Keywords: modernisation, India, citizenship, subaltern
The rise of the aesthetic language of modernism in India was intimately
related to the early anticolonial struggle and the birth of the nation.
Referring to the transition towards the postcolonial state, in Habitations
of Modernity (2002) Dipesh Chakrabarty draws a direct link between
modernity, politicality and citizenship. Such triangulation, echoing Western
political theory, is at the core of this article: reading Mahasweta Devi's
creative writing against Chakrabarty's work, I question the possibility of
seeing citizenship as the passage to modernity. Devi's short stories reveal
how the acquisition of citizenship did not allow adivasis (indigenous
people) to access the promise of 'development' that modernity signified
during nationalism. Devi's acute realism denounces the liberal ideal of
the citizen as a colonial construct and strips the postcolonial nation of its
modern attribution.