Analyzing Third World Urbanization through Selected Texts from Contemporary Indian Literature

Abstract

Urbanization is more than a modern phenomenon, it is a quick and historic transformation of one’s social roots on a global scale, so much so that an individual’s rural culture gets almost permanently replaced by urban culture. The present paper discusses how the intimate relationships and communal behaviour of the native culture have been overshadowed by the unfamiliar relations and competitive behaviour of the city culture. The ongoing argument can be contextualized in the poems of A. K. Ramanujan, and the novels of Khushwant Singh, Manohar Malgonkar, Amitav Ghosh, and Vikas Swarup. The paper shall discuss the proliferation of the slum culture, the irrevocable degradation of one’s value system, and the apathetic marginalization and embarrassment of refugees, immigrants, and women. There shall be implications about class struggle, alienation, and physical punishment, which have burdened our choice of survival and existence.