Indian Subcontinent Cities in Colonialism and Postcolonialism

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies
  • 13 Accesses

Definition

This entry should be read in conjunction with the article “Cities in the South Asia Subcontinent,” and with one on Premchand, the Indian novelist of the 1920s. It takes up the history of the subcontinent from 1500 onwards, so that it considers the experience of colonialism, and Empire, and the events after India and Pakistan gained independence in 1947. It considers, then, colonialism and some of its writers – Rudyard Kipling, E.M. Forster, and George Orwell, and postcolonialism. Here it examines such writers as Salman Rushdie and Rohinton Mistry and considers Bollywood, and Slumdog Millionaire. Postcolonialism must also involve the freeing up of women from forced marriages, from violence, from caste positions, and from compulsory heterosexuality: for some of the theoretical issues here, and suggestions, as centered on Kolkata, see Roy, Feminist Studies 40:628, 2014

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Bibliography and Further Reading

  • Anjaria, Ulka. 2015. Realist hieroglyphics. Modern Fiction Studies 61: 114–137.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ballhatchet, Kenneth, and John Harrison, eds. 1980. The city on South Asia: Pre-modern and modern. London: Curzon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baweja, Vandana. 2015. Architecture and urbanism in Slumdog Millionaire: From Bombay to Mumbai. Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 26: 7–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bhattacharya, Amitabha. 1991. Satyajit Ray’s Calcutta: Friend or adversary? India International Centre Quarterly 17: 301–313.

    Google Scholar 

  • Byapari, Manoranjan, 2018. There’s Gunpowder in the Air (trans: Sinha, Arunava). Chennai: Eka.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chauduri, Amit. 2001. The picador book of modern Indian literature. London: Picador.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crane, Ralph J. 1992. Inventing India: A history of India in English language fiction. London: Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Crick, Bernard. 1980. George Orwell: A life. London: Secker and Warburg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Datta, Partho. 1992. Celebrating Calcutta. Urban History 19: 84–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Furbank, P.N. 1878. E.M. Forster: A life. 2 vols in one. London: Sphere Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gajarawala, Toral Jatin. 2011. Some time between revisionist and revolutionary: Unreading history in Dalit literature. PMLA 126: 575–591.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gokulsing, K. Moti, and Wimal Dissanayake. 2009. Popular culture in a globalised India. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Joshi, Priya. 2015. Bollywood’s India: A public fantasy. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 1952. Macaulay, Prose and Poetry, ed. G.M. Young. London: Rupert Hart-Davis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mallett, Phillp. 2003. Rudyard Kipling: A literary life. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mazumdar, Ranjani. 2007. Bombay cinema: Archive of the city. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Poovey, Mary. 2004. Ambiguity and historicism: Interpreting confessions of a thug. Narrative 12: 3–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Quayson, Ato, ed. 2016. The Cambridge companion to the postcolonial novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roy, Srils. 2014. New activist subjects: The changing feminist field of Kolkata, India. Feminist Studies 40: 628–656.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sengupta, Mitu. 2010. A million dollar exit from the anarchic slum world: Slumdog Millionaire’s hollow idioms of social justice. Third World Quarterly 31: 599–616.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shamsie, Muneez. 2011. South Asian Muslims: Fiction and poetry in English. Religion & Literature 43: 149–157.

    Google Scholar 

  • Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 1997. The career and legend of Vasco da Gama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tharoor, Shashi. 2016. Inglorious empire: What the British did to India. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Varma, Rashmi. 2011. The postcolonial city and its subjects: London, Nairobi, Bombay. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Weightman, Simon, ed. 1996. Traveller’s literary companion to the Indian sub-continent. Brighton: Print Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Tambling, J. (2021). Indian Subcontinent Cities in Colonialism and Postcolonialism. In: Tambling, J. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_343-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_343-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62592-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62592-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Navigation