ABSTRACT
The objective of this chapter is to look at how the history-writing project of the nationalist discourse in India, formulated during colonial times, shows a well-defined method of selection. During the British rule, mainstream historians (the “narrators of the nation”) were mostly English-educated middle and upper-class Hindu gentlemen. By and large, they tried their best to “forget” the age of the Muslim rule, which was tantamount to acts of “repression.” This chapter argues this thesis by analysing Tagore’s popular short story “Hungry Stone,” and by applying the Freudian idea of the uncanny and Walter Benjamin’s theories of Storytelling on the story.
