From Search for The Mother to Search for Two Indias- A Study of the Representation of New India in Three Indian English Novels

Abstract

A major theme of recent Indian novels in English is the portrayal of the New India with all its glory and darkness in varied scale. This portrayal has often been criticized as part of the postcolonial exotic or celebrated as the progress of the postcolonial nation. There are many novels which have represented both these aspects of New India—the progress and the darkness— without overt castigation or celebration. This paper is concerned with such three Indian English novels-- Kunal Basu’s Sarojini’s Mother (2020), Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s Secret Daughter (2010) and Jaishree Misra’s A Scandalous Secret (2011)—all of which deal with the search for biological roots as major characters come to India in search of their parentage. The argument of this paper is that besides this thematic similarity all these novels expose the two faces of New India—both its light and darkness without any conscious attempt to moralize or castigate. This paper discusses how the search for real mothers turns into search for real India with all its success and failures but the conclusions of these novels put the emphasis on emotional enrichment and maturity rather than on mere fact-finding or exoticizing.