Modern Indian Utopian Art and Literature: An Introduction

Abstract

This is an editorial introduction to the Open Library of Humanities Special Collection on Utopian Art and Literature from Modern India, which has a major focus on literary and filmic imaginings of utopia and dystopia, with the majority of articles examining texts from the period before the Partition and independence of India in 1947. We show how the collection is part of the current scholarly endeavour to recognize the wealth of non-Eurocentric utopian and dystopian texts in literature. The introduction captures key themes such as the rural and the urban, discussed in the collection, and points out the scholarly innovation of paying sustained attention to literature written in bhashas (vernacular Indian languages) in both utopian and dystopian modes, and of analysing the work of classic Modernist writers from 20th-century India, such as Satinath Bhaduri and Tarasankar Bandopadhyay.