“Golden hour” : nostalgia and the demise of the Muslim urban space in Twilight in Delhi and Sunlight on a Broken Column
Abstract
This article explores how changing cityscapes of (post)colonial urban transition contribute to the creation of nostalgic longing in Twilight in Delhi and Sunlight on a Broken Column. Drawing from recent scholarship, it focuses on the memorialization of space and compares the ways in which narrative memory frames the perception of urbanization in both texts. Further, this study also examines the cultural location of this nostalgia and articulates the categorization of a specific Muslim nostalgia, which comes from the recognition of the anticipated political and social exclusion of the community in contemporary India. The article analyses the impact of the transformation of the city with colonization and decolonization on Muslims, as narrated in both texts. Borrowing from Svetlana Boym’s twin concepts of reflective and restorative nostalgia as analytical frameworks, a close reading reveals significantly contrasting literary perspectives when it comes to narrating the flux between modernity and tradition within the Indo Muslim imagination.
Citation
Kazmi , Z 2022 , ' “Golden hour” : nostalgia and the demise of the Muslim urban space in Twilight in Delhi and Sunlight on a Broken Column ' , Journal of Postcolonial Writing , vol. Latest Articles . https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2022.2083769
Publication
Journal of Postcolonial Writing
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1744-9855Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.