(Re)constructing an Imagined Indian Community: Myth, Tradition and Subversions in R. K. Narayan's Short Fiction. A Postcolonial Reading
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López Bonilla, Cruz MaríaEditorial
Universidad de Granada
Director
Aguilera Linde, Mauricio DamiánDepartamento
Universidad de Granada. Departamento de Filologías Inglesa y AlemanaMateria
Cultura Identidad colectiva Narayan, R. K., 1906-2001 Literatura Postcolonialismo India
Materia UDC
82 82-3 82-32 6202
Date
2016Fecha lectura
2015-12-18Referencia bibliográfica
López Bonilla, C.M. (Re)constructing an Imagined Indian Community: Myth, Tradition and Subversions in R. K. Narayan's Short Fiction. A Postcolonial Reading. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2016. [http://hdl.handle.net/10481/42199]
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Tesis Univ. Granada. Departamento de Filologías Inglesa y AlemanaAbstract
Traditional culture and subverted myths are subjects that characterise Narayan’s
vast literary production. His subtle humour and a westernised education acquired under
British colonial rule pervade Narayan’s literary style, denoting a clearly recognisable
Hindu personality. The most outstanding peculiarity of Narayan’s works, however, is the
construction of a credible world of his own, Malgudi. This Indian town offers
an
excellent
tool
by
which
we
might
study
his
views of the Indian identity and his
construction of an imagined community: such studies enable us to apprehend better what
Indianness means from a western perspective.
This dissertation examines a number of short stories by Narayan, focusing on five
ways in which they reflect the creation and development of an ideal Indian nation. The
first chapter describes the complex caste situation of a symbolic colonial family that
evolves from an ancestral rural community to an urban middle-class postcoloniality. The
members of this Indian family try to counterbalance the corrosive effects of modernity
with the transmission through storytelling of the family’s memory and its signs of
identity.
Certainly, the British Empire brought important reforms into a system of
education that was based on caste divisions. However, these reforms were also intended
to facilitate British control over the Asian subcontinent. Many corrupted structures of
feudal origin were therefore left untouched. In time, secularism and secular education
were attacked by the most traditional wings of different religious groups, while emergent
secularist currents struggled to create a national identity that could blend old traditions
and modern traits. The second and third chapters deal with the singularity of an India that
has never been free from communal conflicts, conflicts that, from time to time, have led to violent outbursts. Narayan’s artistic impression of the way in which communal
violence only impairs conflict resolution explains the focus of my analysis on this subject.
Although the occurrence of violence blights urban and rural societies equally, the
village communities in Narayan’s short fiction face the additional consequences of
industrialisation and agrarian reform. The population exodus from rural communities for
economic reasons is one of the themes scrutinised in the fourth chapter, along with
mythic and ethnic atavisms that are characteristic of these communities. As this grand
flux of people generates frictional movements on the basic structures of society, these
structures inevitably modify and social behaviours are seen to change in response. Among
these changes, some of the most relevant to this study are the incorporation of the Dalit
population and the Indian woman into modern/urban postcolonial society, a shift which
challenged the patriarchal dictums of the traditional joint family system.
Overall, this study considers Narayan’s use of humour and irony in his short
stories, the ends to which these techniques are deployed, and the postcolonial perspective
expressed in the stories, when taken together. It also explains how Narayan constructs an
imaginary Indian nation-ness, one that is distorted and frayed at the seams as a direct
consequence of the author’s evolution towards mature consciousness of the realities of
India. In short, this dissertation contests some of the archetypical generalisations about
this popular Indian writer while, to my mind, casts a renewing light on his otherwise
amusing oeuvre.