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Title: | Citizen Other: Islamic Indianness and the implosion of racial harmony in postapartheid South Africa |
Author: | Rastogi, Pallavi![]() |
Year: | 2008 |
Periodical: | Research in African Literatures |
Volume: | 39 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 107-124 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | prose Indians race relations |
About person: | Ahmed Essop (1931-)![]() |
External link: | http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/research_in_african_literatures/v039/39.1rastogi.pdf |
Abstract: | This essay explores the implosion of racial and religious harmony in the postapartheid fiction of South African Indian writer Ahmed Essop, notably his short story collection 'The King of Hearts' (1997) and his novel 'The Third Prophecy' (2004). The stories in the first book reflect on the fraught relationship between Indians, particularly Indian Muslims, and other races in the postapartheid era, while the second book problematizes the accommodation of the Indo-Islamic community within the contours of a secular nation. The minority disaffection described in these texts raises important questions about citizenship in the 'new' South Africa. Indian-Muslim alienation from the national norm casts doubts on democratic South Africa's success in the projects of community building, inter-cultural reconciliation, and racial healing, thus compelling us to question its very legitimacy as a truly postcolonial nation. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |