Reading the World: Growing Up in the ‘Discipline’

Abstract

This paper argues that literature is not just about romantic melodies or folk tales or narratives of universal truth; it has the veins of ideology, the blood of language, working in its own synergies to produce narratives of power and discrimination. English literature in India affected the learners negatively and led to vacuous and superficial intellectual growth because it failed to make concrete connections with minds and souls of the people engaged with this discipline. In this paper, an attempt is made to illustrate this idea through a personal narrative of a senior academician and scholar. The author argues that English (British) literature should be replaced with literatures in English and the contrapuntal method should replace the traditional method of reading literature.