ABSTRACT
In English-speaking metropoles, Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel (1989), with its serendipitous blending of epic and modern history, has been warmly received by many postcolonial critics. They typically laud Tharoor for his whimsical history, and that too in the language of India’s former colonial masters. Anita Mannur relates, ‘Tharoor uses “English” to subvert “English” because he is finding the strength to overcome the hegemony within the language itself’(Mannur, 1998: 82). Similarly, Kanishka Chowdhury says that ‘Through his innovative use of the English language and in his effort to recover an indigenous epic “tradition,” Tharoor effectively recovers a version of India for a portion of its people’ (Chowdhury, 1995: 47).1
