Indian English Fiction

This research paper critically examines Salman Rushdie's novel Shalimar the Clown from a postcolonial, historical and allegorical perspective. It looks at a key issue in the work: the loss of the Paradise that was Kashmir and the implications and consequences of that loss. The novel is a combination of fiction, history, magic realism and allegory. It looks at the terrible tragedy of Kashmir through the powerfully drawn characters of Boonyi, Shalimar, Max and India. The characters reflect the fates of their nations. They are doomed to self-destruct. Their inheritance is an inheritance of pain and loss. Shalimar is Rushdie's tribute to a lost homeland which has been destroyed by violence. The destruction of Kashmir lies at the heart of this passionately written novel. Shalimar's original profession as a tightrope artiste comes a full circle when he becomes the member of an international terror organization. Walking the tightrope becomes the ultimate symbol and a metaphor for history. Shalimar the Clown analyzes the roots of violence and connects it to the divisions and conflicts caused in the world by neo imperialism and terrorism.

Published by Niyogi Books, Saanvri: the story of a concubine; is an appalling novel by the filmmaker Vinod Pande. Use of the prefix ‘filmmaker’ before the novelist’s name is intentional. The very tale of Saanvri appears more of a filmmaker rather than of a novelist. The story of Saanvri unfolds much like the narrative of a film script, which seems bound to be converted for the silver screen in future or the idea of its conception as a film might have come before its commencement as a novel.

Speeches of Swami Vivekananda and Subhash Chandra Bose: A Comparative Study deciphers the speeches of Swami Vivekananda and Subhash Chandra Bose to trace out the thought patterns, revealed through the language, and thus to find out the points of similarities and dissimilarities for the final evaluation without harming the reputation of the two. 

(Speeches of Swami Vivekananda and Subhash Chandra Bose: A Comparative Study. Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 2006. Pp. 118. Rs. 200/-. ISBN: 81-7977-149-0)

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's first novel, Rajmohan's Wife, has generally been considered as the first Indian novel in English. Makarand Paranjape even goes one step further to consider it as Asia's first English novel. Though the novel is constructed following the track of a romance and adventure story mingled with the elements of mystery and suspense, trysts, feudal intrigues, burglaries, abductions and love confessions, it also impressively delineates the feelings and passions of modern woman through the character of the heroine against the backdrop of an old, feudal, rural setting of Bengal. Thus the protagonist of the novel may be seen as a strong and firm character unhesitant to declare her own passion, but at the end also, she is deprived of the justice she deserves. This article is an attempt to show how far the novelist successfully depicts the heroine as a representative of the unshackled, new woman of modern India.

Anand Neelakantan’s novel 'Asura: the tale of the Vanquished' is a unique retelling of the epic story of Ramayana as it is from the perspective of the dead, defeated and “vanquished” Ravana. This paper analyses the human condition of the popular villain character Ravana in the text to gain understanding of his psychology and the political standpoint of the novel. In this pursuit to understand the becoming, or construction, of Ravana, this paper also aims to unravel the concept of evil as a construct.

The paper seeks to explore how the lunatic fringe is hell-bent on whipping up communal frenzy. As evidenced in the novels, most of the communal leaders are rank practitioners of politics and therefore, foment trouble for one or other paltry reason. The Indian ethos, which has long been extolled, has been at stake in the last part of the second millennium. It has also witnessed, as evidenced in the novels, the animosity and rancour between the secular and communal forces each trying to outwit the other. The ideologues of communal leaders would always like to harp on the contradictions between Hindu-Muslim traditions. Some of the worth mentioning differences between them come handy for communalists to subvert popular discontent of economic oppression in the main. A few novels are pressed into service to substantiate the argument.

Among debut Indian English novels, few have aroused as much controversy as Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, whether on theme or style of narration. Perhaps the most striking feature in a novel is the linguistic innovation the novelist makes. Arundhati Roy won the Booker prize of 1997 for the stylistic innovations in her debut novel. An analysis of Roy's narrative style is quite complicated, for its structure implies many levels of reading. She writes in a style markedly different from many of her contemporaries. To express her thoughts Roy invents an almost code-language suffused with cross-references, so that it seems the novel invents the language in which it is written. The God of Small Things clearly merits critical study for despite its veneer of simplicity, it is a complex postmodernist and ‗writerly' text that invites evaluation from various angles.

History and politics has been a persistent concern of the Indian English writers ever since the origin of English novel writing in
India. The last three decades have witnessed the publication of many novels that belong to the genre of postmodern
historiographic metafiction. Indian authors have engaged themselves in a retelling of the standard versions of history by both
experimenting with the narrative technique and a portrayal of multiple points of view that both decenters any authoritative form
of knowledge and hints at the possibility of multiple truths. In this article I will try to explore why Shashi Tharoor’s novel, Riot
can be described as a quintessential postmodern historiographic metafiction, by pointing out its chief features that are present in
the novel.
Keywords: Narrative, postmodern, historiographic, metafiction, history

"Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured." -- Mark Twain //
Anger is an emotion which involves a stronger uncomfortable and responsive to it as a perceived provocation. Often it indicates one's basic and violated boundaries. On the other hand anger may be an energising power. Therefore, the present paper aims to explore, the multi-dimensional nature of anger in Arundhati Roy's, 'The God of Small Things' and Aravind Adiga's, 'The White Tiger'.

Piya, the cetologist protagonist of Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide, includes binoculars and a GPS in the equipment that she carries with her on a research trip to the Sundarbans, or “tide country”, region of West Bengal and these can be seen as an index of the novel’s concern with cosmopolitan perspectives on the local.  The Hungry Tide provides multiple optics on the Sundarbans’ threatened eco-system of mangrove-forested islands and mudflats, representing the constant transformations it undergoes, because of daily tidal flows, with sections of land being temporarily submerged, and with seawater and freshwater intermingling.  It also demonstrates the extent to which the tide country has been a contested site, as a consequence of the differing visions of the many stakeholders in the region – state politicians, local inhabitants, conservationists and tigers among them – and at bipolar extremes has variously been seen as uninhabitable and as fertile territory for utopian projects.

Drawing on recent work on place and space in the field of cultural geography, this paper considers ways in which The Hungry Tide debates ecological issues and projects a human geography that attempts to mediate between cosmopolitan and subaltern voices.  The paper suggests that Piya’s situation, as an American of Bengali descent who is returning to her ancestral homeland on a professional mission, refracts back on the novel’s own positioning in relation to its localized South Asian setting. 

The online text of this article can be accessed through the Muse India site (www.museindia.com) and typing my surname in the Author’s Index section. It is not readily accessible by going straight to issue 24 of the journal.

Ecocriticism as a branch talks about interconnection between nature and culture, specifically the culture artifacts of language and literature. The word "ecocriticism" first appeared in William Rueckert's essay "Literature and Ecology: An experiment in ecocriticism" in 1978. However, it was only in 1990s that ecocriticism emerged as a separate discipline.

Penguin India for permission to reproduce an excerpt from Kishore Kale's Against All Odds (2000). I would also like to thank all the contributors who have carried out the ardous task of documenting the pieces, and the translators who have rendered them into English. My colleagues at the Bhasha Research Centre gave unstinting support and assistance at every stage of preparation of this volume. I would like to put on record my appreciation for their help. Contents Introduction ix Creation 1-7 Binti 3 Myth 9-60 From the Bhilli Mahabharat 13 From the Kunkana Ramayan 37 Epic 61-94 From Manteswamy 65 From Male Madeshwara

The purpose of this study is to locate in concrete terms the true identity of Indian English Fiction (IEF). Most studies conducted on this subject are focussed on the linguistic/formalistic aspects. Also, many novels belonging to IEF category represent Indian identity by virtue of representation of apparent cultural traits like attitudes, relationships, norms, practices, traditions, problems, etc., or socio-political problems. I argue that these two dimensions project the Indian identity only partially. There is the covert part at the base of the superstructure that is the most important element but has not been explored seriously by most writers due to ignorance or disinclination. This core is reflected in Indian philosophy, values and worldview. While explaining various ideas-both supportive as well as critical of Indianness, several novels have been cited to make the point clear which makes this study unique and promises to be helpful to future researchers.

Rapid developments in the fields of trade, market, commerce and telecommunication technologies, together with cultural confrontations at the global level are creating a paradigmatic shift in people's understanding of selfhood and identity. This book makes a serious attempt to trace and map out the making of contemporary post-national identities within the subcontinental cultural production of India and in its English Fiction. One of the structural ventures of this study is that these newer identities, which are basically fragmented, ruptured, hyphenated, and palimpsestic in nature, require new descriptions and new elaborations within the field of creative literature and literary criticism. In order to pursue its research on these lines, the present work contrasts the notion of subjecthood and identity with the earlier phases of Indian cultural imagination as represented in some of the pioneering works of Indian English Fiction that have now attained a canonical status. By analysing some of the predominant concerns that work as leitmotif in most of the Indian English novels, the book brings together and reinterprets some problematic concepts such as history, culture, religion, nation and nationalism and creates a theoretical axis upon which it charts insightful and engaging aspects of selfhood and identity.

Rohinton Mistry, an Indian Parsi writer who settled in Canada some four decades ago, is a product of postcolonial times. Beginning with Tales from Ferozsha Baag, a collection of short stories, Mistry has written till date three major novels, viz., Such a Long Journey, A Fine Balance and Family Matters besides a novella Scream. In all these fictional works, the community of Indian Parsis is mainly in focus.

Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan and Raja Rao are known as the trio of Indo-Anglian fiction writers. Anand, senior among the three and committed to creative writing, is a prolific writer. His popular novels include Untouchable, Coolie, Two Leaves and a Bud, The Sword and the Sickle, etc. Besides, he has more than seven collections of short stories to his credit. A committed humanist, he presents the predicament of the deprived people of society not only in his novels but also in his short stories. The paper explores the depiction of the realistic picture of the deprived and the untouchable people in his short stories, who are subjected to perpetual pains and sufferings in our society, and his concerns and sympathy for such people. The short stories discussed in this study include "Old Bapu", "The Barber's Trade Union", and "Lajwanti".

Why do we read/write fiction? The purpose of fiction has always been to entertain, but entertainment is not the only motive in totality. It carries much greater responsibility of enveloping and dealing with the aspects of social, cultural, personal, and impersonal narratives including numerous facts and several facets of lives we live in. Rupa Publications' Ananya – a bittersweet journey written by Shilpa Gupta is such a work of fiction, which deals with one of the most sensitive and complicated phase of a complete generation, (the teenagers) – who are usually caught between the webs of their demanding career as well as the dilemmas and surges of their age, growing up in today's troubled times and society, wherein people keep nagging around the ubiquitous nets of modernity and most often 'mistaken modernity'. It also raises a tremendous question towards the attitude which is carried on by the parents of recent times, those who keep busy in making their career and money; however, in the meantime, they lose their children. The novel essentially focusses on a young and talented girl – Ananya Sharma, whose aspirations are bigger than any other regular teenage­girl­next­door. Being a regular topper of her class, she enjoys competing with boys, rather than getting with them into the romantic spheres. Instead of her passion towards math and science, and complete focus on cracking the IIT entrance exams, she could not run away from her growing age, of course. Ananya's best friend Mohini's handsome and charming brother Rohit enters as the distraction in her life and she witnesses the streaming change within herself, later claiming to be in love. I found myself thinking about Rohit often. I would catch myself daydreaming and with some effort force my thoughts back to my studies. I wanted to ace my exams and make Papa proud. I admired him so much and so desperately wanted to be an engineer like him. I wanted to be a civil engineer so that I could build bridges, roads, and huge buildings. I always envisioned myself with a helmet, on a construction site, looking very important and commanding my team on various operations. But what she receives by the other end is not trust and affection, rather the dosage of longing and betrayal. She is left pregnant at the tender age of seventeen to face the atrocious world.

Pre-publication text of this 2007 paper, originally deliverd at the R.K. Narayan Birth Centenary Conference, Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, October 2006.

Abstract
A comment by Narayan on the “false geography” of his “imaginary town” provides the departure-point for a discussion of Malgudi, which argues against the frequently held view that it is a metonym for a quintessential India, or South India.  Taking its cue from the cultural geographer Doreen Massey’s assertion that “The identities of places are always unfixed, contested and multiple”, the paper contends that Malgudi is a multi-faceted and transitional site, an interface between older conceptions of “authentic” Indianness and contemporary views that stress the ubiquity and inescapability of change in the face of modernity.  It argues that Malgudi is far more than a physical locus, viewing it as an episteme that incorporates numerous ways of perceiving India – social, spiritual, mythological and psychological among them.  Focusing on Narayan’s representation of heterotopias, it considers the demarcations between “pure” and “polluted” space in The English Teacher, the simultaneity of different layers of Indian culture in The Financial Expert and the contrast between Malgudi and a larger Indian world in The Painter of Signs.

The paper attempts to study the novel of Anita Desai
In Custody through Bakhtin’s concept of ‘chronotope’ as interaction
between time and space. The spatial and temporal aspects of the novel
help us analyse the characters and the perspective of the writer. The
novel is set in the post partition Delhi, which appears to be strikingly
different from the ‘Delhi’, which was the capital of the Mughals.
William Darlymple has described the ‘old Delhi’ in The City of Djinns
which has been referred in the paper to create a better understanding.
The novel deals with the life of a Hindi lecturer, Deven who lives an
uneventful life at Mirpore. He loves Urdu poetry and the events are set
in motion when he gets a rare opportunity to meet the famous Urdu
poet, Nur. He faces many troubles to finally meet him but is ultimately
disillusioned. At a symbolic level, the characters become symbols for
places and spaces. The temporal aspect is apparent in the use of Urdu
language in post partition India. Nur is symbolic of the decaying state
of the Urdu language. The spatial context is discussed with reference
to the city of Delhi and small town Mirpor. If the poet Nur is symbolic
of old Delhi, Sarla (Deven’s wife) is most representative of the town
they live in. Thus an attempt has been made in the paper to understand
these characters, their symbolism and spatial setting and its significance.
Keywords: Space, City, Time, Language, Chronotope.

In modern times, joint families are breaking up and sense of brotherhood among people is fading away. The result increases feeling of loneliness, alienation and selfishness among individuals.These are a few evils of our modern world. Novels of Anita Desai have the glimpses of tradition and modernity between which the Indian society is swinging. The Indian woman now presents herself at a new threshold, different from middle age. She is now a developed woman, competent and worldly, but when she sees her shadow, she identifies it with a stranger's face. She is not that woman who had waited in her dreams. What she looks, is a worldly woman bound with chains and shackles. These chains and shackles are the traditions which had made her to accept the compulsion of the given roles that she had never integrated into her personhood. She had been a daughter-in-law, wife and mother but not herself.

Krupabai Satthianadhan's Saguna (1887-88), initially serialised in the Madras Christian College magazine is rightfully regarded as the first Indian spiritual autobiographical novel. Any study of this narrative compels one to explore the influence of the Evangelical autobiography on this genre in nineteenth century India as well as to engage with the distinctive aspects of an Indian Christian woman's spiritual quest in British India. This study also argues for focus on the spiritual life of Indian Christianity as a valid way of according recognition to the experiences and struggles of the life of a religion that is outside of mainstream religious discourse in contemporary India.

The patriarchal societies that existed in India have compromised Indian consciousness in order to have great impact on the half of the women population. Men thought that women are not worthy of education and they themselves considered Independent, superior and omnipotent. Men have always been bread winners and women was to share what he gained. It was a totally masculine world. No We can see the characteristics of women in ancient India. There is tremendous potential, untapped and not utilized. Women were generally treated as 'Abla nari' means helpless women. Also women were confined to four walls of the household. But things have changed and slow transformation was seen within. As civilization changed, society Transformed, Indian women were to escape the shadows without proving themselves. Women were ready to reveal their splendour and the beauty of the world they lived in, where not doing anything productive and simply spending time inside. When we analyse the rise of women literature in Indian context, the country had a situation of not accepting independent, bold, brave and dominating women. They were against the prevailing social norms and social order. There existed unwritten rules like, women should be warm, gentle, decent, dependent, submissive, ready to accept anything that the patriarchy ask them to. When we look into one if the ritual that was performed in India includes 'Sati'. 'Sati' was a very problematic ritual. When we look that in the light of contemporary situation. It was self immolation of women by jumping into the fire that burns their husband, this practise evidently states that there was no standing for independent or single women, the unwritten law was to end their lives when the male partner dies. A very strange fact was that, when Sati was finally abolished by British law, there were women protesting against the abolition of the practice. From a society holding a very old consciousness, the women have developed into winning international recognition for writing and other contributions to the social distribution. The literature of women have a great role in development of women from that to this. Women got equal educational opportunities when the Colonial rule came and made education accessible to everyone.

Mulk Raj Anand is a great pioneer in the domain of Indian-English fiction. He distinguishes between the upper class and lower class of people in the society through his first trilogy. He is free from East-West complex. Undoubtedly, he believes in humanism and realism. He touches the themes of untouchability in Untouchable (1935), poverty, hunger and exploitation in Coolie (1936) and labour problem in Two Leaves and a Bud (1937). The writer shows his sympathy and compassion for the downtrodden and the poor people who face infinite problems to establish their identity. This paper is a study of discrimination and exploitation in his first trilogy.

Bapsi Sidhwa's characterization of Lenny Sethi in her fourth novel, the 1991 historical fiction Ice-Candy-Man, is formulated by the heterogeneous impact of the 1947 partition of India on the psychopathology of children. This paper observes how the trope of trauma problematizes the embodiments of childhood, contradicting its axiomatic paradisiacal nature. Parallel to the chaos of communal massacre, mass migration, dysfunctional parenting and the marginality of women and children, Lenny's traumatic experience surpasses a singular-episodic trauma, and is laden with a multiplicity of source factors, thereby generating "complex trauma" (van der Kolk et al., 2007, p. 202). The child narrator acquires symptoms of irregular curiosity, hyper-vigilance, somatic complaints, fear, PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and transgresses specific social norms. Lenny is a choreographed child, a problem-child, taxonomized as the 'adult-child' in the paper. Now, the question is whether to see the ensuing malfunction symptoms as a diagnostic criterion or adaptative human resilience? Drawing from Anjali Gera Roy's concept of "intangible violence" (Roy, 2020, p. 43) the paper examines textual openings where the stages of childhood and adulthood deconstruct itself, approximates, and overlaps inside each other; taking cues from a relatively less-documented narrative angle of the child victim of partition.

This paper analyses Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss in terms of identity crisis. Everyman living in the world is bound to have an identity. Everyone undergoes a conflict with him/her self. He/she remains dangling between two identities and struggles a lot. The Inheritance of Loss can be studied from the perspective of identity crisis. The story unfolds various complex issues as it progresses. Desai shows how the lives of Gyan, Sai and her grandfather as well as the lives of their cook and his son are suffered and tossed at horrible turning points. Almost all the characters are the inheritors of loss in terms of dislocation of place, wealth and progress. All of them suffer from sense of loss. Through the delineation of opposite characters Desai illustrates the unfortunate consequences of imperialism. While Jemubhai's quest for identity is discussed through adoption of parameters of class of the whites, Gyan's is through an expression of 'resistance' and vengeance. 'The Inheritance of Loss' represents the mimic individuals struggling for lost identity. This is a story of alienation occurred both in the homeland and abroad.

Indian English Fiction allowed a more comprehensive study of the Woman’s
Question. Women were used as symbols of rebellion, heroic values and passionate
desires. From Arundhati Roy to Jhumpa Lahiri and Anita Nair, the novel conveys a
vast “feminine mystique”. Writing about almost anything under the sun, these
women novelists are aware of their society, principles, and ideologies, convention
along with the power, the strengths and weaknesses of the woman.

The novel The Nowhere Man is written by an Indian
emigrant—Kamala Markandaya in 1972. It is based on the theme of
racial discrimination in a country one has come to live and adopt. It
deals with the life, experiences, and pangs of an Indian emigrant in a
foreign country experiencing a longing for home along with its associated
memories and remembering the times spent at home and making it as
one of the earliest diasporic novel. The protagonist of the novel—
Srinivas (and his wife) left India for England due to his active participation
against the colonial masters. Their two sons—Laxman and Seshu
having born in England have both acclimatized themselves to the
anglicized way of life and culture. However, they were made to realize
again and again by the host society that they are Indian. They faced
the situation of inbetweenness, and unbelongingness. And, at last,
Srinivas who went to England to escape from the onslaught of
colonization become a man who has lost all hope, suffering loneliness
and ultimately left a nowhere man in a nowhere city.
Key words: England, Expatriation, Diaspora, Identity.

The Indian diaspora of the post independence phase have registered themselves as remarkable phenomena in the history of world literature by producing works of cultural, national, social and global significance. Diaspora, which traces its history back to the Jewish exile from Babylon has become one of the highly debated discourses today on account of the unprecedented migrations across the continents. True to Amitav Ghosh's view that " the modern Indian diaspora has now become an important force in world culture and literature " (Ghosh 1989:73) the expatriate or immigrant writers of Indian origin have excelled in all the genres of literary writing. Preoccupied with the questions pertaining to the origin, identity, loss, alienation, memory and homesickness they often try to interrogate the stereotypes and subvert the established authority. Rooted invariably in such issues, the following discussion is focused on Meena Alexander's distinct perception of diasporic milieu pertinently expressed through her poems. Writers of the Indian diaspora have produced a wide range of literature that entails the process of self exploration and bridges the gap between the past and the present. Though the majority of diasporic texts consist of fictional writing yet we do have some significant poetic compositions too. B.Rajan, Alexander etc. are some notable figures about whom Bruce King remarks in the following manner: Indian expatriate poets do not write from the position of a distinct foreign community, such as the exiled black or West Indian novelists, but their writing reflects the perspective of someone between two cultures. They may look back on India with nostalgia satirically celebrating their liberation or asserting their biculturalism, but they also look skeptically and wryly on their new homeland as outsiders, with a feeling of something having been lost in the process of growth. The ability to tolerate, accommodate and absorb other cultures without loosing

The essay compares and contrasts Krishna Udayasankar’s science fiction fantasy Aryavarta Chronicles (2012–14) and Amruta Patil’s graphic novel Adi Parva (2012). It argues that while these works are vastly different from each other, they are both part of the push by Indian English publishers to ‘ride’ the mythological wave. The essay situates the texts within their production and cultural contexts, arguing that Udayasankar and Patil are part of the expanding Indian English literary circuits where globalisation is making its effects felt through multinational publishing companies, social media presence and heavily influential Anglo-American aesthetics of high fantasy, high art and the modern age of comic books

Indian English Fiction has been impressive and has attracted attention widely. With the passage of time, it has witnessed a rapid change, from being deeply affected by the Raj to being Vernacular. It is, therefore, very important to know and realize such changes taken place in every field of Indian life and society and for that a brief history of Indian English Fiction might be one of the best media of its expression. These changes from socialism to individualism, from sharing to winning and from spiritualism to materialism reveal reflections of change from tradition to modernity in Indian society. Though this is a natural process as history changes with the passage of time, it is noticed that people are continuously losing their inner happiness and self-control in spite of having material comforts. MLA Citation: Chauhan, Abnish Singh. “A Chronological Study of Indian English Fiction with Social Perspective.” Shodh Sanchayan, vol. 2, nos. 1-2 , July 2011, pp. 41-44

Abstract:- Human rights are held by all persons equally, universally, and forever. Human rights are those basic standards without which people cannot live in dignity. To violate someone’s human rights is to treat that person as though she or he were not a human being. Mulk Raj Anand is one of the few prolific Indian writers in English who have earned a good name as major novelists.  He still continues to enjoy the reputation of being a stalwart in the field of Indian writing in English.  Perhaps no other writer has been so intensely and actively associated with literary creation, with arts and with the cultural mainstream of the country as Anand has.  His novels and stories are read and admired all over the world. All his novels deal with the underprivileged sections of Indian society. The most recurrent theme in his novels that strikes the reader is his treatment of the oppressed and suppressed classes of society.  His subject is man. It is this kind of Anand's love of humanism, a principle of all embracing humanity, and his immediate and ultimate concerns as a writer and passionate sincere sympathy for the downtrodden sections that continually inspire and stimulate him to write continuously and prolifically. In Untouchable, human rights appeared to be restricted to those who control the civil society based on religious interpretations and the political regime. Hinduism prevents the Hindus from touching the sweepers or even touching anything a sweeper has touched. For example, in Untouchable we see the confectioner throws the "jalebis" to Bakha and his assistant splashes water on the nickel coins Bakha has placed on the shoe-board. Furthermore, human rights are denied and abused because of the social and religious structure in India during that time. The high castes Hindus are given the authority to degrade the lower-caste. Are the human rights an arrival to the acceptance of equality and freedom of all people or is it a departure from the beginning of a process? Human rights can be interpreted as principles of moral propriety, a set of objectives toward achieving a better world. They advance mostly legal, sociological, psychological, philosophical and political discourses. The focus of this paper however is how human rights connect to literature, mainly to a particular form of literary text, the novel.
Here in this chapter I will examine Mulk Raj Anand’s “Untouchable” and “Coolie” with a focus on their elaborations on human rights. It is divided into three parts. In first part, I would like to point out the history and development of human rights in the world and an attempt has been made to point out the close relation between human rights and literature. In the second part of chapter, the novels will be examined from point of view human rights and in the last part certain conclusions have been drawn

The central idea of Cultural ecofeminism lies in its rebellion against the
regressive force of patriarchy. It analyses the value of the culture that has the hypodermic effect, keeping its cadres hooked in aggressively instrumentalizing the women and ecology. It seeks to (re) store and retrieve the fragmented history of women and (re) write their past. Cultural ecofeminism encourages the association of women and nature that are based on gender roles and biology. It draws its root from nature-based religion and goddess-worshipping. The critical oxygen came from cultural ecofeminists believes that such associations allow women more sensitivity and affinity towards nature. India is known for its rich cultural heritage. It bears multiculturalism. The country has witnessed various
colonial invasions. The cultural chutnification of post-colonial India is affecting the natives both directly and indirectly. The conventional practice of cultures has compulsive orderliness, easily acceptable and normative. The paper examines Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things” (1997), focusing on cultural ecofeminism in India with special reference to women and ecology. The critical study of the characters and natural settings of the novel will point out the current situation of Indian women and nature.
Keywords: Ecofeminism, Culture, Religion, Women, Ecology, Arundhati Roy

Postcolonialism focuses on literature by the colonised people. It attempts to articulate their identity and reclaim their past in the face of that past's inevitable otherness. Postcolonial writings are attempts at reviving the ethnic cultures, traditions, beliefs and languages. It also aims at developing the national identity in the wake of colonial rule. Rohinton Mistry as a postcolonial diasporic writer has liberated Indian English Literature from the colonial yoke. Mistry tries to overcome the stigma of marginality. Mistry's writings project the Parsis as 'Other' by foregrounding the race as the believer in the traditional values, being conservative and ardent follower of religious rituals and customs amid the secular industrialization and modernization process. Mistry foregrounds the alternative history that challenges the official version of history and illustrates how the powerless have the potential to narrativise the nation. For Mistry language seems to be an important factor as it is tied up with issues of identity. Mistry's narratives are essentially a mode of postcolonial resistance which celebrates the Indian English by capturing the rhythms of the Parsi-Gujarati idiomatic expressions with the most distinctive phonetic and syntactic features. Mistry has also experimented with linguistic hybridity and celebrated the unique Parsi idiom in his writing. He has also experimented with linguistic hybridity and celebrated the unique Parsi idiom in his three novels. Mistry's writings are the history of displacement. This article analyses these postcolonial aspects of Mistry's novels in details.

The article traces the Telangana Movement in the backdrop of its unique history, culture and ethos, and the many voices of protest and reclamation in poetry that articulated the struggle  of millions of people against hegemony. First published as 'Introduction' to the book, "Ode to Frontline Formations" in 2013, one year prior to the formation of Telangana State, it was subsequently published in "Kakatiya Journal of English Studies" in 2014.

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's first novel, Rajmohan's Wife, has generally been considered as the first Indian novel in English. Makarand Paranjape even goes one step further to consider it as Asia's first English novel. Though the novel is constructed following the track of a romance and adventure story mingled with the elements of mystery and suspense, trysts, feudal intrigues, burglaries, abductions and love confessions, it also impressively delineates the feelings and passions of modern woman through the character of the heroine against the backdrop of an old, feudal, rural setting of Bengal. Thus the protagonist of the novel may be seen as a strong and firm character unhesitant to declare her own passion, but at the end also, she is deprived of the justice she deserves. This article is an attempt to show how far the novelist successfully depicts the heroine as a representative of the unshackled, new woman of modern India.

Cultural liminality is the condition of the immigrant. Jhumpa Lahiri has beautifully portrayed this condition in her novel 'The Namesake'.  My paper seeks to unravel the various dimensions of this condition like nostalgia,  sense of exile and in-betweenness, maladjustment, etc.

Several papers, articles and dissertations have appeared on the convergence of Indian and Western literary traditions in the writings of Raja Rao. This article attempts to take a different, though not a solitary stand and argues that Raja Rao's literary lineage is not in the convergence of the east and the west, nor is it in the history and romance; instead it is in the binary systems of Marga and Desi, the two contesting literary traditions present in almost all the languages of India. For the striking similarity they exhibit, this article clubs with the Marga and Desi, the two literary conceptsthe Frontyard and the Backyard -that the noted Indian litterateur, U R Ananthamurthy employs while describing the literary scenario in India. In order to elucidate its theory, this writing takes for analysis the two arguably best novels of Raja Rao -Kanthapura and The Serpent and the Rope -and contends the need for re-assessing the value and place of Raja Rao in the now fairly established tradition of Indian Literature in English.

A reference point for feminist perspective in Urdu literature for long, with the publication of English translations of a few of her works, Ismat Chughtai assumed a powerful voice in gender studies in Indian literatures.  An important aspect of her fictional substance is that when she began writing in the 1940s there was hardly any feminist writing proper in the West. Margaret Atwood, Simone de Beauvoir, the icons of western feminism appeared much later.  Any discussion of ‘gendering Indian narratives’ would be incomplete without an analysis of Ismat Chughtai’s work. She grew up in the face of many constraints: She was a woman, a Muslim, and a writer with a penchant for uninhibited portrayal of feelings. This essay examines some of the events mentioned in her non-fictional work, "My Friend, My Enemy" translated by Tahira Naqvi.

India, after suffering the pangs of humiliation and indignation of British imperialism, experienced the bliss of Independence on 15 th August 1947, but the freedom struggle in colonial India, at the same time, resulted in the creation of two-nations—Pakistan and India. The tragedy of partition of Indian subcontinent not only diluted the pleasure of liberation but also entailed a massive and violent evacuation of Sikhs and Hindus from newly born Pakistan and similarly Muslims from Hindu dominated India. Some families moved voluntarily seeking congenial space for themselves but there were many who suffered forced migration followed by the heart-throbbing heinous acts of incessant murder, loot and rape. Millions of displaced people thus became refugees overnight abandoning their entire establishments including home, properties, families and culture, as borders were drawn over older ethnic and linguistic identities.

The book Indian Women Novelists in English: Art and Vision is a volume of twenty five research articles on contemporary Indian women novelists and their works ranging from Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Manju Kapur, Shobhaa De, Meena Alexander, Githa Hariharan, Arundhati Roy to the younger generation of novelists Anita Nair, Kiran Desai and Jhumpa Lahiri along with two less explored novelists Rita Garg and Nayeema Mahjoor. Three regional writers- Sarah Joseph, Qurratulain Hyder and Mahasweta Devi are also part of this volume, though their write-ups are in regional languages, yet their translated works in English have earned wide popularity. The volume with its diversity of topics will instill knowledge into the critical minds and open many unopened doors from where many unexplored regions of knowledge will be revisited.

Cultural liminality is the condition of the immigrant. Jhumpa Lahiri has beautifully portrayed this condition in her novel 'The Namesake'. My paper seeks to unravel the various dimensions of this condition like nostalgia, sense of exile and in-betweenness, maladjustment, etc.