Decultarization, Disorientation and Political Strategies against the Tribal: A Missing Chapter in Contemporary Mainstream Indian Fiction Writing

Abstract

Indian English fiction writers have made their particular assertions about tribals which are incomplete therefore; we do not find much reality in their novels. In the novels like The Strange Case of Billy Biswas, The Princess, The White Tiger and The English August, we find the unauthentic representation of the tribal life. In every novel, tribal life and characters are shown dependable on mainstream heroes for the help. Novelist’s tribal women and man, surrender to mainstream sophisticated social arrangements. In most of the novels, they consider the non-tribal person as god and savior for them who is outsider of their tribal territory. This is a kind of internal orientalism. The political victimization of the tribal is the colonial phenomena. Mainstream writers assume that the tribals are the uncivilized and no need of cultivation hence tribals are the community for political victimization. Mainstream literatures have never depicted their victimization on ground realities and given place in mainstream canonical literature. This research article tries to examine the displacement and distortion of Adivasi life in the selected novels written in Indian English.