Third Space

The 20th century witnessed the emergence of postcolonial literature with the writings of Chinua Achebe in Africa and Ahmed Ali’s Twilight in Delhi. Prior to this, people from colonized countries were familiar with English literature or their indigenous literatures, while post-colonial literature carried partly the flavour of indigeneity and partly that of foreignness. As such this genre of literature was neither purely foreign nor totally indigenous. Th genre existed as a mixture and amalgam of both, and as Bhabha would call it, in third space, which can be liminal in nature and claimed hybridity of its compositional elements. Most of the producers of this genre belonged to the formerly colonized countries and were responsible for bringing this form of literature, especially fiction, from non-existence to existence but, nonetheless, this existence was in the third space.

Achebe, in his Things Fall Apart, narrated a story of his people being colonized and, so, captured the entire process of dominance by the British colonizers. Similarly, Ahmed Ali in his Twilight in Delhi wrote during British colonization but focused more on the layers of Muslim Mughal culture which was almost on the verge of collapse under the powerful dominance of British colonialism. The Untouchables by Mulk Raj Anand goes one step further and narrates the moments of the struggle of the Indians to liberate their country from the British with an equal struggle of the British missionaries to convert the untouchables to Christianity, because of their vulnerability of being outcasts from mainstream Indian Hindus.

From this humble yet powerful acclaim of the South Asian postcolonial fiction, the third space for postcolonial fiction was created and has been vigorously guarded by generations of writers in the Indo-Pak subcontinent. For example, in the fourth quarter of the 20th century, Bapsi Sidhwa spoke about her Parsi people and culture and narrated the ways through which the Parsis existed as a minority in Muslim-dominated Pakistan. Her Crow Eaters is the tale of Parsi survival in the subcontinent. But The Bride traces the resistance story of a young girl Zaitoon in the backdrop of Partition. Her Ice Candyman focuses exactly the moment of Partition and independence of India-Pakistan subcontinent and the atrocities associated with that. Sidhwa weaves the complex tale of Pakistani Parsi’s tale of rubbing shoulders with the Americans. Similarly, Rohinton Mistry, from India provides stories of loss of Parsi culture in India.

The 21st century has seen major developments in the genre of post-colonial fiction because of the game-changing events in the world, especially the attack on the World Trade Centres in New York. Writers from South Asia have maintained their stances in this world of the American New World Order and Globalization. These writers have in fact enlarged their fields of play by becoming more international rather than restraining themselves within their indigenous territories. Their fictional tales carry the original flavour of indigeneity yet attach them with foreignness. For example, Arundhati Roy’s award winning The God of Small Things narrates a complex yet beautifully romantic tale of the middle eastern Christian who migrated and settled in India. The story generates a web of complex relationships between the Untouchables and the minority Christians heavily impacted by Indian culture and traditions.

Mohsin Hamid, Kamila Shamsie, Nadeem Aslam and Mohammad Hanif have also equally responded to the evolution of post-colonial fiction and have claimed even wider spaces for their stories. Fiction by the South Asian writers, especially from Pakistan, is more a commentary on national and international politics than simply stories about the indigenous landscape. For Instance, Hamid, in his The Reluctant Fundamentalist, makes his protagonist live his story ranging from America to Pakistan and the vice versa and unfolds the tales of a new identity crises for Pakistani Muslims after 9/11. The crisis of identity enlarges and enfolds national and international crises as well. Exit West by Hamid further explores the global landscapes and the protagonists’ experience of migration and reterritorialization in different parts of the world and its impact on world communities in the backdrop of war on terrorism.

A similar theme is carried on by Nadeem Aslam in his Wasted Vigil. Shamsie carries it still further in her Burnt Shadows and later in Home Fire. The former traces the story of the Hiroko, a Japanese woman, traversing multiple landscapes because of World War II and later partition of India; she touches the edges of war on terrorism in Afghanistan and its repercussions not only on Americans but also on the people of different communities of the world. Home Fire hooks up Pakistani life inside and outside and the sufferings of the international diaspora because of the war on terrorism.

Politics becomes glaringly visible in Hanif’s Red Birds which affords the readers an opportunity to witness horrors of American war on terrorism, especially in Middle East. This is the best example of deterritorialization and displacement of the locals and their dependence on the food dropped by U.S. aircraft, which dropped bombs on them before. The devastating impact of this war and global forces is the hallmark of the story. Post-colonial fiction is now portraying international politics and its impact on the people around the world while claiming in its comparatively safer third space.