%0 Journal Article
%T Finding the voice of the Peasant: Agriculture, Neocolonialism and Mulk Raj Anand¡¯s Punjab trilogy
%A Jonathan Highfield
%J Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
%D 2009
%I Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
%X Mulk Raj Anand¡¯s Punjab trilogy¨CThe Village (1939), Across the Black Waters (1940), and The Sword and the Sickle (1942)¨Cspeaks directly to the destruction of traditional agricultural systems under colonial rule and the absorption of the agricultural goods and human labor of India into a global economic system. The Punjab trilogy traces the life of a character searching for another India, an India free of oppression, misery, and classism. Lalu Singh looks at the situation in the Punjab from an ever-widening orbit, only to recognize that global movements devalue the very people they purport to help. In the end he rejects theory for action, returning to the peasant society he fled as a youth. His decision has resonance in the twenty-first century as formerly colonized regions face the neocolonial onslaught of biopiracy and genetic trait control technologies.
%K Agriculture
%K Neocolonialism
%K Mulk Raj Anand
%K Punjab trilogy
%U http://www.rupkatha.com/0102mulkrajanandspunjabtrilogy.pdf