CASTE IS A CHARACTER HERE-A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE CAMPUS NOVEL NO ONION, NOR GARLIC BY SRIVIDHYA NATARAJAN (original) (raw)
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India as a vast and richest country in the world, has a glorious and very colourful past from the very beginning, of civilizations, of heritages and of cultural diversity also. The Indian culture, often labelled as an amalgamation of various cultures of many religions, faiths and spans across the Indian subcontinent and has been influenced by a history of Indian philosophy, literature, architecture, art and music. Amongst the different aspects of Indian cultures, Indian literature has a recognisable heritage, mainly in epics (mahakavyam), poetry (kavyam) and dramas (natyam). Through literature which is truly diverse in nature, only we could present any subjects of literary traditions. Then it is our duty to ensure that all writers whether they practiced this cultural diversity in Indian English literature since we are the patrons of that great tradition which Britishers left behind us and also being Indians we encourage the unity in diversity also. The dominance of Brahmins in the authorship of Indian English novels are unjustifiable, because you can find books that featured by working class writers who are from the dominant culture, they discuss only about family, tradition, and the inequities of the caste system throughout their narratives. For example Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan, Anita Desai, Toru Dutt and etc, where Dalit’s and tribal’s voices were misrepresented by them like in ‘untouchable’, where diversity means nothing, since it is the fostering of knowledge and understanding of other’s experiences through various kinds of narrations. In this paper my very concern is to highlight the casteist attitudes of Indian writers and to prove the very existence of casteism in Indian English novels, and it is high time for us to rewrite over this misrepresentation, negative stereotyping throughout writings and it mainly focusses on the ways to eradicate all discriminations in society - based not just on ethnicity, but also on religion, gender, sexual orientation and disability - in an appropriate way (for which Dalit writings may help to an extent) and to help promoting equality between all sects and castes rather than of classes and races because the problem is of caste rather than that of class and race.
India as a vast and richest country in the world, has a glorious and very colourful past from the very beginning, of civilizations, of heritages and of cultural diversity also. The Indian culture, often labelled as an amalgamation of various cultures of many religions, faiths and spans across the Indian subcontinent and has been credited with shaping much of Indian philosophy, literature, architecture, art and music. Amongst the different aspects of Indian cultures, Indian literature has a recognisable heritage, mainly in epics (mahakavyam), poetry (kavyam) and dramas (natyam). Through literature which is truly diverse in nature, only we could present any subjects of literary traditions in India which is one of the richest in the world, combining as it does the diverse linguistic and cultural traditions which coexist within the Indian subcontinent. Indian writing in English, still considered an elite and esoteric brand of literature even after more than two hundred years of its existence because it has a collective well-equipped and prominent prolific writers like Mulk Raj Anand,
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