The Clarified Bugle of Sovereignty: An Analysis of Geo-centric and Physical Metaphors of the Motherland in Mulk Raj Anand’s Story ‘The Lost Child’

A true son of the Indian soil, Mulk Raj Anand composed this prose poem in the year 1934, when India was under British rule. The child of this motherland was weeping because every child had lost their 'Mother' in this 'fair' of the British Raj. Everything was present before the child’s eyes in that fair, except for his mother. Indeed, it was a critical juncture where literature had to perform its duty silently yet profoundly. Dr. Anand accepted this challenge and, for his noble and sacred objective, successfully established the deep bond between the child and the mother (the son and the motherland) in his poetic story 'The Lost Child'. In this short story, Dr. Anand adopted not only social, geographical, and political perspectives but also made excellent use of the principles of Physical Science. Taking absolute creative liberty in the realm of literature, he deployed it as the most potent weapon against colonialism. In this research paper, for investigative purposes, an attempt has been made to carve out a new path in English literature by integrating perspectives of natural philosophy such as physics and geography. Here, we have etched the deep relationship between Mother Earth and her children as an inherent birthright of every individual from a global perspective, encompassing both East and West, to sustain the harmony of love and peace upon the canvas of entire humanity.