Nation and Nationalism(s): A Study of Two Anglophone Indian Novels by Women

Abstract

This paper undertakes a reading of Attia Hossain's Sunlight on a Broken Column (first published in 1961) and Nayantara Sahgal's Rich Like Us(first published in 1985) to underscore how the relationship between the 'nation' and 'nationalism' and women get problematized. According to Partha Chatterjee, 'The Woman's Question' had been subsumed by the nationalist struggle for Independence, this paper's objectives are to explore the range of women's responses to 'nationalism'. The two novels, each written by a Hindu and a Muslim upper-class woman of post-Independent India were published two decades apart but they both go back to the history of the nationalist freedom struggle to come to terms with their present. This paper aims to explore how women's fictional narratives lead to a contestation of the terrain of 'nationalism' and how they contribute towards a renewal of their history and identity.