LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 11 : 6 June 2011
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.

HOME PAGE

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIAL

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Contributors from South Asia may e-mail their articles to
    B. Mallikarjun,
    Central Institute of Indian Languages,
    Manasagangotri,
    Mysore 570006, India     mallikarjun@ciil.stpmy.soft.net.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2010
M. S. Thirumalai
Custom Search

Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Adiga’s The White Tiger as Social Critiques

Evelynn Sheen Divakar, PGDELT, M. Phil.

We do not like to climb a stair, and find that it takes us
down.
We do not like to walk out of a door, and find ourselves
back in the same room.
We do not like the maze in the garden, because it too
closely resembles the maze in our brain.
We do not like what happens when we are awake, because
it closely resembles what happens when we are
asleep. (Eliot 171-172)

The Responsibility of the Writer

It is one of the trends of postmodernism to present facts that cannot be easily conceptualized, either because it is out of our experience or because of our tunnel vision. Postmodernism has been described as a period of mankind’s deepest self-criticism. The novels of Rushdie, Midnight’s Children in particular, along with Adiga’s The White Tiger can be considered as enquiries that extend and embrace the world they live in. Rushdie has always maintained that it is the responsibility of the writer to tackle issues that sculpt our society, in an era of growing indifference. He writes:

It seems to me that literature enter such arguments, because what is
being disputed is nothing less than what is the case, what is truth and
untruth, and the battle ground is our imagination. If writers leave the
business of making pictures of the world to politicians, it will be one
of history’s great and most abject abdication. (2)

Every Act is a Political Act

Rushdie believes that describing anything is a political act. And re-describing the world is the necessary first step towards changing it. It is every writers dream that his works have a lasting impact on society. When a writer writes about the world around him he is unquestionably contributing towards sculpting it. In situations where the state takes reality into its own hands and contorts it to fit its own agendas, it is the writer’s responsibility to present an alternate reality, apart from the officially sanctioned one.

Rushdie observes, in Imaginary Homelands “the novel is one way of denying the official, politician’s version of truth” (14).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Evelynn Sheen Divakar, M.Phil.
Head of the English Department
MIT Gurukul
Loni Khalbor
Pune – 412 201
Maharashtra
India
evelynn.divakar@mitgurukul.com
sheendivakar@yahoo.com

Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you either cited or used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian scholarship.