Socio-Economic Realities of Youth In Indian English Literature

Abstract

The representation of youth in Indian English Literature has proved to be a strong narrative tool that is used to address socio-economic changes, cultural migration and ideological contradictions of the Indian society. Young people, who stand in the borderland between tradition and modernity, are vulnerable when it comes to monitoring social change, in that they reflect any tensions posed by the stratification of classes, gender stereotypes, economic disparities, educational ambitions and political awareness. This research paper discusses the manner in which the socio-economic reality that influences the lives of young people, their identities and their courses through the Indian English literature. Based on the few works of prominent authors of Indian English, the paper places literary images of the youth in the context of larger socio-economic processes that include colonial heritage, post-independent processes of nation-building, liberalization, globalization and neoliberal restructuring. The paper is interdisciplinary and combines the perspectives of literature and sociology or economy in order to posit that youth in Indian English literature is not a biological or transitional category but a socially constructed subject of forces of a structure. The paper, by foregrounding youth as a location of negotiation between aspiration and constraint, explains the role of literature as an important archive of socio-economic situations shaping the lives of youth in India. The paper will also play a role in the current discussion of the subject of literary and cultural studies in that it highlights the applicability of the youth narrative in the study of inequality, identity formation and social change in the Indian society.