Published Paper Details:

Raja Rao (1908-2006), a pioneering Indian English novelist, masterfully navigates the terrains of home and hybridity in his narratives, reflecting the tensions between Western impact and native response in postcolonial India. His seminal works, Kanthapura (1938) and The Serpent and the Rope (1960), exemplify this dialectic: Kanthapura depicts a village's Gandhian uprising against colonial rule, blending oral traditions with modern nationalism, while The Serpent and the Rope explore Ramaswamy's spiritual quest across India and Europe, embodying Advaita Vedanta amid cultural fusions. Drawing on Homi Bhabha's hybridity, Rao's narratives subvert Western forms--English language, novel structure--to articulate native essence: "We cannot write like the English. We should not. We can write only as Indians" (Kanthapura, Foreword, p. v). Home emerges as metaphysical India, disrupted by colonial modernity, eliciting responses from passive mimicry to assertive reclamation. Through Moorthy's satyagraha in Kanthapura--"There is but one force in life and that is Truth" and Ramaswamy's philosophical wanderings--"The actual, the real has no name" (The Serpent and the Rope, p. 378)--Rao critiques Western materialism, advocating syncretic identities. This paper analyzes Rao's narrative world as a site of hybrid negotiation, contributing to postcolonial studies by highlighting how his fiction rewrites home as a resilient, transcultural space amid Western encroachments. In 2025's globalized era, Rao's vision underscores literature's role in forging decolonized selves.