The Question of Identity in Indian Reformers’ Discourse after the First World War: Madhaviah’s Case

Abstract

The question of identity of the "educated Indians" during the colonial era is defined in historiography in terms of "ambivalence", "schizophrenia", "neurosis" etc. This demonstrates the attempts of researchers to explain the specific way of self-determination of Western-educated class of Indians, which breaks down into several parallel levels often being contradictory by nature. At the end of the First World War, the representatives of Western-educated Indians were deeply concerned by the issue of self-determination due to the activation of the liberation movement with the tendency to revive and preserve their own tradition on the one hand, along with the reproduction of Westernized values and habits on the other hand. The limited number of the specific studies regarding the identity question in colonial context in general as well as the lack of the works corresponding to a particular region, period or society of India motivated this research. Addressing the identity problems in the post-war prose of Madhaviah allowed to study the specific behavior of "educated Indians" of Madras presidency and to shed some light on the identity issues within South Indian context. The current case study represents an attempt to clarify in which way Madhaviah, the prominent social reformer and the pioneer in Tamil prose writing, defines the identity question in his post-war prose. His short stories were published in the influential newspaper of that time -The Hindu, which dealt with both the social reforms and the nationalism. Therefore, the paper discusses whether Madhaviah's identity as a social reformer suffered due to the abovementioned dramatic events, and whether the reforming trend was in conflict with the nationalistic one in the Kusika's short stories.