WRITING POWER, WRITING NATION- NATIONALISTIC DISCOURSE IN THE SELECT HISTORICAL FICTION OF KALKI KRISHNAMURTHI

Literature

Foucault’s theory of power and resistance that became highly influential in the wake of post-structuralism is also severely disputed. According to Foucault, subversion is co-extensive with power, but he does not state on what ground resistance can be formed or exercised. His resistance lacks a subject or agent. But Edward Said, a post-colonial theorist believes in resistance and agency, particularly in the anti-colonial context. Kalki Krishnamurthi, a writer of Tamil origin, through his historical fiction, has not only presented a glorious past but provided the readers with an awareness of their own history, thus helping in decolonizing the native mind and also investing it with the power of the indigenous knowledge which in turn would make way for meaningful resistance on the part of the native who would become an effective intellectual agent. In order to attain this, Kalki has touched upon the most recurrent themes in the nation’s writing like the environment and its abuse, economic exploitation, religion, education, art, architecture and literature. He has presented all these elements of anti-colonial relevance in his novels set in the Pallava and Chola period that is a thousand years old, and the pictures of direct contrast that he portrays purge the indigenous mind from the abuses heaped upon it by the colonizer and turn them into active agents, thus promoting resistance. It also aims to prove that historical fiction is not completely escapist in its tendencies, as is generally believed, but it has a concomitant agenda that reflects the preoccupations of the writer’s own age.

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