Modernism, Brahmin Angst, and Postcolonial Indian Writing in Regional Languages: The Case of U. R. Ananthamurthy'sSamskara

AbstractEuropean modernism deeply impacted postcolonial Indian literatures in regional languages. This essay looks at the South Indian writer, U. R. Ananthamurthy's, novel Samskara to explore such modernist preoccupations with issues of caste and gender in Kannada writing. Many navya (modernism in Kannada literature) writers like Ananthamurthy critique caste repression in South Indian societies. But they are mainly invested in the idea of the new self-fashioning of the Brahmin in a changing world. Despite Ananthamurthy's "progressive" commitment to social change, the ambivalent textual representation of this Brahmin identity in Samskara leads to reinforcing the asymmetry of caste and gender relations.