'PROGRESSIVE THOUGHT' AND POLITICAL CULTURE IN PAKISTANI ENGLISH FICTION

Abstract

In this paper, the author discusses how the Pakistani English fiction of the modern period reinvents the nation through the prism of the progressive political ideology and the commentary of culture. This paper examines the use of these texts in challenging authoritarian, sectarian, and patriarchal institutions that established the national story of Pakistan by analyzing Mohsin Hamid, Kamila Shamsie and Nadeem Aslam respectively. It is based on postcolonial theory and tradition of intellectual writing of the South Asian Progressive Writers/Movement, and argues that the novels can be used to advance civil and ethical vision of nationhood grounded on pluralism, empathy and social justice. The thematic analysis has enabled the paper to come up with three overlapping strands that comprise: pluralism and politics of inclusion, exile and ethics of belonging and gendered resistance as civic imagination. The discourse locates the Pakistani English fiction within the broader discourse of the political role of literature in the postcolonial communities suggesting that the modern writers are changing the narration process to a kind of progressive citizenship. It concludes with the suggestion that this corpus is a shift to the state less nationalism to what may be called a progressive civic imagination the literary effort to re-create collective identity on religious, ethnic, and geographic levels.