1 Consider, for instance, Sahgal’s use of the phrase “lesser breeds” to introduce her recent critique of the war in Iraq, “Wars and ‘Peace’: The Road to Iraq”, Frontline, 20, 14 (2003). <http://www.flonnet.com/fl2014/stories/20030718001504900.htm> Accessed April 12, 2003. She also discusses “a breed of men who quite soberly assessed themselves as the rightful arbiters of affairs”.

2 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard UP, 1999, p. 28.

3 Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1997, p. 196.

4 Nayantara Sahgal, Mistaken Identity, London: Heinemann, 1988.

5 Jawaharlal Nehru wrote extensively about his own life in An Autobiography and The Discovery of India. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Sahgal’s mother, and Sahgal herself, have produced two autobiographies each. In addition, Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s other sister, Krishna Nehru Hutheesing, and Sonia Gandhi, Indira’s daughter-in-law, now leader of the Congress Party, have produced accounts of India’s most famous family. There are also works by more distant and lesser known relatives, such as B.K. Nehru.

6 Nayantara Sahgal, Prison and Chocolate Cake, London: Gollancz, 1954, p. 51.

7 Nayantara Sahgal, Lesser Breeds: A Novel, New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2003, p. 97. All further references will be given in the body of the text.

8 Radhika Mohanram, “Narrating the Nation-in-Process: Nayantara Sahgal’s Mistaken Identity” in Nayantara Sahgal’s India: Passion, Politics, and History, ed. Ralph J. Crane, New Delhi: Sterling, 1998, pp. 141-64.

9 Iram Siraj-Blatchford, The Early Years: Laying the Foundation for Racial Equality, London: Trentham Books, 1994, p. 4.

10 Racism, Gender Identities and Young Children: Social Relations in a Multi- Ethnic Inner-City Primary School, London: Routledge, 1998, p. 195.

11 Nayantara Sahgal, in an interview by Nistula Hebbar, “Fascism is on the Rise”, The Week, 16 March 2003. <http://www.the-week.com/23mar16/life6.htm> Accessed Jan. 27, 2005.

12 Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India: Centenary Edition, New Delhi: OUP, 1989; repr. 2000, p. 259.

13 Alberto Melucci, “Identity and Difference in a Globalized World”, in Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism, eds, Pnina Webner and Tariq Modood, London: Zed Books, 1997, pp. 58-69.

14 Lesley Higgins and Marie-Christine Lepps, “‘Passport Please’: Legal, Literary and Critical Fictions of Identity”, in Un-Disciplining Literature: Literature, Law and Culture, eds, Kostas Myrsiades and Linda Myrsiades, New York: Peter Lang, 1999, pp. 117-68.

15 Homi K. Bhabha, “The World and the Home”, Social Text, 10, 2-3 (1992), 141-53.

16 Discovery, p. 259.

17 See Eclecticism and Modern Hindu Discourse, Oxford: OUP, 1999.

18 ibid., p. 133.

19 ibid., p.4.

20 Vinit Haksar, Rights, Communities and Disobedience: Liberalism and Gandhi, New Delhi: OUP, 2001, p. 89.

21 Eclecticism, p. 90.

22 “Illusion and Reality” in Nayantara Sahgal’s India, pp. 1-15.

23 See OED.

24 See Barbara Korte, English Travel Writing: from Pilgrimages to Postcolonial Explorations, trans. Catherine Matthias, London: Macmillan, 2000.

25 Brian Musgrove, “Travel and Unsettlement: Freud on Vacation”, in Travel Writing and Empire: Postcolonial Theory in Transit, ed. Steve Clark, London: Zed Books, 1999, pp. 31-44.

26 Critique, p.6.

27 ibid., p. 270.

28 M.K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, ed. Anthony J. Patel, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997, p. 73.

29 Doireann MacDermott, “East, West: The Priceless Asset”, in Nayantara Sahgal’s India, pp. 97-110.

30 Frank Tirro, for instance, describes the jazz aesthetic as “performer-centred”, rather than “composer-centred”, Jazz: A History, New York: Norton, 1993, p. 100.

31 Fred Wei-han Ho, “What Makes ‘Jazz’ the Revolutionary Music of the 20th Century, and Will It Be Revolutionary for the 21st Century?”, African American Review, 29, 2 (1995), 283-90.

32 Eclecticism, p. 91.

33 Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Studies and British Rule in India, London, Faber, 1990.

34 Discovery, pp. 442-3.

35 Amitav Ghosh discusses this as a global phenomenon. See In An Antique Land, London, Granta, 1992.

36 OED.

37 Critique, p. 340.

38 ibid., p. 364.

Secularism as Syncretism in Nayantara Sahgal’s Lesser Breeds

Abstract