india author m 1- a-nan - University of Wollongong

DHAWAN, R.K. ed. Three Contemporary Novelists: Khushwant Singh, Chaman Nahal ,
Salman Rushdie New Delhi: Classical Publishing Co, 1986, x + 230 pp.
JHA, MOHAN. "Azadi: A Search for Identity": 117-127.
KIRPAL, VINEY. "The Indian Exile and The English Queens": 139-47.
RADHA, K. "The English in Azadi and The Crown and the Loincloth": 148-71.
RAMAMURTI, K.S. "Azadi: Point of View as Technique": 128-38.
GUPTA, SUBHADRA SEN. "Chaman Nahal: From Tragedy to Satire" IndH 29.2
(1980):19-24.
IYENGAR, K.R. SRINIVASA. "The Crown and the Loincloth" The Literary Criterion 16.3
(1981):76-9.
JHA, MOHAN. "Chaman Nahal's Azadi: A Search for Identity." in Studies in Indian Fiction
in English edited by G.S. Balarama Gupta, 36-45. Gulbarga: JIWE, 1987.
Appreciation of "this chronicle novel" whise "grisly macabre atmosphere...has its own
sharp appeal." Outlines plot, characters and structure (dense blocks of detail and slow-paced
moves between present and past sometimes disorient the reader), stressing its dramatic vigour
and its vision of the "urge for survival", though Arun us found to withdraw into disillusionment
and his father into frustrated anonymity, Despite lifes' bleak prospects, examples of kindness
and tolerance and allusions to Kurukshtra and Tagore underline the worth of commitment to
truth and reason and the ideal of freedom as a condition of human dignity.
JHA, RAMA. "The Fiction of Chaman Nahal" The Humanities Review 3.2(1981):33-9.
KIRPAL, VINEY. "The Uncommitted Indian Middle Classes: An Analysis of Nahal's The
English Queen's" in PRASAD, R.C. & SHARMA, R.K., eds. Modern Studies and Other
Essays in Honour of Dr R.K. Sinha New Delhi: Vikas, 1987: 247-51.
MATHUR, O.P. "The Novels of Chaman Nahal: A Penultimate View": 319-333. in
DWIVEDI, A.N. (ed) Studies in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English, Allahabad:
Kitab Mahal, 1987, pp.358
Nahal repeatedly denied that a first-rate Indian work could be written in English but
modified his claim over twenty years. Surveys output, from stories (The Weird Dance, 1965)
to The Crown and the Loincloth 1981). Nahal is a consistent affirmer of human potential
and is informed by the Gita. The satiric exception is The English Queens (1979) though this
still favours authenticity over artificiality. In The Crown and the Loincloth Nahal attempts a
panoramic treatment of Gandhi as both man and symbol but the focus slips across this wide
cast of characters, some individually memorable. In his work "It is the individual's grasping for
understanding and fulfilment that vivifies the social and political"
RADHA, K. "The English in Chaman Nahal's Azadi." Littcrit 9, no.1 (1983):31-36.
Nahal appears to make no direct comment on the British in India. He distances his
characters from his own voice. Lala Kanshi Ram is ambivalent towards the Raj, admiring its
impartial order but criticizing its abandonment of the people to Partition violence. Baljit
Raizada is altogether hostile, and Sergeant Davidson criticizes both imperialism and its hasty
withdrawal. The consistency of negative response implies authorial sanction.