Agastya versus August: A Postcolonial War of Cultural Piracy

Abstract

The theme of exile runs through most of the modern literature. This sense of exile is, in fact, aby product of cultural amalgamation. Reasons may be many. But this issue assumes an immediacy of concern with all post- colonial literature as they are an outcome of an unequal dialectic between a violent and rapacious imperialistic culture and a subjugated though often rich and complex native culture. Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English August: An Indian Story raises the issue of identity and cultural piracy in a post-colonial society and problematizes the issue by implicating the subject in a web of contradictory and opposing material and discursive practices. The focus of the novelist and my research paper is to show the mental conflict and plight of the urban Indians like August who are victims of an alien cultural discourse which has been internalized by them in the course of their educational cultural nurturing. They are culturally pirated folks.