Indian Nationalism Concealed as Yearning Reminiscence: Rohinton Mistry's Narrative

Notably, McCurry’s neat and predictable photographs of India, taken over the course of 40 years, are more popular than Singh’s more realistic, chaotic and exciting images. Cole argues that this popularity is because of McCurry’s portrayal of places and people due to orientalism, based on conventional preconceptions of historical India. They are our colorful fantasies of old India realized on glossy

The new worlds emerging from such phenomena go beyond the personal, for the country they left behind is changed as well as the one to which they go. The Indian diaspora contains a high number of professionals, making for a global expatriate community with a strong measure of influence and clout. Chaudhuri’s novel is a gently told, convincing glimpse into the life of one ordinary non-resident Indian, stated in deceptively simple, elegantly rendered.

Momaday's book collapses conventional divides between myth and history: by fusing the two he suggests that the conventional white conception of history as an enclosed and protected category is inherently suspect, and without speaking of politics makes a claim for other, equally valuable ways of knowing. However, in this sense his method of storytelling is political, because he suggests that the Indian ways of interpreting experience are just as valid as

Through the prescribed framework of magic realism, the novel allows its multitude of characters, belonging to diverse cultural backgrounds, to appraise and originate their own versions of Indian history, thus subverting British colonial versions of history. Magic realism becomes obligatory to communicate the postcoloniality of India, and within its framework, the novel explores and presents a postcolonial history of its own. The cultural and social hybridity, along with the historical hybridity present within the novel allows the text to exemplify the major themes of the novel and postcoloniality itself: the formation and telling of history, self, and narratives. The novel effectively and noticeably depicts the problems of postcoloniality and

An event that has relation to war today is the tension in the northern region of India, Punjab, where the Sikh holy book was ripped up and thrown. Many Sikhs gathered in a peaceful protest, trying to bring to justice the people who were responsible, but the police ended up shooting and killing two peaceful protestors. Simran Jeet Singh, is one of the authors, who writes on this topic. He takes up this topic, because it represents part of the unjust that happened to Sikhs in 1984 where they were killed and murdered in the thousands by the Indian government. Singh says, “I was born in the United States in the summer of 1984, during the height of the anti- Sikh violence in Punjab” (Singh 1). He goes on to say how he feels the pain of his Sikh brothers and sisters who were killed in the year 1984, for their religious beliefs. Background about Singh shows us the importance of mediated narratives, as they show that Singh is trying to raise awareness about the issues going on in Punjab in an attempt to try to avoid the destruction that happened in 1984. Another one of these authors is Nirmala Ganapathy, who is part of The Straits Times. She takes up the same interest as Singh, as she works to raise awareness on the issues affecting her homeland of India. She writes about why Sikhs have been blocking major roads in India and the influence this has. Her curiosity is what has

Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of fictional short stories by highly acclaimed author Jhumpa Lahiri. The book illustrates the lives of first- and second- generation Indian immigrants as they face the challenges and struggles of living a culturally conflicted life in the United States. Lahiri herself was a part of an immigrant household. She was born in London in 1967. Her mother and father were both immigrants from India. They moved to the United States when she was two years old. Because her mother wanted her to grow up aware of her Indian, specifically Bengali, heritage and traditions, they frequently visited their relatives in Calcutta. Although Interpreter of Maladies is considered fictional, critics suggest that it is also autobiographical because most of them are adapted from her friends’, parents’, and acquaintances’ lives. This paper will focus on three specific stories in the book namely: When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, Mrs. Sen’s, and The Third and Final Continent. The aforementioned stories deal with the struggles and challenges faced by most immigrants, specifically, how they deal with the clashing cultures of their old heritage and their new world. Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies illustrates that although migration entails struggles and sacrifices, the expatriate characters decided to move to a foreign land because of their hopes for a better future, but the strong sense of attachment to their Indian heritage made it difficult for some to adapt to their

The interactions between the two are seen in the author’s perspective with the ideas, cultures, and reflections of the various locations and how the author’s identity evolves as a result. This builds on the works of David Armitage, Linda Colley, Emma Rothschild, and Maya Jasanoff, who attempt to bridge the historiography of British Empire and nation, creating one field. As Rothschild and Jasanoff demonstrate, personal accounts reveal different perspectives of empire that of the contemporary people, of which I wish to contribute. Additionally my project builds upon historiography that endeavors to link the empire globally rather by metropole or periphery. Other historians link these concepts together through their analysis of the East India Company and its relationship to Britain. These approaches allow for my project to look at the lower classes through larger perspectives that make their mobility a global concept through a personal

Sebastien Manrique, a priest who went on a journey to India for missionary work, writes his experiences to educate his audience as well as entertain the audience. While writing this well-constructed article, Manrique keeps his audience in mind by providing exceptionally detailed experiences that he had on his journey. He is able to portray his journey as if the reader were truly there alongside him. The reader is able to imagine the drastic situations he went through on his journey due to the “monsoon floods, voracious mosquitos, appetizing peacocks, violent fever and affronted villagers – as well as threatening Mughal officials.” He is also well aware of what he must do in order to continue his narrative without boring his audience, “give a detailed description of their appearance and control, as well as of the arrangements made in them.”

In this novel Lahiri’s experiences of growing up as a child of immigrants resemble that of her protagonist, Gogol Ganguly. Lahiri belongs to the second generation of Indian Diaspora whose ongoing quest for identity never seems to end. They feel sandwiched between the country of their parents and the country of their birth. They are to maintain ties between the ideologies of these two countries which are poles apart. But in this process they are caught between acute identity crisis from where there is nowhere to go. Lahiri finds herself quite a stranger to both of the countries - in India she is an American and in America she is an Indian

Rohinton Mistry’s (38) first person autobiographical narrative of his trip to the Himalayan city of Dharmsala is on the surface a quaint, visual, biographical account of a journey to an Indian town that helps the author come full circle: His childhood visions of the city he dreamt of visiting and its reality as he sees it in adulthood are different in many ways, yet his childhood and adulthood converged in serene moment that epitomizes Mistry’s glorification of his native India: “To have made this journey, I felt, was to have described a circle of my own. And this understanding increased the serenity of the moment” (51). However, a rhetorical analysis of the speaker in the essay, which as mentioned is a first person autobiographical narrative lead us to an agenda that is hidden below the surface: Indian nationalism and pride. This is not to insinuate that the author has some hidden, malevolent agenda to thrust Indian nationalism upon the reader. Rather, the tools of rhetorical analysis reveal the subtle undertones of the essay in a manner that perhaps even the author is not full conscious of. Rhetorical analysis depends on part in gauging what effect a text has on its intended audience (Leach 218). Thus, the strength of rhetorical analysis lies in the textual evidence that is presented as proof of an analytical claim and that is what is attempted throughout this analysis.

The book, Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri, is a collection of short stories that shows the culture and immigrant experience of Indians. Lahiri paints a picture of what the Indian diaspora was like. We are able to step into the footsteps of the book’s characters, and we can see what it was really like to live during their time.

Sen observes that external images of India in the West often tend to emphasise the difference - real or imagined - between India and the West. There is a considerable inclination in the Western countries to distance and highlight the differences in Indian culture from the mainstream of Western traditions, rather than discover and show similarities. Western writers and media usually misses, in important ways, crucial aspects of Indian culture and traditions. The deep-seated heterogeneity of Indian traditions, in different parts of India, is neglected in these homogenised description of India. The perceptions of Indian culture, by those who weren't born and raised in India, tend to be one of at least three categories, writes Sen:

If one picks up an English novel from the Indian subcontinent written during the ‘60s and 70s’, and one will most probably come across incidents dealing with the Partition of India and Pakistan, a period so violent and gruesome in scope and defying imagination. The novel A Bend in the Ganges illustrates the hatred and acrimony that prevailed during the period of the Partition, and the novel is an important addition to the whole. Manohar Malgonkar concentrates on the tumultuous years of the phase of pre-Independence era of Indian polity and history in the novel. Malgonkar, one of the leading Indian novelists in English, is primarily known as a Maratha historian. He turned to the writing of fiction with a purpose - the purpose of pure entertainment.

Markandaya’s feministic study in her novel A Silence of Desire essentially address feminism and post-colonial themes in present day India. Kamala Markandaya is remembered for her writing about cultural clash among urban and rural societies in south India. She learned a traditional way of life and values with the aid of coronary heart. She analyses husband – wife relationship in the contemporary era. The theme is the conflict between religion and reason. The novel is generally reflective of multiplied and restive middle magnificence stimulated by tensions and resolutions odd to its psychology and temperament. The theme is added as a domestic trouble but develops into a consideration of how religion and the performing out of that religion are met. The movement it generates provides the important snap shots of the changes occurring within the society. In this dissertation work, however, it is to derive the inner elements of faith, process of evolving a faith and acceptance of faith for a peaceful way of

E.M. Forster’s classic novel “A Passage to India” tells the story of a young doctor, Dr. Aziz, and his interactions with the British citizens who are residing in India during the time of the British Raj. Throughout the novel, the reader gets many different viewpoints on the people and the culture of India during this point in history. The reader sees through the eyes of the Indian people primarily through the character of Dr. Aziz, and the perceptions of the British through the characters of Mr. Fielding, Adela Quested, and Mrs. Moore. Through the different characters, and their differing viewpoints, the reader can see that Forster was creating a work that expressed a criticism that he held of the behavior of the British towards their Indian subjects.