Anticolonial Visions and Fictional Versions: A Comparative Study of American and Indian Postcolonial Novels

Abstract

The research juxtaposes two of the prominent postcolonial literary discourses produced by the nations that resisted the colonial encroachments militarily and, ultimately, gained their independence from the British imperial clutch, America and India. The selected literary works are replete with retrospective representations of the historical landmarks and laden with future ideological aspirations regarding national glory. Remaining awake to the perplexing verisimilitude of postcolonial works of literature, the study aims to explain the pivotal nexus that links the divergent discourses, that is, the anti colonial élan.For the accomplishment of the comparative analysis, two of the novels have been chosen, one for each country, to represent the respective version of resistance: Jeff Shaara's The Glorious Cause (2002) from an array of the American fictional narratives and Basavaraj Naikar's The Sun behind the Cloud (2001)from the Indian anglophone fiction. After outlining the belligerent disposition of these novels, their thematic schemas have been compared and contrasted to make the post coloniality of these polemical fictions manifest. It has been made explicit that the novels are essentially similar in their counter-discursive character and dissemination of the anti colonial sentiment despite some peripheral differences. Thus, these novels contribute to the broader postcolonial continuum that comprehensively accommodates varying versions of the textual resistance.