Nation and Nationalism in South Asian Literature

This volume explores the ways in which religion in the South Asian literary landscape play a significant role in the creation of political structures and secular democracies in South Asia.

This volume explores the ways in which religion in the South Asian literary landscape play a significant role in the creation of political structures and secular democracies in South Asia. It highlights how the concepts of nation, nationalism, and secularism in South Asia is frequently determined by the rhetoric of racism, fundamentalism and religious fanaticism, minority politics, issues of caste, class, and ethnic identity, border politics, diaspora, among other factors. This edited volume investigates the extent to which national identities are regarded as potent dimensions of social participation in South Asian literature. It studies key works of many South Asian writers to explicate how the rich national and secular dynamics of the South Asian context remain entwined with questions such as: - How could democratic processes be implemented in independent states by separating politics from religion? - How do certain literary texts depict the notion of nationalism expanding beyond the concept of a single nation due to its intricate ethnic, regional, and cultural offshoots? - How does religious mobilisation in South Asian literary narratives become a carrier of secularism within and beyond South Asian countries? - How can (mis)conceptions regarding religious fundamentalism be understood through the policies and politics of secularism and postcolonial nationalism? Taking readers through literary and cultural analysis of diverse literary productions, this volume will be of immense interest to scholars and researchers in the fields of literature, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, identity politics and political philosophy, modern history, and South Asia studies.