Reasons for Violence: a Study of  “Another Community”  by R. K. Narayan

Cruz Bonilla

doi:10.5565/rev/indialogs.40

Reasons for Violence: a Study of “Another Community” by R. K. Narayan

Authors

Cruz Bonilla Universidad de Granada

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Abstract

Notwithstanding its fictional character and its year of publication, 1956, “Another Community” is a modern critique of communal violence. This short story shows Narayan’s concern with the immediate consequences of a divided Indian society on religious grounds. His communal subjects are shaped according to the ideological purpose of the group. Based on exclusion and rivalry, this reflected identity stimulates communal antagonisms that revolve around ideas of nationhood and otherness. The protagonist’s savage murder becomes the excuse for violence in the hands of local politicians. The author’s intentionality avoids taking side with his protagonist who does not escape the communal duality of the Self and the Other; the rational and the irrational sides of a fake hero.

Keywords

postcolonialism, Indian literature

References

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Author Biography

Cruz Bonilla, Universidad de Granada

Ph.D candidate (dissertation’s defense on December 18^th, Universidad de Granada), M.A. English Literature and Linguistics; English Philology by the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia. My main research interests are focused on Indian postcolonial literature, in particular, the Hindu-Anglian literature of R. K. Narayan. My studies are concerned with the representation of Indian literature in the western world.