Postcolonial Modernity and the Indian Novel: On Catastrophic Realism (New Comparisons in World Literature)

'Postcolonial Modernity and the Indian Novel is an incisive study of how literature represents three "catastrophic" events of twenty-century India. Advancing original readings of both famous and less-known works in English and Bengali, and blending historical accounts with literary analysis, Bhattacharya interrogates the politics of literary form and reclaims postcolonial realism as an energetic and politically committed mode of apprehending social reality.' -- - Ulka Anjaria, Professor of English, Brandeis University, USA 'Bhattacharya has produced an illuminating and eloquent study of crisis and catastrophe in modern Indian fiction. The lens of 'catastrophic realism' opens up a range of important texts to sharp critical analysis and generates fine new understandings of authors from Rushdie and Mahasweta Devi to O.V Vijayan and Nabarun Bhattacharya. An essential companion for studies of the novel in India.' - Dr Priyamvada Gopal, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, UK This book argues that modernity in postcolonial India has been synonymous with catastrophe and crisis. Focusing on the literary works of the 1943 Bengal Famine, the 1967-72 Naxalbari Movement, and the 1975-77 Indian Emergency, it shows that there is a long-term, colonially-engineered agrarian crisis enabling these catastrophic events. Novelists such as Bhabani Bhattacharya, Mahasweta Devi, Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Nabarun Bhattacharya, and Nayantara Sahgal, among others, have captured the relationship between the long-term crisis and the catastrophic aspects of the events through different aesthetic modalities within realism, ranging from analytical-affective, critical realist, quest modes to apparently non-realist ones such as metafictional, urban fantastic, magical realist, and others. These realist modalities are together read here as postcolonial catastrophic realism. Acknowledgements 7 Praise for Postcolonial Modernity and the Indian Novel 10 Contents 11 1 Modernity, Catastrophe, and Realism in the Postcolonial Indian Novel 13 The Historical Context: The Theory of Modernisation and Modernity 15 The Dialectic of Crisis and Event 20 The Dynamics of Realism: Understanding Form and Mode 26 Writing the Indian Postcolonial: Framing Catastrophic Realism 31 History and Temporality: Outline of the Chapters 38 References 48 2 Disaster and Realism: Novels of the 1943 Bengal Famine 52 The 1943 Bengal Famine: History and Thought 52 Understanding the Form of Disaster: Interrogating Famine and Realism 55 Bhabani Bhattacharya’s So Many Hungers!: The Disastrous Decade and the Analytical-Affective Mode 61 Amalendu Chakraborty’s Ākāler Sandhāne: Metafictional Mode of a Post-Famine Postcolonial Society 76 References 101 3 Interrogating the Naxalbari Movement: Mahasweta Devi’s Quest Novels 107 The Naxalbari Movement: History and Politics 108 Representation of the Movement and the Form of Critical Irrealism 111 Mahasweta Devi’s Naxalite Novels and the Use of Quest Mode 116 Linear Plot and Non-linear Action Time I: Dreams and Dialogues in Mother of 1084 118 Linear Plot and Non-linear Action Time II: Dialogue and Memory in Operation? Bashai Tudu 128 The Interventionist Narrator 137 The Non-death of the Insurgent 141 References 160 4 The Aftermath of the Naxalbari Movement: Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Urban Fantastic Tales 166 The Movement and Its Aftermath 166 Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Fiction: The Lumpenproletariat and Urban Fantastic Mode 167 The Dialectic of Rational and Irrational I: Spatial Unevenness in Harbart 172 The Dialectic of Rational and Irrational II: Urban Filth in Kāngāl Mālshāt 184 References 205 5 Writing the Indian Emergency: Magical and Critical Realisms 210 The Emergency: Authoritarianism, Violence, and Representation 210 Allegorising the Emergency: Salman Rushdie’s Magical Realism 217 Critical Realism I or Realism from Above in Nayantara Sahgal 225 Critical Realism II or Realism from Below in Rohinton Mistry 235 References 264 6 Conclusion 270 References 276 Index 277 Front Matter ....Pages i-xiv Modernity, Catastrophe, and Realism in the Postcolonial Indian Novel (Sourit Bhattacharya)....Pages 1-39 Disaster and Realism: Novels of the 1943 Bengal Famine (Sourit Bhattacharya)....Pages 41-95 Interrogating the Naxalbari Movement: Mahasweta Devi’s Quest Novels (Sourit Bhattacharya)....Pages 97-155 The Aftermath of the Naxalbari Movement: Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Urban Fantastic Tales (Sourit Bhattacharya)....Pages 157-200 Writing the Indian Emergency: Magical and Critical Realisms (Sourit Bhattacharya)....Pages 201-260 Conclusion (Sourit Bhattacharya)....Pages 261-267 Back Matter ....Pages 269-280