The Indian Contexts and Subtexts of My Text

Abstract

Krishna Baldev Vaid studies the Indian contexts and subtexts of some of his major works and examines how the notion of ‘Indianness’ is reflected in them—consciously or subconsciously. The author voices his suspicion regarding any variety of cultural nationalism and critiques its re-emergence anywhere but especially in India. He points out that in its reductive manifestations in literature and literary criticism, it can espouse jingoism and xenophobia. He reminds his readers that defiance of space and time nourishes great literature in the first place. Vaid argues that the questions that haunt every theoretical meditation on literature are related to how it manages to transcend the conditions out of which it is created and whether it does so self-consciously.