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VOL. 12, ISSUE 2 (2026)
Indigenous echoes: Reimagining identity in postmodern Indian writing
Authors
Dr. Surender Singh
Abstract
The Postmodern Indian writing in English
offers a significant space for exploring identity, memory, and cultural
belonging in the context of colonial legacies and globalization. This paper
examines how contemporary Indian writers reinterpret indigenous traditions
through innovative narrative techniques to question dominant historical and
cultural narratives. Focusing on Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children,
Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines, and
Githa Hariharan's The Thousand Faces of Night, the study investigates the use
of historiographic metafiction, fragmentation, magical realism,
intertextuality, multilingual expression, and self-reflexive storytelling.
Drawing on the ideas of Linda Hutcheon, Homi K. Bhabha, Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak, Frantz Fanon, Patricia Waugh, and Julia Kristeva, it argues that these
narratives recover marginalized voices and reshape understandings of Indian
identity. Rather than presenting indigenous traditions as fixed or nostalgic,
the selected texts portray them as living sources of cultural resilience and
creative transformation. The paper concludes that postmodern Indian fiction
broadens literary discourse by demonstrating how local histories, cultural
memory, and hybrid identities remain essential to interpreting contemporary
Indian society and its place within world literature.
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Pages:92-94
How to cite this article:
Dr. Surender Singh "Indigenous echoes: Reimagining identity in postmodern Indian writing". International Journal of English Research, Vol 12, Issue 2, 2026, Pages 92-94
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