Conflict between Tradition and Modernity in Samrat Upadhyay's Arresting God in Kathmandu
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Department of English
Abstract
Samrat Upadhyay's Arresting God in Kathmandu (2001) presents modern
Nepali agents on the one hand who are capable of acting on their own resist the
repressive cultural, political and social orders on the other hand the old generations
want the tradition to be preserved and want to protect it. This collection of short
stories is full of subjects resisting the repressive social, cultural and political values.
The agency is within the subjects of the society. This research paper is done under the
theoretical light of Dilip Parameshwor Gaonkar's alternative modernities, Charles
Taylor's making of the modern identity, Peter Wagner's concepts of modernity, Dipesh
Chakrabarty and Arjun Appadurai's theories on modernity. The selected stories for
this research paper are "Deepak Misra's Secretary", "The Cooking Poet", "The
Limping Bride" and "This World". Different characters in the stories act in their own
way. Kanti, Jaya, Giri, Moti, Rukmini, Bandana, Deepak and Jill are the main
characters. They stop performing social, political and cultural values instead they
resist against those values. Thus, the tension between modern subjects; the people
who are self-dependent and their resistance against the socio-political and cultural
values and the traditional subjects who want new generations to act according to
established norms and values is depicted in the selected four stories from the short
stories collection, Arresting God in Kathmandu.
Keywords: Modernity, Resistance, Self-dependent, Agency, Social, Political,
Cultural Values