ABSTRACT
Through an analysis of the postcolonial fiction emanating from acts of violence unleashed in India during the anti-Sikh massacre of 1984, the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992 and the explosion of violence in Gujarat in 2002, this essay examines how literary representation impacts communalism or religious minorities. It underscores the narrative strategies and techniques that fictional constructs use to articulate as well as to challenge the physical, emotional, and psychological dimensions of the marginalization and the exclusion of minorities in India. Emerging as a powerful and radical critique, these fictions can be read as counter-narratives or studies in resistance that interrogate and unravel the politics of suppression that governs nationalist discourses thereby challenging the secular underpinnings of the Indian nation-state.
