Citizen Other: Islamic Indianness and the implosion of racial harmony in postapartheid South Africa

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Periodical article

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-)
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]