A short window into south asian literature, and its themes. Helful for people just starting off in this literary genre

1. SOUTH ASIAN
LITERALTURE
AND ITS
THEMES
Post-colonialism,
identity/self crisis,
language, diaspora, and
women suppression

2. Introduction
The term "South Asian 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.

3. Post-
colonialism
Postcolonialism is the academic 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.

4. • The euphoria of 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.

5. Identity/
Self Crisis
The immensely diverse 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.

6. • Notwithstanding the advent 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.

7. • Post-Partition meant a 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.

8. Language
The issue of language 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.

9. • The culturally alienating 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.

10. Diaspora
Diaspora refers to people 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.

11. • Indian diasporic experience, 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.

12. Women
suppression
Gender oppression is one 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.

13. • Historically women were 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.

14. • Daniyal Mueenuddin and 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.

15. Thank You
By
Sakina Ali Asghar
BS ENGLISH V
02-100181-021