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

Annalena Geisler

This project draws on recent approaches in border studies that investigate the relational potential of borders. On the one hand, scholars argue that borders function as meeting points that foster the dialogue between different epistemologies and engender new multi-perspectival theories. Similarly, the assumption that borders are complex phenomena that interlink multi-sited and multi-layered processes has shifted the focus from divisionary politics that unfold at the border to its capacity to generate social and political change. These hypotheses raise several questions among which the impact that the relational potential of borders could have on the global rise of right-wing nationalism which has led to stronger national borders in recent decades.

This analysis inscribes itself in the context of the rapid rise of Hindu nationalism in India since the beginning of the 1990s and the increasingly divisionary border politics of the movement. Following the hypothesis that relational bordering processes can generate “altern(arr)atives” of nationalism, a corpus of six contemporary Indian novels will be examined. How do these novels represent borders as relational and how does the writing participate in relational bordering processes? To what extent do these bordering processes foster alternative visions of Indian nationalism that counter the monocultural agenda of Hindu nationalism? To answer these questions, the work follows a tripartite structure: starting with two Partition novels, the analysis moves on to two novels set in India’s borderlands before ending with two experimental novels that represent borders visually on the page. This structure is based on a double movement of an increasing thematization of India’s international borders as well as a growing ecocritical concern within the examined novels.