Liberalism in Colonial India

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This study builds upon E.M. Forster's unconventional perspective on colonial engagement and aims to uncover commonalities among Forster, Mulk Raj Anand, and Attia Hosain's representative texts centered around late colonial India. The argument posits that, much like Forster's liberal humanism clashed with the prevailing cultural discourse of colonialism in interwar London, Anand and Hosain's colonial hybridity positions them in opposition to the dominant narratives of empire during their respective eras. These authors epitomize a non-normative discourse of empire, seeking to diverge from the conventional polemical representations of colonial involvement. Anand's "Untouchable" and Hosain's "Sunlight on a Broken Column" serve as prime examples of this colonial hybrid consciousness, wherein the intricate interplay of cultural and political dimensions shapes the colonial dialectic.