Wishful or Wistfulness of Social Class in the Post - Independence India: A Study of Gurcharan Das’s 9 Jakhoo Hill.

Abstract

Every literature has a relevance to society and has a message to give that is conveyed through its story but it is also true that the literature is the composition of the writer who owes the credit of everything. He pens something that shows the concern for the society and endeavours to bring the mirror image of the realistic aspects of the society. Such compositions are called realistic compositions and such writers are called realists. One of the realists is Gurcharan Das (1943), a man whose family had struggled in the Indo –Pakistan Partition and later resettled in India as refugees and the one who retired as the Vice President and Managing Director in Procter & Gamble Worldwide and held to writing literature. Gurcharan Das brought various writings like A Fine Family, a book of essays, The Elephant Paradigm, and anthology, Three English Plays including 9 Jakhoo Hill which proves that Gurcharan Das is a committed artist who has a great concern for the political and social conditions in India. His play 9 Jakhoo Hill shows the causes and effects of the post partition political events upon the people living in India mainly of old aristocratic class and old middle class. It discusses the occurrence of psychological and social changes in the above classes in the Post-Independence India and shifts that take place in their status. It also observes the wistfulness of the old aristocratic class that binds it to the past and on the other side wishful old middle class which detested tobe nostalgic and rose to become neo middle class. In the light of these factors, this paper attempts to study Gurcharan Das’s play 9 Jakhoo Hill, a realistic attempt toportray the nature and tendency of people of different classes in the Post-Independence India.