Oppressive Present

Name: Oppressive Present
Brand: Taylor & Francis

Taylor & Francis

The Oppressive PresentLiterature and Social Consciousness in Colonial India\nAuthor(s): Sudhir Chandra\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Routledge India\nISBN-13: 9781138660175, 978-1138660175\nSynopsis\nMarking a departure from studies on history and literature in colonial India, The Oppressive Present explores the emergence of social consciousness as a result of and in response to the colonial mediation in the late nineteenth century. In focusing on contemporary literature in Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, and Marathi, it charts an epochal change in the gradual loss of the old pre-colonial self and the configuration of a new, colonized self. It reveals that the oppressive present of generations of subjugated Indians remains so for their freed descendants: the consciousness of those colonized generations continues to characterize the modern educated Indian. The book proposes ambivalence rather than binary categories such as communalism and.