Rosemary Marangoly George

(Extra)ordinary violence : National literatures, diasporic aesthetics, and the politics of gender in South Asian partition fiction

A s with similar struggles around the world, independence from British rule in the Indian subcontinent was inaugurated with violence. The 1947 Partition of British India into two nation-states, India and Pakistan, provoked the single largest population movement in recent history, with Hindus moving into independent India and Muslims into the newly formed nation of Pakistan. It is estimated that between 1947 and 1948, 10–15 million people crossed the newly created borders in both directions. The vast body of South Asian Partition–themed fiction has been read, quite understandably, within the framework of nation building as the quintessential national literature documenting the birth pains of the nation(s). In this essay, I will argue that Partition fiction can just as accurately be read as diasporic narrative, more concerned with the trauma of relocation and homesickness for the place left behind than with celebrations of independence. And yet, reading this fictional genre through a gendered and culturally embedded lens reveals that the idiom of diaspora is appropriate not just because of the movement of populations that ensued after Partition but because of diaspora’s resonance as metaphor. In these

Of Fictional Cities and “Diasporic” Aesthetics

This essay considers the work of social reproduction as it unfolds within the cultural realm in both national and diasporic contexts. Beginning with a discussion of the creation of Malgudi—the quintessential Indian hometown created in the 1930s by one of Indias most venerated writers, R K Narayan—I go on to argue that in the preindependence days, this Indian small town was created from an aesthetic position not unlike that of present-day diasporic artists. I then look at the novels of South Asian-American writer Indira Ganesan and the paintings by South Asian-American artist Arijit Sen to document the ways in which the works attempt to map alternative articulations of the space of home and community in a diasporic context. Together, these imaginary hometowns do the work of reproducing a viable social sphere through creative work that overcomes the constraints of colonial rule (in Narayans case) and immigration (in Ganesans and Sens work).

Tracking ‘Same–Sex Love’ from Antiquity to the Present in South Asia

This essay focuses on the anthology Same–Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History (2000), edited by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai. Unlike many other recently published, celebratory ‘gay anthologies’, this book contributes to ongoing scholarly work on specific same–sex erotic practices and relations in historical and cultural context. We examine issues relevant to this anthology and other such projects: the use of ‘love’ and ‘same–sex’ as (stable) signifiers over centuries; the validity of interpreting social reality through literary texts from the period; the difficulties of locating ‘love’ in severely hierarchical, even slave–owning, societies; and the implications of using such anthologies in the classroom.