A decolonial reading of the Punjabi (m)other in British Asian literature

ABSTRACT

This reading focuses on the mother figure in recent novels and memoirs by Punjabi-origin male writers. These texts can be seen as forms of translation into modernity, of subjects that are rarely represented in English-language literature, that cannot be recognised by the text, that exist at its margins. These texts are founded in the idea of the nation; which is unable to contain or represent these mother figures. Where is the nation for the non-English speaking Sikh and Muslim mothers in the texts if it is neither India nor Britain (where acceptance is conditional on being ‘modern’, speaking English, secular)? The ‘difference’ of these mother figures means that they don’t fit into the idea of Britain; their identities are tied up with the immediate communities in which they live and the regions from whence they hail. There is little connection to the British citizen-making project and ‘multiculturalism’. Decolonial readings of these texts through regional (Punjabi) lens can help to read the mother figures better, reading her ‘difference’. Meanwhile, resilience can be seen as a form of resistance to British hegemony – connected to rural Punjabi female resistance (resilience) to British and Indian elite hegemony under British colonialism.

KEYWORDS:

• Decolonial
• postcolonial
• multicultural
• British Asian
• Punjabi
• literature
• assimilation
• integration
• resistance
• feminism

Acknowledgements

This research has been carried out with the generous support of a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Leicester University

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust [Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship].

Notes on contributors

Kavita Bhanot

Dr. Kavita Bhanot has a PhD from Manchester University, and is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Leicester University, where she is also a Creative Writing Fellow. Her fiction, non-fiction, reviews have been published and broadcast widely. She is editor of the anthology Too Asian, Not Asian Enough (Tindal Street Press, 2011) and Book of Birmingham (Comma Press, 2018) and co-editor of the Bare Lit anthology (Brain Mill Press, 2017). She has taught at Manchester University, Fordham University and Ashoka University. She was selected as a 2018 Room 204 writer by Writing West Midlands and a draft of her first novel won third prize in the SI Leeds Literary Prize 2018. Kavita has been awarded the 2018 Tilted Axis Emerging Translator Mentorship. For the last eight years, she has been a Reader and Mentor with The Literary Consultancy.