1 - A Maverick Scholar: The Writings of Pankaj Mishra

Summary

One of the relatively recent signatures in contemporary Indian English writing, Pankaj Mishra, shot into the limelight with his work in fiction and nonfiction. Not much attention has been paid to him in the academic world for very long; in this paper my attempt has been to address this gap. But for a few reviews appearing in newspapers and literary journals (as the endnotes reflect), and the critical articles of Rahul Gairola (2003), Padmaja Challakere (2004), Jill Didur (2009) and Dwivedi (2009), no sustained efforts in the form of a book have been made to throw light on Mishra's works and achievements. These reviews and articles evoke a mixed response to his writings. More critical attention is called for because Mishra happens to be an author of the postliberalization period. But for his Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India (1985), all his works appeared after 1991 – once the process of liberalization and globalization in India had begun, the resonance of which was particularly felt in metropolitan cities.

Pankaj Mishra was born in the small town of Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh, in 1969. He did his undergraduate course at the University of Allahabad, which had been a centre of attraction for his maternal family: ‘Three generations of my mother's family had gone to the University in Allahabad.’ Having spent three years at Allahabad (1985–88), Mishra proceeded to Benares in the winter of 1988 for an intensive self-guided reading.