Mirroring and Mimicking: A Postcolonial Study of Khushwant Singh’s Story “Karma”

Abstract

The paper aims to investigate Khushwant Singh’s short story “Karma” placing in perspective postcolonial literary studies and exploring how the protagonist Sir Mohan Lal’s migration to the West to acquire professional educational qualifications transforms him into an ambivalent colonial subject. The story raises certain questions about his stay at Oxford and articulates how the West became a standard identity marker for his lifestyle and how his personality mirrors the marks of colonial inscriptions on his identity. Singh
sharply captures the Western-educated Indian’s mimicking mindset to show how the colonial ideology influenced the identity of a native Indian and how Indian cultural, and linguistic traditions have been erased and replaced by Western ethos.