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Full Description
As they seek to explore evolving and conflicting ideas of nationhood and modernity, India's writers have often chosen forests as the dramatic setting for stories of national identity. India's Forests, Real and Imagined explores how these settings have been integral to India's sense of national consciousness. Alan Johnson demonstrates that modern writers have drawn on older Indian literary traditions of the forest as a place of exile, trial and danger to shape new ideas of India as a modern nation. The book casts new light on a wide range of modern writers, from Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay - widely regarded as the first Indian novelist - to contemporary authors such as Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati Roy, and Salman Rushdie as well as local attitudes to nationhood and the environment across the country.
Contents
Preface: The Plan of the Book
The Argument and Its Scope
A Note on Translation
1. Introduction: Epic Forests, Sacred Groves and Vernacular Jungles: Forests in Context
2. Colonial Modernity, National Romance, and the Global Trade in Wood
3. Forest, Village, Nation
4. Home Forest, Outlaw Forest: Indigeneity, Forestry, and National Hegemony
5. The Forest and the City: Aspiration, Cosmopolitanism, and Pollution
Conclusion: Language Politics, Religious Ideologies, and the Fate of Forests
Bibliography
Index
