Negotiations between History and Fiction New Historicist Readings of Shauna Singh Baldwins What the Body Remembers and Anita Rau Badamis Can You Hear the Nightbird Call

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to negotiate between history and fiction with regard to new historicist readings of Shauna Singh Baldwin s What the Body Remembers and Anita Rau Badami s Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? It delves, into four historical incidents namely Komagata Maru (1914), Partition of India (1947), Operation Blue Star (1984), and Air India Flight 182 Bombing (1985), through a parallel study of non-fiction and fiction as these form the background subject of the novels taken for study. All these issues, as referred to in the twentieth century, highlight Sikh community with regards to colonialism and diasporic ethnic group politics in the concerned period. An analysis has been done to show the hardships suffered by women at the altar of patriarchy and the turbulences suffered by the Sikh community in general under the said four incidents. Racist incidents have also been included. These incidents as shown by the authors have gone a long way in fiction to negotiate with history. The theory of new historicism has been used with regard to an analysis of power paradigms contributing in re-fashioning the identity of characters in the said novels through varied discourses floating in the society in the chapters of the thesis. newline