Indian Fiction Research Articles

Reading new India: post-millennial Indian fiction in English

Introduction: From Postcolonial India to New India 1.1 'Indianness' since Independence 1.2 Literary 'Indianness' 1.3 New India, a New Canon 2. Urban Scapes 2.1 Mumbai 2.2 Bangalore 3. Chick Lit - Crick Lit 3.1 Chick Lit 3.2 Crick Lit 4. Young India 4.1 Call Centres and Corporate Lives 4.2 MSMs 5. Crime Writing 5.1 Female Detectives 5.2 Difference and Death 6. Fantasy and Epic Myth 6.1 New [Fantastical] India 6.2 Bharat Fantasy 7. Graphic Novels 7.1 The Harappa Files (2011) 7.2 Kashmir Pending (2007) Conclusion: New/Old Stories in Old/New Ways Further Reading Index

Resurgence of Ethnicity and National Identity in Contemporary Native American Literature

The paper offered is devoted to the analysis of Native American identity questions discussed in contemporary Indian fiction. Though the author of the article is Not-Native, an attempt to consider cultural issues from Indian point of view is made. Such novels as “Ceremony,” 1977 by Leslie Silko; “Bingo Palace,” 1994 by Louise Erdrich; “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” 2007 by Sherman Alexie are used as the study material. The problems of self-realization, national dignity regain, inferiority complexes and post-colonial trauma causes are considered. The research proposed draws attention of both Native and Non-Native audiences to the destructive aftereffects of ethnic genocide. It also helps understand indigenous values, priorities and mentality. Misinterpretation of Native objects purposes and disrespect towards Indianness result in cultural misunderstanding and offense which can be regarded as a further endeavor of colonization. These ideas are supported by the relevant examples from the novels selected. The work of indigenous writers is treated as a powerful means of mass influence helping solve current problems of ethnicity and national identity, bridge the existing cultural gaps. Expansion of knowledge on important aspects of Indian nations’ worldview improves cross-cultural understanding and promotes balanced co-existence of Native and Non-Native peoples. It also encourages indigenous people to be aware of their rich spiritual and cultural legacy helping them survive the painful blunders of the past. The following methods are applied in the study: historical, cultural and comparative analyses. The results received may contribute to the recent social decolonization and Native resurgence process.

No longer good girls: sexual transgressions in Indian women's writings

Indian women's writing in English has long depicted Indian women as victims of society, whose rights are routinely exploited and whose welfare and happiness are commonly sacrificed for the good of their families and communities. The literature has often depicted the women as complicit, accepting and upholding the definition of a good woman as one who is faithful, virtuous, self-effacing and obedient. This definition is also one the women instil in their daughters, thus reinforcing this code of ethics. This article observes that there is a tide running contrary to this and that there is a new breed of women in twenty-first century Indian literary fiction in English: women who are single and married, working and non-working, middle and upper-middle class and wives and mothers, who are no longer prepared to be ‘good girls’. These women knowingly, thoughtfully and successfully defy societal conventions to have pre and extramarital affairs, divorces and even custody battles for children, without shame, guilt, dire consequences or even societal condemnation. This article argues that these writings represent a quietly radical departure from the conventional depictions of the roles, expectations and morals of middle-class urban twenty-first century Indian women.

Contractarianism and the Ethic of Care in Indian Fiction

Through close readings of recent fiction from English, Hindi and Kannada sources, this paper analyses the feminist ethic of care with reference to adult daughters caring for their critically-ill or dying mothers. The discussion focuses on problems associated with the care ethic and examines some of its assumptions, particularly its inability to account for the emotional complexity of adult caregiving relationships, which can make the invocation of relationality difficult; its focus on responsiveness to needs, such as those of helpless infants, which prevents adequate engagement with ideas of reciprocity; and, finally, its extraction of the caregiving relationship from the network of social and familial relationships in which it is embedded. Alongside my critique of the ethic of care, I will also examine the extent to which mainstream moral concepts, such as rights and contracts, may continue to be relevant to the dynamics of intergenerational relations in old age.

Big issues around a small-scale phenomenon: Vernacular pulp fiction in English translation for Indian readers

This paper explores the implications of the recent appearance of some Indian vernacular pulp fiction texts in English translation for Indian readers. As background, the first of three main sections outlines the current scope of Indian Translation Studies, and also briefly examines recent thinking about the position of English in India. The second section examines the habitual Indian English-readers’ perspective of such pulp fiction in translation, and the third that of Hindi commentators insofar as relevant here. These two latter sections do not offer a linear argument, or undertake a close reading of specific texts. Rather, they draw a picture of vernacular and English popular print culture in India, wherein various slippages and cross-connections are apparent.

Postcolonial Ecofeminism in Indian Novels in English

This paper seeks to outline postcolonial ecofeminism in India in terms of both activism and fiction that explicitly foreground women. I also argue that women's relationship to environment is ambivalent, thus disputing dualism of nature/culture and yet straddling grey area between these two binaries. This is particularly highlighted by women writing Indian fiction in English. An explication of nature/culture dualism will be given to contextualize this study and to explain how dualism affects upon notions of a gendered (ecological) citizenship. This paper seeks to outline lineage of postcolonial ecofeminism in India in terms of both activism and fiction that explicitly foreground women. I argue for a case to be built for women writers, and why they are important for field of literature and environment in an age of accelerated and globalized technological development. While outlining ecofeminism as a field and forms it has taken in India in both activism and writing, I also argue that womens relationship to environment is ambivalent, thus disputing dualism of nature/culture and yet straddling grey area between these two binaries. This is particularly highlighted by women writing Indian fiction in English. A brief explication of nature/culture dualism will be given to contextualize this study and to explain how dualism affects upon notions of a gendered (ecological) citizenship. Postcolonial ecofeminism is a concept which has been in circulation for some time but is still at a nascent stage. The related fields of postcolonial ecocriticism and ecofeminism have been dominated by a typically Euro-American point of view till date, and both fields do not address issue of postcolonial ecofeminism adequately, where both fields need to recognize the double-bind of being female and being colonized (1). A postcolonial ecofeminist perspective would involve coming together of postcolonial ecocriticism and ecofeminism into one analytical focus, where it would be necessary to recognize that exploitation of nature and oppression of women are intimately bound up with notions of class, caste, race, colonialism and neo-colonialism. Postcolonial ecocriticism focuses on intersection of postcolonial and environmental issues. Many critics, particularly from strain of deep ecology, have asserted that postcolonialism is inherently anthropocentric and

Exile and Estrangement in East African Indian Fiction

East African Indian fiction, or rather fiction by East African writers of South Asian origin, presents memorable images of ceaseless wandering through strange territory, flight from home-spaces, violent expulsions, and the networks—imaginative and literal—that link the resultant diaspora communities. Ojwang’s article accounts for the different ways in which three key writers, M. G. Vassanji, Bahadur Tejani, and Peter Nazareth, have responded in their fiction to the experiences and exigencies of migration, African nationalisms, and alienation. In doing so, it draws attention to the contribution that these writers, in providing imaginative accounts of one of the classic diasporas of colonialism, make to scholarly understanding of exile in colonial and postcolonial culture.

Book Review: Ira Raja (ed.), Grey Areas: An Anthology of Indian Fiction on Ageing

Book Review: Ira Raja (ed.), <i>Grey Areas: An Anthology of Indian Fiction on Ageing</i>

The Cambridge companion to American fiction after 1945

Introduction: a story of the stories of American fiction after 1945 John N. Duvall Part I. Poetics and Genres: 1. Postmodern metafiction Amy Elias 2. Contemporary realism Robert Rebein 3. New journalism and the non-fiction novel Stacey Olster 4. Science fiction Philip Wegner 5. The short story Susan Lohafer Part II. Historical and Cultural Contexts: 6. African American fiction Keith Byerman 7. American Indian fiction Nancy J. Peterson 8. Multiethnicities: Latino/a and Asian American fiction A. Robert Lee 9. American Jewish fiction Victoria Aarons 10. Feminist fiction Jane Elliot 11. Southern fiction Martyn Bone 12. Fiction and the Cold War Alan Nadel 13. Fiction and 9/11 John N. Duvall Part III. Major Authors: 14. Ralph Ellison Nicole Waligora-Davis 15. Flannery O'Connor Jay Watson 16. Thomas Pynchon Brian Jarvis 17. Toni Morrison Linden Peach 18. Don DeLillo Laura Barrett Conclusion: whither American fiction? Jessica Pressman Index.

Subtle Technology: The Design Innovation of Indian Artisanship

October 01 2011 Subtle Technology: The Design Innovation of Indian Artisanship Ken Botnick, Ken Botnick Ken Botnick directs the Nancy Kranzberg Book Studio, a letterpress printing and binding facility. He also teaches graphic art and typography in the Department of Communication Design. Ken was Fulbright Fellow (2005–6) at the National Institute of Design in Ahmadabad, India, and has continued his relationship with Indian craft and design through yearly excursions, most currently directing the Village India Program for Washington University at St Louis in Andhra Pradesh. Botnick publishes limited editions under the imprint emdash. His recent book, KAMINI: Selections from the Gitagovinda, printed in Sanskrit and English, was an AIGA selection for 50 Books/50 Covers. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Ira Raja Ira Raja Ira Raja has edited Grey Areas: An Anthology of Indian Fiction on Ageing (Oxford University Press, 2010), co-edited with Kay Souter, An Endless Winter's Night: Mother-Daughter Stories from India (Women Unlimited, 2010), and with John Thieme, The Table is Laid: Oxford Anthology of South Asian Food Writing (2007). Ira has published articles in a number of peer-reviewed international journals including Narrative: A Journal of Narrative Theory, Journal of Aging, Humanities and the Arts; Journal of Commonwealth Literature; Commonwealth: Essays and Studies; among others. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Ken Botnick Ken Botnick directs the Nancy Kranzberg Book Studio, a letterpress printing and binding facility. He also teaches graphic art and typography in the Department of Communication Design. Ken was Fulbright Fellow (2005–6) at the National Institute of Design in Ahmadabad, India, and has continued his relationship with Indian craft and design through yearly excursions, most currently directing the Village India Program for Washington University at St Louis in Andhra Pradesh. Botnick publishes limited editions under the imprint emdash. His recent book, KAMINI: Selections from the Gitagovinda, printed in Sanskrit and English, was an AIGA selection for 50 Books/50 Covers. Ira Raja Ira Raja has edited Grey Areas: An Anthology of Indian Fiction on Ageing (Oxford University Press, 2010), co-edited with Kay Souter, An Endless Winter's Night: Mother-Daughter Stories from India (Women Unlimited, 2010), and with John Thieme, The Table is Laid: Oxford Anthology of South Asian Food Writing (2007). Ira has published articles in a number of peer-reviewed international journals including Narrative: A Journal of Narrative Theory, Journal of Aging, Humanities and the Arts; Journal of Commonwealth Literature; Commonwealth: Essays and Studies; among others. Online ISSN: 1531-4790 Print ISSN: 0747-9360 © 2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology2011 Design Issues (2011) 27 (4): 43–55. https://doi.org/10.1162/DESI_a_00104 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Ken Botnick, Ira Raja; Subtle Technology: The Design Innovation of Indian Artisanship. Design Issues 2011; 27 (4): 43–55. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/DESI_a_00104 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsDesign Issues Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology2011 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Gender and communal politics in Shama Futehally’s Reaching Bombay Central

Most of the best-known women writers of anglophone Indian fiction have been Hindu, and in the context of the intensification of communal politics in India, it is important to also consider the voices of their Muslim counterparts. Shama Futehally’s novel Reaching Bombay Central ( 2002 ) engages with both gender and communal politics from a Muslim perspective, and this article examines the ways in which the narrative implicitly challenges a number of popular perceptions about the disadvantaged position of Muslim women in India. The novel dramatizes the environment of inter-communal tension but conspicuously downplays the role of religious ideology and legal disadvantage, both of which have been prominent in public debates about Muslim women in India. In its dramatization of the power dynamics within a middle-class Muslim marriage, the narrative suggests that women’s disempowerment is located above all in the domestic sphere and in interpersonal relationships, and that their subordinate status is not specific to particular religious communities.

Crossing the Kala Pani: Cause for “Celebration” or “Commemoration” 150 Years on? Portrayals of Indenture in Recent South African Writing

Summary In 2010, the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the first indentured labourers from India brought across the Indian Ocean – the kala pani – on the SS Truro in 1860, was marked in a variety of ways by the descendants of those original pioneers. One of the many letters to the press during last year asked whether cultural organisations should be “celebrating” or “commemorating” this anniversary given the harsh conditions under which indentured labour was carried out. This article picks up on this point – to “celebrate” or “commemorate”? – by seeking to assess how the topic of indenture is handled in the local press and also in fictional works of selected contemporary South African writers of Indian descent; for example, Neelan Govender's Girrmit Tales (2008), Rubendra Govender's Sugar Cane Boy (2008), Aziz Hassim's Revenge of Kali (2009) among others. These titles are all recent additions to what could be called a South African plantation literature which is flourishing at present in local writing circles, given perhaps the 150th anniversary mentioned above, but also given a coming of age for South African Indian fiction post apartheid.

South African Indian Fiction: Transformations in Ahmed Essop's Political Ethos

Ahmed Essop’s texts represent the aesthetics of complicity and resistance in apartheid and postapartheid South African Indian literature. His earlier narratives attempt to redeem the diaspora within a nation by building a sense of national belonging through locating a moral foundation of a nation alongside black South Africans. In his later fiction, however, Essop breaks with past representations of interracial solidarity with the majority black population and instead highlights the failures of multicultural democracy in postapartheid South Africa. The diasporic subject is perceived as continuing to disrupt the march of the nation toward democracy due to his/ her race and religious affiliations. Essop’s stories provide the base for the construction and representation of national identity for diasporic Indians and a collective South African history, a history ravaged by the trauma of apartheid, but one that also paradoxically awaits excavation, reexamination, and rewriting in order for a truly egalitarian polity to emerge.

International Geographics: Looking Out in Ishtiyaq Shukri's &lt;em&gt;The Silent Minaret&lt;/em&gt;

This essay examines Ishtiyaq Shukri’s novel The Silent Minaret (2005) in order to understand the changes that have taken place in South African Indian fiction after nearly a decade of democracy, particularly the shift in focus to a transnational aesthetic based on the intersection of South and Southeastern Asia, South Africa, England, and the Islamic world. The Silent Minaret is exemplary of a certain “turn” in South African Indian literature that reveals a reorienting of the inward glance of apartheid-era fiction to a gazing at other worlds in order to position Indians and Indian writing globally as well as locally.

Ideological Moorings in Indian Literature: A Study of Kanthapura

Raja Rao's contribution to Indian fiction in English language is manifolds. The philosophical sensibility of Raja Rao distinguishes him from his contemporaries like Mulk Raj Anand and R.K. Narayan, who project man primarily in relation to social reality. His novels are saturated with various philosophical ideologies. His first novel Kanthapura (1938) is based on Gandhian ideology. This paper presents an analysis of Kanthapura which mainly portrays the Freedom Movement launched by Mahatma Gandhi in the 1920s to liberate India from the imperialistic hegemony of the British, through the hero of the novel Moorthy. In Kanthapura, Raja Rao has come out with complete mastery of the various aspects of the novel as a form of art. Never again since the publication of this masterpiece of Indian English fiction on the theme of Indian struggle for freedom has been able to recapture the perfect harmony of plot, character, dialogue and narrative on the one hand and fantasy and realism on the other. The novelist assiduously explores the Gandhian ideals of loving one's enemies, non-violence and abolition of untouchability.

Reconsidering South African Indian Fiction Postapartheid

This article investigates contemporary South African Indian fiction in order to examine how this literature gives rise to new ways of thinking about South African culture. The dramatic changes that South Africa has experienced in recent years have prompted fresh ways of understanding its cultural history, which move beyond ideas based on difference, into ideas based on integration. South African Indian fiction offers a different lens through which to view the tangled and complex forms of interdependency that mark both South African and transnational cultures more broadly. I read South African Indian fiction as a model for an intellectually integrated cultural formation. Instead of focusing on ideas of embodiment and difference, South African Indian fiction pivots on the conception of race as a social category shaped by its historical routes. South African Indian fiction explores the movement of Indians to South Africa during the nineteenth century, covering issues of migration, diaspora, transnationalism, hybridity, difference, cultural undecidability, and a blurring of boundaries in the postapartheid fiction of Imraan Coovadia, Achmat Dangor, Farida Karodia, Beverley Naidoo, Shamin Sarif, and Ishtiyaq Shukri. I argue that these narratives focus on the tensions between race, place, and history in a South African and a transnational context in a way that suggests revisions to current postcolonial theory.

Female Survivors in Contemporary Native Prose

The paper offered is devoted to the analysis of powerful Native women characters described in contemporary Indian fiction. Though the author of the article is non-Native, an attempt to explain cultural issues from indigenous point of view is made. Such novels as Night Flying Woman, 1983 by Ignatia Broker; Grass Dancer, 1994 by Susan Power; Shell-Shaker, 2001 by LeAnne Howe; Bingo Palace, 1994 and The Painted Drum, 2005 by Louise Erdrich; are used as the study material. The importance of women as traditions keepers in Native communities and the significance of cultural regalia (drum, pipe, pow-wow outfit constituents, etc.) for indigenous people are enlightened. The research proposed helps Non-Indian audience understand indigenous values, lifestyles and mentality. Underestimation of female characters importance and misinterpretation of Native objects purposes may result in cultural misunderstanding and offense which can be regarded as a further endeavor of colonization. The work of indigenous writers is perceived as a powerful teaching of indigenous survival. Expansion of knowledge on important aspects of Indian nations’ worldview improves cross-cultural understanding and promotes balanced co-existence of Native and Non-Native peoples. Female characters may be considered as an embodiment of Indian cultures helping indigenous people be aware of their rich spiritual and cultural legacy and get rid of inferiority complexes which have been imposed on them by the ruling civilization. The following methods are applied in the study: historical, cultural and comparative analyses. The results received may contribute to the recent social decolonization and Native resurgence process. They also can be used as lecturing materials for Native Literature classes.

The inheritance of modernity: insurgencies in contemporary Indian fiction

Résumé Plusieurs romans des années 2000 ( Magic Seeds, The Inheritance of Loss, An Iron Harvest et The Hungry Tide ) font figurer des insurrections de type marxiste dans plusieurs régions de l’Inde, et dressent un portrait sombre de l’engagement et de la représentation politiques. La fiction permet de dessiner la dislocation entre les idéaux et la violence, réelle, disséminée par ces conflits, ainsi que le délitement du langage, quand les émotions et l’affect occupent toute la scène politique. Alors que le roman indien semblait souvent célébrer la différence et la contestation, ces non-sens politiques permettent de repenser radicalement la relation de l’individu à l’histoire

Contemporary Indian fiction and the dynamics of cross-cultural collocation

Résumé Étudiant les stratégies métatextuelles telles que les perspectives multiples, la polyphonie, et la transtextualité, et explorant le processus dialogique qui lie l’émetteur et le récepteur, cet essai place la littérature indienne contemporaine (de Desai à Adiga, lauréat du Man Booker Prize 2008) dans le contexte plus général des nouvelles littératures qui ont accentué les pratiques intertextuelles classiques et souligné la circulation du sens.

The Depiction of Corruption in English-Language Indian Fiction

India stereotypically is regarded as a country riddled with corruption, although international surveys indicate that it ranks in about the middle of the world's nations in terms of corruption. The article surveys novels and short stories by more than two dozen writers, primarily native Indians, to discover how they depict episodes of corruption. It determines that they focus particularly on miscreant behavior in politics and the government, the police, petty officials, the postal service, transportation, and on smuggling. The writers flesh out and make more vivid information that is presented in criminological writing about corruption in India.