South asian literalture and its themes

South asian literalture and its themes

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  SOUTH ASIAN LITERALTURE AND ITS THEMES Post-colonialism, identity/selfcrisis, language, diaspora, and women suppression
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  Introduction The term "SouthAsian literature" refers to the literary works of writers from the Indian subcontinent and its diaspora. South Asia emanates from the great Indian sub-continent and comprises India, Pakistan,Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal and Afghanistan, who have deep rooted connection through a shared history and culture. The experience of sharing a history and culture that is common, yet utterly personal, makes the literature of the region unique. It provides the South Asians a common basis for understanding their position in the contemporary world. Encompassing Indo-Pak literature majorly, themes aim to criticize problems of: Post-colonialism, identity crisis, women oppression, diaspora, language thereby highlight historical, social and literary perspectives found in South Asian Literature.
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  Post- colonialism Postcolonialism is theacademic study of the cultural legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the human consequences of the control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. In this context, enveloping colonialist literature of the subcontinent, consisting of India and Pakistan also known as Indo-Pak.
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  • The euphoriaof independence tempered by the horror of the bloody partition of British India into the nations of India and Pakistan gave birth to a multi-layered and complex literature. • Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children (1981), Kushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan (1956), and Saadat Hasan Manto’s Toba Tek Singh (1955) reflect the ambiguity of political independence, expressing the identity crises of individuals in an unstable world. • With the promise of independence delivered, the realities of nation-building along with its mundane challenges of corruption, inefficiency, and confusion began to be portrayed by writers and poets of post-independence India and Pakistan. • Raag Darbari by Srilal Shukla (Hindi, 1968) is a novel that traverses the villages of North India, revealing the hilariously inadequate sociopolitical structures. The novel also demonstrates the use of Hinglish (a blend of Hindi and English) that soon became very popular with Indian writers.
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  Identity/ Self Crisis The immenselydiverse ranges of ethnicities, colonization and submerge of cultures, has drastically effected how Identity is perceived in South Asian Literature. Therefore, exploring the Identity crisis and struggles with belongingness have rooted a significant place in peoples minds post partition as reflected in the Literature mirroring it.
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  • Notwithstanding theadvent of decolonization that began in the 1940s, South Asian literature is still in the formative phase of its identity, a comprehensive account of identity is found in the diverse range of literary compositions by the Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi writers. • Anita Desai’s stories are a passionate search for identity and voice. Her Clear Light of Day (1980) is a fine example of this search. The female characters of Desai are embittered and their fight for their identity is, though unrelenting, foredoomed. • The first generation of Pakistani writers wrote with the awareness that they were no longer Indian and sought to emphasize their new national identity. For a time, therefore, the anglophone Pakistani novel continued to focus on how the identity of the new country and its citizens was taking shape. • Zulfikar Ghose’s 1967 work, The Murder of Aziz Khan, attempted to map this cultural transition as Pakistan grew into its adolescence, the writer employ a dark tale of the unscrupulous Shah brothers plotting to exploit the older, eponymous Aziz Khan — a stand in for traditional values.
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  • Post-Partition meanta conflation of Muslim and Pakistani identities. The Muhajir (Muslim migrants to Pakistan from India), thus, based their sense of belonging to the new country on religion and embarked upon a quest to dissolve themselves into the national framework. • Imperialism consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a global scale. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively, white, or Black, or Western, or Oriental.
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  Language The issue oflanguage with reference to identity has always been a topic of passionate argumentation among the postcolonial South Asian writers. The conflict was not only picking a language for the literature be it English, Hindi, or Urdu, but also for themselves.
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  • The culturallyalienating consequences of a language as well as an education brought by the colonizers to the Indian Subcontinent. • Ever since the Independence, the crucial debate has been about the legitimacy of English as a medium of literary expression and the status of indigenous writings in English. • After the Independence, the issue arose as to whether a foreign language, rooted in a faraway literary tradition and which was learnt mainly from books, could ever be tuned adequately and delicately to the task of representing indigenous experience. • On the other hand, people like A. K. Ramanujan came with a more blunt estimation who maintained that the issue was not whether the South Asian writers should or should not write in English but “whether they can. And if they can, they will” (as cited in Lal, 1971, p. 444). • This is how purely linguistic considerations emerged and problematized the question of appropriate language for their literary expression. However, a large number of writers were prepared to write in English with increasing self- assurance and an admirable poise. At the same time, some of the writers also employed and/or bent the English language while maintaining a love-hate relationship with it.
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  Diaspora Diaspora refers topeople who have been displaced or dispersed from their homelands, and who possess and share a collective memory and myth, and the nostalgic reminiscence of “home” (“imaginary homelands,” to use Rushdie’s term) or an inherited ideology of “home” becomes a personal identity as well as a collective identity of members of a particular community.
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  • Indian diasporicexperience, for instance, has been extensively documented by authors like Bharati Mukherjee, Meena Alexander, Menon Marath, Dom Moraes, Farrukh Dhondy, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri, and many others. • Diasporic theorists such as Avtar Brah and Robin Cohen propose the idea of a home as a mythic one, a place of desire in the diasporic imagination, a place to which there can be no return, despite the possibilities of visiting the place that is seen as the place of origin. • Diaspora is not rooted in one location, and live in the memories of their “Imagined homelands.” In the new geographical location, they negotiate their culture and that of the host nation.
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  Women suppression Gender oppression isone of the main themes of South Asian writers. Progressive writer movement turned out to be a turning point for the female writers as it welcomed unorthodox and untraditional ways. Atrocities against women in sub-continent has caused much upheaval on international level as well. Most writers of sub-continent try to use these issues as themes of their work in order to criticize, enunciate or comment on these problems.
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  • Historically womenwere have been underrepresented, deprived of education, considered concubines, socially disrespected, suppressed on raising their voices, and been a victim to patriarchal norms. • women writers projected those issues which were easily overlooked and incomprehensible to male writers. Stories of injustice and discrimination, religious hypocrisy, inhuman superstition regarding women’s medical treatment were highlighted by women writers of progressive movement • Writers like Rahmat Begum (aseer) talked about serious social issues Bashir-un- Nisa Begum (bashir) wrote about purity of feelings and kind heartedness, Safia Begum (Qamar) wrote about “emancipation of women from societal oppressions but all this was written in subtle undertones as society didn’t encourage such opinionated women. • After fighting hard to become visible on a male dominant literary canvas, women like Rashid Jahan wrote on the subject of women freedom and their rights. Ismat Chughtai wrote about the suppression of sexual desires by women and its psychological and emotional impacts. Khatija Matoor and Hajra Masroor wrote along the same lines as well.
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  • Daniyal Mueenuddinand Arudhati Roy who are two of the leading writers of sub-continent talk about both new and old issues of economic and gender suppression. In god of small things by arundhati roy, the two characters, Ammu and Mammachi symbolize women oppression. • Domestic violence was a subject also touched upon by Tehmina Durrani, Taslima Nasrin and Mukhtar Mai. As they argue, the three authors have disclosed their victimization to the readers, thus formulating a literary testimony. • South Asian literature discusses women by both imperialism and patriarchy. In postcolonial literature, gender and sexuality have become prominent themes in the last decades of the 20th century. • Gender and the role of women in the postcolonial countries have been the focus in the writings of Anita Desai, Ama Ata Aidoo, Suniti Namjoshi, Buchi Emecheta, and Nawal El Saasdawi. • Postcolonial gender studies examine how class, caste, economy, political empowerment and literacy have contributed to the condition of women in the Third World countries. Another interesting area of study is the impact of “First World Feminism” on Third World writers while exploring the possibilities of Third World Feminism.
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  Thank You By Sakina AliAsghar BS ENGLISH V 02-100181-021