The incurable Dr. Vaid : transgression, nation and the crisis in postcolonial Hindi criticism

Abstract

Krishna Baldev Vaid is one of the most innovative and significant writers of Hindi fiction. He has relentlessly tested the boundaries of acceptability in Hindi fiction, and has refused to bow to pressure to conform to dominant paradigms regarding what Hindi literature should look like. The purpose of this thesis is to show that accusations that Vaid's fiction is obscene, un-Indian and lacking social engagement reflect certain anxieties regarding what constituted 'authentic' Indian literature in the postcolonial context. I argue that criticism of Vaid's more controversial work, and the subsequent relegation of his fiction to the periphery, has been the result of a set of postcolonial circumstances whereby establishing a modernity which could be asserted as both modern and Indian was considered important. In the case of Hindi literature ideas regarding what constituted 'good' Hindi fiction were heavily influenced by the social and political milieu of post-colonial India and the establishment of this uniquely Indian style of modernity.

The thesis takes the themes of sexual transgression and nation as the basis for analysis of selected short fiction by Vaid to demonstrate how Vaid critiques the postcolonial discourse of the time. I argue that Vaid's fiction has been marginalized as a result of a postcolonial crisis in Hindi criticism, despite, or perhaps because of, his relentless challenging of normative discourse and his absolute refusal to conform to the boundaries dictated by his contemporaries. In the texts analysed Vaid uses rupture, dissonance, irony and wit to destabilize the predominating discourse regarding sexual transgression and nationalist sentiment. After analysis of selected fiction of Vaid based on the themes of sexual transgression and nation, the thesis proceeds to an outline of the crisis in postcolonial Hindi criticism, criticism of Vaid's work, and rebuttal from Vaid regarding the criticism he has received and the environment he considers it reflects.

The main contribution of the thesis is to show that criticism of Vaid's fiction has been heavily influenced by postcolonial anxieties regarding Indianness and authenticity and that this reflects more about the environment in which he wrote than the literature itself. The evidence shows that rather than demonstrating a lack of social engagement, obscenity or undue imitation of Western models, Vaid is deeply engaged with the Indian postcolonial environment and challenges the very basis on which it was constructed.