Beyond the Nation: the Mobility of Indian Literature

Bill Ashcroft

doi:10.5565/rev/indialogs.1

Abstract

This paper argues that while it is generally accepted that contemporary Indian literature entered a decisive, cosmopolitan and globally popular phase with the publication of Midnight’s Children in 1981, this period actually demonstrated a continuation of deep skepticism about nationalism that had originated with Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi. The three decades after 1981 have revealed a literature whose mobility and energy has had perhaps a greater impact on English literature than any other. The argument is that this mobility goes hand in hand with skepticism about nation and nationalism that has had a pronounced impact on the perception of the globalization of literature. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997), Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (2006), Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger (2008) and Hari Kunzru’s Transmission (2004) sketch the trajectory of the contemporary novel’s extension of Midnight Children’s subversion of the grand narrative of nation. Three of these share the status of Rushdie’s novel as a Booker Prize winner and indicating that the impact of India’s nationalist skepticism has been felt globally.

Highlights

This paper argues that while it is generally accepted that contemporary Indian literature entered a decisive, cosmopolitan and globally popular phase with the publication of Midnight’s Children in 1981, this period demonstrated a continuation of deep skepticism about nationalism that had originated with Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi
The revolution inaugurated by Rushdie hinged on the subversion of the nationalist euphoria of midnight, 27 August 1947
One version of this story is that the euphoria continued until the arrival of Indira Gandhi, when disappointment set in with a vengeance

Summary

The ation and its borders

The pre-independence utopia of a liberated postcolonial nation provided a very clear focus for anti-colonial activism in India, but this ground to a halt once the goal of that activism was reached and the sombre realities of post-independence political life began to be felt Both Tagore and Gandhi saw the issues of class and economic disparity as being tied up with the problem of the nation state and its promotion of profit. Elizabeth Outka argues: “By presenting the novel's temporal framework not as a continuous narrative but as a disordered mix of various times that can be pieced together only by the reader (if at all), Roy's text echoes the way her characters are experiencing the present moment, one always already haunted by past and future events” (Outka, 2011: 25-26) This experience, like so much of the domain of the Small God, exists well below the level of Nation. What Sai finds herself in the middle of is the endless cycle of history, the passion for decolonization repeating itself

The World

WORKS CITED