Mital Helaiya

 Globalization and Postcolonial Perspectives: Identity, Resistance, and Literary Representations in a Globalized World Introduction This blog is part of the Thinking Activity assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir. For this activity, I engaged with two scholarly articles: “Globalization and the Future of Postcolonial Studies” and “Globalization and Fiction: Exploring Postcolonial Critique and Literary Representations.” Both articles explore the relationship between globalization and postcolonial thought, examining how contemporary global processes influence identity, culture, economics, and power relations. Through these articles, I explored important postcolonial concepts such as Orientalism, hybridity, neo-colonialism, resistance, and identity crisis. To understand these ideas more deeply, I connected the arguments of the articles with Mira Nair’s film The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012) and Aravind Adiga’s novel The White Tiger (2008). These works demonstrate how globalization creates ...

 Introduction This blog is written as part of the film screening worksheet assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad, Head of the Department of English, MKBU. The task aims to critically engage with Mira Nair’s film adaptation of The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012), based on Mohsin Hamid’s acclaimed novel published in 2007. Through a postcolonial lens, the film invites viewers to reflect on questions of identity, globalization, empire, and resistance in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist tells the story of Changez, a young Pakistani who achieves the American dream through his education at Princeton University and his successful career at the elite valuation firm Underwood Samson in New York. However, the events of 9/11 fundamentally alter his position within American society, transforming him from a celebrated immigrant into a figure of suspicion. His journey becomes a powerful exploration of belonging, alienation, and the politics of rep...

  Introduction Deepa Mehta’s Midnight’s Children (2012), adapted from Salman Rushdie’s celebrated novel, is not merely a historical film about India’s independence. It is a complex postcolonial narrative about the relationship between an individual and a nation, between memory and history, and between language and power. The protagonist, Saleem Sinai, is born at the exact moment of India’s independence on 15 August 1947. His birth establishes a symbolic relationship between his individual life and the life of the nation. As India moves through Independence, Partition, political instability, and the Emergency, Saleem also experiences changes in his family, identity, body, relationships, and sense of belonging. The film is particularly significant for postcolonial studies because it questions apparently simple categories such as Indian/foreign, colonizer/colonized, Hindu/Muslim, individual/nation, and English/vernacular. Through these contradictions, the film presents identity as som...