Indian politics has its major roots on the invasion over it by many empires and imperial powers, the slavery under the British for more than two centuries in specific. The entry of East India Company was the root cause of the various political issues in India during the Mughal empire. And it resulted in the demolition of Indian cottage and small scale industries in order to develop the trade, making many Indians rising issues against British.
Then started the political crises which invoked several writers to write about those political issues. Any political novel must possess both the form and content along with interpretation as to develop many portals as a part of dealing with various discussions and issues, like British colonisation, Partition of India and Pakistan, riots, numerous loss of lives, Opium Wars and slavery to mention a few.
Starting from the earlier writers like Rabindranath Tagore, Raja Rao, R.K.Narayanan and Mulk Raj Anand, and the post- independence- Khushwanth Singh to the present writers. Manohar Malgonankar, Shashi Taroor and Amitav Ghosh talk about various aspects of political concepts in their novels, dealing with the reality of it.
Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan depicts the trauma of the victims of Partition. Since he belongs to a community who remained the victim of this cruel fate, he could easily understand the pain of the people who have been prey to such issues.He has also participated as a villager in the events of Mano Majra, an imaginative peaceful abode of communal harmony but he has narrated the whole tragedy as a detached observer. He does not blame either British or any religion for it but regrets for such an evil occurrence that has taken away a lot of lives. He narrates the agony of the colonised people who were traumatised both physically and emotionally.
Bankin Chandra Chaterje’s first Indian novel paved way for the hit Bollywood patriotic movie Anand Math, from which emerged the National song of India,”Vande Matharam”. In the later stage, came the novels of Rabindranath Tagore whose The Home and the World and The Wreck talk about a family being caught in the political turmoil during the freedom struggle. He gives more prominence to women characters who also had a major role in freedom fight of that period. Manohar Malgonkar in his A Bend in the Ganges creates a new perspective, talking about the Divide and Rule policy of the English thereby leading India to Partition. He depicts the aspects of political reality into the novel which prevented India from developing any further.
Shashi Tharoor in his novel The Great Indian Novel has adopted the story of the Indian legend Mahabaraha through which he satirises the political condition of the present era. Though Mahabaratha belongs to early ages, the politics covered in it proves that political issues prevail even from earlier ages.
Amitav Ghosh in his novel The Shadow Lines has taken the concept of Partition of India and its victims, politics being played upon them and it’s brutality over its own people more than anything else. He does not give more space to the families belonging to each region and country and explains the agony they suffer due to political turmoils, in which even the people who desperately wanted to take part in freedom struggle have lost faith and passion for country. They fail to be patriotic further, as they happened to lose their beloved ones in riots in an unfaithful manner and for invalid reasons and causes. R.K Narayan’s Waiting for Mahatma deals with a distinct aspect of the fall-out of the Partition where it is stressed that ‘making of a country is not as important as that of making humanity’. When India got its independence, some people were caught in riots, losing their lives and many children were orphaned. Such pressures and agonies forced some writers to deal with the Partition of India in their works.
These novels can be considered as the factual and unofficial documents recording the plights of people – physically and emotionally, making the novels more than a historical novel. These novelists feel that political issues are responsible for human destruction all across the world. Such an approach is considered objective by the author and the audience in recording the background politics as major themes in their works.