Md Shahnawaz
Independent Scholar. Email: mdshahnawaz.ms69@gmail.com
Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.13
Tales of the Horrors of War: Analysing Select Indian Fictions on World War I
Abstract
Conscription of Indian men from different states and ethnicities were recruited to fight in the First World War for the British in foreign lands, while Indian resources kept the Allies going. The discursive reduction of it quantified India to merely numbers, of soldiers given, soldiers lost, tons of food sent, and money spent. The Indian Movement for Independence as an act of political negotiation with the British masters had warranted the cultural amnesia of the Indian intellectual class about the War’s impact to focus on the more vital demand, and how easily were all the unwanted marks of the War hidden and left behind. Thus, my paper will examine the representation of War in India and identify the ways in which Indian involvements in the War remain unacknowledged in the contemporary period through select works of fiction and non-fiction by Indian authors. Therefore, it is a pressing concern that much of the information about the World War I from an Indian perspective is lost, or is on the verge of being lost forever, because of the general apathy towards the preservation of such materials. This engagement with the First World War is not acknowledged the way it should be, since most of these works are not even categorized or identified as ‘war literature’ even if their sole concern remained precisely that. It is also important in this regard to understand the inclusion of the World War I in the silences and the omissions. Therefore, I will analyse select literary texts by Indian authors to evaluate the intersections of fiction and history alongside the enunciation of the unknown/forgotten voices of the marginalized people in the World War I.
Keywords: World War I, Indian literature, history, cultural consciousness, nationalism.