Altern(arr)atives of Nationalism: A Study of the Representation of Borders in Contemporary Indian Novels

Annalena Geisler

Going against conventional conceptions of the border as what separates or causes violent conflict, this project draws on recent approaches in border studies that investigate the relational potential of borders. When conceived as meeting spaces that foster dialogues between different perspectives and cultures, borders bear the potential of generating political change and epistemological shifts. Since this approach is invested in making borders more “transgressible” and malleable, it stands in opposition to phenomena such as the global rise of right-wing nationalism and the concomitant call for stronger borders.

This analysis investigates these competing understandings of the border in the context of the rapid rise of Hindu nationalism in India since the 1990s. Following the hypothesis that relational bordering processes can create “altern(arr)atives” of nationalism, a corpus of six contemporary Indian novels will be examined: how does the representation of borders as relational offer alternatives to the monocultural discourse of Hindu nationalism? Can the page itself become a point of connection and dialogue between the writer and various intra- and international audiences? To answer these questions, the work follows a tripartite structure: starting with the examination of two Partition novels, the analysis moves on to explore two novels set in India’s borderlands before analysing two experimental works that represent borders visually on the page. This structure reflects a double progression within the analysis with, on the one hand, an increasing thematization of India’s international borders and, on the other hand, a growing ecocritical concern with the borders between humanity and nature.