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Left‐wing extremism in India: Red terror through the novel
Author(s) -
Sarkar Debjani,
Manirban
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/lic3.12604
Subject(s) - scholarship , literariness , contextualization , audience measurement , popularity , literature , terrorism , history , insurgency , aesthetics , sociology , epistemology , political science , law , art , philosophy , linguistics , interpretation (philosophy) , politics
This article is a compilation of recent scholarly research produced on Anglophone fiction inspired by left‐wing extremism (LWE) in India, known as the Naxalite–Maoist insurgency. With a brief historical glimpse distinguishing the three phases of the movement, the article begins with a contextualization of the canon. It perceives the immediate reason for the upshot of scholarship in this field. The array of literature is categorized and contextualized into subfields for a lucid examination of critical debates in fiction. It establishes how the novel has grown over the years to identify with distinct phases of LWE—Naxalism and Maoism. Some observations on the genre are chalked out, which include a biased scholarship to a lack of firsthand empirical knowledge in the writings. The whole repertoire is incorporated to analyze the significant trends in existing research, laced with deciding factors of global popularity, literariness, and readership. A thorough survey of the available research is ascertained to direct and formulate a direction for future scholarship.