Abstract

Mark Tully’s books, No Full Stops in India (1992) and Non Stop India (2011) are telling commentaries on the situation of post-independent India. Central to both books is the question of Indian ‘modernity’ or ‘development’ after independence, and in this regard they explore various aspects of Indian society, economy, politics and religion. The aim of this paper is to analyse how India has been pictured in these stories. This picture should be important for two reasons – firstly, that these stories come from the pen of an author who is not an Indian but British by birth; and secondly, because the author claims that in these stories, ‘Indians do as much of the speaking as possible’. Moreover, Non Stop India, written twenty years after No Full Stops, allows one to contemplate on the issues raised in the first book. The methodology used in this paper is mainly analytical, and combines tools of postcolonial theory and ideological criticism. The paper is constrained in that it tries to evaluate only two books by one author – Mark Tully. However, the researcher believes that this paper should contribute to define India’s present reality in a new light, which can be further researched into.

Key words: India, Mark Tully, colonial legacy, postcolonial, modernity.

Abbreviation

NS, No Full Stops in India; NSI, Non Stop India.