Part of
Landscapes of Realism: Rethinking literary realism in comparative perspectivesEdited by Svend Erik Larsen, Steen Bille Jørgensen and Margaret R. Higonnet
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXIII] 2022
► pp. 991–1005
Edited by Svend Erik Larsen, Steen Bille Jørgensen and Margaret R. Higonnet
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXIII] 2022
► pp. 991–1005
Realism in the colony
Initially, realism in India was a result of colonial import, a means to modernize India’s literary culture, which was thought by the British and European colonizers to be excessive and irrational. Yet, in the early twentieth century, realism was claimed by Indian writers themselves as an apt mode in which to imagine their own national future beyond colonial constraints. This malleability of realism suggests that at any given moment the significance of realism, in India and elsewhere, must be historically situated rather than assumed. This is clear throughout India’s postcolonial history as well. While novels in the manner of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981) rejected realism and its assumed epistemological and cultural transparency to unravel the complexity of the period of postcolonial transition, newer Indian writers have embraced realism as a means of rethinking the nature of politics in the twenty-first century.
Keywords: colonialism, postcolonialism, Indian literature, economic liberalization, contemporaneity, realism
Article outline
- 1.Realism and anti-realism
- 2.Realism in the twenty-first century
- 3.Adiga, Prakash and Bhagat
- 4.Coda: A contemporary realism
-
Notes -
Works cited
References
Works cited
Adiga, Aravind
2008 The White Tiger. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Anand, Mulk Raj
1935 Untouchable. New Delhi: Penguin.
Andrade, Susan Z.
2009 “The Problem of Realism and African Fiction.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 42.2: 183–89. 
2012 “Realism, Reception, 1968, and West Africa.” Modern Language Quarterly 73.3: 289–308.
Anjaria, Ulka
2006 “Satire, Literary Realism, and the Indian State: Six Acres and a Third and Raag Darbari.” Economic and Political Weekly 41.46: 4795–800.
2012 Realism in the Twentieth-Century Indian Novel: Colonial Difference and Literary Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2015 “Realist Hieroglyphics: Aravind Adiga and the New Social Novel in India.” Modern Fiction Studies 61.1: 112–35.
2017a “Great Aspirations.” Review of One Indian Girl by Chetan Bhagat. Public Books, July 31, 2017. Accessed July 21, 2020. [URL]
2017b “Twenty-First-Century Realism.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. Accessed July 21, 2020. [URL].
Bhabha, Homi
1984 “Representation and the Colonial Text: A Critical Exploration of Some Forms of Mimeticism.” In The Theory of Reading, edited by Frank Gloversmith, 93–122. Sussex: Harvester Press.
Bhagat, Chetan
2004 Five Point Someone: What Not to Do at IIT. New Delhi: Rupa.
2005 One Night @ the Call Center. New Delhi: Rupa.
2008 The 3 Mistakes of My Life. New Delhi: Rupa.
2009 2 States: The Story of My Marriage. New Delhi: Rupa.
2011 Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption, Ambition. New Delhi: Rupa.
2014 Half Girlfriend. New Delhi: Rupa.
2016 One Indian Girl. New Delhi: Rupa.
Chakraborty, Samhita
Chaudhuri, Amit
2006 “ ‘I Wish Indian Writing in English Were Less Triumphant.’” DW, October 3 2006 Accessed January 29, 2016. [URL]
Dhaliwal, Nirpal
2014 “Chetan Bhagat: Bollywood’s Favourite Author.” The Guardian, April 24 2014 Accessed September 18, 2017. [URL]
DiMartino, Nick
2008 “Nick Interviews Aravind Adiga.” The Shelf Life. University Bookstore, October 6 2008 Accessed February 22, 2018. [URL]
Gikandi, Simon
2006 “Preface: Modernism in the World.” Modernism/modernity 13.3: 419–24.
Holmes, Christopher
2013 “The Novel’s Third Way: Zadie Smith’s ‘Hysterical Realism.’” In Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond, edited by Philip Tew, 141–53. London: Bloomsbury.
Jeffries, Stuart
Joshi, Priya
2015 “Chetan Bhagat: Remaking the Novel in India.” In A History of the Indian Novel in English, edited by Ulka Anjaria, 310–23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kanaganayakam, Chelva
2002 Counterrealism and Indo-Anglian Fiction. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Kapoor, Mini
2014 “My Competition is apps like Candy Crush or WhatsApp, says Chetan Bhagat.” India Today, August 29 2014 Accessed September 18, 2017. [URL]
Majumdar, Saikat
2016 “Indian Writers Under Siege: A Roundtable.” Public Books, March 1 2016 Accessed March 3, 2016. [URL]
Mill, James
1975 The History of British India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mishra, Pankaj
2014 “Narendra Modi and the New Face of India.” The Guardian, May 16 2014 Accessed November 8, 2017. [URL]
Prakash, Uday
2001 Peeli chatri wali ladki. New Delhi: Vani Prakashan.
2008 The Girl with the Golden Parasol, translated by Jason Grunebaum. New Delhi: Penguin.
Premchand
, (Munshi) 2000 “Sahitya ka Uddeshya [The Purpose of Literature].” In People’s Art in the Twentieth Century: Theory and Practice, 74–87. Delhi: Jana Natya Manch.
Rushdie, Salman
1981 Midnight’s Children. New York: Avon Books.
Shingavi, Snehal
2013 The Mahatma Misunderstood: The Politics and Forms of Literary Nationalism in India. London: Anthem.
Shukla, Srilal
1968 Raag Darbari. New Delhi: Rajkamal Prakashan.
Smith, Zadie
2008 “Two Paths for the Novel.” New York Review of Books, November 20 2008 Accessed February 22, 2018. [URL]
Sorensen, Eli Park
2010 Postcolonial Studies and the Literary: Theory, Interpretation, and the Novel. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wood, James