Somjyoti
Mridha
Dr. Somjyoti Mridha teaches at the
Department of English, North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong,
Meghalaya. His areas of interest are Post-Colonial Studies, Ideas of Nation and
Nationalism, Indian English Literature.
Abstract
The paper proposes to engage with two
post-war British novels Kingfishers Catch
Fire (1953) by Rumer Godden and The
Kashmir Shawl (2011) by Rosie Thomas and explore the politics of
representing colonialism and its demise in the context of the princely state of
Jammu and Kashmir. Though Kashmir wasn’t a part of the British territories in
India, it came within the ambit of British hegemony under the Dogra regime and
its representation is marked by typical colonial mindset since the
mid-nineteenth century. The primary objective of the paper is to provide a
postcolonial reading of these two novels in order to deconstruct their inherent
colonial bias and decode the cultural politics of the ‘persistence of Empire’
in post-war British literature. The paper will focus on the cultural politics
of representing Kashmir and its people within the larger narrative of Empire
and its imminent dissolution. It is evident from these narratives that in spite
of their ‘good intentions’, all the British characters expose their sense of
superiority and social one-upmanship in their interaction with Kashmiris. These
narratives written in the aftermath of the Second World War and the
dismemberment of the British Empire in South Asia play a crucial role by
evoking nostalgia for the Raj during a period when British influence in the
international arena was on the wane. This paper will also explore the cultural
politics of nostalgia for the Raj in the context of these two novels.
Keywords:
Kashmir, End of Empire, Decolonization, Nostalgia, Cultural Politics
Colonialism has been one
of the major influences in the political and cultural life of not only the
colonies but also Great Britain since the nineteenth century. There has been a
steady production of fictional narratives about the colonies creating an
ideological consensus for British presence in the colonies since the onset of
colonialism. Writers like Rudyard Kipling and E.M. Forster wrote masterpieces
like Kim and A Passage to India respectively, which were immensely popular in
Britain as well as the colonies. Narrativizing
colonialism was a fairly popular theme for British writers since the mid-nineteenth
century. It continued even after the political system of colonization was
dismantled and erstwhile colonies gained political independence. The memory of
the British raj was glorified in the cultural life of Britain and assumed
centre stage through literary and cinematic productions that narrativised the
Raj long after the major colonies got political independence. Some of these
literary and cultural productions remain the mainstay of post-colonial British
culture. Since the political dominance of Great Britain waned during the Cold
War era, Britain strived for political validation by culturally producing
nostalgia for the Raj. These cultural productions were curiously much relished
by the literati and the glitterati of the erstwhile colonies as well. Novels
such as The Jewel in the Crown (1966)
by Paul Scott, The Far Pavilions (1978) by M. M. Kaye, The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) by J.G.
Farrell created a sense of nostalgia for the Raj and were immensely popular in
Britain. TV series was made on The Jewel
in the Crown and The Far Pavilions,
while The Siege of Krishnapur went on
to win the Booker prize in 1973.
The phrase ‘end of the empire’
generally refers to the moment of decolonization for most countries of Asia,
Africa and South America after centuries of colonial yoke. Even in academic
discourse “end of the empire’ is primarily considered from the perspective of
the colonized because of the popularity of Postcolonial studies since the
1990s. During the colonial period and thereafter, it was commonly understood
that colonizing European nations influenced the colonies in myriad ways while
the influence of the colonies was negated in the metropole. Recently, the
academic gaze has turned towards Europe which was grappling with the loss of
colonies in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. The
socio-political and cultural ramifications were widespread though ignored until
recently. According to Berny Sebe and Matthew G. Standard,
…decolonization
was a fundamentally fluid process of fluxes and refluxes involving not only
transfers of populations, ideas and sociocultural practices across continents
but also complex intra-European dynamics at a time of convergence following the
Treaty of Rome. Decolonization was neither a process of sudden, rapid changes
to European cultures nor one of cultural inertia, but a development marked by fluidity,
movement and dynamism (Sebe and Standard 2).
This paper deals with two
post-war British novels writing about Kashmir and the empire in its death
throes.
This paper will focus on two novels, Kingfishers Catch Fire (1953) by Rumer
Godden and The Kashmir Shawl (2011)
by Rosie Thomas which re-created nostalgia for the Raj in the context of
Kashmir. Godden’s Kingfishers Catch Fire
is a bildungsroman of the character named Sophie and The Kashmir Shawl is a novel about love, longing and self-attainment
of itinerant female characters separated by generations with the Raj as the
political context. These novels are diverse in their motifs, linguistic
manoeuvres, themes and are published over a gap of half a century. The common
thread that binds them is the colonial fascination for Kashmir as well as their
effort at narrativizing the end of British rule in the Indian subcontinent. Deriving
from Frederic Jameson’s theorization of third world texts, especially novels as
“national allegories” in “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational
Capitalism”[i],
this paper argues that all novels of colonial encounters are allegories of
empire narartivizing structures of colonial exploitation and domination in
order to bolster the claims of colonial hegemony. This paper intends to provide
a postcolonial reading of these novels with a singular focus on their
representation of Kashmir and its populace.
Kashmir has generated a lot of
academic interest in recent times primarily because of armed resistance against
the Indian state since the 1990s. It has remained a perpetual topic of national
importance since its inclusion in the Union of India because of various
reasons. The most recent political development, that is, the abrogation of
Article 370 and Article 35A and the subsequent internet shut down has generated
renewed controversy surrounding the Kashmir issue. Kashmir remained crucial to
the Indian nation state and ideas of Indianness since its inception in 1947. It
also had seminal political presence in the imaginary of the British Raj. Primarily
owing to the fact, that the state of Jammu and Kashmir was the largest princely
state in terms of territory within British Indian Empire whose relationship
with the colonial state was guided by the treaty of Subsidiary alliance.
Outside the direct control of the colonial state, the Kashmir valley
experienced something like secondary colonialism for lack of a better term. It generated
a lot of interest among the Britishers residing in India. Numerous literary narrative
and travelogues testify to the fact. The novels dealt with in this paper refer
to itinerant Britishers travelling to Kashmir in order to explore the pleasure
potential inherent in the beautiful valley and the city of Srinagar.
The state of Jammu and Kashmir in
general and the Kashmir valley in particular, though not central to the
colonial project in India remained a cherished location to retreat from the
murky business of Empire and a travel hotspot since the mid-nineteenth century.
The high demand for Kashmiri property among British colonials forced the Dogra
monarch to promulgate the State Subject Act in 1927[ii]
which restricted property ownership for anyone who is not a state subject. It
was primarily promulgated in order to thwart settler colonial aspirations of
the colonial British citizens. The State Subject Act of 1927 is the precursor
of Article 35A of the Indian constitution which empowers the Jammu and Kashmir
Legislative Assembly to determine permanent residents of the state of Jammu and
Kashmir and was abrogated along with Article 370. In both the novels the
narratives revolve around British presence in Kashmir, their desire for
property ownership and their rented property. Both Sophie in Kingfishers Catch Fire and Myrtle in The Kashmir Shawl express their desires
to own property but are thwarted by restrictions and hence resort to renting
property in Kashmir valley. Within discourses of desire generated by
colonialism, a system that institutionalized hierarchical relationships between
the colonizer and the colonized, this desire for a home in Kashmir among
British colonials becomes a metonymic representation of the colonial states’
expansionist political ambitions. Thus, when Sophie exclaims that, “I
am…homesick for them…Homesick!” for the valley of Kashmir, it is more political
than personal nostalgia about her experiences in Dilkhusha (Godden 2). In pure
simple terms, it is an expression of collective British nostalgia for the empire
once it was lost. It is crucial to note that Kingfishers Catch Fire was published after the British Indian
empire achieved political independence with the princely state of Jammu and
Kashmir as a constituent part in 1947.
In curious ways, the supremacy of
the colonizer in all spheres of social and political life stands reversed, though
in a much mitigated manner, in the context of Kashmir since the Maharaja is at
the helm of affairs. Sophie’s nostalgia for Kashmir and the wistful language
employed to describe Kashmir in the prologue of Kingfishers Catch Fire may be politically read as the desire of the
settler colonial for a territory/space lost. The recollection of good memories
from Kashmir also has her innate desire to control the narrative about the bad
turn of events in Kashmir. The narrative of Kingfishers
Catch Fire and that of its protagonist Sophie is loosely based on Godden’s
personal experiences in Kashmir, including the disturbing one where her cook
tried to poison her with glass particles mixed with her food. Kingfishers Catch Fire does not devolve into a murder mystery or a colonial
gothic like M.M. Kaye’s Death in Kashmir.
In the context of British fictional treatment of colonial spaces so succinctly
theorized by Alan Sinfleld, Godden resorts to “enthusiastic myth-making that is
the obverse of hostile stereotyping” (Sinfield 127). Though Kashmir was
practically sold to the Dogra chieftain Gulab Singh for 7.5 lakhs both as a
reward for his loyalty to the British during the Anglo-Sikh wars and the
British reluctance to engage with the ever expanding Russian empire, in the
heyday of British colonial presence Kashmir signified lost possibility for the
British colonials. In these narratives, written after the British Raj was
dismantled from the Indian subcontinent, a characteristic nostalgia is
generated about the Raj. In both the novels, the Raj has been imagined as a
perfect political arrangement vis-à-vis the impoverished, ill-managed and pre-modern
Dogra state. There are repeated references to ethnic and communal disturbances
in these novels. The primary political motive is to showcase the inefficiency
of the Dogra state in maintaining law and order and present it as a contrast to
the orderly British territories in India. Poverty and communal tension were
highlighted in order to create a discourse in defense of British colonial
presence in other parts of the Indian sub-continent. This is not to say that
communal disturbances were not happening. Since 1931, militant anti-Dogra state
agitations by Sheikh Abdullah’s Muslim Conference which was later on named as
National Conference, took the form of violent attack against members of the
Kashmiri Pandit community.
Kashmir was constructed as the delectable spot
created for the pleasure seeking British colonials within European exclusive
clubs outside the hubbub of the city of Srinagar. This conceptualization of
Kashmir as the pleasure ground of British colonizers enjoying their vacation found
continuity in the post-Independence imaginary which reduces the valley as a space
devoid of human habitation and aspirations of its own. Repeated references to
the beauty of the landscape and the poetry of existence in Kashmir coupled with
vivid description of poverty create a fertile ground for colonial intervention
yet the authors are painfully aware of the imminent departure of the British
from the sub-continent. Kashmir is conceptualized as both pre-modern and
delectable. Occasionally, it is delectable because it is pre-modern which
concomitantly produces the desire to bring in the signposts of modernity. These
contradictory impulses generated by colonialism which on the one hand promises
the fruits of colonial modernity yet deprives the colonized equivalence on
grounds of race and class because it is only in the deference that power may be
realized, herein lay the continuation of colonization. In the context of
Kashmir, discourses generated by colonization, including the novels dealt here
tend to put the onus of delayed modernity on the Dogra princely state. For
instance, Godden’s chief protagonist, Sophie imagines Kashmir as “Russia in the
Eastern sense, like its old name Scythia; the sweet green tea they drink here
is made in a samowar which is much the same as a samovar. Russia of the old
days” (Godden 13). The description of Kashmir in these novels is characterized
with contradictions. Poverty and underdevelopment are vividly described along with
a characteristic desire to possess and settle in this land of unparalleled
beauty. A curious sense of nostalgia is also generated through the language of
desire in both Godden and Thomas. Rumer Godden begins her novel with a visual
description of Kashmir equating the territory with its natural beauty and
artisanal treasures. In the prologue, Godden writes, “…her eyes were tender as her
fingers traced the bright birds on the lamp; Kingfishers always made her think
of Kashmir; with the bulbul, the lotus, the iris, vine and chenar leaf, they
are the symbols of the country; over and over again they appear in carvings and
embroideries and are woven in Kashmiri silk and carpets (Godden 2). Thomas’ approach
is more direct and describes the valley of Kashmir as “the most beautiful place
Nerys had ever seen” ( 89). The iterative reference to delectable scenic beauty
of Kashmir not only represents colonial desire for territory but also projects
Kashmir, to be a land untouched by industrial modernity.
Nerys and Sophie, both belonging to rural
England, considers Kashmir as a replica of their native place complicating the
discourse of desire, power and nostalgia generated in the novels. For British
imperialists, a Kashmiri Village is the locus of unchangeability since “nothing
much had changed here in centuries” (Thomas 209). Orientalist imperial gaze
became the dominant mode of representing Kashmir since the early period of
colonialism in India which in a way paved the way for entrenched British
control over the largest princely state in the Indian sub-continent. As Vanessa
Chishti writes, “The colonial engagement with Kashmir was marked by
contradictory impulses: the desire to preserve Kashmir as an untainted paradise
on the one hand and the desire to bring colonial ‘order’ to it on the other.
While the former impulse dominated early accounts, the latter was not entirely
absent. A British influence over the valley became more direct in the last
quarter of the nineteenth century; the colonial desire to transform Kashmir
became more pronounced” (Chishti 276). In fact, the novels portray colonial
intervention in a direct fashion. British characters portrayed in these novels
are mostly missionaries, soldiers, colonial government servants and their
spouses. The very reason for their existence in Kashmir is primarily to
safeguard British interests in the Indian sub-continent. The omnipresence of
soldiers signify war time society in far flung areas of the British empire as
well as imminent social unrest due to the impending transfer of political power
in India which subsequently brought about the violent episode of partition of
the Indian sub-continent. Yet, their omnipresence clearly exposes the violent
nature of colonial occupation belying the rhetorical significance accorded to
civilizing mission undertaken by the empire. In fact, the civilizing mission is
purely interventionist and primarily undertaken in order to protect and
perpetuate the interest of the colonizers at the expense of the colonized.
The furtive and futile presence of
the Mission in Kingfishers Catch Fire and Evans’ personal zeal for
proselytization is politically significant. There is a characteristic ironical
treatment of Christian missionary zeal in both the novels. Both Nerys in The Kashmir Shawl and Sophie in Kingfishers Catch Fire are aware of the
futile intervention of the missionaries in religious landscape of Kashmir. Yet
both these characters intervene in the life of local Kashmiris without any
hesitation. Nerys’ intervention in the life of a female Kashmiri shawl weaver
and her children brings about positive changes in their life. She also strives
to teach English language, another colonial pedagogical intervention in the
sub-continent, to hapless Kashmiri and Ladakhi children without any avenues for
improving their lot. Sophie’s intervention in the Dar versus Sheikh conflict in
the village destroys social harmony. While Sophie conveniently leaves the scene
as she returns to Toby and England, the villagers are left to live with the
consequences of disturbed peace much like the fractured sub-continent
bequeathed by the British once the empire was dismantled.
Colonization is a system maintained
by both military and structural violence. It creates an artificial hierarchy in
the colonized territories where the colonizer is accorded a certain degree of
primacy denied to the colonized in their native land. In the words of Fanon,
A
world compartmentalized, Manichaean and petrified, a world of statues: the
statue of the general who led the conquest, the statue of the engineer who
built the bridge. A world cocksure of itself, crushing with its stoniness the
backbones of those scarred by the whip. That is the colonial world…The first
thing the colonial subject learns is to remain in his place and not overstep
its limits (Fanon 15).
Racial and social
superiority claimed by the colonizer cuts across class boundaries and is
supported by racist discourses which gained the status of popular science in
Britain since the nineteenth century. The claims of racial and social
superiority by the colonizer were assisted by the subterranean threat of
violence bolstered by the military might of the empire. These racial
supremacist discourses have currency even after political decolonization of the
erstwhile colonies with the elite subscribing to such views in a more or less
uncritical fashion. Rosie Thomas writing after half a century of decolonization
tends to uncritically narrate instances of superior claims of the British
without so much as a critical remark. As narrators of the Raj, both Godden and
Thomas subscribes to discourses of racial superiority of the British bolstering
the legacy of writers of the Raj like Rudyard Kipling. As Alan Sinfield has
rightly pointed out,
Societies
have to reproduce themselves culturally as well as materially, and this is done
in great part by putting into circulation stories of how the world goes.
Diverse institutions are involved in this (the media, religions, political
parties, education), and the texts designated literary, and the processes of
that designation, contribute. They present the attempt of literary
intellectuals, in the changing conditions of their medium and society
generally, to make persuasive sense of the world (Sinfield 2).
Colonial domination over
vast swathes of the empire was primarily possible through discourses of racial
and cultural superiority. These discourses helped camouflage the real purpose
of colonial domination, that is, political subjugation and exploitation of
resources in the colony. The exceptional deference and courtesy meted out to the
not so privileged Britishers like Nerys, Caroline, Evan in The Kashmir Shawl and Sophie and her children in Kingfishers Catch Fire is a testament to the social one-upmanship accorded to
the colonizers within a colonial space. In fact, most of the British characters
depicted in both the novels belong to the middle class and some like Sophie is
practically a destitute widow. In spite of all her problems, Sophie constantly
enjoys a feeling of one-upmanship due to the stark poverty of the villagers.
While she says, “ ‘We shall be poor like the Kashmiris…we shall be poor and
frugal. We shall toil’ ” (Godden 35), she is also constantly reminded that she
is not a Kashmiri but a British woman residing in the British dominated Indian
subcontinent. In spite of her poverty, her exceptional importance is brought
home through words of caution uttered by well-wishers like Sister Locke, who
reminds her, “ ‘You should be what you are—British” (56).
The narration in both the novels is permeated
through a female imperialist gaze comfortably aware of their superior racial
and social position vis a vis their Kashmiri counterparts. While analyzing
racism in Literature, Culture and
Politics in Post War Britain, Alan Sinfield distinguishes between two
different kinds of racism in the novels representing colonialism. They are
structural racism and phobic racism. He writes,
Structural
racism helps to legitimate the social order, but it may be relatively
unimportant to the individuals who manifest it. Phobic racism, on the other
hand, seeks to secure not just the economic, political and general psychic
well-being of the European; the racial other is invoked, also, as a way of
handling profound personal inadequacy (Sinfield 121).
While none of the
fictional characters in these two novels suffer from what Alan Sinfield terms
as “phobic racist” both these narratives expose structural racism of the
colonial world. Fictional characters in both the novels are aware of their
superior racial/social position vis-a-vis any Indians in their vicinity. Archie
McMinn depicted as a devoted husband and perfect gentleman throughout The Kashmir Shawl have no compunctions
about “commandeering the places regardless of who might have arrived ahead of them.
As a British sahib and a proper daughter of the Raj, Archie and Myrtle
automatically took the precedence they saw their due. They felt no compunctions
in ousting Ladakhi or Kashmiri travelers from the shelters…” (Thomas 82). The
obsequious behavior of elderly Kashmiri men towards these middle class British
women characters are depicted in order to drive home the exceptional importance
of being British in colonial India.
In fact, Kingfishers Catch Fire
and the colonial episode of The Kashmir
Shawl reduce Kashmiris as little more than caricatures, nuisance makers, servants
and ill-mannered beggars. The servants in these two novels have a muted
presence apart from Nabir Dar while none apart from Sultan exercises any agency
in their actions. These novels abound in racial stereo-typing, ideologically
concomitant with colonization. The stereotypes employed are Janus-faced, simultaneously
orientalizing Kashmir and Kashmiris in order to invoke desire and nostalgia as
well as elicit horror and pity. Sophie’s insistence on Sultan’s infantilization
and exoneration in spite of definite criminal intent is characteristic of
colonial attitude towards colonized native where they are subjected to varied
stereotypes, occasionally contradictory ones but never considered fellow humans
on an equal footing. The only exception in the representation of Kashmiri
characters is in the references to the Maharaja and his charming but sexually
dissipated cousin, Ravi Singh. This is primarily because of their status as
royalty. They are spared the imperialist female gaze through which everything
Indian is presented in both the novels. These novels (though published much
later) guided by the social mores of Victorian and Edwardian England tend to be
more generous towards the aristocracy. Ravi Singh, though portrayed in a
seamier light, is not projected as an outright villain in spite of his sexual
dalliance and transgressing the sexual boundaries made sacrosanct by the Raj in
order to maintain racial and social hierarchy in colonial India.
Both the novels intermittently refer to the imminent end of the empire.
Sophie’s final departure from Dilkhusha, as a consequence of her thwarted
attempts at “civilizing’ the Kashmiri villagers anticipates the departure of
the British from the sub-continent. Myrtle in The Kashmir Shawl described as the offspring of the Raj is at a
loss to understand the incipient nationalist fervor across the length and
breadth of the British Indian Empire. She anticipates the departure of the
British from the Indian sub-continent in no uncertain terms as she voices her
anxiety, “I don’t understand India any more. It’s all I know, but I can hardly
recognize the country I grew up, or understand what’s happening to beautiful
Kashmir. They want us to leave, and we will do, but what will happen after
that? There’ll be nothing left, nothing but blood and destruction” (Thomas
307). Her concern is as much for Kashmir as for her irrelevance in the land of
her birth. As a member of the colonizing race and accustomed to commanding in
all spheres of life, the British community in India were at a loss to
understand the new reality of not legitimately belonging to the Indian
sub-continent for political reasons. With the dismantling of the British Empire
and loss of Britain’s preeminence in the international arena, the colonial
elite found themselves disenfranchised and rootless, returning back to the so
called mother country where they had tenuous ties. Myrtle and Archie McMinn
represents that cross section of the colonial elite who experienced political and
social upheavals with the end of the empire. The prospect of repatriation looms
large in their minds. The most poignant moment about the end of the Empire in The Kashmir Shawl is when Archie McMinn
refers to the prospect of winning the war. For the war battered McMinn, the end
of the war brings forth possibility of renewed life and he states, “… then
there will be a life again. A New world”(Thomas 342). Yet, he ignores the possibility
of the loss of Empire in the aftermath of the war and the ensuing changes bound
to unfold due to political exigencies. The ever perceptive Nerys “marveled at
Archie’s spirit in genuinely counting himself as fortunate, and in looking
forward to a new world in which the British India the McMinns had known all
their lives would almost certainly no longer exist” (342). The new world
envisioned by McMinn and Nerys is that of decolonization and the loss of
exclusive privileges of the British in a newly independent India and their subsequent
departure to Britain. It is a moment of supreme irony when colonial officials
envision the incumbent new world order without British hegemony as something to
look forward to. For the The Kashmir Shawl published as recent as 2012, it
would have been grossly politically incorrect to refer to decolonization as anything
other than a novel way of life full of possibilities for the greater good. That the primacy of the British is a thing of
the past in the Indian sub-continent is evident from the treatment meted out to
Mair, Nerys’ granddaughter, during her travels in post-colonial era Leh and
Kashmir valley.
For the McMinn family depicted in The Kashmir Shawl, the end of the empire
signifies the end of privileges and home while Sophie’s tribulations in Kingfishers Catch Fire are far easier since
she is well ensconced within English polite society and was linked with the
empire only through her marriage with Denzil. She manages to escape Kashmir before
the political upheavals began. Of course, her departure signifies the imminent
departure of the British from the Indian sub-continent in the aftermath of the
Second World War. These two novels represent different cross section of the
colonial elite including Indian aristocracy created by the Raj and their
predicament with the end of colonial era. Indian Nationalist agitations and the
anti-Dogra Monarchy agitations in Kashmir led to the dismantling of the empire
and its political structures which in turn led to the downfall of the Dogra
monarchy. So in some ways, the end of the British Empire in the Indian
sub-continent is also the end of the old feudal Kashmir under Dogra dominance. Both
these novels tend not only to aestheticize the Raj but also unwittingly
narrativize its downfall along with all the allied political structures that it
propped. The immediate victims of dismantling of the Empire were the colonial
elite situated in India ensconced as they were in the privileges that came from
belonging to the ruling class and race.
Endnotes
[i] This is a reference to Frederic Jameson’s
controversial assertion that, “All third-world texts are necessarily, I want to
argue, allegorical, and in a very specific way: they are to be read as what I
will call national allegories, even when, or perhaps I should say, particularly
when their forms develop out of predominantly western machineries of
representation, such as the novel.” This assertion led to a controversy and in
response eminent South Asian scholar, Aijaz Ahmad wrote the essay, “Jameson’s
rhetoric of Otherness and the ‘National Allegory” anthologized in his book, In Theory: Classes, Nations Literatures. Though
the paper derives its premise from Jameson’s assertion in order to subvert its
logic, it is not uncritical about the remark.
[ii] There are frequent references to
the history of Kashmir in the paper, especially of the nineteenth century. The
books consulted are Mridu Rai’s Hindu
Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights and the History of Kashmir, Chitralekha
Zutshi’s Languages of Belonging: Islam,
Regional identity and the Making of Kashmir. These books have not been
included in the list of works cited since the paper does not cite from these
books but they were crucial for understanding of Kashmiri history.
Works
Cited:-
Chishti, Vanessa. “Producing Paradise: Kashmir’s Shawl
Economy, the Quest for Authenticity
And the Politics of Representation in Europe, c. 1770-1870”. Kashmir: History, Politics
Representation. Ed. Chitralekha Zutshi.
Cambridge University Press. 2018.
Fanon, Frantz. The
Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Richard Philcox. Grove Press, 1961.
Godden, Rumer. Kingfishers
Catch Fire. Virago Press, 1953.
Jameson, Frederic. “Third-World Literature in the Era
of Multinational Capitalism”. Social Text,
No
15. Autumn 1986. http://www.jstor.org/stable/466493.
Sebe, Berny and Matthew G. Standard. Decolonizing Europe? Popular Responses to
the End of
Empire. Routledge. 2020.
Sinfield, Alan. Literature,
Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain. University of California
Press. 1989.
Thomas, Rosie. The
Kashmir Shawl. Harper Collins, 2011.