FROM PARTITION TO KASHMIR: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF BORDERLANDS AND BORDERIZATION IN SOUTH ASIAN LITERATURE

This thesis explores the ideation of borderlands in South Asian literature as a continuation by comparatively analyzing literature in Urdu, Hindi, and English on Partition and the militarization of Kashmir. It situates Partition as an event that created a perpetual borderland and borderization in South Asia. The thesis then compares and finds an extension of that borderland in the depiction of the militarization and borderization of Kashmir in South Asian literature. The project also posits that minoritization and traumatization are essential processes of borderization as imagined in South Asian literature. The primary texts for this study are River of Fire (published in Urdu as Aag ka Darya in 1959, trans-created into English by the author in 1998), Basti (published in Urdu in 1979 and translated into English in 2012), This is Not that Dawn (published in two parts in 1958 and 1960 as Jhootha Sach, translated into English in 2010), The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017) and Future Tense (2020). The thesis employs the framework of borderlands as theorized by Gloria Anzaldúa in the book Borderlands/ La Frontera. I also employ the Postcolonial and Global South theorizations in understanding the borderlands in the included novels.