Understanding Nation and Postnationalism Narrative and Context in South Asian Literature

Introduction

Shruti Das

Section I: Understanding Nation: Narrative and Performance

1. The Collapse of the Nation in Anita Desai's Baumgartner's Bombay

Anna Beatriz Paula

2. Performing Region, Realizing Nation

David Wesley

3. Re-contextualizing Identities and Ideologies of a Nation

Priyanka Singh

4. A Postnational Reading of Ethical Universality in Vishnu Sharma’s Panchatantra

Shruti Das & Ranjit Mandal

5. Mapping the Border, Mapping the Mind: A Study of Sunanda Sikdar’s Dayamayeer Katha (A Life Long Ago)

Goutam Buddha Sural

6. Subnationality Vis-À-Vis Self-Determination in Indira Goswami’s The Shadow of Kamakhya and Anjum Hasan’s Lunatic in My Head

Harit Sambhabana Khandayatray

Section II: Nation and Postnationalism: Ideology and Narration

7. Apocalyptic Discovery of Cultural and National Identity in the Colonized Protagonists of Amitav Ghosh Novels: Evidence from The Glass Palace and Flood of Fire

Roohi Andalib Huda

8. A Critique of Democracy: An Analysis of Arundhati Roy’s Select Non-Fiction

Anupama Maitra

9. Nation- Building and Development Discourse vis-à-vis Indigenous Rights: A Study in Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s “The Adivasi Will Not Dance”

Bishakha Sarkar

10. Family and Indian English Novel: A Study of Anita Rau Badami’s The Hero’s Walk

Rama N.H. Alapati

11. Persecution, Exile and Exodus of Kashmiri Pandits - Home away from Home in Our Moon has Blood Clots

Meenakshi Kulkarni

12. Undoing the Folded Lie: Reflections on the Subaltern Will to Subversion

S M Mahfuzur Rahman

13. Rabindranath Tagore’s Nationalism and Postcolonial Dissensus in Tasher Desh

Sharbani Banerjee Mukherjee

14. Rebel as/in Creative Annihilator: Resistance in Nazrul Islam and Bairagi Kainla

Komal Prasad Phuyal

Biography

Shruti Das is Professor and Former Head at PG Department of English, Berhampur University, Odisha, India. Her academic contributions extend globally, having lectured as a visiting faculty at universities in Poland (2017) and Brazil (2024). She is listed in the ALA Directory of Scholars at Princeton University, USA, and has received accolades such as the ALSE Biennial Travel Award for her research on Indigenous tribes of Odisha. She has authored 13 books and over 100 research papers as journal articles and book chapters.”

'This volume of essays examines the phenomenon, practice and politics of nationalisms and postnationalisms in South Asia. Literature as one of most powerful mediums of expressions complete with sentimentality, polemic, metaphorization and rhetoric, comes in as a handy lens to examine such practices in the essays. Covering a wide range of texts from antiquity's Panchatantra to the 19th century, and then to the contemporary, the essays unpack strategies of inclusion and exclusion, contestation and affirmation in practices and ideologies of the nation-state. Attentive to representational modes, from theatre to longer fiction, the volume is a useful introduction to the field, and would be of interest to literary studies scholars but also to students in the Social Sciences who may want to see how political ideas shape, and are shaped by, institutions such as Literature.'

-Pramod K Nayar, FEA, FRHistS, Professor of English, and UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies, University of Hyderabad

'To understand human relations in the 21^st Century we need nuanced perspectives on local and transnational structures and the globalizing pressures impacting them. Approaching these relations from varied literary and theoretical perspectives, Understanding Nation and Postnationalism: Narrative and Context in South Asian Literature explores modern writing from the Subcontinent that offers invaluable insights into the societal patterns that shape nations.'

-Thomas Jay Lynn, Professor of English, Penn State Berks

'The volume is a timely interrogation of and engagement with South Asian texts, reimagining the nation as a fluid cultural construct while mapping post-national thoughts in an increasingly globalised world caught between acceptance and resistance. The voices available here will prompt critical dialogues among scholars of postcolonial and literary studies.'

-Shamsad Mortuza, Professor, University of Dhaka and Vice Chancellor, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh