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Gandhian fictions : rereading 'Satyagraha in South Africa'
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Lahiri, Madhumita (2012) Gandhian fictions : rereading 'Satyagraha in South Africa'. Social Dynamics, Vol.38 (No.1). pp. 104-116. doi:10.1080/02533952.2012.698950 ISSN 0253-3952.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02533952.2012.698950
Abstract
From 1923–24, Mahatma Gandhi wrote his recollections of South Africa from a prison cell in India. This text, Satyagraha in South Africa, was intended to be ‘helpful in our present struggle’ to liberate India, as well as ‘a guide to any regular historian who may arise in the future.’ An emphatically transnational text, Satyagraha in South Africa relies upon the mode of allegory to place South Africa and India in relation to each other. As it encourages comparison, however, it discourages common cause. Gandhi places Africans as the anterior sign in a larger system of signification: South African politics prefigures Indian anti-colonial victory to come, but the African native also represents the innocent natives of India writ large.
Without the political didactics of Hind Swaraj, the journalistic interventions of Indian Opinion or even the philosophical aspirations of My Experiments with Truth, this fictionalised history has rarely been the centre of attention. Satyagraha in South Africa, however, reveals Gandhi’s understanding of imperial geography, as he places South Africa and India in a single frame but fails to imagine them as inhabiting the same historical present. This understanding is reflected in his political decisions, as he fails to connect Indian anti-colonial agitation with struggles elsewhere.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > English and Comparative Literary Studies | ||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Social Dynamics | ||||
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis | ||||
ISSN: | 0253-3952 | ||||
Official Date: | 2 August 2012 | ||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | Vol.38 | ||||
Number: | No.1 | ||||
Page Range: | pp. 104-116 | ||||
DOI: | 10.1080/02533952.2012.698950 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
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