Conceptualizing In-Text “Kshetra”: Postcolonial Allahabad’s Cultural Geography in Neelum Saran Gour’s Allahabad Aria and Invisible Ink

Chhandita Das; Priyanka Tripathi

doi:10.18778/2083-2931.11.24

Authors

Chhandita Das Indian Institute of Technology Patna https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8043-7143
Priyanka Tripathi Indian Institute of Technology Patna https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9522-3391

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.11.24

Keywords:

“kshetra”, cultural geography, Allahabad, multiculturalism, postcolonial

Abstract

Literary renditions of cities have always gravitated towards the spatial imagination and its ethical counterpart outside the textual space. This paper explores the multicultural geography of the North Indian city Allahabad (recently renamed Prayagraj) observed through Neelum Saran Gour’s postcolonial narratives Allahabad Aria and Invisible Ink, projecting the narrative alignment of spatial aesthetics and cultural ethics. Interrogating the spatial dimensions of a “narrative world” within narrative theory (Ryan) and its interdisciplinary crossover with cultural geography (Sauer; Mitchell; Anderson et al.), the article seeks to examine Gour’s literary city not simply as an objective homogeneous representation, but as a “kshetra” of spatio-cultural cosmos of lived traditions, memories, experiences and collective attitudes of its people, in the context of E. V. Ramakrishnan’s theoretical reflections. The article proposes new possibilities of adapting the Indian concept “kshetra” to spatial literary studies; its aim is also to suggest a new source of knowledge about the city of Allahabad through a community introspection of “doing culture” in the texts, bringing into view people’s shared experiences, beliefs, religious practices and traditions as offshoots of the postcolonial ethos. The article aims to re-contextualize the city’s longstanding multicultural ethics in the contemporary times of crisis, which may affect a shift in the city’s relevance: from regional concern to large-scale significance within ethnically diverse South Asian countries and beyond.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Chhandita Das, Indian Institute of Technology Patna

Chhandita Das is currently a Senior Research Fellow and Teaching Assistant in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Patna. Her areas of interest are place and literature, literature and social semiotics, and Indian writing in English. She is also a Teaching Assistant for UG level course English for Communication. She has published with reputed journals including English, Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), Open Cultural Studies (De Gruyter), GeoHumanities, Economic and Political Weekly and others.
Priyanka Tripathi, Indian Institute of Technology Patna

Priyanka Tripathi is Associate Professor of English, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Patna. She has published extensively with Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), English, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Feminist Theory, Economic and Political Weekly and others. She is also the Book Reviews Editor of Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities. Currently, she is working on an ICSSR-funded project entitled “Mapping Domestic Violence in the times of COVID-19: A Study from Bihar.” Her areas of research include South Asian fiction, gender studies, place and literature, and graphic narratives.

References

Anderson, Kay, and Fay Gale, editors. Inventing Places: Studies in Cultural Geography. Longman Cheshire, 1992.

Anderson, Kay, et al., editors. Handbook of Cultural Geography. Sage, 2003. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781848608252

Bhardwaj, Surinder Mohan. Hindu Places of Pilgrimage in India: A Study in Cultural Geography. U of California P, 1983.

Chedgzoy, Kate. “The Cultural Geographies of Early Modern Women’s Writings: Journeys across Spaces and Times.” Literature Compass, vol. 3, no. 4, 2006, pp. 884–95. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2006.00352.x DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2006.00352.x

Crang, Mike. Cultural Geography. Routledge, 2002.

De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Volume 1. Translated by S. F. Rendall. U of California P, 2011.

Duncan, James S. “The Superorganic in American Cultural Geography.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 70, no. 2, 1980, pp. 181–98. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.1980.tb01306.x DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.1980.tb01306.x

Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias.” Translated by Jay Miskowiec. Diacritics, vol. 16, no. 1, 1986, pp. 22–27. https://doi.org/10.2307/464648 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/464648

Gour, Neelum Saran. Allahabad Aria. Rupa, 2015.

Gour, Neelum Saran. Invisible Ink. HarperCollins, 2015.

Gour, Neelum Saran. “Silhouetting the Self and Society: An Interview with Neelum Saran Gour.” Interview by Chhandita Das and Priyanka Tripathi. English: Journal of the English Association, vol. 69, no. 265, 2020, pp. 178–88. https://doi.org/10.1093/english/efaa005 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/english/efaa005

Gupta, Agam. Unfolding Faith: A Journey to the Kumbh. Partridge, 2013.

Heber, Reginald. Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India from Calcutta to Bombay: 1824–1825. Murray, 1829.

Jackson, Peter. “A Plea for Cultural Geography.” Area, vol. 12, no. 2, 1980, pp. 110–13.

King, Anthony D. “Cultures and Spaces of Postcolonial Knowledges.” Handbook of Cultural Geography, edited by Kay Anderson et al., Sage, 2003, pp. 381–98. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781848608252.n27

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson Smith. Blackwell, 1991.

Maclean, Kama. Pilgrimage and Power: The Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, 1765–1954. Oxford UP, 2008. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195338942.001.0001

McMillan, David W., and David M. Chavis. “Sense of Community: A Definition and Theory.” Journal of Community Psychology, vol. 14, no. 1, 1986, pp. 6–23. https://doi.org/10.1002/1520-6629(198601)14:1<6::AID-JCOP2290140103>3.0.CO;2-I DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/1520-6629(198601)14:1<6::AID-JCOP2290140103>3.0.CO;2-I

McRae, Andrew. Literature and Domestic Travel in Early Modern England. Cambridge UP, 2009.

Mitchell, Don. Cultural Geography: A Critical Introduction. Blackwell, 2000.

Nasar, Jack L., and David A. Julian. “The Psychological Sense of Community in the Neighborhood.” Journal of the American Planning Association, vol. 61, no. 2, 1995, pp. 178–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944369508975631 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01944369508975631

Niven, Alastair. “India and Its Cities through the Eyes of Its Writers.” The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and the City, edited by Jeremy Tambling, Macmillan, 2016, pp. 599–606. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54911-2_38

Parida, Debadutta. “Sangam City as Faith-Based Utopia.” International Journal of Innovative Research and Advanced Studies, vol. 4, no. 5, 2017, pp. 259–62.

Ramakrishnan, E. V. Preface. Indigenous Imaginaries: Literature, Region, Modernity, by E. V. Ramakr is hn an, Blackswan, 2017, pp. vii–xiv.

Ryan, Marie Laure. “Space.” The Living Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn et al., Hamburg UP, 2010, pp. 796–811. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110316469.796

Sanders, Julie. The Cultural Geography of Early Modern Drama, 1620–1650. Cambridge UP, 2011. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511762260

Sauer, Carl O. “The Morphology of Landscape.” University of California Publications in Geography, vol. 2, 1925, pp. 19–53.

Schwyzer, Philip. “Purity and Danger on the West Bank of the Severn: The Cultural Geography of A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634.” Representations, vol. 60, 1997, pp. 22–48. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928804 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2928804

Selby, Martha Ann, and Indira Viswanathan Peterson. Introduction. Tamil Geographies: Cultural Constructions of Space and Place in South India, edited by Martha Ann Selby and Indira Viswanathan Peterson, State U of New York P, 2008, pp. 1–16.

Shurmer-Smith, Pamela. Doing Cultural Geography. Sage, 2001. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446219706

Sreekanteswaram G. Padmanabha Pillai. Sabdataravali. Sahitya Pravartaka Sahakarana Samgham, 1986.

Tickell, Alex. “Writing the City and Indian English Fiction: Planning, Violence, and Aesthetics.” Planned Violence: Post/Colonial Urban Infrastructure, Literature and Culture, edited by Elleke Boehmer and Dominic Davies, Macmillan, 2018, pp. 195–211. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91388-9_11

Tilley, Christopher. A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments. Berg, 1994.

Twain, Mark. Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Sun-Times Media, 1897.