Colonization and Decolonization of the Indian Subcontinent: A Colonial Discourse Analysis of 'A God in Every Stone'

Abstract

The British Raj in the Indian subcontinent has been an area of academic and scholarly inquiries. The period has deeply impacted the indigenous culture and political system. Studies have highlighted a plethora of political, military and economic reasons accounting for the establishment and collapse of the Empire. However, Kamila Shamie’s novel A God in Every Stone (2014) adds another dimension to the subject, which is not power rather the colonial discourses which settled and unsettled the Empire in India. The study examines that how the colonial discourses helped the colonizers in the establishment of Empire in the subcontinent. The study contends that it is not the military might but the colonial discourses which helped the Empire take its roots. Ironically the same discourses also resulted into anticolonial resistance and the final collapse of the Empire due to its being endlessly split and anxiously repetitive in nature. The study is based on Shamsie’s novel. The analysis is developed round Homi K. Bhaba’s theory of "Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse”. The study, unlike the common perception, concludes that it was not military might alone, but the colonial discourses which settled and unsettled the British Raj in the Indian subcontinent.