of novels in ideological opposition to the imperial centre. This study examines two postcolonial novels: Midnight's Children, as one of the exemplary postcolonial texts by Salman Rushdie with its numerous allusions to the colonial past and the colonialist novels and The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy who, despite being a younger writer, powerfully put forward a postcolonial discourse that functions as an anti-colonial rhetoric. This paper aims to compare the discourse of these postcolonial novels to the discourse of two colonial novels: A Passage to India by E. M. Forster and Kim by Rudyard Kipling.
Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Discourses, Disruptions and Intersections (E-book)
2021
The term 'Postcolonial' is used for a historical phase that corresponds to the aftermath of European colonisation. The period is witness to the effects of colonialism on languages, cultures and communities in the post-independence era. The ineradicable mark of the European colonisation on the contemporary world has not only resulted in a process of unification as well as diversification but also has caused the most controversial global concerns like economic instability, ethnic rivalries, cultural violation, migration and dislocation, expatriation and hybrid nations formation along with cross culturalism and ethnic inclusiveness. This sets a question of 'identity' as one of its prime deliberations. The people belonging to the pro colonised paradigm quander in the hunt for a consolidated 'identity' while in the process of doing so find themselves consumed by insecurity and self-doubt. This concern of postcolonial dimension of the quest for identity has been widely addressed by one of the leading Indian Parsi writers in English, Boman Desai in Asylum, USA. The present paper endeavors to illustrate how migration and cultural conflicts impacts the immigrants' sense of insecurity which alters their distinctive identity by leaving a permanent deep subterranean chasm in their lives and their persistent efforts to bridge up this gap of identity with reference to the Parsi community in Asylum, USA. Boman Desai, who is born and grew up in Mumbai, is an Indian expatriate himself as he shuttles back and forth between two major cities of the world and their reflections-Bombay and Chicago. His writings are mostly evocative of some predictability in terms of approach, certain consistency in form of narratives, technique, and choice of subject matters-reminiscence of the past, migration, nostalgia, transculturalism, longingness for identity, alienation, and the theme of marriage-all of which mostly revolve around the Parsi Zoroastrian community. He is certainly more inclined towards emphatically affirming his 'Parsiness' through his works. Desai has the powerful skill to blend his memories of India and that of his Works Cited
The Novels of Salman Rushdie: A Postcolonial Study
The twentieth century has been the age of theories and practices. The first half of the century concerned especially with linguistic theories, with form rather than content while the latter half attempted to focus on content and context, history and new historicism. Since 1960s, theories became reader oriented and meaning of the writing shifted from the author and work to the 'scriptor' and 'text' and even the very existence of the author fell into danger.
COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE: DISCOURSES, DISRUPTIONS, AND INTERSECTIONS
Authorspress, New Delhi, 2021
The term 'Postcolonial' is used for a historical phase that corresponds to the aftermath of European colonisation. The period is witness to the effects of colonialism on languages, cultures and communities in the post-independence era. The ineradicable mark of the European colonisation on the contemporary world has not only resulted in a process of unification as well as diversification but also has caused the most controversial global concerns like economic instability, ethnic rivalries, cultural violation, migration and dislocation, expatriation and hybrid nations formation along with cross culturalism and ethnic inclusiveness. This sets a question of 'identity' as one of its prime deliberations. The people belonging to the pro colonised paradigm quander in the hunt for a consolidated 'identity' while in the process of doing so find themselves consumed by insecurity and self-doubt. This concern of postcolonial dimension of the quest for identity has been widely addressed by one of the leading Indian Parsi writers in English, Boman Desai in Asylum, USA. The present paper endeavors to illustrate how migration and cultural conflicts impacts the immigrants' sense of insecurity which alters their distinctive identity by leaving a permanent deep subterranean chasm in their lives and their persistent efforts to bridge up this gap of identity with reference to the Parsi community in Asylum, USA. Boman Desai, who is born and grew up in Mumbai, is an Indian expatriate himself as he shuttles back and forth between two major cities of the world and their reflections-Bombay and Chicago. His writings are mostly evocative of some predictability in terms of approach, certain consistency in form of narratives, technique, and choice of subject matters-reminiscence of the past, migration, nostalgia, transculturalism, longingness for identity, alienation, and the theme of marriage-all of which mostly revolve around the Parsi Zoroastrian community. He is certainly more inclined towards emphatically affirming his 'Parsiness' through his works. Desai has the powerful skill to blend his memories of India and that of his Works Cited
POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE-ASPECTS AND CHALLENGES
Indian writing in English is in a lot of demand these days. It is also worth mentioning that there has been a movement to take Indian writing across the globe. Writers like Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy are considered best-selling authors.Their works have taken Indian writing and writers to great heights. The Department of English in every college wants a scholar who can knowledgeably discourse about Indian writings in English and Indian authors.In the words of Makarand Paranjape,"Indian English Literature is a contest over the nature, identity and ultimately the destiny of modern India".