A Critical Study of the Illusions of Nationalism in Post-Independence Pakistani English Novels: From Nationalism of Liberation to Nationalism of Domination in Ice-Candy Man

Abstract

In the years succeeding the downfall of Colonialism, the term nationalism came to be recognized as a strong alternative to Imperialism. However, the process of decolonization also brought about disenchantment with the ideas of nation and nationalism. This research aims to analyze the process by which the journey from nationalism of liberation is transformed into nationalism for domination of a once colonized nation by analyzing the novels written specifically in the background of the creation of Pakistan and the subsequent years by native fiction writers such as Bapsi Sidhwa’s (2015) Ice-candy Man. To test the disillusionment and the dissections within the nation which loom over the fulfilment of its ideals guaranteed as a consequence of formal emancipation, this study determines how nationalist elements add to the unrelenting oppression of the native groups within the national population even after independence. With reference to the text under study, a preliminary analysis of the concept of nationalism and its inherent rifts as proposed by Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth (2004) is carried out. Additionally, nationalism’s resultant downfall and its relationship with an imagined community of nation as put forward by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (2006) is also taken into account. The conclusion drawn is that the legendary ideals of nationalism fail to unify the multitude of masses occupying a territorial boundary and cause disunion and conflict, contrary to the very ideals at its core.