Tracing the Socio-Political Trends of Socialist Thought in Pre-Partition South Asian English Fiction: Historical Contexts and Literary Narratives

Le résumé fourni par la source

The paper discusses the socio-political tendencies of socialism in the pre-partition South Asian English fiction of Mulk Raj Anand in the texts of Untouchable (1935), Coolie (1936) and Two Leaves and a Bud (1937), Ahmed Ali in the text Twilight in Delhi (1940) and Raja Rao in the novel Kanthapara (1938). The study traces the theme of these novels in relation to the socio-political paradigm of colonial South Asia based on the historical circumstances, the theme of the novels and the manner in which they highlight the issue of class relations, labour exploitation, structural inequality, social decline and collective action. It has been evident throughout the discussion that Anand is a realist in his narratives, Ali illustrates how structural change is affecting the old hierarchies and that Rao is a Gandhian in her storytelling with a different model of the political mobilization. The combination of these pieces of writing demonstrates that early South Asian English fiction did not shy away of the socio-political arguments of the pre-partition era but reflected in a variety of albeit simultaneously related views on justice, inequality and social change. This research paper is a contribution to the current body of scholarship because it predicts the importance of class and labour as the primary categories of early English fiction reading in the region.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.