Panel on "History and the South Asian Novel Written in English", 20th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, University of Manchester, July 2008
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ABSTRACT:
From 8 to 11 July 2008, the city often described as England’s “Capital of the North” played host to the 20th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies (ECMSAS). The University of Manchester’s Humanities Building was the backdrop to this vast event. The conference ranged across remarkably wide swathes of South Asian studies, from ‘Political economy of Bangladesh’ to ‘The Sanskrit tradition in the modern world’, taking in history, sociology, economics, fine arts, popular culture, regional studies and more. So enormous an event, split as it was into almost forty panels, each one virtually a conference within the conference, could not usefully be summarised by any one participant: the present writer will therefore describe only a small portion of the elephant, and will concentrate on teasing out the significance of Panel 13 (capably and sympathetically organised by Nicole Weickgennant of Manchester Metropolitan University), whose subject was ‘History and the South Asian novel written in English’.
The rubric of the panel was clear: the theme of debate was the modern (20th and 21st century) English-language novel as practised by writers from India/ South Asia and their diasporas, in its relation to history, whether of the region or also of the wider world. The panel consisted of 14 papers and took place over the last two days of the conference, 10 and 11 July 2008. The authors of the papers - subcontinental/diasporic, European or North American – were mostly literary scholars, but other disciplines – translation studies, history – were also represented. The discussions following each sub-panel of two to four papers were as lively as they were passionate, and a strong sense of camaraderie was generated among the participants as the two hard-working days unfolded.
The writers whose work was analysed in detail in the various papers (others of course being mentioned in passing) were: from India and its diaspora, Mulk Raj Anand, Amitav Ghosh, Manju Kapur, Rohinton Mistry, V.S. Naipaul, R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao, Arundhati Roy and Salman Rushdie; and from Pakistan, Kamila Shamsie. The selection of authors may certainly be considered representative, in terms of period, geographical location and gender, though one may note the absence of, say, Vikram Chandra, Shobha Dé, Anita Desai or Vikram Seth. Certain key works, significantly enough, were examined in more than one paper: Ghosh’s ‘The Shadow Lines’ (in three), Mistry’s ‘A Fine Balance’ (in two), Roy’s ‘The God of Small Things’ (in two) and, inevitably, the one that – at least for many in the west - started it all, Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’.
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