Colonialism in Literature: Colonialism is the establishment, exploitation, maintenance, acquisition

and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony, and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by colonizers from the metropole. Colonialism is a set of unequal relationships between the [1] metropole and the colony and between the colonists and the indigenous population. The European colonial period was the era from the 1500s to the mid-1900s when several European powers (particularly, but not exclusively, Spain, Portugal, Britain, the Netherlands and France) established colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. At first the countries followed mercantilist policies designed to strengthen the home economy at the expense of rivals, so the colonies were usually allowed to trade only with the mother country. By the mid-19th century, however, the powerful British Empire gave up mercantilism and trade restrictions and introduced the principle of free trade, with few restrictions or tariffs.

The study of colonialism has become, over the past twenty years, a fundamental part of the study of European literature and literatures from the former European colonies. This change has come about through Colonial/Postcolonial Studies, a field influential in literature departments internationally. Our proposal is for a series of three courses in Literature and Colonialism at the undergraduate level. This series will educate our students in canonical and non-canonical literary texts while serving two crucial functions: to introduce students in the English major to important changes in the field of literary study, demonstrating the interrelatedness of History, Theory, Politics, Aesthetics, and Culture; and to make literary study understandable within the current global context. Ideally, these courses will serve as a core for interdisciplinary work and prepare students for further study in a number of departments. We anticipate that the courses will be offered sequentially at least every other year, in order to enable as many students as possible to benefit. This study of colonialism has extended beyond critiques of representations of the colonized in European texts. The field has also highlighted how, for example, Britishness itself and concepts of the literary formed out of colonial relations; how literary production from the colonies in earlier periods is in dialogue with colonial literature; and how we reconceptualize the aesthetic in literary study that calls for historical specificity.
Post-colonialism (also Post-colonial Studies, Post-colonial Theory, and Postcolonialism) is an academic discipline featuring methods of intellectualdiscourse that analyse, explain, and respond to the cultural legacies of colonialism and of imperialism. Drawing from post-modern schools of thought, Post-colonial Studies critique the politics of knowledge (creation, control, and distribution) by analysing the functional relations of social and political power that sustain colonialism and neo-colonialism; the how and the why of an imperial rgimes representations (social, political, cultural) of the imperial coloniser and of the colonised people. As a genre of contemporary history, post-colonialism questions and reinvents the modes of cultural perception of viewing and of being viewed

Postcolonial Indian Literature in English: Narayan, Jhabvala, Rushdie

This page last revised 3 June 1997

Indian literature in English which is accessible to us in the West, still has its roots in colonial literature and the tensions between East and West. A European naturalism is often present; a concern to posit India as an arena within which Western readers can identify realities is inherent within much of this writing. The following are three examples of the progression of post-Independence literature. Twenty years after Independence, R.K.Narayan was still tackling issues of colonialism. The Vendor of Sweets (1967) takes us through the tensions integral to a family in which two generations belong to two different cultures. Ascetic Jagan belongs to an old India of family and history ;his son to an India increasingly subject to the foregrounding of the commodity and a dramatic industrialisation. Narayan explores the inevitable clash of what is, in many ways, both a colonial and a post-colonial encounter: Jagan, a follower of Gandhi and a veteran of the wars against British Imperialism, must attempt a negotiation of an ethos invasive to his own definitions of nationality; Mali, without this structure, must reconcile an American capitalism with India's own sense of what constitutes a modern nation. This theme is continued in Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Heat and Dust (1975). Again two generations, this time British, must come to terms with an alien culture. Whilst Olivia's adventures are romanticised, Jhabvala attempts to explore in a more sophisticated manner the social outlay of Anglo-Indian relations with the higher Muslim classes and Olivia's step-grand-daughter is confronted with an India that remains hidden in the works of Kipling, Forster or Narayan. Leelavati the beggarwoman's life, if not her behaviour, demonstrates an unusual social awareness of the lowest castes. It is to be noted that the East-West dichotomy within the later generation has become less strained: modern Britain is expected now to accept India on its own terms. Salman Rushdie, whose work has been produced in the eighties and nineties, has removed himself from the sites of both nationality and naturalism but remains in an engagement with economic colonialism and its consequences. Midnight's Children (1982) critiques the post-Independence political strategies of Nehru and Indira Gandhi but to do so, conforms to intrinsically Western postmodernist narrative technique. Critique and critiqued demonstrate an India which has not yet fully resolved the dramatic industrialisation necessary to the creation of a modern nation: Rushdie's response is necessarily part of the same Western political agenda as Nehru's or Mrs Gandhi's. Details of this can be found in Independence: Building a New Nation 1947-1977.
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement in the arts, its set of cultural tendencies and associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In particular the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by the horror of World War I, were among the factors that shaped Modernism. Related terms are modern, modernist, contemporary, and postmodern.
major changes in terms of literary writings. Indian independence may be a historic event for its socio-political significance. But according to some writers, this event has had an outstanding impact on the creative writing done in various regional languages

of the writers. India`s nationalism at the point before independence was a nationalism of grief and mourning. Thus, most of the new age writers through their writings portrayed the terrible fake world that was based on the western modernism. However, in a country like India, the vast culture of the past does not go off completely. With the independence of the country the cultural rhythm of the past certainly broke down as a result of modernistic experimentations. Rabindranath Tagore, Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, Vallathol Narayana Menon, Munshi Premchand, Mardhekar and Iqbal, to mention a few towering peaks in the Indian literary scene in the first half of this century, had given their best before independence.

The development of modern Indian literature has been marked by certain characteristics, some of which it shares with modern literatures over the world. There has always been in all countries and ages a conflict between the orthodox and the unorthodox, but in India, because the new impulse was identified with an alien culture and foreign domination, the clash of loyalties has been sharper. The very impact of Western thought, with its emphasis on democracy and self-expression, stimulated a nationalist consciousness which resented the foreign imposition and searched for the roots of self-respect and pride in its own heritage. For instance, Rabindranath Tagore`s novel Gora is a masterly interpretation of this built-in conflict in the very nature of Indian renaissance, a conflict which still persists and has coloured not only our literature but almost every aspect of human life. The first outstanding Bengali poet of the nineteenth century (and the last in the old tradition), Iswar Chandra Gupta (1812-59), whose remarkable journal, Sambad Prabhakar, was the training-ground of many distinguished writers.

The study of the postmodernists to the realistic, historical and technical aspect of modern era has been strongly deep rooted in being selfconscious, ironical and experimental. Postmodernism focuses on themes such as irony, playfulness, black humour and so on. This paper focuses on the aspects of Postmodernism in an Indian context, with a special reference to NISSIM EZEKIEL. This presentation concentrates on the techniques such as irony, parody and anti thesis that has a free play in the poems of Nissim Ezekiel.
ORIGIN OF MODERN INDIAN ENGLISH POETRY:

Modern English poetry in India is one of the many new literatures which began to emerge at the end of the Second World War. The emergence of modern English poetry was a part of modernization which included urbanization, industrialization, independence, social change, etc. Gradually with passing time the English language poetry became more indianized in nature. Such Indianisation had been proceeding for several generations and is prominent in the poetry of Kamala Das and it is more likely to be felt in the verse of Nissim Ezekiel. In 1960s it is the great trio NISSIM EZEKIEL, KAMALA DAS and A.K. RAMANUJAM who wrote poetry. They all have greatly contributed to the creation of a new literature in English in our country. Indian English Literature in the post 1980 era can be marked as the postmodernist period. Most important poets during this period include Nissim Ezekiel, Jayantha Mahapatra, A.K. Ramanujam, Kamala Das, Dom Moraes and few others. But, Indian English Poetry got its name only with the publication of Nissim Ezekiels A Time to Change in London 1952.
NISSIM EZEKIEL:

Postmodernism is in general the era that follows Modernism. It frequently serves as an ambiguous overarching term for skeptical interpretations of culture, literature,art, philosophy, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism. Because postmodernism is a reactionary stereotype, it is often used pejoratively to describe [2] writers, artists, or critics who give the impression they believe in no absolute truth or objective reality. For example, it may derogatorily refer to "any of various movements in reaction to modernism that are typically characterized by... ironic self-reference and absurdity (as in literature)" or to "a theory that involves a radical

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reappraisal of modern assumptions about culture, identity, history, or language". It is also confused with deconstruction and post-structuralism because its usage as a term gained significant popularity at the same time as twentieth-century post-structural thinkers.

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POSTMODERN ASPECTS IN NISSIM EZEKIELS POEMS: Postmodern aspects in Nissim Ezekiels poems deal with the theme of irony, playfulness, satire and so on. We come across such themes in Ezekiels poems such as The Professor and The Patriot. IRONY and SATIRE: Satire is primarily a literary genre or form. In satire, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, preferably with the intention of embarrassing individuals, and society itself, into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be funny, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit as a weapon. It is common for postmodernist to treat serious subjects in a playful and humorous way. The poem The Professor is essentially a satire on Indian English. This poem is in the form of a dialogue between a professor and his old student. But the listener is silent throughout the poem and so it can be termed to be a monologue. The speaker in this poem is a professor and his basic profession is to educate others. But, he himself seems to lack the proper command of the medium he utilizes. Thus it is ironical indeed. From the conversation with his student we come to know th