Cultural Pluralism In Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel

2239 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Hindu conflicts

Shashi Tharoor, an acclaimed diplomat, has become a popular writer with the publication of his unique novels that are known for their cultural record of India, the religious panorama of India and the picture of Indian myths. The paper focuses on two renowned novels of Tharoor - The Great Indian Novel (1989), which brings out a parallel study between the characters of the Mahabharata and the Indian political leaders and Riot (2001), which traces the events of cultural activism and religious confrontation in the Indian scenario.

Posting the novel Riot amidst the morbid sectarian clashes in 1989 in North India, Shashi Tharoor explores the cultural diversity in Native India. Tharoor voices his assertive views on how culture is broken up due …show more content…

The result is unique. Pluralism is a reality that emerges from the very nature of India. With diversity emerging from the geography of India and inscribed in the history of India, India is made for pluralism. Tharoor tells “The singularity about India is that we can speak about it in the plural.” He focuses on religion on how the secularization of religion in India means religious pluralism rather than religious absence. He reveals the various conflicts between the cultural manifestations in India – between bread and democracy, pluralism versus fundamentalism, centralism versus federalism and globalisation versus self-reliance. In spite of such vagaries, Tharoor feels that India’s greatest strength is its growing pluralism and it emerges from the very nature of the country and this pluralism demands an equal religious pluralism too. Tharoor writes in his essay on “A Culture of Diversity” that “the idea of India is not based on language, not on geography, not on ethnicity and not on religion. The idea of India is one land embracing many. . . . It’s the choice made inevitable by India’s geography, reaffirmed by its history and reflected in its ethnography” (http://

Show More
Related

  • My Objections to Pluralism And Exclusivism

    2256 Words  | 5 Pages

    In the following, I will focus on and examine John Hicks outlook on religious pluralism. I will make an effort to prove that religious pluralism is not a strong view to advocate. The claim that all the great religions of the world lead to God plays an essential role in this argument. In this paper, I argue against this claim, thereby disagreeing with religious pluralism. First, I explain Hicks’s argument, and the role that religious pluralism plays. Second, I explain Hicks’s defense of this claim. Third, I raise some objections to this defense. I conclude by drawing some broader lessons for the question of what it means to be a pluralist and its relation to religious exclusivism.

    Read More

  • America’s Personal Values, Compared

    1187 Words  | 3 Pages

    Great Indian authors have written grand epics that depict heroic characters performing virtuous deeds. Many of these epic tales feature fearsome and godly battles, while others highlight the soft side of human emotions. Despite seemingly unrealistic characters such as talking hawks and ten-headed monsters, and unlikely conflicts that feature bloody battles, many of these grand epics display many traditional values that Americans value in modern society. When construing three particular celebrated Indian epics (“the Mahabharata,” “the Bhagavad-Gita,” and “the Ramayana”), readers would easily glean the values and belief system that Ancient Indian society held in high esteem many thousands of years ago. Moreover, by comparing and contrasting respective ideals and principles, similarities between Ancient Indians and Americans would come to surface.

    Read More

  • Religion and Sexuality in Mexico and India

    3100 Words  | 7 Pages

    India has a characteristic of more ethnic and religious groups than most countries in the world. Despite this multiplicity of religions, there exists a broad group of interrelated traditions called Hinduism. Although other religions within the nation such as Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity have occasionally challenged its dominance, Hinduism is the most prevalent religion in the South Asian region. Some of the outstanding differences between Hinduism and other denominatio...

    Read More

  • Touch the Earth, A self-portrait of Indian existence by TC McLuhan

    1472 Words  | 3 Pages

    One statement in the beginning of the book was especially poignant to any one who studies Indian culture, It is easy for us to feel a vicarious rage, a misery on behalf of these people, but Indians, dead and alive would only receive such feelings with pity or contempt; it is too easy to feel sympathy for a people who culture was wrecked..

    Read More

  • Western Perspective on Western Biases in Hinduism

    858 Words  | 2 Pages

    Fuller, C. J. The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2004. Print.

    Read More

  • Hinduism, Tolerance, and Individuality

    1686 Words  | 4 Pages

    Hinduism is often viewed as a particularly tolerant religion. The lack of a single omniscient God, absence of a prophet, and the open worship of what may look like many Gods may tell a tale of open worship, individuality within religion, and a peaceful, tolerant way of life. Without further examining what Hinduism entails, this may seem like the perfect religion. When the impression of superiority is looked at with a little skepticism, the pretty picture is marred by the deep scratches of discrimination, sexism, and elitism.

    Read More

  • The Perforated Sheet by Salman Rushdie

    1035 Words  | 3 Pages

    When discussing the controversial authors of Indian literature, one name should come to mind before any other. Salman Rushdie, who is best known for writing the book “Midnights Children.” The first two chapters of “Midnights Children” are known as “The Perforated Sheet”. In “The Perforated Sheet” Rushdie utilizes magic realism as a literary device to link significant events and their effects on the lives of Saleem’s family to a changing India. In fact, it is in the beginning of the story that the reader is first exposed to Rushdie’s use of magic realism when being introduced to Saleem. “On the stroke of midnight/clocks joined palms” and “the instant of India’s arrival at independence. I tumbled forth into the world”(1711). Rushdie’s description of the clocks “joining palms” and explanation of India’s newfound independence is meant to make the reader understand the significance of Saleem’s birth. The supernatural action of the clocks joining palms is meant to instill wonder, while independence accentuates the significance of the beginning of a new era. Rushdie also utilizes magic realism as an unnatural narrative several times within the story to show the cultural significance of events that take place in the story in an abnormal way.

    Read More

  • Hindu Culture And Diversity: The Pride Of Hindu Dharma

    769 Words  | 2 Pages

    I am born from age to age - Diversity - The Pride of Hindu Dharma

    Read More

  • Rang De Basanti Religion

    1872 Words  | 4 Pages

    The film displayed India in many ways that went from Religious diversity to cultural and political diversity. There were many characters in the film that differed in financial income and status. Also, there were characters that came form different religious backgrounds. Furthermore, there were many different cultures and traditions that were made present from the film. However, the major inclination that was created by the film was the idea of “ Power might change hands, but injustices will continue the same.” Many years have passed since India has been under Colonization, but many of the same ideas and thought process influence the people. Most of the character sin the film were jaded or felt as if there was nothing that could unite India. However, through one tragic event, many of the characters were giving a second life and way of thinking. They stopped sitting on the sideline and complaining about the issues that affected them and their love ones. Nevertheless, they stood up and decided to change things that were injustices in their

    Read More

  • Conflict between Hindus and Muslims

    1310 Words  | 3 Pages

    India is the center of a very serious problem in the world today. It’s a very diverse place with people from many different religious backgrounds, who speak many different languages and come from many different regions. They are also separated economically. Two of the country’s religious sects, Muslims and Hindus, have been in conflict for hundreds of years. Their feelings of mistrust and hatred for each other are embedded in all those years and will not leave easily. What’s most disturbing is that there seems to be no plan for reconciliation available. There are numerous reasons for this conflict.

    Read More

  • The Importance of Religion in Indian Politics

    1084 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Importance of Religion in Indian Politics India is the largest democratic country in the world, in the last fifty years it has travelled and been influenced by multiple social and economic changes in the future. Its independence from Britain in 1947. partition creating Pakistan and the Pakistan/ Indian debate over Kashmir has been a fundamental political movement within the past few years. As Y.B.Damle states, “Politics is concerned with goal-attainment and politics is the art of possibility”, the political process cannot. function without the structural features.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Partition: The Day India Burned

    872 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ricardo Pollack is distinguished as a director because of the documentary, Partition: The Day India Burned (2007). The documentary itself discusses the detrimental consequences of the withdrawal of Britain's reign from India in 1947, which led to the forced relocation of men, women, and even children across newly defined border lines, along with violence, rape, and murder. The film makes it argument through dramatized reconstructions and witness testimonies, which offer personal insight into the horrors of the partition and conjure up feelings of sympathy and remorse. The film intends to make an educated public more aware of how an ethnically diverse nation was tragically divided and its effects on civilian lives. This is a secondary source with primary sources because it is based on witness testimonies and an actual historical event, but offers its own evaluation on the issue through dramatized reconstructions of the event. This source is quite useful and relevant to my project because it offers more than just the historical facts pertaining to the event. It offers a more narrow perspective of the broader, general history; thus broadening the scope of my research.

    Read More

  • The Other Side of Silence, by Urvashi Butalia

    1383 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...shown through Lenny’s point of view. Prior the partition, Lahore was a place of tolerance that enjoyed a secular state. Tension before the partition suggested the division of India was imminent, and that this would result in a religious. 1947 is a year marked by human convulsion, as 1 million people are reported dead because of the partition. Moreover, the children of Lahore elucidate the silences Butalia seeks in her novel. The silence of survivors is rooted to the nature of the partition itself; there is no clear distinction as to who were the antagonists. The distinction is ambiguous, the victims were Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims, and moreover these groups were the aggressors, the violent. The minority in this communal violence amongst these groups was the one out-numbered. This epiphany of blame is embarked in silence, and roots from the embodiment of violence.

    Read More

  • Gandhi's intent with Hind Swaraj

    1782 Words  | 4 Pages

    The measured dialogue between Reader and Editor serves as the framework through which Gandhi seeks to discredit accepted terms of civilization and denounce the English. These principle characters amply assist in the development o...

    Read More

  • Patriarchal Pathology: The Case of Sam Shepard’s Buried Child and Mahesh Dattani’s Where There’s a Will.

    3242 Words  | 7 Pages

    Mahesh Dattani writes on the burning issues that beset the post-independence Indian society, whether it is communal discord, politics and crime, growing homosexuality or the gender bias. He uses stage to condemn many of the drawbacks prevailing in society. His plays depict marginalized groups of society, people who are considered misfits in a society where stereotyped attitudes and notions reign supreme. His plays have varied content and varied appeal.

    Read More

More about Cultural Pluralism In Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel

Open Document