Question
Describe the ways in which the novel in India attempted to create a sense of pan-Indian belonging.
Solution
Novels produced a sense of a pan-Indian belonging.
(i)They imagined the nation to be full of adventure, heroism, romance and sacrifice – qualities that could not be found in the offices and streets of the nineteenth-century world.The novel allowed the colonised to give shape to their desires.
(ii)Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s (1827-94) Anguriya Binimoy (1857) was the first historical novel written in Bengal.
(iii)Its hero Shivaji engages in many battles against a clever and treacherous Aurangzeb.The imagined nation of the novel was so powerful that it could inspire actual political movements.
(iv)Bankim’s Anandamath (1882) is a novel about a secret Hindu militia that fights Muslims to establish a Hindu kingdom. It was a novel that inspired many kinds of freedom fighters.
(v)Premchand rejected the nostalgic obsession with ancient history. Instead, his novels look towards the future without forgetting the importance of the past.
(i)They imagined the nation to be full of adventure, heroism, romance and sacrifice – qualities that could not be found in the offices and streets of the nineteenth-century world.The novel allowed the colonised to give shape to their desires.
(ii)Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s (1827-94) Anguriya Binimoy (1857) was the first historical novel written in Bengal.
(iii)Its hero Shivaji engages in many battles against a clever and treacherous Aurangzeb.The imagined nation of the novel was so powerful that it could inspire actual political movements.
(iv)Bankim’s Anandamath (1882) is a novel about a secret Hindu militia that fights Muslims to establish a Hindu kingdom. It was a novel that inspired many kinds of freedom fighters.
(v)Premchand rejected the nostalgic obsession with ancient history. Instead, his novels look towards the future without forgetting the importance of the past.
