Abstract

CONFLICT BETWEEN INDIAN SPIRITUALISM AND WESTERN MODERNISM: A STUDY OF KAMALA MARKANDAYA’S A SILENCE OF DESIRE

Dr. Anuradha Gaur

Volume: 4 Issue: 4 2014

Abstract:

Kamala Markandaya is one of the senior most Indian novelists writing in English. Her novels are remarkable for their wide range of themes. Broadly her novels are based on four major issues - --east-west encounter, conflict between tradition and modernity, colonial and post-colonial ethos and progress versus present situation. She writes about poverty and hunger, struggle for freedom, social evils, reforms, protests, intercultural understanding, man-woman relationship, effects of progress & development on villages and the emergence of New India etc. she wrote eleven novels and all of them are fine specimens of her literary genius. The present paper is an attempt to explore the theme of clash between science and religion or reason & faith in Markandaya’s A silence of desire. Nectar in a Sieve was Markandaya's first novel. It was published in 1954. The critics hailed it as an epic of Indian rural life. One year after this her second novel Some Inner Fury came out in 1955. It deals with the westernized upper class society. The third novel of Markandaya was published in 1960 and the title is A Silence of Desire. The focus is now on a middle class family in a small town. The main concern in this novel is the clash between the East and the West- tradition and progress, superstition and science, faith and reason. The novel revolves around the tension between the husband and wife created on account of communication gap and domestic disharmony. Kamala Markandaya is the first woman writer to deal with the subtle and sensitive problems that exist between man and woman on account of misunderstanding and lack of dialogue. The delicate complications in husband-wife relationship caused due to various factors is her prime focus in the present novel, the issue which was later explored in detail by other women writers like Anita Desai, Shashi Deshapande, Anta Nair and Chitra Banerjee, etc.

Back Download

References

• Markandaya Kamala, A Silence of Desire. London: Putnam, 1960. P.7
• Bande Usha, Kamala Markandaya New Delhi: Sahity Akademi, 2011 P.38-37.
• Mukherjee Meenakshi, The Twice-Born Fiction: Themes and Techniques in the Indian Novel in English. New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann, 1971.
• Prasad, Madhusudan, ed. Perspectives on Kamala Markandaya New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2001.