Socio-political Realities of India in select Novels of Manohar Malgonkar, Khushwant Singh and Rohinton Mistry

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2012 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: A, , language: English, abstract: The thesis presents the socio-political realities of India through Khushwant Singh¿s novels Delhi and Train to Pakistan, Manohar Malgonkar¿s A Bend in the Ganges and The Garland Keepers and Rohinton Mistry¿s A Fine Balance and Family Matters. Muslim conquest of India, 1857 Sepoy Mutiny, impact of Gandhiji¿s ideology of non-violence, holocaust that took place at the time of the Partition of Indian sub-continent in 1947, State of Internal Emergency declared in 1975 and Post-Babri India are discussed in this book as depicted by the three writers in their novels.

Literature is considered to represent one of the highest forms of development of human sensibility. It is a deliberate act of social communication which is written by someone, for someone to read and is meant to convey something. A serious work of literature is a living document of contemporary happenings and also of the historical process underlying them. The great epics and tragedies of ancient Greece are rich in variety, lofty in thought and universal in comprehension. Hence we learn from them about the Greek society of the times as they reflect the ancient Greek civilization. The great renaissance that swept through Europe in fourteenth and fifteenth centuries produced Dante and Shakespeare. Blake, Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley owe much to the French Revolution.