Indian English Literature

PLAY OF KALIDASA OFKAlidAsa (OEaka 445)
The most celebrated Sanskrit poet, KAlidAsa authored numerous works like “Abhigyana shakuntalam ”, “MAlavikAgnimitram”, “Vikramorvanshiyam”, “Raghuvanshiyam”, “Kumarasambhavam”, “Meghadutam”, “RitusaamAram”, etc. KAlidAsa also authored an astronomical work named “JyotirvidAbharanam” in Kali year 3068 (34 BCE).

The female characters in Rohinton Mistry’s debut novel
Such a Long Journey are situated in a trebly marginalised position—
they are women by gender, in the post-independence post-colonial
India and Parsi by ethnicity, which is a minority community in the
Indian subcontinent with a history of migration. However, situating
them in this position, Mistry does not allow them a voice of subversion
as all of them are cast in the stereotypical mould. This paper attempts
an analysis of the various major and minor female characters in this
novel and tries to find a thematic relevance in their portrayal as the two
major female characters—Dilnavaz and Miss Kutputia—contribute a
streak of ambiguity central to the design of the narrative of this novel.
Keywords: Gender, ethnicity, migration, ambiguity, narrative.

Preface

A cat answers a poignant call, leaps over the boundary, comes up the stairs and rummages through the library and the racks and hides in the bag. Hung on the wall like a spider, a muddled mind not dead, sometimes hungry, at times a wooden flower and not knowing the real from the ideal, the loner envies the lover of his games. He paints the world in new hues, adds music to many songs and sets the loner’s groaning heart right. He uses his hypnotic charm to restore youth to a stifled life. He has come like rain where the sun rules. He is lofty above the crowd and he gingerly lifts a retired bird on his wind. As love flows sometimes in fairy tales of emotions, you wish you could offer more caresses to a flower but indeed, you take flight in poetic expressions.
Nothing surpasses passion except compassion. If someone tugs at your sleeve and suggests a whirlwind romance what will you do? If you give in to passion, your conscience pricks; if you do not give in, the whole world pricks. I have tried to give expression to a cultural chasm that becomes apparent to one at middle age and only after the best things offered to one have disappeared due to a lag.
When with time life begins to show signs of crumbling, you groan in pain. I have captured the sound of those groans in numerous images. It becomes more hysterical when something emerges from the unknown zones of your heart and tries to conquer time, restrain decay and forces you to push hard against accepted cultural ties. It requires a lofty ideal to deal ideally with a cultural hole. In the following poems one can read the heart’s dilemma at such an interruption. If read in the given sequence, the poems form a storyline.
If Lofty touches you passionately, it would mean that you have not been swallowed up by the chasm.

List of contents:
Lofty Above The Crowd
A Muddled Mind
Rain
Hero Honda
The Atlas
Me On The Wall
Pity
Goals
Over The Boundary
A Cat
Lover
On The Rack
I Wish
Fairy Tales
I Am Not Dead
Hoax
Answering Call
It Has Never Been As Before
False
Games
Panther Passion
The Bag
Another Possibility
Hungry Rhymes
We Shall Talk
Emotions
Sometimes
The Spider On The Wall
Those Stairs
Tug at My Sleeve
A Wooden Flower
Reality
Vegetable Passion
The Fall
The Flight
Forces
In Disguise
The Cobra
I Was Drunk
Caresses
Edging Forward
A Loner
The Naughty Streak

This paper on soft-power connected with culturalism vis-à-vis Henrik Ibsen, draws its essence from the term ‘soft power’ coined and defined by Joseph S Nye Jr. and read in contiguity with ‘culturalism’ that Arjun Appadurai connotes as “identity politics mobilised at the level of the nation-state”. On these terms, the present author perceives ‘soft power’ as a force that affects or is expected to affect not just few specially endowed individuals in any given society; rather as one that works upon the mindscapes of the commoner, or in the collective unconscious. The quintessential social critic that inheres Ibsen the playwright, is here looked upon as such a reservoir of soft-power, whose dramatic oeuvre and its subsequent global reception have ignited ideas of social reform and thus have become part of Norwegian culturalism and soft power. While the Norwegian Government has funded projects and encouraged institutional collaborations in this connection, individuals too have taken up vital roles in establishing intercultural links using Ibsen as their ambassador. At present Ibsen is part of cultural exchange between Norway and many developing countries of Asia and Africa. What happens to the targeted receivers of such soft power is a valid question and this paper explores soft power from the perspective of the third world marginalised subject position. Dwelling upon specific channels of Norwegian soft-power that have proven world-wide currency, and the indefatigable ways in which Ibsen has been a major tool in such soft diplomacy, this paper attempts to analyse how Ibsen the dramatist has eventually become a significant part of Norwegian culturalism as soft power whose outreach is aimed at the egalitarian ideal, hence imbued with enormous potential to function as a strong influence in intercultural affairs.

This essay is a critical examination of Russian prodigy Dostoyevsky's famous work "Crime and Punishment". In this essay, I attempt to deconstruct the ideas of duality, identity crisis, moral resurrection, and religion by illuminating the theme of prostitution and crime. My area of concern is Sonya and her multi-layered character used as a window to gauge the above-mentioned ideas. 
Keywords: Prostitution, Christianity, Sin, soul, identity, Crime

These poems, composed in Somali and in English, provide a poetic reflection of the recently emerged debate on the theme of Caddaan Studies which means "White Studies". The criticism and counter-criticism contained in the debate dug so deep into life nerve of Somali Studies that over a thousand people participated. The poems, under the title "Inaugurating Caddaan Studies" were composed with a critical observation of the debate.

This paper argues that the diasporic writings deal with the paradox of separation and connection with the homeland. While the diasporic connection with ‘past-home’ is revived by audio, visual, and verbal memories through photographs, albums, letters, videos, audios, and recordings, the connection with the ‘present-home’ is retained by a global communication network. Thus, modern communication and technology seem to bring diaspora nearer to home because of which they can retain their connections with the homeland in the host-land. However, it can be seen that modern technology and communication itself allure individuals in envisioning the idea of “would-be-homeland” resulting in their diasporic psychology. Consequently, the diasporic narrative can be divided into parts: In the first part, it is the ‘would-be host-land’ which becomes a place of attraction as it is represented in various media like television, cinema, magazines, internet, books, and anecdotes. An image of prosperity is created of “would-be-host land” which is filled with hope and opportunities for progress. The protagonist is thus already inclined to make a move to this new ‘host-land.’ The second half of the narrative deals with the experience of ‘the moved body.’ The person who migrates to a new place finds it difficult to adjust to a new identity and fails to assimilate in a new environment resulting in a nostalgia for the lost place. This paper attempts to deconstruct the causal aspect of media and means of communication.

In their illustrated children’s book Trash! On Ragpicker Children and Recycling, Gita Wolf, Anushka Ravishankar and Orijit Sen rally for improved working and living conditions for the world’s informal recyclers. Bright with Sen’s comic-like images of vibrant cityscapes, the text invites us into the daily lives of two Indian children. Read against the backdrop of a rising interest in waste studies, this paper positions Trash! as a key postcolonial environmental text for its ability to address social and environmental issues simultaneously. Two theories of waste and garbage are considered here. The first is Michel Serres’ writings on the links between trash and property in Malfeasance. Serres offers us ways of thinking about the im/materiality of trash; moreover, he gives us a framework for understanding garbage as an imperial maneuver. The second work under consideration is Dipesh Chakrabarty’s “On Garbage: Modernity and the Citizen’s Gaze.” In it, Chakrabarty contemplates the role of bazaar culture in shaping attitudes about waste and waste-handlers. The paper settles on the metaphor of “sorting” for understanding the potency of waste’s stigma. Informed by Trash!, Serres, and Chakrabarty, the author concludes that it is the mixed-state of garbage, rather than its out-of-placeness, that truly determines our negative reactions to trash. Indeed, Trash! has sorting at the heart of its moral message, as the children learn that their work is important, and that citizens could help make their work better and safer simply by being conscious of how they organize their waste.

The objective of this research paper is to prominence the concealed reality of Indian social system and the suppression of low class people in India. The caste system has spread its roots deep in Indian society. The constitution of Indian society, with its hierarchy is an ideal place to better realize the practice of oppression. Lower class throughout the longest conventional Indian hierarchy and members of the lower castes and classes have usually born to force the repression generated by the Indian communal structure. Premchand is generally considers the greatest Hindi writer. Premchand was also a social reformer. The remarkable characteristic of his writing was the reality that he depicted as exploitation of poor people. He gave the massage on social evils like dowry, poverty, communalism and corruption. He was the first writer of twenty century to reflect reality in the literature. Premchand is the most prominent Hindi novelist, and Godaan is Premchand's renowned novel. The ...

The paper focuses mainly on Janie’s quest to find her own self in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Although the novel revolves around Janie’s relationships with other people, it is first and foremost a story of Janie’s search for spiritual enlightenment and a strong sense of her own identity. The novel is not about her quest for a life partner but rather that of her quest for a secure sense of independence. Janie’s development along the way can be charted by studying her use of language and her relationship to her own voice.

Speeches of Swami Vivekananda and Subhash Chandra Bose: A Comparative Study deciphers the speeches of Swami Vivekananda and Subhash Chandra Bose to trace out the thought patterns, revealed through the language, and thus to find out the points of similarities and dissimilarities for the final evaluation without harming the reputation of the two. 

(Speeches of Swami Vivekananda and Subhash Chandra Bose: A Comparative Study. Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 2006. Pp. 118. Rs. 200/-. ISBN: 81-7977-149-0)

This paper is a study of the Indigenous literatures of Australia and Canada. As Indigenous writings reflect the symbiosis of nature and culture, an important aspect of Indigenous people is that they try to return to nature to receive Indigenous spirituality that has its roots in harmony among all beings. These writings based on nature-centred thoughts, belief system, traditional patterns, spirituality and cultural practices, environmental knowledge and respect, change and catastrophe, and dependence on nature and natural resources have been studied as presented in some relevant texts.

Braj Kachru is a major figure in linguistics and English studies, and he has left us an intellectual legacy that speaks to a wide range of fields in language studies, including sociolinguistics, variation studies, bilingualism and multilingualism, applied linguistics, second language acquisition, and teaching English as a second or foreign language. This article sets out to provide a detailed and nuanced study of the intellectual trajectory of one of the most influential figures in contemporary sociolinguistics and English studies. 1 | INTRODUCTION Braj Kachru is a major figure in linguistics and English studies, along with their ancillary fields, sociolinguistics, variation studies, bilingualism and multilingualism, applied linguistics, second language acquisition, and teaching English as a second or foreign language. He brought about a change in the way we understand the use of English around the world. He exposed the limitations of contemporary colonial, ethnocentric models of teaching English, which insisted on one proper way-the native speaker's way-of using English as the only one appropriate for any occasion. He showed that it is limiting to view the many ways in which English is used in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere as erroneous perversions of this ideal. Instead, the educated versions of the different usages should be seen as parallel, legitimate varieties of English, systematic in structure and autonomous in function, resulting from the interplay of linguistic and social contexts of their learning and use. In fact, the differences are creative innovations that extend or enrich the resources of English to express new meanings, values, and experiences not encountered in native uses. Hence, what is needed is a pluralistic conception of English-beautifully captured in the term 'world Englishes'-which recognizes that there is more than one model of English and that different models are appropriate for different contexts. In adumbrating this new paradigm through a half-century of meticulous scholarship and energetic advocacy, Kachru 'liberated' the language of hundreds of millions of non-native speakers of

Taslima Nasreen, who is known for her controversial novel Lajja, is a Bangladeshi-Swedish author with a multi-dimensional personality. She has become famous for her novels and autobiography, but her poetry, particularly love poetry is equally significant. She is frustrated in love, deceived in love and betrayed in love. Still she is in love and cannot live without love. She loves the emotional colour of love so profoundly that she paints it in most of her poems which reveal her feelings and connection to the persons and things. Her love is not confined to the body; it goes beyond. She loves her homeland with the core of her heart. She loves all the people who live in this world. Love is the only emotion to which she gives more value. Her love poems, which are coloured with emotional love, clearly prove her as a poet of love.

Dr. E Stanley Jones through his Kingdom of God perspective had a lasting impact on racism both in India and North America.  Through his formation in India of the Christian Ashram movement in 1930 and transplanting it worldwide, Jones modeled a christian community in which divisions of class and cash had no place.  His book on his good friend Gandhi was instrumental in encouraging Martin Luther King Jr in the formation of the nonviolent civil rights movement.

Nation is a concept that draws lot of attention for its complicated discourse. It impacts the
lives of its citizens in multiple ways. The inception of national consciousness in the minds of its
people creates chaos in their personal as well as public life. The dichotomy of nation as a discourse
is its inherent problematics of memory, forgetting, brutality, glory, necessity of common past,
topography, remembrances, amnesia, suffering, marginalization and politics of control, violence and
plethora of issues that complicates the human life. It also restricts the life, ideology, emotions
within the confines of national borders. These blurred lines on the spatial geography, encroachment,
wars, bloodshed brings out the hollowness and absurdity of popular concept of nationalism and
patriotism when thought on the universal levels.
K. Satchidanandan, a Malayalam poet, raises questions on the changing cartography and
futility of war and borders in his poetry collection, Questions from the Dead(2021). The
communion with nature and human beings across the world preaches the values of universal
brotherhood, peace, love, compassion. He gives hopes of possibility of utopian world where living
and non-living beings would dwell with harmony and co-existence. While portraying the futility
and absurdity of nation, war and borders, he also keenly observes the nation within the nations
caused due to unequal distribution of resources, discrimination, prejudices, and marginalization.
The present paper attempts to trace the critique of nation, nationalism and necessity of
peace, love, compassion for universal brotherhood and harmonious co-existence as reflected in K.
Satchidanandan‟s selected poems from his recently published poetry collection entitled as
Questions From the Dead (2021).
Keywords:
Nation, Nationalism, Boundaries, Borders, War, Peace, Compassion, Universal brotherhood,
Harmony, Co-existence, Civilization, Culture, Language, History, Race, Memory, Amnesia,
National Consciousness

Meeting Without Knowing It compares Rudyard Kipling and W.B. Yeats in the formative phase of their careers, from their births in 1865 up to 1903. The argument consists of parallel readings wed to a biographic structure. Reading the two poets in parallel often yields remarkable discursive echoes. For example, both men were similarly preoccupied with the visual arts, with heroism, with folklore, balladry and the demotic voice. Both struck vatic postures, and made bids for public authority premised on an appeal to what they considered the "mythopoeic" impulse in fin de siecle culture. Meeting Without Knowing It dentifies these mutual echoes in their poetry and political rhetoric, before charting them against intersections in their lives. Kipling and Yeats were, for much of their careers, irreconcilable political enemies. However, a cross-reading of the two poets' bardic ambitions, heroic tropes, and interpretations of history reveals that, to achieve their opposed political ends, they frequently partook of a common discourse. Supplementing this analysis with biographical context, we can trace these shared concerns to their late nineteenth century artistic upbringing, and to the closely linked social circles that they inhabited in fin de siecle London. It is, in fact, their very mutuality during the 1890s which lent rancor to their ideological division after the Boer War. In turn, acrimony and denunciation only served to bind together all the more intimately, in an argumentative spiral of revolving discourses, two men who were often proximate but who actually met only in cartoons and satirical gossip.

Drawing upon research into Indian property law, this essay offers a new perspective on both the feminist interventions and the aesthetic innovations of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. This essay is the first to show how The God of Small Things' feminist critique is established primarily through attacking Indian property law, which has historically excluded women from its purview. Whereas previous criticism has focused on Roy's exploration of female social ostracism, this essay addresses the precarious political, juridical, and economic status of women in the novel. The God of Small Things' feminist legal critique is not only perceptive and timely, but it also offers a crucial insight into the political stakes of the novel's aesthetic form. I use political and legal theory to identify India's property law and juridical economy as “possessive,” or exclusionary, and to explain the contrasting significance of the novel's nonpossessive, relational aesthetics. Through its literary innovations, particularly its recursive narrative structure and metaphors of connection, The God of Small Things reconfigures the legal and political logic authorizing female dispossession. If India's gendered property law has systematically dispossessed women, The God of Small Things works to counter such exclusions by establishing an alternative structural logic. Roy's formal strategies are, I conclude, politically significant, as they delineate the possible form of a nonpossessive, relational juridicopolitical economy.

Women writers from NorthEast India engage with narratives that have a distinctive local flavour. This paper focuses on the literary contribution of women writers from the NorthEast. A qualitative study of select creative works implies that there must be a pattern of indigenous elements in the narrative of the works. These elements include the oral story-telling tradition, the everyday lives of the ordinary village people living in close proximity with nature, and the spiritual geography that governs their daily activities that defines their identity. This suggestion is conflicting as the available scholarly conversation on the creative works reveals a substantial focus on violence and unrest that characterizes the region in the mainstream imagination. However, we cannot arrive at a fixed conclusion and generalise the rest of the creative works based on select readings. Hence, the quantitative study is useful for a study like ours to show the indigenous aesthetics in the creative works that otherwise may go unnoticed against an overwhelming emphasis on the topic of political violence and unrest. The quantitative study is carried out through computational algorithm to closely analyze a corpus of texts. We ask the following questions: 1) How does the quantitative study help in locating the indigenous elements present in the works? 2) Do the findings of the experiment suggest a pattern of indigenous elements in the corpus of novels? 3) What are the different narrative approaches and interpretations found in the literary works?

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's first novel, Rajmohan's Wife, has generally been considered as the first Indian novel in English. Makarand Paranjape even goes one step further to consider it as Asia's first English novel. Though the novel is constructed following the track of a romance and adventure story mingled with the elements of mystery and suspense, trysts, feudal intrigues, burglaries, abductions and love confessions, it also impressively delineates the feelings and passions of modern woman through the character of the heroine against the backdrop of an old, feudal, rural setting of Bengal. Thus the protagonist of the novel may be seen as a strong and firm character unhesitant to declare her own passion, but at the end also, she is deprived of the justice she deserves. This article is an attempt to show how far the novelist successfully depicts the heroine as a representative of the unshackled, new woman of modern India.

“Abhijit Sarmah's Dying with a Little Patience transports us into a world of fine wit, opulence, and stark imageries. It opens up alternate worlds, democratic and egalitarian—spaces that question the existent social condition, create an alternate reality, and dare to undo the state of apathy and brutality that pervades our current scenario.”
—Dr. Namrata Pathak, author of That’s How Mirai Eats a Pomegranate

In this paper, I talk about the works of three Indian writers, namely Sarojini Naidu(1879-1949), Boman Desai (1976-Present), and Anurag Mathur (Probably 1970s-Present) with regards to their unique portrayal of India and its colorful, mind-boggling diversity, and sometimes disappointing habits in their respective works. I have picked Naidu's poem 'The Bangle Seller', Desai's short story - 'Between the Mosque and the Temple' and Mathur's essay - 'Education: Indian and American' for this comparative analysis.

The present book entitled, “The Dramatic World of Sri Aurobindo”, is one of my triplet on the Indian English Drama in its Critical Exploration Series. The book in the present format is neither intended as an original contribution to the field of criticism in Indian dramatic writings nor is it planned to make the already reputed dramatist more popular or less likable. I hereby claim no scholarship by writing a few critical observations on the internationally famed Indian writer and his English plays. This small book, however, has smaller objective to offer, i.e., simply to help the students, scholars or mere readers of Indian English drama in their better understanding of Sri Aurobindo’s drama texts and make them available a few more angles and sources to ease their dramatic comprehension.

Nowadays, relatively few people read Indian English plays as compared to Indian English fiction or poetry. Fewer still go to the theatres to watch their performance live on the stage. In addition, English drama in India is yet to produce an Indian Shakespeare. It still has to gain the desired status to enable the theatre loving audience flocking in queues at the ticket windows. However, the germs can be easily discerned in the dramatic writings of a few creative playwrights such as Rabindranath Tagore, T.P. Kailasam, Harindranath Chattopadyaya, G.V. Desani, Girish Karnad, Asif Currimbhoy, Vijay Tendulkar, Badal Sircar, etc. The present book is a humble attempt to explore Sri Aurobindo’s plays, his dramatic skills, his thematic presentations of Indian lore on English stage and his understanding of human being as an entity. It highlights the reformist attitude inculcated by him through his dramatic use of ancient Indian tales, social and religious conventions, myths and legends on the stage. It so begins with a brief survey of Indian English drama from its origin and its development to its present state in the first chapter. It is followed by a critical evaluation of the dramatic world of Sri Aurobindo as found in his English plays. His popular and critically acclaimed plays in English print have been classified and studied individually according to the use of myths, legends, folklore and history by the dramatist in three separate chapters. Hopefully, that would present a perfect picture of the internationally renowned Indian English writer in this critical estimate of the dramatist as is actually found in his drama scripts.

The paper analyzes the notion that Indian Railways, or rather Railways in India were built solely for Colonial interests which and it was funded by public money.  The public was to bear the risk of the venture's failure if it happened but the shareholders were insulated from the loss of such venture. The paper also analyzes the effect the railway had on Indian literature and how it gave rise to a particular genre of literature in India known as the railway literature.

The book consists of three parts– Introduction, Select Speeches and Questions-Answers. In the first chapter of Introduction, which consists of 5 chapters, Singh details Swami’s eventful life. In the Second Part of the book Singh has meticulously selected some of Swamiji’s speeches which are especially useful to Indian young people who have to do the onerous task of nation building. The third part Questions-Answers has been designed to help the students and readers of Vivekananda literature.

(Swami Vivekananda: Select Speeches. Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 2004 & 2012 (Second Enlarged Edition with ISBN). Pp. 190. Rs. 80/-. ISBN: 978-81-7977-466-3)

This paper aims at analysing Bharati Mukherjee's individual positioning as a woman writer by using the female characters caught between two different worlds, homes and cultures present in her works. After having undergone several phases in her life: as an exile from India, an Indian expatriate in Canada, a common immigrant and finally a citizen in the United States, all these diverse selves have been translated into her literary career. The writer thus envisions herself as a pioneer of new lands and literatures, initiating a process of reforming and deforming American culture, and redefining diaspora as a process of unhyphenated rehousement in which the cultural landscape in which one lives is no longer divided into a centre and its peripheries. Mukherjee celebrates "racial and cultural mongrelisation" but rejects cultural balkanization in its defence of the local over the national. She is neither ignorant nor insensitive to racism and oppression in the United States, yet her characters are always tenacious and feisty in their struggle to belong. Mukherjee stresses their quality as battlers, moved by the instinct to improve their lives. In her construction of America as the land of opportunity and success Mukherjee rejects homesickness and in so doing she clearly marks a difference from the Indian diaspora, though we consider that in defending this posture she goes to extremes, idealizing the "real" to create a personal and literary migrant cosmos. RESUME La lucha de Bharati Mukherjee contra la balcanización cultural: la creación de una nueva escritura inmigrante americana Este artículo tiene por objeto el estudio de la posición individual de Bharati Mukherjee como escritora, a través de los personajes femeninos que aparecen en sus obras, a caballo entre dos mundos, casas y culturas variopintos. Tras pasar por fases vitales diferenciadas: como exiliada de la India, expatriada en Canadá, emigrante común y lograr, finalmente, la nacionalidad estadounidense, todas estas identidades se trasladan a su carrera literaria. Así, la autora se concibe a sí misma como una pionera en tierras y literaturas nuevas, iniciando un proceso de reformulación y deconstrucción de la cultura americana, y redefiniendo la diáspora como un proceso de rehabitación sin líneas divisorias en el cual el paisaje cultural vivido no presenta centro ni periferias. Mukherjee festeja una "bastardización racial y cultural" y rechaza la balcanización cultural en su defensa de lo local sobre lo nacional. No es, por otra parte, ajena ni insensible al racismo y la opresión de los Estados Unidos, pero sus personajes se muestran pertinaces en luchar por su sentido de "pertenencia." Mukherjee pone el énfasis en su cualidad de batalladores, empeñados en mejorar sus vidas. En su construcción

The present paper seeks to closely explore Kurt Vonnegut " s Slaughterhouse-Five in terms of Judith Herman " s surveys and categorization of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. It is an attempt to analyze the conflict between the will to deny horrible events experienced by the protagonists of the novel in World War II and the will to proclaim them aloud. The psychological distress symptoms including the inability to sleep, lack of concentration, flashbacks and state of surrender are thus investigated in the narrator and Billy Pilgrim as the two figures who are suffering from PTSD. These symptoms are analyzed in a way to call attention to the existence of unspeakable secret and simultaneously as means to deflect attention from it. The protagonists are both subjected to the dialectic of trauma in that they find it difficult to remain clearheaded, to see more than a few fragments of the picture at one time, and to retain all the pieces and to fit them together. It is even more difficult to find a language that conveys persuasively what they have seen.

The paper seeks to explore how the lunatic fringe is hell-bent on whipping up communal frenzy. As evidenced in the novels, most of the communal leaders are rank practitioners of politics and therefore, foment trouble for one or other paltry reason. The Indian ethos, which has long been extolled, has been at stake in the last part of the second millennium. It has also witnessed, as evidenced in the novels, the animosity and rancour between the secular and communal forces each trying to outwit the other. The ideologues of communal leaders would always like to harp on the contradictions between Hindu-Muslim traditions. Some of the worth mentioning differences between them come handy for communalists to subvert popular discontent of economic oppression in the main. A few novels are pressed into service to substantiate the argument.