Postcolonial Modernity and the Indian Novel

This book argues that modernity in postcolonial India has been synonymous with catastrophe and crisis. Focusing on the literary works of the 1943 Bengal Famine, the 1967–72 Naxalbari Movement, and the 1975–77 Indian Emergency, it shows that there is a long-term, colonially-engineered agrarian crisis enabling these catastrophic events. Novelists such as Bhabani Bhattacharya, Mahasweta Devi, Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Nabarun Bhattacharya, and Nayantara Sahgal, among others, have captured the relationship between the long-term crisis and the catastrophic aspects of the events through different aesthetic modalities within realism, ranging from analytical-affective, critical realist, quest modes to apparently non-realist ones such as metafictional, urban fantastic, magical realist, and others. These realist modalities are together read here as postcolonial catastrophic realism. 

• Postcolonial modernity
• Catastrophic realism
• Indian novels
• Indian fiction
• 1943-44 Bengal famine
• Naxalbari Movement
• State of Emergency
• British modernisation programmes
• British Raj
• Modes of realism
• Global realisms
• Bhabani Bhattacharya
• Amalendu Chakraborty
• Mahasweta Devi
• Nabarun Bhattacharya
• Salman Rushdie
• Nayantara Sahgal
• Rohinton Mistry

“Through insightful textual readings coupled with ample quotations from the texts under discussion, and offering brief contexts of the events of historical crisis, the book is successful in capturing the attention of global readers unfamiliar with the catastrophes and novels discussed in the book. … This could be a promising avenue of inquiry for future scholars. The easy flow of writing and the profuse references to world literary works are sure to enlighten readers inside and outside the academy.” (Avijit Pramanik, Postcolonial Text, Vol. 16 (1), 2021)

“Postcolonial Modernity and the Indian Novel is an incisive study of how literature represents three “catastrophic” events of twenty-century India. Advancing original readings of both famous and less-known works in English and Bengali, and blending historical accounts with literary analysis, Bhattacharya interrogates the politics of literary form and reclaims postcolonial realism as an energetic and politically committed mode of apprehending social reality.” (Ulka Anjaria, Professor of English, Brandeis University, USA)

“Bhattacharya has produced an illuminating and eloquent study of crisis and catastrophe in modern Indian fiction. The lens of 'catastrophic realism' opens up a range of important texts to sharp critical analysis and generates fine new understandings of authors from Rushdie and Mahasweta Devi to O.V Vijayan and Nabarun Bhattacharya. An essential companion for studies of the novel in India.” (Dr Priyamvada Gopal, Cambridge University, UK)

“In this urgent and compelling study, Sourit Bhattacharya makes a case for reading catastrophe -- famine, insurgency, political terror – as the hermeneutic lever with which to unlock the complexities of aesthetic form in Indian postcolonial fiction. His admirable historical contextualization and careful analysis of novels from six decades following Indian independence suggest a harsh, unforgiving realist commitment within both modernist and postmodernist narrative, producing the poetics of ‘catastrophic realism’. Bhattacharya’s book should be required reading for students of postcolonial fiction.” (Supriya Chaudhuri, Professor Emerita, Jadavpur University, India)

“This is an original book that offers a welcome discussion of literary realism within a postcolonial context. It explores the possibilities of constructing a new perspective on literary history centred around catastrophic events throughout the 20th century. Bhattacharya’s detailed and engaging readings will undoubtedly makean important contribution to the postcolonial revision of modernity, and the role of literature within the dynamics of history.” (Dr Eli Park Sorensen, Assistant Professor of English, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong and author of Postcolonial Studies and the Literary: Theory, Interpretation and the Novel (2010))

• School of Critical Studies, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

  Sourit Bhattacharya

Sourit Bhattacharya is Lecturer in Postcolonial Studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. He is a co-editor of Nabarun Bhattacharya (2020) and Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry.

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