Beyond Modernity : Narrative Strategies in Hindi Short Stories of Uday Prakash

Abstract: This thesis explores different genres and modes of writing in short stories of the contemporary Indian author Uday Prakash, such as magical realism, the fantastic, regionalism, postcolonial and postmodern writing. It poses the question: “In which literary genre should Uday Prakash’s writings best be categorised?” The study is based on a reading of Prakash’s collection, 10 Pratinidhi kahāniyāṃ – Ten Representative Stories, consisting of ten stories of the author’s own choice. Critics have often understood Uday Prakash as a writer of magical realism. This thesis, however, argues that the author fits better in the category of the fantastic since his narratives often are characterised by the “hesitation” before the supernatural, a central feature of this literary mode. The thesis further suggests that regionalism is present in his writings in the portrayal of both the rural and urban landscapes of India. Above all, Prakash portrays a “public landscape,” in which India as a whole is reflected in the local—rural or urban—regions he depicts and in which any Indian can identify himself. The postmodern perspective is also prevalent in his writings, evident through literary tropes such as metafiction, historiographic metafiction, intertextuality, self-reflexivity and extended use of metaphor. Central to his writing is a social or postcolonial critique. Together his stories write an alternative national history of India, focusing on the subaltern and the downtrodden, depicting how the old colonial structure and oppression have now re-emerged among the elite and political leadership of independent India. I have, in this thesis, understood Uday Prakash as a postcolonial experimentalist (uttaropaniveśvādī prayogvādī), standing in the tradition of the prayogvād of the 20th-century Hindi literary field since the characteristics of his authorship are the concoction of multiple literary modes or genres, the breaking with traditional forms of narration and the formation of creative and original narratives, all in the service of social and civilisational criticism.