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AARRTTIICCLLEE

AA SSttoorryy ooff IInnddiiaa iinn aann IInnddiiaann VVooiiccee:: AA PPoossttccoolloonniiaall RReeaaddiinngg ooff

TThhaarroooorr’’ss TThhee GGrreeaatt IInnddiiaann NNoovveell

MMaannjjeeeett KKuummaarr RRaaii

Assistant Professor- English Govt. Degree College

Chandrabadni - Uttarakhand

Abstract

The present paper has been divided into two parts; the first part (I) deals with the basic understanding or fundamental ideas of the recently emerged phenomenon known as Post-colonialism and the second part (II) critically analyses Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel in this light. This paper seeks to explore the elements of post-colonialism as presented in the text The Great Indian Novel.

Intermingled with myth, history and culture, Tharoor’s novel playfully covers the time-span from the 1930s to 1980s of India and its political history. Tharoor, by choosing the grand text the Mahabharata, explores the characters and incidents with new and fresh (postcolonial) perspectives. Tharoor shows his colossal force to debunk and lampoon the colonial hangover as well as to transform the epic into a parody or story through a contemporary fictional re-telling of same through the aforementioned novel. This paper aims at finding the postcolonial elements and discourse existent in the text by a meticulous study and analysis of the novel The Great Indian Novel in the light of postcolonial theories.

Key Words: Myth, Story, The Mahabharata, Satire, History, Culture, Identity, Colonial(ism),

Postcolonial(ism), Imperial(ism), Capital(ism), Rule/Domination, Reclaim/Reassert



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A Parade of Colonial/Postcolonial Debates

The late 1980s and early 1990s witnesses a huge metamorphosis of emotion and thinking in the

field of contemporary literary and cultural theories, particularly known as postcolonialism.

“Postcolonialism” became a central concept for much of the contemporary cultural and literary

criticism or discourse. Introducing the concept of postcolonialism Robert J. C. Young writes:

“Since the early 1980s, postcolonialism has developed a body of writing that attempts to shift the

dominant ways in which the relations between western and non-western people and their worlds

are viewed” (02). “The authors of The Empire Writes Back (1989) argue that the term

‘postcolonial’ should be seen as covering ‘all the culture affected by the imperial process from the

moment of colonization to the present day’ (qtd. in Andrew Bennet & Nicholas Royle,

Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory 214). “Postcolonialism”, in the words of Charles

E. Bressler , “is an approach to literary analysis that concerns itself particularly with literature

written in English in formerly colonized countries” (265).

It is interesting to know that the content of the term existed and lingered in form of ‘The Third

World Literature’ or ‘Commonwealth Literature’. The term Commonwealth Literature fell into the

rough weather in the hands of writers from erstwhile British colonies, when it was drawn upon

them that the writers of the colonizer (i.e. England) do not form a part of this body of literature.

Hence, a new term, post-colonial (often postcolonial) literature is coined to suggest de-centering of

colonial literature. It usually excludes literature that represents either British or American

viewpoints, and concentrates on Writings from colonized cultures in Australia, New Zealand,

Africa, South America, and other places and societies that were once dominated by European

cultural, political and philosophical tradition. In the case of India, this includes novels, poetry

drama and non-fictional writings which were written both during and after the British Raj.

Broadly speaking, the Post-colonial Literature and Theory is an aftermath of cultural clashes. It

investigates the situation what happens when two cultures clash and one of them with

accompanying ideology empowers and deems itself superior to other. John McLeod in his famous

introductory book Beginning Postcolonialism considers ‘postcolonialism’ as “an umbrella term”

which, he suggests, “due to the variety and wide range of our field, it is worth considering” (03).

Thus we see that the meaning of the term is not so easy to comprehend and to deal with.

Highlighting the complexity of the term Leela Gandhi writes:



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In the last decade (1980s & 1990s) postcolonialism has taken its place with theories

such as poststructuralism, psychoanalysis and feminism as a major critical discourse

in the humanities. As a consequence of its diverse and interdisciplinary usage, this

body of thought has generated an enormous corpus of specialized academic writing.

Nevertheless, although much has been written under its rubric, ‘postcolonialism’ its

remains a diffuse and nebulous term. (viii)

By putting a bifurcation between postmodernism, poststructuralism and postcolonialism Raman

Selden draws a significant difference: “Thus, postmodernism and poststructuralism direct their

critique at the unified human subject, while postcolonialism seeks to undermine the imperialist

subject (229).”

Although there is little consensus regarding the proper content, scope and relevance of postcolonial

studies, as a critical ideology it has acquired various interpretations. Like deconstruction and other

various postmodern approaches to textual analysis, postcolonialism is a heterogeneous field of

study where even its spelling provides several alternatives. The critics are not in agreement

whether the term should be used with or without hyphen: i. e. ‘Post-colonial’ and ‘postcolonial’

which has different meanings. John MacLeod writes in this concern:

The hyphenated term ‘post-colonial’ seems more appropriate to denote a particular

historical period or epoch, like those suggested by the phrases such as ‘after colonialism’,

‘after independence’, or ‘after the end of Empire’. However, for much of this book we will

be thinking about postcolonialism not just in terms of representations, reading practices

and values. These can circulate across the barrier between colonial rule and national

independence. Postcolonialism is not contained by the tidy categories of historical periods

or dates, although it remains firmly bound up with historical experiences. (05)

Thus he prefers to use the term postcolonialism instead of post-colonialism which seems to be

more suggestive, clear, apt and thought-provoking.

Defining its scope as well as commenting on its relevance Peter Barry writes: “If the first step

towards a postcolonial perspective is to reclaim one’s own past, then the second is to begin to

erode the colonialist ideology by which the past had been devalued” (193).



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As a historical period, post-colonialism stands for the post - Second World War decolonizing

phase. Although the colonial country achieved political freedom, the colonial values do not

disappear with the independence of a country. According to Bill Aschcroft, Griffith & Tiffin, “The

semantic basis of the term ‘post-colonialism’ might seem to suggest a concern only with the

national culture after the departure of the imperial power” (1).

Meenakshi Mukherjee rightly observes:

Post-colonialism is not merely a chronological label referring to the period after the

demise of empires. It is ideologically an emancipatory concept particularly for the

students of literature outside the Western world, because it makes us interrogate

many concepts of the study of literature that we were made to take for granted,

enabling us not only to read our own texts in our own terms, but also to re-interpret

some of the old canonical texts from Europe from the perspective of our specific

historical and geographical location. (3-4)

It seems that Postcolonial theory emerged from the colonized peoples’ frustrations, their direct and

personal cultural clashes with the conquering culture, and their fears, hopes and dreams about their

future and their own identities. How the colonized respond to changes in the language, curricular

matters in education, race differences, and a host of other discourses, including the act of writing

become the context and the theories of postcolonialism. The project of postcolonialism is not only

applicable to the students of literature alone; indeed, it seeks to emancipate the oppressed, the

deprived and the down-trodden all over the world.

Thus the concept of postcolonialism deals with the effects of colonization on cultures and

societies. The term as originally used by historians after the Second World War such as ‘post-

colonial state’, where ‘post-colonial’ had a clearly chronological meaning, designating the post-

independence period. However, from the late 1970s the term has been used by literary critics to

discuss the various cultural effects of colonization. Although the study of the controlling power of

representation in the colonized societies had begun in the late 1970s with the text such as Said’s

Orientalism, and led to the development of what came to be called ‘Colonialist Discourse Theory’

in the work of critics such as Spivak and Bhabha, the actual term ‘post-colonial’ was not employed

in these early studies of the power of colonialist discourse to shape the form and opinion and

policies in the colony and metropolis.



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Undoubtedly Post-colonialism (postcolonialism) marks the end of colonialism by giving the

indigenous people the necessary authority and political and cultural freedom to take their place and

gain independence by overcoming political and cultural imperialism. Theories of colonial

discourses have been hugely influential in the development of postcolonialism. Postcolonial

discourse is/was the outcome of the work of several writers such as Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon,

Ngugi Wa Thiango, Edward Said, Bill Ashcroft and his collaborators, Gayatri Spivak, Homi

Bhabha, Aizaz Ahmad and others. In general their work explores the ways of representations, and

modes of perception that are used as fundamental weapons of colonial power to keep colonized

people subservient to colonial rule.

Anti-colonial resistance is another major issue in postcolonialism. The colonial experience is a

continuing process even after the formal end of the colonial situation. Anti - colonial struggles,

therefore, must challenge colonialism at political, intellectual and emotional levels. The two

historical figures, Gandhi and Fanon, represent a style of total resistance to the political and

cultural offensive of the colonial civilizing mission. Both of them suggest psychological resistance

to colonialism. Fanon asserts, “Total liberation is that which concerns all sectors of personality”

(250). In Fanon’s view the colonized has the ability to resist the cultural supremacy of Europe.

Gandhi feels sad about Indians attraction towards the glamourous superficiality of the West. He

remarks, “We brought the English and we keep them. Why do we forget that our adoption of their

civilization makes their presence in India at all possible? Your hatred against theirs ought to be

transferred to their civilization” (Gandhi, Mahatma 66).

Anti-colonial resistances have taken many forms. Anti-colonial movements drew upon western

ideas and vocabularies to challenge the colonial rule. They often hybridized what they borrowed

by juxtaposing it with indigenous ideas. English education fostered the ideas of liberty and

freedom in native population. There is shift from ‘abrogation’ to ‘appropriation’, from unlearning

English to the project of learning how to curse in the master’s tongue, the emergence of Caliban-

paradigm.

To sum up, the postcolonial theory deals with cultural contradictions, ambiguities and perhaps,

ambivalences. It repudiates anti-colonial nationalist theory and implies a movement beyond a

specific point in history (i.e. colonialism). Hence, postcolonial theory is transnational in



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dimension, multicultural in approach and a movement beyond the binary opposition of the power

relations between the ‘colonizer / colonized’, and ‘centre / periphery’.

II

Shashi Tharoor established himself as an outstanding writer in English with the publication of his

first fiction The Great Indian Novel in 1989 which won for him two prestigious literary awards

(1.The FIP – Hindustan Times Literary Award in 1989 2.The Commomwealth Writers Prize

1990). It has been highly admired by critics in India and abroad. Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel

has been appreciated as well as deprecated by many well-known critics and observers. P. Lal

considers it as “an appallingly fascinating novel” and “all that can be said, and should be said, is

that this novel is an astonishing accomplishment, deserving unreserved kudos”(10-12). Paniker

finds in it “a strange vision of contemporary India retold in the garb of the ancient tale of story –

telling . . . . The Great Indian Novel . . . is in a sense a recreation of the old tale in contemporary

terms” (13). And in the same article he makes us aware about the liberties which Tharoor has taken

regarding plots and characters “The work opens with the sentence, “They tell me India is an

undeveloped country,” and the last sentence is the same: “They tell me India is an undeveloped

country”. This circularity is reinforced by the self-reflexive tone of Vyasa’s words at the end of

Ganapathi . . . . This self-irony and self-mockery on the part of Vyasa -- Tharoor in a way provides

an indirect justification for all the liberties the author has taken with the plots and characters of the

Mahabharata and of modern Bharata” (Panikar 15-16). P. K. Rajan is of the opinion that “The

Great Indian Novel seems to have intrinsic power to captivate its readers both as a text that tells a

contemporary tale and as a text born out of a text” (27). Considering its impact and comparing it to

Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children Shayamala A. Narayan remarks “Perhaps no novel except

Midnight’s Children has made as much of an impact as the The Great Indian Novel” (35).

However, M. K. Chaudhury critically analyses The Great Indian Novel and finds both merits and

demerits in it. He observes: “What The Great Indian Novel fundamentally tries to underline is the

continuance of the historical process, the pastness of the present and the presentness of the past”

(108). And at the end of the paper he observes: “He fails to evolve varying tones and perspectives

through the use of different genres . . . . Being a subversive history, the predominant style and tone

used in the novel is that of parody and polemic. The use of conflicting genres does not go far to



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implement multiplicity or diversity . . . Tharoor’s achievement nevertheless lies in his assessment

of the political history of modern India. His forte is truth-telling and India does need such truth

tellers” (114-115). But G. N. Devy holds an opposite view and says that “I found the book highly

disappointing in spite of my training to read experimental fiction and the willingness to keep

patience while encountering it” (31). Vanshree Tripathi bitterly criticizes the novel and states that

The Great Indian Novel “emerges as neither great nor Indian in spirit, but a promiscuous and

gauche caricature of the ancient as well as modern India in the absence of any substantial

informing vision, and lacks correspondence between the theme and the narrative” (116). She goes

on to the extent of stating that “the tragedy of the novel is that the novel does not generate a sense

of tragedy at all, but of the absurd” (131). But such notions are hardly welcomed by sound critics

because they are one dimensional and fail to see the other or bright aspect of the novel. Hence it

does not give a proper evaluation.

Analysing Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel, an eminent critic P.K. Rajan finds an

opportunity to observe and throw some light on experimental novelists of the 1980s:

I have no hesitation to say that it is a refreshing contribution to the new crop of

experimental novels published since the 80s in Indian English Literature. It is

promising as Tharoor’s first novel and gives him a place alongside other

contemporary practitioners of fiction in Indian English like Salman Rushdie,

Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Upamanyu Chatterjee and O. V. Vijayan. (30)

Telling a tale on an epic scale and by constantly questioning its eternal values, Shashi Tharoor

emerges as a powerful postcolonial and postmodernist Indian writer. Being a major voice of

1980’s, he has written three novels and many nonfiction works. The Great Indian Novel is based

on Indian Epic, the Mahabharata. It is an ironic portrayal of Indian political system from ancient

to contemporary India.

The Great Indian Novel, a political satire, is Tharoor’s magnum opus in which he has adopted the

framework of the Mahabharata to retell the modern his(story) of India. He has expressed some

very insightful and thought-provoking ideas regarding the epic and the modern history. Here he

attempts to re-invent a 2000- year-old epic, the Mahabharata, as a satirical retelling of the story of

twentieth-century India from the British days to the present. Writing about India in English

Tharoor is different from Rudyard Kipling and E. M. Forster. His stories and heroes are altogether



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different from those of the western writers. As a writer he strives to reclaim his “country’s heritage

for itself, to tell, in an Indian voice, a story of India. Let me stress, a story of India, for there are

always other stories, and other Indians to tell them.” (Tharoor, BIB 218).

Undoubtedly The Great Indian Novel is a prominent postcolonial text which gives expression to

the colonized experience and undermines the colonialist discourse. The novel is replete with

postcolonial elements and, simultaneously, it seeks to rewrite the history of India’s colonial

encounter from a postcolonial point of view.

Undoubtedly the colonial rule or British regime in India has done irreparable loss to its culture and

society by damaging India’s real identity in every possible way – cultural, social, mythical,

political etc. British had completely devastated the identity of the colonized people. A dire need for

retrieval as well as reclamation of Indian identity was surging up in the Indian intellectual mind,

for which they took resort to the multiple ways of projecting indigenous myth, history and oral

memory. Using myths drawn from native tradition, postcolonial writers sought to integrate the

cultural life of the past with their post-independence reality. They turned to their own cultural

traditions both as the source of a new national identity and as a mythic resource with which they

structured their works.

The culture and civilization of the colonized countries had been more harshly denigrated by the

colonizers. The colonized are/were more acute and intense in their urge to rewrite, reclaim and

resurrect their past. The colonizers had ruthlessly tagged the culture and civilization of the

‘colonized’ as void, retrogressive, blank and dark space. Challenging the governing topos of

colonialist representation that India was an underdeveloped country, a backward space, the

octogenarian narrator of The Great Indian Novel, thus, asserts: “India is not an underdeveloped

country but a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay” (17). As a postcolonial text,

Tharoor’s novel not only rewrites the country’s pre-independence history but also critically

scrutinizes the colonial relationship and resists colonialist perspectives. It challenges the

ideologically determined patterns of historical relationship. In Ved Vyas’s alternative account, the

native people of India do not play only side-roles in British history, as in the novels of Rudyard

Kipling, E. M. Forster, M.M. Kaye, and Paul Scott; they rather make’ history. In those sections of

the novel which describe the colonial past, Tharoor debunks the literary myths which sustained the

Empire and shatters the idols of imperial history.



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Tharoor, in his book, attempts to shatter the hollowness of superiority around the colonizers.

Tharoor aims to liberate the Indians from the excessive burden of colonial hangover. The book

seeks to emancipate the formerly colonized people from the reverential awe in which they held the

colonizers. The impressive figure of Mountbatten (represented as Viscount Drewpad) is

significantly reduced to a shallow, vainglorious and insensitive individual who ‘wore his lack of

learning lightly’ (211) and General Reginald Dyer (fictionalized as Rudyard Kipling) is

remembered as an inhuman tyrant. Edwina Mount- batten (Georgina Drewpad) is depicted as an

‘amatory adventuress of libel Ions renown’ (229) who was used by her husband as a ‘secret-

weapon’ (215) to charm and will over Indian leaders. Tharoor ruthlessly attacks British

colonialism through his caricature/parody of imperialist rulers and attempts to link many of the ills

which plague independent India to the mischief done by the British during their rule. The narrative

takes cognizance of the pernicious effects of indoctrination of Indian school children by ‘the

bastard educational institutions the British sired on us’ (47), and the disastrous consequences of the

imperial policy of ‘divide and rule’ for the Indian subcontinent (133-36). Ved Vyas’s oral narrative

attempts to supplant the recorded British history of colonized India with a counter discourse that

subverts and undermines the colonizers’ view of the country. He uses, like Rushdie, the ‘novel of

memory’ as a political weapon to disprove the imperialists’ version of truth and resist the

forgetfulness which is induced by their distortion, even alteration, of historical facts.

Tharoor, through his narrative, scathingly exposes the meanness of British colonial attitudes and

policies. The historical account of the novel begins around 19th century when British had overtly

revealed their true faces of tyranny and objectives to colonize India. The disparaging attitude of the

colonizers to native languages and culture was illustrated by Sir Richard, the British Resident in

Hastinapur, who said, echoing Macaulay, to his aide Ronald Heaslop: “These native languages

don’t really have much to them, you know. And it’s not as if you have to write poetry in them. A

few crucial words, sufficient English for ballast, and you’re sailing smoothly.” (37)

The pathetic condition of the Indian peasants caused due to colonial policy is evident when

Tharoor writes: “There was starvation in Motihari, not just because the land did not produce

enough for its tillers to eat, but because it could not, under the colonialists’ laws, be entirely

devoted to keeping them alive. Three tenths of every man’s land had to be consecrated to indigo”

(51). While commenting on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the narrator lays bare the inhumanity

of the colonial ethics and the hollowness of the claim that the imperialists were carrying on a



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‘civilizing mission’ in India made by British writers and historians who provided the theoretical

underpinning for colonialism:

Or perhaps he just acted in the way dictated by the simple logic of colonialism,

under which the rules of humanity applied only to the rulers, for the rulers were

people and the people were objects. Objects to be controlled, disciplined, kept in

their place and taught lessons like so many animals: yes, the civilizing mission upon

which Rudyard and his tribe were embarked made savages of all of us, and all of

them. (80)

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, called the Bibigarh Gardens massacre in the novel to parody the

infamous Bibigarh rape in Paul Scott’s Raj fiction The Day of the Scorpion, is narrated with an

irony and objectivity that only matches the spirit of its description in Rushdie’s Midnight’s

Children:

The soldiers tired just 1600 bullets that day, Ganapathi. It was so mechanical, so

precise; they used up only the rounds they were allocated, nothing was thrown

away, no additional supplies sent for. Just 1600 bullets into the unarmed throng, and

when they had finished, oh, perhaps ten minutes later, 379 people lay dead,

Ganapathi, and 1,137 lay injured, many grotesquely maimed. When Rudyard was

given the figures later he expressed satisfaction with his men. ‘Only 84 bullets

wasted,’ he said. ‘Not bad’. (81)

The brutality of the imperialists and their complete lack of human feelings led the narrator to arrive

at the conclusion that the Raj was not just evil but Satanic’ (83). He ruthlessly exposes the loot of

India’s fabulous wealth by the British merchants: ‘the merchants and adventurers and traders of the

East India Company . . . came to an India that was fabulously rich and prosperous, they came in

search of wealth and profit, and they took what they could take, leaving Indians to wallow in their

leavings’ (95). The exploitative aspect of the colonial rule and its harmful effect on the country’s

economy have also been stressed: “The British killed the Indian artisan, they created the Indian

‘landless labourer,’ they exported our full-employment and they invented our poverty” (95). The

narrative not only makes a critical assessment of British colonial administrators in India (‘The

truth is that the average British colonial administrator was a pompous mediocrity whose nose was

so often in the air that he tripped over his own feet’ (116), but also denounces their ‘divide and



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rule’ policy (‘The strategy was amoral, the tactics immoral’ (135) which resulted in India’s

partition, and the ‘haphazard division of the country on the basis of religion which led to

unprecedented violence and mass exodus.

The period of British rule is, thus, for Tharoor, a fitting target for hilarious lampoons and

impassioned frontal attacks. The excesses of the British Raj are brilliantly mocked at. Side by side,

the novel also depicts the country’s struggle against colonial rule under the dynamic leadership of

Mahatma Gandhi which heralded ‘the dawn of a new epoch’:

Students left their classes in the city colleges to flock to Gangaji’s side; small-town

lawyers abandoned the security of their regular fees at the assizes to volunteer for

the cause; journalists left the empty debating halls of the nominated council

chambers to discover the real heart of the new politics. A nation was rising, with a

small, balding, semi-clad saint at its head. (51)

Many of the chapters in Tharoor’s novel are given titles which parody well-known literary works

on India by British authors like Paul Scott, Rudyard Kipling, M.M. Kaye and E.M. Forster. There

are chapters with titles like ‘The Duel with the Crown’ , ‘A Raj Quartet’ ,‘The Powers of Silence’ ,

‘Passages through India’ , ‘The Man Who Could not be King’ , ‘The Far Power-Villain’ (which is

reminiscent of Kaye’s The Far Pavillions) and ‘The Bungle Book’ (that reminds one of Kipling’s

Jungle Book). Some of these authors and characters of their novels reincarnate as colonial figures

in Tharbor’s narrative. Rony Heaslop of Forster’s A Passage to India, for example, reappears in

The Great Indian Novel as a typical representative of the colonial rule who is contemptuous of the

natives and their culture. Maurice Forster, who is just down from Cambridge and ‘seems to prefer

young boys,’ recalls E. M. Forster. Rudyard Kipling is represented as Colonel Rudyard, an

insensitive and tyrannical army officer who orders his soldiers to open fire on an unarmed crowd

in Bibigarh Gardens. The parody of the colonialist literature written by and for the British about

India, which embodied the imperialists’ point of view and was informed by theories regarding the

superiority of European culture and the rightness of Empire, is a subtle but powerful reversal, by

Shashi Tharoor, of the traditional tide of cultural colonialism.

Thus the analysis of The Great Indian Novel in the light of ‘Postcolonialism’ leads us to think that

the present work is a political satire which is modeled on the epic Mahabharata in terms of both

issues and structure. In this novel Tharoor has used the great epic as the framework or bedrock to



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re-invent, re-tell and re-interpret the political history of modern India. Thematically, The Great

Indian Novel covers a small period of 20th century political history of pre- and post-colonial India

but technically it occupies a post-modernist strategy which allows the author to play with ideas,

celebrated events and incidents of both epic and the history. The portrayal of the narrator as Ved

Vyas, with Ganapathi as his amanuensis (both intimately associated with the Mahabharata) at the

very outset of the novel, gives Tharoor an adequate means to bridge the gap between the political

and the mythical history of the subcontinent, and provides him the platform for drawing parallels

between the two. There is circularity about the narrative; it ends with a fresh beginning the

concluding line of the novel being, the same as its opening line. So we find an open-ended circular

narrative.

Tharoor, very aptly, utilizes postmodern and postcolonial tenets in his novel. While post-

colonialism comprehensively influences Tharoor’s fiction thematically, postmodernism

extensively dominates his technique. Consistently exploring and revealing India’s inherent

diversity and her unity, her plural and secular credentials, her culture and her civilization, her

ethnicity and her modernity, her innocence and her experience in his fiction, Tharoor does not only

reaffirm India’s true identity but also juxtaposes her essential beauty, with her banes of corruption,

deceit, insincerity and profligacy. Writing in the language of the colonizers of his country, the

British, he undoubtedly emerges as a ‘hybrid’ author essaying to undo the wrongs done by the

prejudiced, unequal and uneven occidental representations of his country through his fiction.

Correcting the manipulated representations of his country, Tharoor does not only try to re-assert

and re-invent his own culture but also uses it to remove our misconception about Indian culture

and society.

Work Cited:

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Chaudhury, M. K. “The Eternal Present: Shashi Tharoor’s Story of India.” Recent Indian Fiction.

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Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Mask. Trans. Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1963. Print.

Gandhi, Leela. Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. Delhi: OUP 1999, Print.

Gandhi, Mahatma. Hind Swaraj. Ahamdabad: Navjivan Publishing House, Reprint. 1938. Print.

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McLeod, John. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester and New York: Manchester, Manchester

University Press, 2007. Print.

Mukherjee, Meenakshi. “Interrogating Post-colonialism”. Interrogating Post-colonialism: Theory,

Text and Context. Ed. Harish Trivedi and Meenakshi Mukherjee: Shimla: IIAS, 1996. Print.

Narayan, Shyamala A. “India.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, xxvi. 2 (1991): 88 89.

Print.

Paniker, K.A. “Reminiscential and Subversive” Littcrit, 16. 1-2 (June- December 1990). Print.

Rajan, P. K. “History and Myth in The Great Indian Novel” Littcrit 16. 1-2 (June- December

1990). Print.

Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto and Windus, 1993. Print.

- - - Orientalism. London: Penguin, (1978) 1995. Print.

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Tripathi, Vanshree. “Polysemy at the Dead End: Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel.” Recent

Indian Fiction. Ed. R.S. Pathak. New Delhi: Prestige, 1994. Print.

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Ocford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Print.



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