Identity, Diaspora & Authenticity in Indian Literature | Conference Day 2 Highlights

[00:00:00]ful tone for our conference. Yesterday was a truly enriching start.

[00:00:07]We began with the inaugural session with the welcome address from professor Dr. Shuvid Dhar dean school of humanities international languages and social sciences and by Dr. Priyanka Chakraorti head department of English sister Niveita University.

[00:00:26]The presidential address was delivered by the honorable vice chancellor of sister Nvidita University professor Dr. Shonku Bosch. We also had the privilege to hear the inaugural address by professor Dr. Chandraha Chakraorti director of center for studies in gender culture and media and Dr. Robin Chakraorti editor postc colonial interventions. We witnessed the ceremonial watering of the plant.

[00:00:56]Listened to a stimulating keynote address by professor Anindo Shikhar Puroka and the first plenary by professor Dr. Emma Dawson Varugis.

[00:01:08]Yesterday's discussion were truly wide-ranging and intellectually stimulating. Apart from the keynote and plenary, we had six parallel academic sessions. We heard papers that explored a remarkable diversity of themes from reflections on indigenous aesthetics and powerful readings of women narratives to discussions on tribal resistance, multicultural identities, and perspective that was shared by the scholars made the conversations both lively and thought-provoking.

[00:01:41]And many of those discussions continued even beyond the session rooms.

[00:01:48]It was wonderful to see participants engaging so enthusiastically with one another's work.

[00:01:54]As we move into the second day of the conference, we look forward to continuing that same spirit of dialogue and exchange.

[00:02:03]Today's program also includes six academic sessions where scholars will once again share their research across parallel panels. And we also have three plenary lectures that promise to bring together many of the ideas and questions that have emerged during the conference.

[00:02:23]I'm sure the sessions today will be just as engaging and enriching as those we experienced yesterday.

[00:02:32]I would like to record our thanks to all the speakers, chairs, volunteers, and delegates whose participation made day one productive and spirited.

[00:02:43]With that continuity in mind, we move to the program for day two.

[00:02:53]We will begin the second day with the second plenary of this conference and it is my honor to invite professor Dr. Shang Huitra Dalal who is going to deliver this lecture online.

[00:03:12]Shanghomitra Dalal completed her PhD in postcolonial diasporic literature at Mon Monach University, Melbourne, Australia and had taught in India and Germany. Her research interests include postcolonial migration and diasporic literature'ses with special interest in south and southeast Asian literature'ses in English transl transnational and transcultural literature'ses lifewriting and food writing. She is the managing editor of the journal journal of creative arts and on the editorial board of rupata journal on interdisciplinary studies in humanities and literary voice a peer-reviewed journal of English studies. This particular session will be chaired by our dean sir professor Dr. Shuid Dhar, Dean, school of humanities, international languages and social sciences.

[00:04:14]Professor Dhar is an internationally renowned scholar who has taught for nearly 35 years in Robindra Bharati University having served as director of the university's school of languages and culture and the honorary director of the Teor Gandhi center. He has also had the distinction of serving for a time as the officiating vice chancellor of Roindraharat University on the orders of the honorable chancellor and the higher education council of the government of West Bengal. He is at present serving in sister Niveita University in New Town, Kolkata as the dean of the schools of humanities, international languages and social sciences and mentor adviser of the department of English. Professor Dhar has conducted post-doal research in Cambridge University and has made academic presentations in Oxford University, Ohio State University and UAB Bangladesh.

[00:05:17]He has participated in academic interactions with faculty in Morris College, USA, Colorado University and the University of Denver. He has had the distinction of having delivered conference keynote addresses, refresher orientation course and faculty development program lectures throughout India in at least 14 states including Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Delhi, Jharkand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Misoram, Pondicherry, Odisa, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal etc. He has published 10 books and scores of research papers and is at present co-editor of two UGC care listed journals including the longrunning international journal of cultural studies and social sciences. Before we begin uh our second plenary of this conference, we would like to felicitate our very own dear dean sir. Uh sir, would you please come up on stage? And I would also request Mr. Shaendu Dam who is happen to be the convenor of uh this conference to please come up on stage and felicitate sir. And can we have a big round of applause for this?

[00:06:33][applause] Ma'am, over to you.

[00:07:28]>> Uh, thank you.

[00:07:28]>> Thank you. Can Can you hear hear me?

[00:07:34]>> Yes, ma'am.

[00:07:35]>> Okay. Uh, good morning everyone.

[00:07:39]>> Uh, thank you all the organizers for inviting me. Uh, I'm from currently associated with university technology in Malaysia.

[00:07:51]Uh today I'm going to talk about as you can see on the screen uh the title of my talk today is who is an Indian identity authenticity and branding in the new millennium.

[00:08:07]As we all know, India is currently not only the most populous country in the world, but India now holds the distinction of having the largest diasporic population in the world too.

[00:08:17]Over 35.42 million overseas Indians, including 15.85 million non-resident Indians and 19.57 million persons of Indian origin comprise the largest diaspora globally. According to the United Nations World Migration Report 2024, India is the origin of nearly 18 million international migrants, making it the top source country for migrants on a global scale.

[00:08:41]People migrating from one place to another in search of work or economic opportunities or to escape violence or persecution or even to avoid natural disasters or other environmental factors is not a recent phenomenon.

[00:08:56]The earliest use of the term diaspora can also be traced back a long time ago during the 3rd century BC in a Greek translation of the Bible indicating a sense of loss, exile and suffering.

[00:09:08]However, since the 1990s along with the rise of globalization and technological and digital communication revolution, not only the nature of the diasporic movements transforms rapidly, but the essence of the diaspora studies which initially focused predominantly on homeland coastland economy has evolved exponentially in multi-disiplinary.

[00:09:30]Rogers in 2005 proposes the term the diaspora diaspora to indicate how the use of the word diaspora has proliferated and the meaning has been stretched in various directions. The field of study has been further complicated with the ceaseless emergence of novel ideas and concepts such as trans migrants, digital diaspora, e diaspora, d territorialized diasporas, cultural diaspora, homeless diaspora, flexible citizenship, biracial and multi-racial identities and subculture.

[00:10:02]in a struggle to attempt to identify and characterize the diverse predicaments experienced by the current generation of diasporic individuals to trace their intricate relationships with their country or countries of origin, residents and movements and to recognize how they distinguish themselves and their belongingness in a world which is still obsessed with branding and leveling of identities according to some preconceived prejudiced and presumed ethnic markers.

[00:10:34]>> Today I will refer to three selected works published in the recent years by three different authors who are born and brought up in different parts of the world but can trace their roots in Indian origin through diverse roots.

[00:10:48]Their works articulate not only their unique diasporic predicaments but also compel us to re-evaluate who we should call an Indian author. what can be identified as authentic Indian diasporic experiences and how they have been branded and leveled both as an individual and an author by their community and society in general and by the influential publishing industry in particular.

[00:11:17]Navin Ratnam is an Indomarian Canadian who was born in Winnipeg, Canada and spent his childhood Galona, British Columbia to his Maician parents who have their roots in the Indian subcontinent.

[00:11:30]He currently resides in Toronto and is an author of four novels namely Find You in the Dark 2018, Your Life is Mine 2019, A Hero of Our Time A Novel 2022, and The Grimmer 2023.

[00:11:44]A novella titled healthm was published in 2022 and a non-fictional memoir essay curry eating reading and rest was published in 2017 and he is also a contributor to the collaborative fiction project titled writers last year in 2025.

[00:12:02]I will today only focus on his memoir essay eating reading and rest 2017. It is a slim volume of three interl sections of eating, reading and rest which wanders through several generic characteristics such as food writing, cultural history, literary criticism, travel and memoir.

[00:12:25]However, Ratnam's predominant aim in this memoir essay is to challenge the existence of a supposedly authentic Indian curry and also to question the risk of worse publishing industry which solicitates stories steeped in stereotypically authentic and nostalgic experiences from the second or third generation Indian diaspora authors.

[00:12:46]Ki commences with a rather provocative remark. Ratnam implies that curry does not exist.

[00:12:54]However, he immediately asserts that irrespective of his personal consideration of curry's non-existence as a generic dish, he has to admit without any doubt that several distinctive and authentic versions of curries do overfill conventional food literature and food industries. He further affirms that the significant impact of curry does not remain confined within the discussion of food itself but is capable of expanding exponentially to symbolically transform itself into a cultural signifier of brown identity.

[00:13:29]Ratnav's childhood experiences are simultaneously marked by his small town white Canadian friends along with the unique in the Maician spread at the dinner table at home and by his passion for thrillers and crime fiction.

[00:13:44]His first short story uh cinema reps was originally published in the literary magazine the Malahhat review. It was loosely based in Maicius and inspired by the stories he has heard from his parents who grew up in the island. It is a classic coming of age story which explores three young brown kids transitioning out of boyhood on the island of Maicius in the early 1950s and their subsequent film obsessed lives in the west as adults. He admits that the success of this short story garnered him real attention from award judies, publishers and agents.

[00:14:24]However, his first novel, Find You in the Dark, which was an instant bestseller and an Arthur Ellis Awards finalist for the best first novel, and the next novel, Your Life Is Mine, are psychological thrillers and do not necessarily have ground protagonists operating within a stereotypical pre-existing story template of tragic looking back, generational disconnect, and an inability to reproduce mother's home cookish.

[00:14:53]Ratnam recollects that in order to counter the pressure exerted by the cultural identity focused publishing industry where he is expected to produce manuscripts narrating hackneed and predictable diasporate experiences by the I quote here publishing industry operatives who have an extremely narrow internal definition of diversity. He decides to assume a white pseudonym Nathan Replay as an author of his psychological truths. Such a choice according to him best facilitated avoiding the stereotypical expectation of authentic immigrant as identity diasporic writing and also allowed him to uh I quote come to people's desks under a different identity that's not associated with his racial background unquote. this racial background which is hinged with the prejudice expectation of articulating authenticity.

[00:15:53]Ratnam's memory therefore interrogates the troubled concept of authenticity. Be it the taste of an Indian curry or the expected and accepted traits of Indian diasporic identity. As curry can be an infinitely diverse dish in its taste and ingredients. Indian diaspora is also marked by extremely diverse history, cultures, traditions and cuisines since they continue to originate from and journey through as varied locations as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, South Africa, Guyana, Sudinam or Fiji.

[00:16:28]Hence my discussion today will focus on unpacking the complex notion of authenticity and eventually argue that the pursuit of a singular idea of authenticity and identity as an Indian is inadequate since the perception of authenticity significantly within any diasporic predicament is not a static artifact that can be observed and analyzed through an external lens but a personal truth that can only be produced and reproduced continually through one's own unique dust. encounters. I also highlight the problematics of essentializing a singular story or a unique cultural signifier such as curry to identify certain cultural traits which necessarily disregard the fluid and evolving nature of culture itself as authentic.

[00:17:18]Even though the very concept of authenticity has become a widely used catchphrase in different strands of literary, cultural, heritage and tourism studies, it is still difficult to determine what exactly one signifies by the term itself. According to ancient Greek ethmology, the word indicates genuiness in the sense that it has been validated by someone as origin. Such meaning also includes the idea of being sincere, natural, credible, and real, which at times can be related to some past and olden days, signifying a perennial longing to trace something back to its source. However, the ancient Greek word also refers to master or ruler which would be closely associated with the sense of authority and authorization of any texts, exhibits, depictions or performances.

[00:18:13]Charles Lindhom in cultural authenticity attempts to identify varu authenticity perceived differently within diverse con contexts.

[00:18:23]In legal jargon, authenticity is proved if the signatures on the document are met by the person whose name is on them.

[00:18:30]While for a collector or a kosher, a piece is authentic if its source can be traced. According to Lynn, a person can be considered authentic if they are true to their roots or if their lives are a direct and immediate expression of their essence.

[00:18:47]Similarly, collective identities are authentic if their biological heritage can be traced and if the members act in the proper culturally valued manner.

[00:18:58]Lynhum thus characterizes two overlapping ways for an entity to be marked as authentic. It is either through genealogical or historical origin or through identity or correspondence which Lindum calls content. He further strives to trace the roots through which an individual continues to pursue their own authentic being and practice a lived experience of authenticity. He again identifies two different ways of seeking such authenticity. He terms the first as seeking personal authenticity which can be done quote through art, musical performance, travel and excitement consumption and self exploration or expression unquote. And the next as seeking collective authenticity which is a construction of group identity quote through food and desire sorry through food and dance forms of nationalism and the identities of minorities unquote.

[00:19:56]Lynhon rightly points out that these two strands of personal and collective always intertwine and influence each other which are also evident in the discussion of diverse forms of authenticity.

[00:20:09]Seinal discourses on authenticity have distinguished concepts such as staged authenticity, existential authenticity and emergent authenticity. Dean Mccernel identifies how stage authenticity is practiced mostly in the performance of heritage tourism where a manufactured place or experience which he terms as unquote stage back region unquote is created to provide the tourists with an appearance or sense of an expected authenticity.

[00:20:40]wanding and states the discussion by reorganiz recognizing two different kinds of authenticity namely objective authenticity and constructivist or symbolic authenticity. While objective authenticity refers to the authenticity of originals, constructivist authenticity implies the authenticity of experiences which is a result of social construction and not at judged through objectively measurable qualities.

[00:21:06]Thus, constructivist authenticity is symbolic as it is a construction of authenticity formed by longheld perceptions of idea or images that are often stereotypically considered authentic. However, Wong proposes an alternative category of authenticity which he terms as existential authenticity. Existential authenticity transcends the object related attributes or the projected and perceived attributes that emerge out of objects.

[00:21:34]It is instead produced through a unique quote potential existential state of being that is to be activated by tourist activities which have nothing to do with the authenticity of the truth object unquote. He even divides existential authenticity into two different dimensions named intrapersonal and interpersonal authenticity.

[00:21:56]Intrapersonal authenticity relates to to bodily feelings both sensual and symbolic. The human body which is both a display of identity and a primary organ of sensibility creates an authenticity of being beyond the measure of material experiences.

[00:22:14]Interpersonal authenticity is achieved by selfmaking which is related to constructing a sense of selfidentity through a holistic experience developed through accentuating natural emotional and familial bonds. Therefore, authenticity can also be regarded as a personal construct shaped by an individual's physical, emotional, and psychological experiences.

[00:22:38]Such personalized perception of authenticity evokes what what Eric Cohen refers to as emergent authenticity.

[00:22:47]According to Cohen, authenticity in its objective sense is non-existent. He states that as a socially constructed concept, authenticity is not something given but negotiable. His idea of emergent authenticity thus lies in the eyes of the beholder where material products and cultural traits can involve and become authentic in the course of time and where sense of authenticity can also differ depending on different perspectives and needs. Such an evolving and emerging kind of authenticity can obviously lead to commoditization which MCL previously identifies as taste authenticity which in its course of preparing and packaging certain material objects or cultural experiences for public consumption disregards the original authentic essence.

[00:23:41]However, argues that transformation or commoditization should not be solely seen as having destructive impact.

[00:23:49]According to him, in the course of acquiring new perceptions and perspectives, the origin and originary essence of objects and cultures do not necessarily disappear, but new meanings may be added to old ones which persevere into the new situation. uncontrolled food traditions and culinary practices are often considered authentic markers of ethnic identities. Conventional food and food waste not only form an important part of cultural heritage but also act as a significant attribute of cultural identity and belonging both on an individual and a collective level as it exposes the norms and practices of certain people and places. However, migratory movements and formations of diverse diasporic communities in different parts of the world have prompted immigrants to redevelop and reinvent their ethnic cuisines in different ways. Food is one of the intimate cultural practices with the that the immigrants carry with them in order to rroot their familial roots in foreign lands in hopes of sustaining their ethnic and cultural distinctiveness and passing it on to future generations. However, the proliferation of ethnic cuisines and ethnic restaurants worldwide proposing to offer authentic culinary experience to local diasporic and tourists alike manifests how cultural authenticity is commoditized, marketed and eagerly consumed as an exotic other. Charles Lindholm identifies the problematics of establishing connections between I quote the invention or recovery of an authentic local cuisine and the development of a national consciousness unquote. He specifically refers to India where identification of an authentic national cuisine is impossible as India is not only extremely diverse both linguistically and culturally but it also boasts of a continuation of an oral tradition of local culinary practices consisting of multiple local styles of cooking and a complete absence of any panindian dish or particular cooking style. It has become further complicated as the country and its different cultural attributes have been lo have been regularly impacted and influenced by repeated invasions and colonization effects. Lingham refers to the Mughal invasion in India during the 16th century which developed a unique cuisine that foreigners often recognize as Indian. He cites that such stereotypically perceived north Indian cuisine actually blended the quillinary traditions of the Afghan invaders and the present food of North India.

[00:26:33]Similarly, he illustrates how the 200 years of British colonization of India has eventually yielded a truly subcontinental food regime of curry based on their own standardization of restaurants. The hat dish of curry is customarily showcased as authentic Indian dish in ethnic Indian restaurants throughout the world. However, as Lizzy Collingham states in curry, a tale of cooks and conquerors, even though there are regional differences in the cooking styles and ingredients used, the British started to use the term curry as a generic term for any spicy spicy dish with a thick sauce or gravy in every part of India. Such disregard of wide variations in cooking styles which is achieved by adding various spices in different combinations, proportions and at different stages in the cooking process resulting in subtle differences in flavor and test brings about on one hand a greatly altered and simplified recipe to suit the British and European tastes and on the other hand signifies homogeneous stereotyping which the colonizers use to collectively identify the colonized.

[00:27:43]Rahit Farman pertinently observes that the coinage of the term curry is a part of British colonial narrative which is shaped by commercial interest and racial prejudices. He further discerns that since colonization and commercialization have facilitated circulation of goods and ideas on a global scale. Curry is eventually assumed to be an internationally known supposedly authentic cultural icon signifying quote hegeimony and global hierarchies that shape ideas of consumptions and markets unquote. Authenticity is thus authorized branded and marketed to gratify the insulable global hunger for a taste of an exotic India. Graham Hugan in his much referenced the postcolonial exotic marketing the margins justifiably indicates how the cosmopolitan alterative industry carefully exploits and exoticizes cultural difference and turns it into a globally marketable community through offering I quote a range of available options for both the producers and consumers of culturally otherred goods un such production simultaneously incorporate strangeness and familiarity in different degrees depending on the perspectives of the producers and consumers. Exoticizing certain people, places or objects is also a conscious manipulation which applies specific quote exotic quotes of cultural representation unquote in order to satiate the quote global spectacular spectacularization of cultural difference unquirs this conscious deliverance of expected tastes of curry and accepted traits of Indian diasporic identity in the name of authenticity. He asserts that such sweeping generalizations promptly dismiss any individual experiences which can be widely varied and mifarious.

[00:29:38]Through a personal exploration of his own lived experiences, he eventually indicates how performing a single construct of the culturally other not only creates a calacious idea of collective otherness but also restrains the many possibilities of expressing dasporic authenticities.

[00:29:57]Looking back on many diasporic fictions, memoirs and cookbooks that invariably showcase the archetypal loss of a mother's home-cooked meal, Ratnam in his memoir essay does provide a recipe of his mother's shrimp curry. It was a much beloved staple dish in his family household during Christmas holidays.

[00:30:16]According to him, the dish has a deep greenish brown look which is not a shape that one finds in the curries served in Indian restaurants. He comments, quote, "While Westerners may like brown food, they don't like it to be actually brown."

[00:30:33]However, he also presents his own version of chicken curry, which he has made his own by deviating from the traditional recipe. He adds sour cream to make it richer and throws in torn up kale leaves into it. As the curry nears the end of its simmer, he adds a good amount of black pepper too. Thus he intends to argue that a dish of curry can be potentially fluid and flexible as its history of making has also manifested and each and every version of curry can be an authentic dish to the person concerned as it exudes a deep personal care and satiate and craving.

[00:31:15]However, as mentioned earlier, Ratnam's trouble encounters with the cultural identity focused publishing industry as he tries to publish his crime fiction and psychological thrillers also reveal how these constructed stereotypes contrived by the other often ironically compel the ethnic diasporic authors into duplicating the same in their creations.

[00:31:39]This assisted their publishers to slot their works into available packages each marked and marketed with certain levels of ethnic characteriz characteristics representing a fulfilling negotiation of identity, family and accent and articulated through a supposedly authentic voice. Yet Ratnam points out that capitulating to such tacid demands of recreating authentic experiences in diaspora can eventually result in the opposite. They create quote false stories or false stories or stories with false elements burring truthful details and experience built on conventions created by other authors and categorizations of the publishing industry.

[00:32:29]Ratna further explicates how the pressure of exoticizing familiar experiences for commercial purposes exerted by the alterity industry forces an individual from a particular ethnic background to showcase their habitual practices in such a way that they follow the conventional construct of the cultural.

[00:32:50]He cites an example. He refers to the Pakistani American author Sonia Kamill and her mango dilemma as Kamill describes in it in her personal essay when my authenticity is your exotic.

[00:33:04]Proded by her American editor that you need to rethink food in your novel, Kamill realizes that even though a white American can eat as much pizza as they like, Kamal's fictional Pakistani American family should be eating something else, something authentic.

[00:33:22]Since a protagonist is visiting Pakistan from America during summer, she needs him to do Pakistani things, catching thought to playing cricket, eating language. Kamill therefore spends four months pondering mango or no mango as she recollects. If I put the mango in, was I a sellout? If I took it out, was I been true to the season? What fruit could I substitute? A jamun. But what is the English name for jam? Should an English name even matter? A jamun being a jamun like a corn dog is a corn dog.

[00:33:57]Would I yet have to italicize jamun? Who is the audience for my novel anyway?

[00:34:02]Everyone. But what does everyone mean?

[00:34:05]Should I stick to an apple or a banana or would that be too generator? I put the mango in. I took the mango out. I spent four months playing in and out. It was tiresome and annoying. More importantly, I began to ask myself why I should substitute the mango.

[00:34:27]She finally decides to put the mango in.

[00:34:31]Not because of the fear of the disdainful eastern eye and also not because of the fear of needing to fulfill the expectations of the orientalist western gates. for her mangoes and all the other associated cliches including monsoons, spices, peacocks, bangles, bindies, sharies, samosas, arrange marriages and love marriages are her reality and it is her choice not to censor herself just because parts of the world have turned my reality into cliche.

[00:35:05]Consequently, Ratnam indicates that it is necessary to disassociate the idea of authenticity from the clutches of authority and proposes that I quote, "Our stories don't have to explain ourselves to white people or to each other." unquote. As part of the Indian diaspora, performing authenticity as a we or a they and serving a corresponding identifier in the name of curry at the banual chronicling of stories that disregard the story of particularity of regional and familial species.

[00:35:41]Chimamanda Adichi fittingly highlights the adjusting dangers of a single story in one of her tech talks.

[00:35:49]She posits the single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

[00:36:04]Ratnam clarifies in an interview why the protagonist of his thriller find you in the dark which is published under the pseudonym of Nathan Brlay is white. He clearly states, "The protagonist of my thriller is white for a reason. If he was a brown guy with a beard or if he was black, the book would end with him being arrested on page 10 for his sketchy activities."

[00:36:33]Therefore, ethnic and cultural stereotypes beget further stereotypes where a single story represents the other as a collective entity. Ratnam in another conversation with Shahila Vanatan underscores unquote for me authenticity has to be very personal to the writer. There are no authentic overarching diaspora narratives. It's impossible for there to be one.

[00:37:00]Publishers may think there is one and perhaps the readers do as well. As a result, there is a lot of false authenticity that diasporic writers feel pressure to create, which results in their actual experiences being left off the page. Our chance to look at what is authentically unique to the writer is often taken from us because there is no market categorization for an individual's unique experiences."

[00:37:31]I now refer to another memoir written by Anita Anita Shi and titled I belong here a journey along the backbone of Britain which among others chronicles how such prejudiced markers of singular stereotype can effectively erase colonial history of immigration and lead to violent respect crimes. Anita Shetty was born in Manchester, UK and is a writer, journalist and broadcaster. Her memoir won a books are my bag award and was nominated for the winworth prize for UK nature writing Royal Society of Literature on Prize, great outdoor awards and prize. She is also the recipient of RSL literature matters award.

[00:38:18]Shetti's ancestral Indian heritage can be traced back to the history of the colonial practice of the indentured labor system in the 19th century. Her mother's ancestral family were shipped from British India to British Guyana and her mother after gaining a nurse friendship migrated to England alone at the age of 21. Chett's father's family was sent from India to Nairobi Kenya when both countries were British colonies and her father was born in Kenya. Following Kenyan independence from Britain, her father also migrated to the UK at the age of 19. Shett's parents eventually met in London and married in Manchester and Shetty was born in Manchester as a result of multiple migrations which are a part of colonial history and thus become part of British history as well. However, Shetty has to confront the recurring query of where she is actually from right from her childhood which concerns the stereotypical racial implication that Shetty does not belong in her land of birth.

[00:39:19]In 2019, as she was traveling from Liverpool to Newcastle on the Transpinian Express train, Shetty became a victim of restit crime. After asking a fellow passenger who was playing loud music in the train compartment to turn the volume down, she was met with a torrent of resistance. Do you have a British passport? Get back on the banana board. You can read the rest. I don't have to read it out here. As the rest of the compartment remained silent, Shetty, the only non-white British person present in the compartment, resolved to make an official report, first to the train stop and then to the police at Dington and Newcastle, respectively. The accused was arrested, charged, pleaded guilty and was convicted of a racially aggravated public order offense using threatening abuses, insulting words and behavior. Even though Shetty is relieved at the stress successful conclusion of the legal procedure, she continues to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder stress disorder as she fails to overcome the hideous insinuation that she has no right to belong to a place that she calls.

[00:40:28]In her memoir, she also recalls an earlier incident which demonstrates how she has been questioned about her Britishness explicitly or implicitly many times from a from a resist in a railway journey to the royalty.

[00:40:44]She refers to one of her articles published in the Guardian on 20th April 2018 titled Dear Prince Charles, do you think my brown skin makes me unbritish?

[00:40:57]I quote from the news article written by I met Prince Charles this week at the Commonwealth People's Forum at which I was a speaker on a day whose itinerary was entitled politics of hope taking on injustice in the Commonwealth. It was part of the buildup to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting the summit of leaders of 53 countries representing more than two billion people. I shook the prince's hand with my right hand. In my other I was holding a copy of my anthology we mark your memory writing from the descendants of indenture in which I have an essay published. I told him that my mother was born in Guyana and that the anthology had collected hidden histories of indenture. And where are you from? Asked the prince.

[00:41:39]Manchester UK. I said well you don't look like it. He said and laughed. He was then ushered on to the next person.

[00:41:46]Although I have experienced such off the cuff supposedly numerous comments before, I was stunned by the cuff. So what does a British person look like? A British person can look like me. A British person can have black or brown, not only white skin, and still be just as British. This shouldn't this should not need to be spelled out in black and white. I have proven that I was born in Manchester and that I am British as I had my passport in my handbag. I had needed it to get through the Venus.

[00:42:17]Yet I can't tell Prince Charles exactly where I am from originally, the old chestnut. Why? Because the British destroyed much of the evidence that my ancestors were shipped from over from India in the 19th century to toil for the empire as indentured laborers and sugar colonies in the Caribbean. I have been to the National Archives in Georgetown, Guyana to search for my ancestral history and stared down a gaping hole where records of lives should have been. The British destroyed so much that could properly explain and evidence our identities. She rightly points out that how British history lessons at schools are conspicuously silent on the histories of immigration, the British Empire, the Commonwealth and colonialism, thus projecting a single story as the only story and unwittingly perpetuating racial tragedies and hegemonic power structures in the society. Barbarara Perry's central idea of doing difference identifies hate crimes as reinforcing the hegemonic and hierarchical boundaries of the supposedly dominant and the subordinate groups in society where violence and intimidation are directed to those who are seen as different thereby reminding them that they are the other which implies you are different you don't belong however shettis resort to undertake the journey on foot across the penines arranged of uplands in the northern England known as the backbone of Britain and designated areas of outstanding natural duty is not only to assert her right to roam freely in her home country but also to affirm an other existence in Britain.

[00:44:00]Finally, I referred to an author from my current year.

[00:44:07]Vijay Krishna Morti was born in Epipo, a city in the state of Perak in northwestern Malaysia to a Tamil father and a Hoken Chinese mother. She spent her early childhood years in Koala Lamur and then in Madras as it was then known.

[00:44:24]She completed her tertiary education in the UK. She previously worked as a freelance writer for several magazines and currently lives in Bal. Her debut novel 912 Batu Road was published in 2021 and was long listed for prestigious Dublin literary award 2023.

[00:44:42]The novel justaposes two fictional families the camps and explores how their tranquil lives are shattered by the Japanese invasion of Malaya against the modernday secret between the descendants. Flicking between 1940s Malaya and 2008 Malaysia, the protagonist Gita turns to the 1920s to navigate the late 2000s in the form of the letters of her grandfather Rang Swami Ayad whose father hails from a village in Tanjour, now Tanju.

[00:45:15]As the third generation navigates war, love and relationships, the secret affair challenges traditional branding beliefs and threatens to the sport and age-old friendship.

[00:45:27]Now Krishna recolcts in an interview and she said although I am of mixed parentage my upbringing was entirely Indian. I speak Tamil fluently and learned varatyam at a young age and was sent along with my sister to boarding school in the D matras. We grew up in an extended very close-knit and noisy family of uncles, aunts and cousins.

[00:45:52]Sunday lunches were very much a part of my young and adult life and that of my two childrens too as they as were the sestas that fall.

[00:46:02]However, when urged by her husband to turn one of a special birthday gifts of a chapter of a story to him into a book, Krishna Morti decides to produce a story of three generations. She recalled and I quote, "The first thing I told him I needed to do was to give it a pass and that past would have to be a story of a Tamil Brahmin man who migrated to Malaya in the 20s, which would have been the kind of journey my grandfather might have made back then."

[00:46:34]She admits that having never met her grandfather, he died before her father was even married. Of course, she can't possibly know what his journey was like, but she was determined to include it anyway.

[00:46:46]She explains, I quote, "I just felt that while so much have been written about Indians moving to America in the west, there's hardly been anything about them coming to Southeast Asia or this part of the world." I thought that would make for an interesting angle. Incidentally, the Tamil Brahmin community here is very small. There are 300 families only in the country.

[00:47:09]The title 912 Batu road which is now known as Jalanuang Abdul Rahman in Koala Lumpur was the address of the house Krishna Morti's father was born in.

[00:47:20]According to her aunt, the house was given to Krishna Morti's grandfather by the British during his service as an assistant labor commissioner for the British government there.

[00:47:30]Although the novel 912 Batu Road traces the story of immigrant families in Malaya and later in Malaysia, Krishna Morti includes real historical figures, the Malayan wartime heroes such as Cibil Katigasu and Guchan Singh. Cibil Katagasu was a nurse and her husband Dr. Abdan Fman Katigasu who was earlier known before his conversion to Catholicism as Dr. Arumugami had a clinic on 74 Main Street, Papang Pek. During the Japanese occupation, they kept hearing a shortwave radio nicknamed Josephine to listen to BBC broadcasts and discretly provided medical supplies, treatment, and information to those fighting against the Japanese occupation, including the communist carriers. In 1943, their activities were discovered, leading to their arrest and torture. Sibil Katigasu remained resolute and was sentenced to a lifetime imprisonment under the Japanese military code. In recognition of her bravery, she was awarded the George Medal for gallantry in 1947 by King George the 6. Our road Jalan civil katigashu in fair pakipo was named after her after independence to commemorate our referee. Guchan Singh who worked in Malayan police force founded a resistance group against the Japanese initially with his brothers and friends risking torture and death if captured and they carried their campaign under the code name singa meaning liar eventually receiving an award for bravery from the British government.

[00:49:05]Sorry to interrupt you for a fascinating lecture but we need to wrap up in another five minutes or so.

[00:49:12]>> Okay, sure. This is the last part.

[00:49:16]>> Okay. Thank you.

[00:49:17]>> Krishna Morti observes I quote, "Young Malaysians must know of the contribution of these unsung heroes as they are invisible in our history books today. It was important to shine a spotlight on them and acknowledge not just their contribution but patriotism and love for their country. [laughter] However, even though the National Library of Malaysia, the nominating library for the Dublin literary award commented on Krishna Muti's novel in the following way. This novel was chosen for its interesting history and patroism of Malaysian Malaysians. It displays how Malaysia is a harmonious country that embrace multi multi-racial aspects. 912 Batu road will never be considered for any national award, recognition or support in Malaysia.

[00:50:05]Malaysian society is ethnically diverse comprising Malays and indigenous group 17.5%, Chinese 22.2% and Indians 6.5% and Eurasian and other groups 0.8%.

[00:50:18]However, despite the formation of the Federation of Malaysia and the achievement of independence from the British, interethnic hostilities and tensions continued to escalate uh until the tragic day of May 13, 1969 when West riots broke out in Koala Lumpur leading to the radical reshaping of Malaysian socopolitical landscape consolidating and safeguarding the special position and rights of the native Malaysia observes and I quote, "As far Most of the Malay intellectuals were concerned the issues of national culture, national literature and national history had all to be decided on the basis of Malay society as the base society while the other races were viewed as immigrant or splinters from their own ethnic society." unquote. The 1967 National Language Bill mandated Malay or Bahasa Malayu now renamed as Bahasa Malaysia as the national language and the sole official language of the nation. The 1971 national culture policy conferred national stat status only upon indigenous cultural productions including Malay literature. Therefore, only the literature written in Malay is considered national literature and literature written in other languages such as English, Chinese or Tamil as downgraded as sectional literature not worthy of any national recognition even though they continue to garner international reputation. Jose Suliman sums up this demoralizing circumstance of the non-malle language writers in the following manner. I quote, "The fact that English does not officially exist means that if you write in English, you don't officially exist." unquote. The Malaysian Vijay Krishna Morti's Indian and Chinese roots, her internationally recognized chronicle of three generations of Tamil Daspora in Malaysia, her celebration of human resilience in one of the most difficult periods of Malaysian history have eventually been reduced into a single story of her being a non-Main in Malaysia whose authorship will never be nationally recognized. Yet she continues to persevere to preserve Malaysian history through her writings as she observes. And quote, "In the course of the research, you come across the stories of ordinary Malay malayans of different ethnicities doing extraordinary things in times of hardship." It was important to shine a spotlight on that. If you don't write those stories, it lost. It's gone. It's over. Nobody will remember. Unhold.

[00:52:57]Therefore, it is again time to ponder who can be called an authentic Indian author and what can be identified as authentic Indian diasporic experiences.

[00:53:06]As referred to three different ethnic Indian authors diasporic predicaments, I contend that an ideal identifier of individual authenticity indulges not in one but in many different histories and stories, and dishes, initiating dynamic conversation with each other. Identity and authenticity are embodiment of personal history which creates distinct personal truths for each individual.

[00:53:34]Personal truths might revolve and evolve through same issues and experiences. But since they are filtered through one's own understanding and interpretation, the truth as one person perceives it might not be the same to another one. Hence, as there are many truths to the same story and many versions of the same story, Indian diasporic identity and authenticity in the new millennium refuse to accept any preconceived levels or markers but move within and beyond tradition and history as a ceaseless emergence in this amazing varieties. Thank you.

[00:54:19]Uh thank you very Yes.

[00:54:28]>> Uh thank you very much for a very very interesting uh presentation. Uh you see at one time people used to say the way into a man's heart is through his stomach.

[00:54:40]I think your paper really showed that the one way into literature is once again through food and uh uh I personally found it very stimulating very interesting particularly because of a range that you have covered uh ethnicity the notions of diaspora and so and so this just one point which is you know a niggling point which I like to raise and that is you see uh you are right when you're talking about the author, the publisher and you essentially have a kind of a global north perspective, don't you?

[00:55:19]>> Yeah.

[00:55:20]>> In that case, you see, I think that one has to perhaps look at the more indigenous forms of fiction that are being written the world over.

[00:55:30]>> If you country like India for example, >> we have a large author readership of English language productions. But then there's an enormous market which is very vigorous and very very creative of regional language writing.

[00:55:48]>> It strikes me that uh as an Indian if I go to some place as a visitor as a tourist I would expect maybe to have something food which is going to be so-called authentic to that particular place and once again you see that's one observation. The other is you see nowadays on Indian TV we watch these travel shows and things in which you see uh there are foreign chefs who prepare Indian food and uh the usual reactions they eat something hot and they sort of run around in circles. Now you see which is amusing to us as Indians. So you see once again the whole manufacturing of uh ethnicity uh two questions by whom and for whom?

[00:56:38]>> No reactions your reactions on these.

[00:56:42]>> Well well it is always very difficult to say by whom and for [laughter] whom because there is no one answer to that.

[00:56:48]>> Yeah. So what I as you rightly said that because I was since I am staying outside India, I come across those kind of comments about my home country and my experiences which is kind of sometimes very weird and so that actually led me to questions the stereotypes that people have outside India which I have never thought when I was living in India.

[00:57:16]So I think this is all because most of the thing most the mostly what strikes me is that it is the commoditization because things needs to be sold and here like Malaysia is not soal west.

[00:57:34]Yeah. I'm here in Malaysia for about 10 years and here Malaysia has a very different kind of uh attitude towards Indians which is very different from the attitude towards Indian in the west.

[00:57:48]Here Indian food is very south Indian food and also Indian films and not Bollywood films is all like Rajni Kant and the Tamil Naru based Indians because of the chhat liberals that came here from the Tamil Naru and Kerala during the British colonization period and so I think still uh they are not there like different parts of the world They showcase Indian culture and whatever Indianness that they have it to sell to others for Malaysia, they sell it to others to show how multicultural we are.

[00:58:31]Although they are extremely marginalized because they are not even considered as nationalists like even though they hold Malaysian passport but they like as I said Krishna or any other indigenous like other ethnic writers their writings were never considered as national.

[00:58:50]>> Thank you. Uh we have about five minutes for questions answers reactions from the audience. So if there's anyone who has a point to make you can take this microphone maybe yeah this Hello. Am I audible?

[00:59:30]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:59:31]>> Yes. Uh first of all uh thank you for this excellent presentation. I just have one query that since you mentioned Anita Shetty and uh the diasporic condition.

[00:59:42]One question that uh reminds me of the latest scenario in 2024 um you know protest in Kenya that is hash reject the finance bill scenario and uh there the the the African the Kenyan Asians they are standing side by side the Kenyan people the original Kenyan people and the slogan was we are not Asians in Kenya we are Kenyans. So uh I would like to ask you that uh do you really consider that after the uh you know 1963 Idiamin uh rule and the 1982 or 83 coupe drama even today 2024 uh the situatedness of the uh Indian diaspora in Africa in Ken Kenya and Uganda uh is it really integrative that they are are they really going to get considered as the African nationals?

[01:00:39]Well, if we are considered African nationals, then probably they don't have to protest saying that we are Africans, we are a kind of an kind of an indentured laborers that they had been.

[01:00:51]But generations after generations, they have been living there. They are serving countries. They are being part of Kenya itself. But they still are not getting acknowledged as a part of that. That is what Anita Shetty was trying to do. She she was born a British but she was never been considered as a British. She is trying to establish that I belong here.

[01:01:12]That's what Vijay Krishna was also like like her grandfather came and we have huge like here like the I can see like fourth generation fifth generation sixth generation Indians they are still not given the equal opportunities as the >> Malays is that kind of a difference that they are considering regarding the privileged position of the Indians in Africa that is they are opportunistic and privileged and that is the reason that they are uh uh still getting marginalized and uh outcast so-called >> well it is like like different situation like like Kenya's situation or different other places situations are different so political context is different so I don't think it is >> I don't think it is right to generalize what is true in Kenya may not be true in outside [laughter] Kenya so I think we should consider like when we talk about those kind complexities. We should take the that that social political context in consider into consideration because that is very important because like how the diasporas are whether blending or being marginalized or having a advantageous position it depends on that particular context so political scenario. Thank you ma'am. I got my answer. Thank you.

[01:02:36]>> Go back. Go back.

[01:02:37]>> We have time for just one more question.

[01:02:39]If there's any uh observations from the audience, anything you would like to uh be clarified?

[01:02:51]>> Yes, please.

[01:03:01]Um first of all uh fantastic presentation thank you so much for that uh professor Dalal um uh I just wanted to know your views on um there are these cross currents especially in the 20th and 21st century because of globalization there's an increased um focus also on people traversing boundaries the boundary is not really mattering anymore and the idea of the borders This is also it's it's pretty fluid now because of digitalization and because of all other manners of all other you know um trends which have come in because of globalization that starts with colonialization of course but there's also an increased pressure on essentializ essententralizing authenticity and I absolutely found fascinating something that you said disassociating authenticity with authority. Um what are your thoughts on these kinds of crosscurrens because you have talked a lot about how authenticity itself is a construct which is I think something that we find in um western philosophers as well who are countering this kind of um an enlightenment focus on what is authentic what is not but there's also very recent kind of work which is talking about how these kinds of crosscurrens in themselves there's an aporeia in the theory itself wherein on one hand there's a discussion about global civilization which seeks to um negate borders itself. But then there's also a increased focus on um authenticity and essential identities which leads to these kinds of racist attacks and they're increasing everywhere and we're just talking about the literary representation of that but in the political state and the earlier question was also about that. So how do you uh do you come ac you come across this kind of a pora also especially uh um especially visav the globalization and the negation of borders in these works because I I have not read these works and I I find them all very fascinating the way you have connected them. Well, we are always negating borders. It is like fluidity crossing borders. This is true. [laughter] We with the rise of like traveling and also the violation whatever we talking about also true but but the thing is that even though we are talking about crossing borders borders borders are really yeah it is if you are considering political scenario there are as you can see if you follow the news it is really getting further and further complexity further and further complex but But I think like we need to talk about it because of this like the fluidity and also different kind of like like distinction between me and they particularly depending on certain physical or cultural ethnic markers which are like >> creating those kind of questions and issues needs to be talked about because authenticity and identity ity nowadays I I think as these authors are trying to say should not not be boxed like ticking boxes authenticity can also be crosscultural [laughter] can be cross can be negotiable and can also change according to the where they are how they how they responding and how they want to situate themselves as well although that creates a lot of issues and that's why I think those kind of uh writings needs to be done to show or to raise pertinent questions that these people are facing on a daily basis.

[01:06:54]>> Thank you very much uh Dr. Talal. Uh >> thank you.

[01:06:58]>> We are badly out of time unfortunately.

[01:07:02]>> No worries. But may I say your presentation was a fascinating one and intellectually stimulating and not only that you see the slides that you showed particularly with this the with the illustrations of the food that was perfectly yummy. So [laughter] thank you so much.

[01:07:18]>> So we are going to have a good lunch.

[01:07:22]>> We going to have lunch a little later.

[01:07:24]So that was an appetizer. Let's see.

[01:07:26][laughter] >> Thank you very much to everyone of you for inviting >> most your most wonderful afternoon.

[01:07:34]>> We were enriched by your presentation and we look forward in this university to have you back if you can give us the time in some future or occasions.

[01:07:43][laughter] >> Thank you so much. Thank you.

[01:07:46]>> Goodbye. Byebye.

[01:07:47]>> And please keep well. Bye.

[01:08:17]Thank you uh professor Daral for that loose that lucid and thoughtprovoking lecture observations will inform many of the conversations we carry into the parallel sessions. Surely now uh we'll proceed to the third pl address. The lecture will be delivered by professor Dr. Shitat Bish.

[01:08:43]Professor Bish is currently a professor in the department of English University of Kolkata, India. He taught in the department of English St. Paul's Cathedral Mission College for 17 years before joining the university. He has published several articles in reputed journals in India and abroad. His books include theater theory and performance and looking for home journey and boundary in postmodern texts among others. He has also translated several works among which are his translations of the merchant of Venice and 12th night. His areas of interest include postmodern theater, translation studies and popular culture.

[01:09:30]The session will be chaired by professor Dr. Shepra Mukharji. She is a professor at the department of English West Bengal State University. Her research interests are religion, cast and literature. She has published research with Brill Books, Oxford University Press, Sage Shahito Academy, Sri Shamo, Rattlage and Permanent Black. Some of her books are modern English literature, under my dark skin, Dalith writings from Bengal, I belong to nowhere, Kolani Takur Charal's poem, the languages of religion, politics of the sacred, interrogating my Chondal life, a translation of Bapari's book and the Kolkata mosaic, minority communities of Kolkata. She has won the AK Ramanujan translation award with Minmoy Prammanik the 2018 Hindu award for non-fiction and been shortlisted for PEN presence UK before we move on to the third plenary of this conference the Indian writing in English in the 21st century negotiation resistance and alternatives we would like to felicitate both of our resource person I would like to call professor Bish Ash on stage and uh to felicitate him I would like to call Miss Oindrila Mukharji assistant registister and HR sister Niveita University. Ma'am please come on stage and felicitate sir.

[01:11:13]Ma'am happened to be a student of professor Vishasha. Can we have a big round of applause for this?

[01:12:00]I'm absolutely honored because sir is here today. So whatever I've learned my colleagues will know I have learned from the sessions sir has taught for um you know pinter he's taught us spinter and the power politics there. So if you see me applying any of it you know where it came from. Thank you.

[01:12:26]>> Now uh we'd like to felicitate uh our chair for this session professor Dr. Shepra Mukharji.

[01:12:33]I would like to call upon stage Dr. Moniqin Kinasu, Assistant Dean, School of Humanities, International Languages and Social Sciences. Ma'am, if you can kindly come up on stage and felicitate professor Mukheri.

[01:13:31]>> [clears throat] >> It's my pleasure to chair uh today's session. Uh Dr. Professor Shidhhat has already been introduced. So we look forward now to his presentation.

[01:14:21]>> Thank you Shepradi.

[01:14:23]Let me begin by thanking all the organizers this university and I feel very much at home here because I have been here for quite a few occasions and it's always pleasant to come back although having said that uh with professor Thor present it's a matter of great nervousness for me because as you know uh we all look up to him and he has been such an uh influence wins on all of us. I can't say inspiration. You know why? But it's a huge he has been such he has made such an impact on several generations of students and scholars. So speaking in front of him even now with all my hairs gone gray, it's still a matter of some as I said nervousness. and my colleagues and friends and uh everyone from this state university shipradi is here and once again I am slightly apprehensive speaking in front of Shepra he's chraha and I go way back is a good friend and of course ain uh is somewhere a postcolonial interventions and I also go back a long time because I have been uh doing some work for them for a while and they are doing such great work. So congratulations on this seminar and every year SNU holds these seminars which are absolutely brilliant. So congratulations on that too. Now today when Aubin told me that Shidata you have to uh speak we are organizing this I was in a little bit of a pro problem I would say because this is not quite my area of expertise at all. uh I am out of my depth so to say completely but then what I thought that I do have some questions to ask about whatever the state of Indian literature in English is about.

[01:16:31]So why not ask those questions here so that people can think about them they can enlighten me. So this will not be something that I am telling you. This would be me sharing my questions with you in the next few minutes. I don't plan to take long. And the other thing that I must uh apologize for I will speak not as somebody who knows anything about anything. Then again, I will not be speaking as a layman, a sort of a quote unquote common reader, but somewhere in between from that particularly confused state of being and that confusion will show in whatever I uh am going to speak about and the title that I had given I started working on that but somewhere in between it went in a very different direction. So my apologies for that too. It it all began when I was reading Adiga. I am a little behind in my reading. So I read Adiga quite recently and uh this is the part which actually began this whole series of questions. Let me quote from Adiga.

[01:17:53]Uh he writes, "I am talking of a place in India, at least a third of the country, a fertile place full of rice fields and wheat fields and ponds in the middle of those fields, choked with lotuses and water lilies and water buffaloos waiting through the ponds and chewing on the lotuses and lilies. Those who live in this place call it the darkness.

[01:18:20]So this is the darkness that began this chain of thought as I intend to present to you and with your permission I'm going to read today because as I told you I'm very confused about this so reading would be the best way to go. Now we know that the white tiger was awarded the man booker prize in 2008 and in Adiga's book it is being spoken the whole thing writing a letter to the Chinese premere it is by a native of that place which is called darkness so somebody who is from that darkness calling it a darkness and this this kind of uh I don't know how to bracket it how to present it whether it's self-awareness or is it a kind of othering that is happening othering which is being done by the native of that place himself so and and of course we have this othering everywhere I mean if you everywhere I can remember that piece quaba in the ministry of utmost happiness where the hijra community they're looking at the world and calling it dunya so that kind of a thing, this otherness is there and it started this process of thought which kind of told me that this is the kind of otherness that we find in most of the major texts that we call Indian writing in English. So this otherness and this locationing sometimes like in Adiga is speaking as an insider then we have texts uh in which the perspective is of an outsider. Then we have texts in which there is an interaction between the insider and the outsider. I mean hungry tide for instance and Pia comes from the outside and uh there are multiple other voices from the inside different layers of voices from somebody from Shundurbon somebody who is a minor academic sort of a fellow. So we have all those voices but defining this darkness seems to have become a confirmed part in the location of a section of Indian literature in English a location validated by the present politics of canon formation because if you're not writing about that you are not really celebrated that that kind of a feeling is very much there all around and regarding the other uh colonial I This is just another thing. I mean it is Indian literature in English that we are celebrating that is very much there.

[01:21:09]There is not really an Indian literature in French that we talk about. I mean there are people tudot I think wrote in French and Madhavan was writing in French or even the French influence I hardly I I don't really see people talk about Kulkumar mojun anymore as such but uh or Portuguese influences but then again uh there was this konani resurgence of konani consciousness that happened but when we are talking about English seems to have survived all other Indian consciousnesses. In fact, English seems to have been integrated in the Indian consciousness somehow because of its very large presence, numerically large presence, I guess. And in this realm of consciousness, the creative process that allows finding the self in English is at one end of the spectrum. But what I was thinking of is the range of reception of these texts.

[01:22:12]So I think this is something that is worth looking into. If we separate literature from academia and attempt to look at it through a popular lens, the location of this Indian literature in English might shift a little or it might shift a lot because our problem is we think we are everybody as academics.

[01:22:34]there is a very large uh part of India who are not responding to this Indian literature in English as we would like to think in fact having said that there is a large part of our students who don't really care about this Indian literature in English I mean there are some names yes Amitab Bush they will flock for autographs etc if Jumpalahi is there if there do any of them live in India.

[01:23:07]So these are questions I mean as professor Dalal was saying this idea of authenticity and this idea of identity these are questions that we need to ask because this Indian writing in English has evolved into something else now we are no longer in the realm of aren right we are not there we are in a very different geopolitical politics so this is the question that I was wanting to ask and the problem here is the perception and once again from a strictly popular point of view not an academic point of view because I am not a part of this point of view as far as academia is concerned. So has this literature uh managed to get a kind of unequivocal acceptance in India? We like to think so. In classes we teach them as if they are the be all and end all of everything. But what is that location if from the popular perspective and if it is not popular why is it not popular?

[01:24:16]So whenever we speak of Indian literature in English a kind of implied readership seems to be evoked. this implied re readership. This is Ulfang Aer who had first talked about implied readership and uh if we are talking about reception I cannot not refer to Hulab's reception theory and he is writing uh both as a textual condition and a process of meaning production.

[01:24:46]This is the implied reader is becoming a part of this meaning production. But quite interestingly when we speak about the implied reader we are speaking of exclusion as well. Because if we are implying a section of readers then there is a large section of readership which we are excluding who are not included in this creation of the text itself.

[01:25:14]So they are not writing for everyone. So this is the thing and this is where the exclusive nature of this kind of construction becomes apparent. I mean English is available to a very large part of the demographic. Now is Indian literature in English equally received by all those who have English. So this is the other question. Just because I can speak English or I can read English, am I reading Indian literature in English that much or am I choosing to read either vernacular literature or other English literatures. So these are it is time that we ask these questions.

[01:25:55]Now if we take a moment to look at English in India, we will find of course many issues. uh although Indian English literature predates any idea of globalization by a very long time somewhere along the line post globalization English had taken on the identity of being a commodity with a slightly evolved purpose the pressure pressures of the present makes the populace forget the past rather easily and conveniently and in India we are not that history conscious I'm I you might not agree with me but this is what I generally feel And the past we forget rather easily and conveniently from being the language of the artoine masters it became the conduit of globalization somehow not somehow we know how so representing the west and modern western enlightenment. So this shift it's no longer the language of the colonial masters but it is now the language of the west the representative language of the west and uh writes uh it's in his book called identity and violence the illusion of destiny he writes I quote indeed globalization is sometimes seen as a correlative of western dominance indeed a continuation of western imperialism So this dominance, this imperialism and this language they somehow become one probably I am guessing not my this is a hypothesis that I'm presenting. So when we speak of contemporary literature in English from India and once again contemporary literature in English from India I am not talking about the literature from other countries they have their own diasporic dynamics etc. So when we're talking about that quite often the perception of the general population towards it is influenced by this particular aura.

[01:27:59]Even though there has been discourses presenting the difference between English with a capital E and English S that we know a lot of discourses uh David Crystal and everything a lot of discussions on that and of course empire rights back is Ashcroft and the others are talking about that uh this remains a question but somehow the major texts that we have from this kind of Indian writing in English. They seem to be at least attend attempting to be the central capital E English adjacent.

[01:28:40]They are they are no longer trying to be Indian in their English. That English is more global. That English is more towards once again English with a capital E. They are no longer happy with being Indian English. This is a feeling that I have and this however to a large largely unacademic postcolonial audience the possibility of such distinctions may not be quite lucidly apparent that is also true which is the proper English the queen's English or American English or our English the English that I'm speaking now the average Indian person with one kind of English may not be able to distinguish inguish between this. I mean no disrespect to the average Indian but what I mean is that to them all these Englishes might be the same and might be a representative of globalization a representative of the west. So uh there is to uh many native readers a dissatisfaction with the Englishness of this kind of English literature. Of course, when I write write Englishness, I mean predominantly a western sensibility that looks varily at least, if not that looks down upon certain Indian traits, certain Indian cultural ideas. There is selective acceptance of the features of Indianness. Well, of course, according to the project at hand, uh unlike the novels of Ar Narayan, in which society was uh as Ashkraftoft is saying, I quote Ashcroft here, no longer conceived as other but triumphantly self-defining and self- sustaining, able to reorder the conceptual frame within which power is determined. And this sense of there is this sense of harmony that we have.

[01:30:41]There is a project of nationalization, nationalism etc. just after postindependence. But now the sense of harmony that was there in this new nationhood idea that shifted as Indianness progressed.

[01:30:58]So this Indianness idea and that shifted much with liberalization as well. So we cannot forget that very central idea which changed Indian history remarkably.

[01:31:12]So that and certain texts became celebrated for their discovery of the other.

[01:31:20]So whereas towards the beginning this otherness was challenged. Now this otherness becomes everything. This otherness is becoming celebrated and some uh attributes find direct condemnation. Some are accepted as charming or even progressive. Critique of a culture is bound to be such. There is no of course some would be selected, some would not be. But the point is whether there is this imposition of the western paradigm via this imposition of a rather capital E English aesthetic sensibility and that western cultural attempt at domination.

[01:32:07]So this is a question this question of imposition of western paradigms that is much that is not organic at all. Now there is this claim that of course we say that whatever is western was actually ours. That is a claim there.

[01:32:24]But the west has properly appropriated them. They have taken them. They have uh developed them and they have marketed them. So it there is no point saying that whatever you are saying we had said earlier there is absolutely no point that there is no rational in that. So this perhaps brings into the question the Indian selfhood found in these texts and questions the globalized representations of an enlightened India which condemns the non-enlightened as defined by a rather western paradigm.

[01:33:02]So this demarcation of enlightened this definition of enlightenment whether it's how is it presented how is it and how is it presented globally so that is the question that I am trying to ask so the fact that I mean English literature I'm if you think about Chaitan Bhagat if you think about Amish they're widely popular but are the major names that we think about like Amitab Boss or Oranduti Ray or Jalahi are they as popular?

[01:33:40]This question of popularity has to be asked right. So the nationwide success stories of Chetan Bhagat and Amish Amish Tripati this is something that needs to be examined because they are also writing in English. They are also writing in a kind of a discourse which seems to be far more acceptable to majority of India. Right? So this is something question and of course the term nationwide has its own problems.

[01:34:14]Ordunuti ray in her an ordinary person's right to empire says that even after independence the state and the people in India could not become one.

[01:34:24]Referring to the Hindi word public I mean the Hindi word not the English word. So public she says that it has become irretrievably separated from the concept of circar. So public and circad are two different phases. Now it is only the elite that can think that it is one with the state as a conscious project English has remained the marker of elitism somehow even now 2026 even now in in fact in Quaba a man is marked as the man who spoke English.

[01:35:06]that becomes the identifier. So it is still true in India now. So in one might say that somehow Indian literature in English has become a part of it and has also failed to bridge this divide between the elite circar and the public. So please don't accept me or accept whatever I say. I ask you only to think about this.

[01:35:39]Now if one is to look for reasons the most obvious answer would be class.

[01:35:46]I go back to sart. I mean I speak about class and I immediately jump to sart.

[01:35:50]There is an irony here. Uh in one of his uh interviews it's called the writer and his language.

[01:36:00]He talks about this idea which we also use but I was quite happy to find it in Sartra. The idea of resonance that it is the element that resonates with the reader and makes him identify with certain aspects of the text. In the case of Indian writings in English, the readers being cultural elites will have resonance with themes that may not be the central focus of the text.

[01:36:30]They may connect with ambitions, repercussions instead of looking at class issues simply because they have a different perception of those or perception towards those very issues.

[01:36:42]Inhabiting a space that is beyond the scope of the atrocities referred to because this is once again the fashion that all these texts refer to some atrocity or the other. It is it has become a general norm in these celebrated books. Now the authors themselves may have theoretical connections with the issues themselves belonging to a structure that insulates them from certain realities. That does not mean that they are unqualified to write about this. That does not mean that I mean when somebody is writing about the noshell movement you don't have to be a noshell to write about the noshall movement. It can be an academic approach, a critical approach as well.

[01:37:25]But the popular approach that is my concern. I mean they can and as a matter of fact their perspectives are necessary as they connect to those who are power adjacent.

[01:37:37]For instance a marginal voice may not have complete command over the English language. The perceived correct English language. I mean as per grammar books those Renan Martin books we used to or PK deswher for that matter so and that language may alienate certain sections who have better ownership of the postcolonial space so I read a book I see it's such a the English is so bad and I will not be able to connect to that book because I kind of have this ownership of English for whatever reason And then again somebody else who is reading that book their grasp might be quite faulty. They might identify with the flawed language but they might find resonance with the issues that are there.

[01:38:34]They might find more of a connection with the faulty language as well. So these this particular demographic will have the resonance with injustice and violence and will not be limited by the nitty-g gritties of grammar. It is quite worth looking statistically at the audience that the Indian writing in English caters to and how it affects them. Global recognition or exposure is vital, right? Even for the survival of margins, it's vital, right?

[01:39:07]But global recognition is also used to get authoral glory which is very true.

[01:39:13]The other reason behind this divide if not alien alienation is the idea of the social critics and the ideologies that run behind them. Criticism in itself is not a problem but the problem lies in attitude in condemnation and in a general lack of familiarity with what is known as the soil. that des kimiti kind of a thing. So once again Sartra right this is an interview titled revolution and the intellectual. Sartra is writing about his talking about radicalism and he's writing but radicalism can lead us into certain dangers. One of those dangers is leftism. That is demanding the universal immediately and instantaneously with all the practical theoretical and in fact very often symbolically symbolic and imaginary consequences which this kind of voluntism volunteerism implies.

[01:40:11]this instant redressal.

[01:40:14]In fact uh in the ministry of uh utmost happiness there is this section in which Orunutai is talking about a certain very old exs soldier activist who is sitting in Dilli and fasting for something and how a whole generation of activists who are more fashionable activists than anything else they flock and they come and they want immediate redressor which actually speaks of a kind of nonunderstanding of that dish kiti that we are talking about. Now this idea of leftism is not to be confused with the authentic ideology of the left that is that's a very different thing. Leftism is this quickism that is very popular. It is something that comes from a filtered and non-detailed understanding of core political thought that comes from a lack of engagement at the ground level. The inherent issue here is of that immediacy that implies an impatience for change which in turn signifies a lack of understanding of the existing structure and its relationship with the individual deemed to be suffering because we are imposing voices on the people that we are telling them you are suffering. The person who is suffering is not allowed to speak. Right? So that also is a problem. Then one cannot be free of ideology of course which will always dominate the discourse and the equation of literary reception. But the literary artifacts that have been wellreceived globally and critically seem to have their own dynamic. The literary market is very much in favor of anti-establishment sentiments that reflect violences past and present.

[01:42:02]There is a fine balance between conflicting ideologies when it comes to the politics of reception. The spectrum ranging from overt criticism to shameless propaganda rarely sees literary uh texts or canonical understandings that find proper objectivity. Judgment of one kind or the other work better than balanced outlooks because these judgmentality sells. Right? The question of history then once again and our response to it is more crucial than ever. The transition from the postcolonial to the neoc colonial has seen many projects uh related to history and they have created this kind of irreverance for history in the common mind the minds of the common people. We don't really care about history. We care about the narratives that are generated every day somehow or the other. these neoc colonial narratives. Even now with multiple wars going on all around the globe, we have so many we have been exposed to so many narratives. Modified perceptions have been created in order to reinvent the other or the enemy. One of my favorite essays is Ombberto Eko's inventing the enemy. So if you have a chance read that essay it tells us a lot about ourselves particularly in India with our close neighbors. So therefore new stories especially through media and of course social media of internal colonization rather easily captured the popular imagination. But is that why the presence of postcolonial violence of a colonial nature failed to resonate with a section of the readers? Are we suffering from a look back in anger kind of a phenomenon that affects only those who have the luxury to look back?

[01:43:59]And that is once again another kind of elitism which allows us to look back and luxuriate in past uh issues etc. I mean when we are talking about hungry tide we are talking about morapi how many common read how many of those people who are non-academic would actually care about morapi we would we have been very impressed we have been very uh we have been taken rather been taken with this idea my favorite novel the luland it's talking about the noshell movement once again the noshell movement is something I think the average Bengali people are sick and tired of I mean they are now we are more uh engaged with urban noshells and stuff right so that kind of noxialism once again from an academic point of view we have a lot to say we have a lot to think about but is the popular imagination still fascinated with that so when that land is engaging with this who is the implied reader so this is a question that we must ask but as in quaba and my I I always keep on joking about Chetan Bhagat in my classes but in this one I am going back to him. I mean three mistakes of my life and he is talking about Godra and Godra is something people are actually thinking about.

[01:45:26]Godra is very much there in the political narrative of our day. So these ideas for a large part of the population morapi and noshalites mean nothing and of course morapi noxialites I'm talking about Bengal to the rest of India do they have any meaning do they do would any average Indian care for these ideas butra somehow becomes very significant we know why so but these average readers they are more concerned concerned with their day-to-day violations and violences.

[01:46:05]This currency in popular politics becomes a pivotal point in reception and in popular culture. Taking advantage of this lack of interest in the past history, almost all contemporary political strategies aim at colonizing history. The project of reconfiguring the past and reinventing enemies along with the distrust of multithnicism find challenges in many texts written in English. That is true and that is necessary. That is why this Indian English literature is absolutely necessary. I'm not challenging its existence. I'm just looking at its reception. So even when we connect with I mean the brazen and the audacious way this is done now. So there has to be a construct which will challenge it. So even when we connect with these events are we aesthetizing aestheticizing these atrocities somehow?

[01:47:03]This is the other question that I have.

[01:47:06]Are we creating a space in which an objective and distant point of view can have an academic interest in these events? So like when we read 100 years of solitude or love in the time of Kolera, we are fascinated with the chaos the uh those uh I don't know uh unrest etc. Do we care about them? We care about magic realism. We don't care about the violence. Right? So is Indian writing in English doing the same thing for a global audience? They are looking at the literature, they're looking at the language, they're looking at the aesthetics of it, but not really caring about us.

[01:47:47]So this is a question that has been bothering me for a while. So the global market is absolutely fine with such a thing because the hardcore real is always acceptable than the feel-good. So what are we presenting as the hardcore real? Are we marketing these atrocities?

[01:48:06]So this is the question that I have. Now coming back to the idea of darkness, the dismissive approach towards the entire zone can be alienating to the inhabitants of the zone and to those who are struggling and fighting in it. There are people who are actually fighting the darkness and you come, you become a famous writer, you won a booker pri you win a booker prize and you say this is darkness and you dismiss it completely.

[01:48:31]Right? So it's a book, it's literature. I don't have to be so judgmental about it.

[01:48:39]Generally I am not. But the question has to be there. The question must be asked is how do we locate that now? Do we keep it as a continuation of the older tradition to do aren etc. or must do we need to redefine the entire thing once again as professor Dalal had said that idea of authenticity and identity that becomes a very important part I mean if you think about that there is a lot of literature coming out of northeast which is in English but there are a lot of marginalized people who are writing marginalized literature that literature itself is marginalized because they are not writing in English I mean Shepradi has done a wonderful thing with the translation wonderful translation and congratulations once again I could not uh so that is a kind of thing but they cannot write in English so the India that is being represented which India because we have many Indias which India is being represented here so violence is a part of all identities as a matter of fact as far as Indian identity is concerned violence has always remained an integral part but the question here is How is this violence being packaged? The representation of violence inward and outward, are they the same? The issue that has remained is of perspective. It is still dominated by the so-called upper class educated percentage of Indians. One may go on to ask if it is also a rather urban upper class response to the violence that we are finding in that Indian literature in English. Now this discussion does not question the writer who chooses to write in English. Not at all. With all due respect to them, English in a space like India allows multiculturalism to flourish. Let me go to go back to Amarushin and his description of the modern multicultural individual. He asks whether an individual should be limited to a specific unchosen identity determined by gender, economic classification, geolinguistic location, politics and traditions. Or he asks, should the alternative be like or should I quote or should they be understood as persons with many affiliations and associations and priorities over which they must themselves choose taking the responsibility that comes from reasoned choice. Now this choice this is what I'm in asking once again in Indian literature in English the celebrated Indian literature in English what is this choice which location are we inhabiting now the creative choice of writing in English is individual the reception of that whole is a wholly different inquiry this question must be asked this reception must be scrutinized closely this correlation between Indian literature in English and India's /barut still tells us much about the evolution of our entire demographic in the journey of our colonial to postcolonial to the neoc colonial space. One must also remember that this journey is different as far as the different segments of the nation are concerned. There are many indas and each has a different degree of progression. It is difficult for any single literature to represent them all true and it is necessary to locate Indian English literature properly. The more canonized texts of Indian English literature speak from a rather arbane stance if I may be so judgmental. While they are vital fighting the entire ecosystem dedicated to the exploitation of difference and segregation and the unleashing of mob/popular responses, their effectiveness across the board remains somewhat questionable. The percentage of people reading serious English literature cannot be equal to the large number of Indian population which is enamored with our Ramayan and Mahabharatan etc. All our epics, all our religions, all our religious teaching texts.

[01:52:50]with tradition that settles them into the greatest comfort of all the negation of thinking with projects going against the spreading of the language of the masters and projects insisting that this new linguistic hedgeimmonies that new linguistic hedgeimmonies be established.

[01:53:06]It is a critical juncture for Indian English literature and his stakeholders.

[01:53:11]One must also remember the Amish phenomenon.

[01:53:15]One may disregard it as quote unquote not good literature but one must not forget the resonance that it has created.

[01:53:30]This resonance should define Indian literature in English. Thank you.

[01:53:47]Thank you very much Shitarto. That was a very thoughtprovoking and a very interesting lecture and I was busy taking notes as you were talking. Uh uh I was especially struck by the tone of weariness in Shitaru's voice when he was talking about Indian English writing. So he has as it were turned the search light on to us. What Indian English are we teaching? Uh is this Indian English or is this too English English? Do we really when we lump together a number of books by diaspora writers, by Indian writers, by Indian popular writers, by Indian academic writers like Amitab Kosh as he said, are we really talking of the same kind of audience or even the same kind of context? uh I found it a fascinating lecture. So thank you very much and also this shift that you spoke about about how English changed it was English was one thing in postindependence India it has become another thing in globalized India. What is this ideology that we now package in English? And he has laid bear to us the range through which literature'ses and language work not only just as commodities which we buy on the market from the market but also as books which play a role in colonizing history. So yes, thank you very much.

[01:55:17]The paper is now open to questions, comments, observations. Yes, Chandraha.

[01:55:32]Thank you for a fascinating paper.

[01:55:35]Uh you know you uh ended your lecture saying that we need to situate Indian English in today's context. Now and you also said that as we all know that there are many Indians and many kinds of Indian English literature. So how do we really give it a particular location to this Indian English because there will always be diverse locations conflicting perhaps you know overlapping and literature once again no but no single text has the responsibility to discover this diverse India for us. Every text has its own target audience. It has a market dynamics. It has a publishing strategy and all these are you know very very closely associated. So people who are right and and again another thing you know many most of the popular I mean the well-known Indian English writers are diasporic writers and I I have a little bit of reservation because they do not have uh adequate knowledge of the ground realities of people's life living uh lives rather living in India. So uh you know your comment.

[01:56:42]>> Thank you. Thank you so much. Uh as I said that I have merely shared my confusions but I will try to expand that confusion more. So through this what well going back to once again professor Dalal this authenticity that she was talking about and I always ask that this focus this commercial focus on certain authors as if they are the be all and end all. As I said there are no other voices anywhere and whenever either Goss or Lahidi or Ry or anybody else even second generations Kirandai or somebody would be writing we would become so happy and so celebratory and most of them do not even belong to this deskiti thing that I as you also mentioned. So they are writing from I mean I I have no problem with their writing. They should write their writing not at all. But my problem is with our celebration that we are accepting somehow in the classrooms in in the seminars in the uh literary meets we are kind of turning them into prophets and activists etc. who do not actually engage with the realities. But the people who do engage with that realities of course one text will not be able to should not be able to or should not even try to be able to do everything. But the focused areas there are so many books there. I mean we were talking about I mean we are all talking about NAB syllabus. Now while talking about these syllabus formations we create this kind of cannon in which we cannot go beyond these texts. Right.

[01:58:39]Kari is a book which we are looking at right now but since but it's it's not an Indian text right it is a diasporic text it comes it comes from outside so there is this bluring of lines that we in order to have a global kind of an acceptance presence etc I mean Salman Rushi when was Salman Rusti in India but we start with Midnight's children Just because he has written about India as a marker for Indian but why >> right right right >> he he lives in New York right this is the question that I'm trying to ask that we have this yes and we do not have one single syllabus without them if we include some obscure I mean if I think of even saying that let's have a text by Amish I mean obviously not absolutely not but someone parallels somewhere near there are many texts which we have to find and this is where Indian English this is the consciousness that I'm you know targeting that let's shift the focus let's come back to if we are talking about Indian English in literature in Indian writing in English then where is that India? Is that the global globally imposed idea of India that we will respond to or should we look at ourselves?

[02:00:24]Should we allow ourselves to be colonized by that same global marketing the globalization liberalization marketing or should we raise a voice and create a new cannon which will actually talk about Indian writings in English.

[02:00:39]So that is the main idea here. So okay um thank you Okay, fine. So, thank you very much for your very thoughtprovoking um paper.

[02:01:03]Actually, um I back to disagree with something that you have been saying. Um well, as you may know, I'm from Italy.

[02:01:12]Uh recently, I have read a wonderful Italian novel by a writer who calls himself winging one. Actually, wuming is the name of a collective of writers in Italy. They do not want to be called by their names. They never appear uh on the media because they believe that um they don't like this market oriented idea.

[02:01:41]However, they do exist as a collective of kind of anonymous people. Right? So, wonderful novel and it's called it's not been translated yet. Um I will let you know when it is but the point is uh the title is you which means the fish men.

[02:02:03]So men who look like they're kind of um legendary figures. Okay. And it is all connected with um the Italian longest river which is called po well the name is very short but it's the longest river we have. So however when I was reading that novel it was absolutely clear to me that there were a lot of influences of both the hungry tide and the great derangement on that particular novel. Now should I say that it is not an Italian novel because um possibly the author was not coming exactly from that particular region. We don't know anything about the author you see and certainly it was strongly influenced by Amitavos and possibly other writers whom I have not read.

[02:03:02]So I actually don't think so. The point is that there is a kind of international dialogue about literature and India uh has a very prominent position in that international dialogue. Now that does not mean that those um books or those novels that literature is actually written for Indian people living in India. But however let me ask you something. How many Indians outside Bengal today would care to read Gibbre?

[02:03:39]Okay. So, uh I mean it's not there the point in my opinion. Obviously there is a kind of elitism in in these things but that's written certainly from a Indian viewpoint in many in many ways. And let me say just one thing about Naran. Now uh I happen to to to write extensively on on Narian. So there are a few things that few details. Uh one of these is that he had more readers abroad than in India uh back in the 50s and 60s. It was only after the guide was made into a film that he gathered a wider audience in India as well. Um so basically he too was writing for an international market.

[02:04:27]he too was kind of uh commodifying if you want his malgui uh for an international audience. Uh but I don't think there is nothing wrong uh in this basically he uh he has his own micro history and he uses his own micro history uh in order to write fiction.

[02:04:50]The point for me is whether it is good fiction or not and I think that in the case of Kosh in the case of Junalahhiri especially her English stuff the Italian stuff I don't know but anyway the English books the lowland is a wonderful book u the namesake is a wonderful book okay so the point is whether this is good literature it might be not so widely read uh in India but it's still you cannot call it nonIndian fiction It has to be called Indian fiction in many ways and if you really want to call something that is international fiction from India in my opinion.

[02:05:38]Uh thank you so much for your disagreement because uh that is the point of these seminars that we talk about and we have a conflicting uh points of view. The issue here is of course they are all good literature.

[02:05:53]They are all Indian literature. I am not really questioning their Indianness. I'm not questioning their aesthetic value or anything. What my point is that since because there are so many indas, there is this also an international India, right? And this whole project I don't know whether this is true of European countries or American countries, this NRI phenomenon, right? the non-residential Indians whom we kind of worship because apparently they have the power to bring in a lot of money which I'm sure they don't but that whole uh idea and in literature these NRI Indian literature'ses are dominating this whole presentation is aimed at challenging that dominance and giving some at least academic canonical priority to other texts that are there which do not fall under that dominance which which somehow escape our scrutiny. So I am more about equality of all these and not for once would I say that Jalahi writes badly.

[02:07:05]No, not at all. She's very Indian and as once again I just caught Professor Dalal so I'm really influenced by her thing as well. Somebody writing in Malaysia. So there is this question some Indians want to be Kenyans because they are living in Kenya but when they write they will be Indians. So there is a hugely a complex problem here that what are you choosing? Of course you can choose your identity but if you choose to be in Kenyan be Kenyan identity well you can shift but not as per your convenience.

[02:07:44]But the point is that yes this the India that is being represented there is a large amount of India which is misrepresented and I'm not saying that this because the prime minister is in town so right there is this whole belt several belts which we kind of dismiss as backward cast without really trying even to understand what they are about, what makes them click, how those dynamics function. So that is basically the point. But the disagreement is I accept the disagreement. I accept your point sir. So it is a valid point and I will uh kind of if I ever get a chance to revisit this, I will definitely think about this. So thank you.

[02:08:34]>> One last question.

[02:08:41]Well, the head of the department can ask me later and Lucky also can ask me later. So, Lucky is my PhD scholar here.

[02:08:58]>> Great. Thank you. Thank you for your thoughts about paper. U my question is out of sheer curiosity.

[02:09:08]Yeah, it's on. Oh, hold closer. Yeah.

[02:09:11]Yeah. Thank you for your thoughtprovoking paper. I mean, I I have I I my question is from a position of sheer ignorance and curiosity. The argument that you're making, I mean, like I'm thinking of catch words like the search for authenticity and misrepresentation and all that. Uh I I noticed that most of the examples and illustrations that you're giving were from novels. I wonder if this argument holds for other genres like drama particularly where there is more room for intersubjectivity and the dialogic nature where you kind of give up claims of authority and all that. So what would you how would you respond to that?

[02:09:49]>> Thank you so much. Right. And let me tell you that uh curiosity and ignorance that you talk about I shared that with you. So absolutely this is an exploration into something new for me.

[02:10:01]and poetry I poetry is a very different kind of a dynamic altogether this is something that I'll think about in greater detail now that you have mentioned it but if we are talking about Indian English drama then carnard tendulkar these are translations mainly when we talk about somebody who is actually writing in English we come to Datani or some other people but if you look at their theaters They are also not visiting a kind of a larger demographic but limiting themselves to a certain specific area as theater should. I mean theater cannot be pan national or anything. I mean in India's natto cannot be a place cannot be held everywhere but in that in those individual texts and in that cannon that Indianness I think works better. But it is in the realm of novels that this problem became more apparent to me because that is why I did not go to theater because theater is so much local. Theater is so very much engaged with immediate issues that even when we go back to ipsson we kind of look for issues that resonate with us. We don't just take any ipsson play. We focus on some plays which will make sense here. So that is a kind of ecculturation or something like that in those productions in the things. So but in case of novels in case this kind of dominance seemed like a problem to me but when I am expanding this I will definitely visit this. Thank you. Maybe we can talk about this more later on. Right.

[02:11:55]>> With that we bring the session to an end. Thank you Shitart. Thank you to the audience.

[02:11:59]>> Thank you all.

[02:12:02][applause] Thank you very much, Professor Vish, for your uh thoughtprovoking lecture and are sure that we'll uh get to listen to you more and now Without further ado, we are going to move on to the third academic session for this conference.

[02:13:13]I'm going to announce the names of the paper presenters and the respected venues.

[02:13:22]Session 3A, gender, power and social formations chair, Dr. Schomach Mandol, assistant professor, West Bengal State University.

[02:13:34]Venue seminar hall block A second floor the name of the paper presenters are Jahira Hussein Pawundi Deepan Nitita Nath Dr. Shubr Bish session 3B colonial alternatives and postcolonial formations chair Dr. Rafat Ali, Associate Professor, Jadapur University, Venue, Boardroom, Ground Floor.

[02:14:09]The name of the paper presenters are Shaendu Gors, Rahan Akar, session 3C, Heritage, Architecture, and Conservation Practices. Chair Dr. Priyanka Chakraorti, Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of English, Sister Niveita University, Venue Moot Court.

[02:14:48]The name of the paper presenters are Obishek Bachary, Dr. Shurrohida, Mohita, Churi, Dr. Dr. Ritushri Shenguptto for the session 3C the chair is Dr. Orchita Banerjee Assistant Professor Department of English Sister Niveita University.

[02:15:15]The participants are requested to go to their respective venues and if you need any sort of help or assistance uh our volunteers are there to help you.

[02:15:26]And after the end of this academic session, we'll gather here for lunch and after that we'll move on to the fourth plenary lecture of this conference.

[02:15:38]Thank you.