The Nation of India in Contemporary Indian Literature

"This book discusses selected works by six contemporary Indian novelists writing in English - Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie, Nayantara Sahgal, Arundhati Roy, Ruchir Joshi, and Rupa Bajwa - all of whom have made the Indian nation a central theme in their fiction. All these writers respond, in varying ways, to the idea of India as united in diversity, a construct most readily associated with the nationalist vision of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister. In considering India's past and looking towards the future, they struggle with and attempt to extend the available language of cultural diversity."--Jacket Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgments......Page 7 Introduction......Page 8 1 Compromise and Contradiction in Jawaharlal Nehru’s Multicultural Indian Nation......Page 22 2 Vikram Seth’s Real(ist) India......Page 42 3 Parodying Nehru in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and The Moor’s Last Sigh......Page 66 4 All in the Family: Nayantara Sahgal’s Indian Home......Page 96 5 Reexamining Indian Nonalignment: Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things......Page 122 6 States of Dystopia: Imagining Future Indias in Ruchir Joshi’s The Last Jet-Engine Laugh......Page 142 7 Unity in Diversity Beyond the Nation-State in Rupa Bajwa’s The Sari Shop......Page 164 Conclusion......Page 186 Notes......Page 192 Works Cited......Page 212 B......Page 230 E......Page 231 H......Page 232 M......Page 233 P......Page 234 R......Page 235 U......Page 236 W......Page 237 This book investigates representations of the nation of India as characterized by unity and diversity in the works of six contemporary novelists, linking their work to important political, historical and theoretical writings.