ABSTRACT
Through a close reading of one photograph, the study concludes by showing the displacement of what is properly “inside” or “outside” the frame or form of the twentieth-century nation, or the origin of emancipatory discourses of individuality (interiority), freedom and a popular sovereign self in the context of decolonisation. The photograph is an anonymised image of Jawaharlal Nehru’s bedroom, looked upon by museum-goers who also figure as images of a popular political subject. The reading retrieves the major motifs of the study to suggest undecidable possibilities for both the novel and our collective imagination after references to “freedom” lose their historical force, while also implying that the contentions of the twentieth-century novel endures, as an extension of memory, in other materialities and media.
