Redefining Nationhood and Nationality through Historiographic Metafiction in the Shadow Lines

Purpose: Postmodernism is a general movement that developed in the late 20th century across the arts, philosophy, art, architecture, and criticism, marking a disappearance from modernism. The term has been more often used to describe a historical age which followed after modernity. Postmodernism is a period of uprising which refers to ups and downs in each walk of life and the different disciplines of knowledge be it literary work, philosophy, or science. Postmodern literature revokes some modern literary methods by transforming them. Historiographic Metafiction is a contradictory term that consists of two opposite categories such as history and metafiction. It is having dual representations because such writings reflect the reality as well as fictional position. An attempt is made by the Post-colonial Indian English writers to liberate Indian English literature from the foreign bondage. Historical events such as agitations, migration, movements, refugees, colonial hegemony; social-economic and cultural problems like encounter of the east-west, caste, and class became the concerns of the writers. Design/Methodology/Approach: This paper is prepared by making a study of Primary source and accumulating secondary data from educational websites and written publications. This qualitative research is carried out by studying and interpreting the existing knowledge on the subject. The paper tries to analyze the historiographic metafictional features as depicted in The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh. Findings/Result: After reviewing many articles, books and thesis it has been found that the paper aims to study Amitav Ghosh's notions like ‟ Nationhood and National distinctiveness in "The Shadow Lines” as a reminiscence novel, highlights a few historical happenings like the Second World War, the Swadeshi movement, and the Partition of India in 1947 and communal uprisings in Bangladesh and India. The ardent nationalism upheld by the protagonist that is the narrator’s grandmother is questioned and re-analysed. Ghosh searches for appropriateness of traditional identity such as nation and nationalism. Originality/Value: This paper makes a study of the major character Thamma with special reference to her concerns of Nationhood and Nationality. The identity of Thamma in the novel is given prominence being a woman she stands for her thoughts and identifies her as an individual who faced tragedy but still who had the courage to raise her voice till the end. Paper Type: Analytical Research paper.

Religious Division and Otherness as Portrayed in 'Shame' and 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness'

After the partition of India in 1947, religion has become a major catalyst for division and othering in most of South Asia. Bangladeshi author and activist Taslima Nasrin was exiled from her country, primarily for revealing the mistreatment of the Hindu minorities in Bangladesh in her novel Shame. Indian author Arundhati Roy has also faced severe backlash due to her portrayal of the mistreatment of the Muslims in India in her novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Religion has become an extremely fraught issue in South Asia, making almost any criticism of religious fundamentalism a highly perilous endeavor. Yet, both Nasrin and Roy had the courage to do that. This paper explores how the aforementioned novels expose the process of othering of the religious minorities in India and Bangladesh by highlighting the retributive nature of communal violence which feeds on mistrust, hatred, and religious tribalism – a cursed legacy that can be traced back to the violent partition of the Indian subcontinent based on the two-nation theory.

Writing as Resistance: A Reading of Mohsin Hamid’s Select Novels

Mohsin Hamid, one of the powerful voices to emerge from Pakistan engages with themes that go beyond the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 and portrays contemporary issues relevant to Pakistan. In the process, Hamid consciously performs the role of the mediator and attempts to explain his country to the readers. In his two novels, Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist Hamid not only represents modern-day Pakistan but also offer resistance to the association of Pakistan with terrorism thereby replicating the postcolonial tendency to “write back” and reclaim one’s identity. Furthermore, he offers a nuanced understanding of the hostilities that prevail between India and Pakistan. Fictional representations of Islam and Muslim identities by writers of Pakistani origin have received increased attention, especially in the post 9/11 political climate with its attendant reductive representations of Islamic fundamentalism. The ‘war on terror’ which has had the effect of equating Islam and Muslims with terrorism has become a dominant political narrative in Europe and the US over the last decade. It is such diffused representation of Muslim identity which has evoked criticism in the ‘orient’ and Hamid shines bright in this regard.

Locating the Storyteller in Silent Waters: Sabiha Sumar’s Cinematic Tale of Shared Histories and Divided Identities

In her multi award-winning feature film Silent Waters (2003), Pakistani woman filmmaker Sabiha Sumar connects the socio-political traumas of the Partition of India and creation of Pakistan (1947) with the onset of military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization period (1977-1988) in Pakistan. Presenting a story based on real-life events, the film focuses on the impact of religious fundamentalism and nationalism on women in particular. Examining Silent Waters as an example of “history on film/film on history” (Rosenstone 2013), and film as an “agent, product, and source of history” (Ferro 1983), the discussion identifies and analyzes the filmmaker’s own tacitly embedded location and participation in the filmic narrative as an experiential ‘auto/bio-historiographer’, arguing for the value of this new paradigm in Cinema Studies.

Suffering and Rejuvenation in the Novels of Chaman Nahal

This article discusses the partition between India and Pakistan. After partition how people became mentally disable and suffering from so many problems. One of the greatest novelists Chaman Nahal who has written the most famous novel “Azadi” during the partition of India and Pakistan in which he writes about historical and political events and rejuvenation, before and after the declaration of British division in June 1947 to vacate India after partitioning it.

Socio-Political Imaginings of the Kolkata Maidan

<p>The legacy of colonial spatial hegemony in Kolkata is investigated here with focus on the idea of <i>public </i>space particularly, the open <i>maidan</i>, defined by predominantly colonial buildings. This former centrepiece of British spatial expression of authority and pomp is appropriated by diverse uses but the edges can be read as a built record of the city’s tryst with colonial rule for 200 years. Evolving from a strictly Palladian palette to a more accommodating Imperial Indo-Saracenic, the continuity of colonial vocabulary is only rarely broken by modern buildings. Parallel situations in other British colonies e.g. the <i>padang</i> in Singapore, have undergone considerable redefinition and re-articulation, often consciously undermining the erstwhile hegemonic position. The paper would trace the ambivalent image of the <i>maidan</i> over the years, to uncover, albeit partially, the patterns to which the colonial, post-colonial and even the neo-liberal State limits itself in imagining this heterogeneous space. </p> <p> </p> <p>The evolving socio-political imagination of the <i>maidan</i> and in that the cityscape would be traced on the basis of how media has captured it at critical historical junctures, the samples varying across time and across media. <i>Maidan</i> as a backdrop of riots, rallies and atrocious human sufferings in the wake of the Partition of India would be captured from newspaper clippings and narratives. Post-independence nation coming to terms with modernization and subsequent characterization of the <i>maidan</i> as a site for civic unrest, a first of a kind public space for sports clubs, picnics, fairs- an embodiment of personal freedom- the urban other- would be understood from stills from Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy and the Calcutta Trilogy. The attempt here would be to look for broader patterns of postcolonial urbanism by specific focus on evolving socio-political re-imaginings of colonial urban public spaces.</p>