¹ Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006), p. 7 (emphasis in original).

² Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, (trans.) Keith Tibe (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 257.

³ S. Natarajan, ‘Naa Dainika Samasyalu’ [My Everyday Problems], Telugu Swatantra (Telugu Independence), vol. 1, no. 29, 1949, p. 41 (my translation).

⁴ The Progressive Writers’ Movement is a most significant and influential literary movement which had its beginnings in colonial South Asia. The first conference of the All-India Progressive Writers’ Association (AIPWA) was organized in Lucknow on 10 April 1936 and was addressed by the famous Urdu-Hindi fiction writer, Premchand. Seven years later, the first conference of the Andhra Progressive Writers’ Association took place on 13 and 14 February 1943 at Tenali.

⁵ Priyamvada Gopal, Literary Radicalism: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence (New Delhi: Routledge, 2005), p. 2.

⁶ Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Decolonization in South Asia: Meanings of Freedom in Post-independence West Bengal, 1947–1952 (New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2012), p. 2 (emphasis added).

⁷ Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought in the Colonial World (London: Zed Books, 1993), p. 131.

⁸ I draw this phrase from the title of Madhav Khosla’s book. Madhav Khosla, India’s Founding Moment: The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020).

⁹ This idea comes from Charles Taylor, who writes, ‘There are important differences between social imaginary and social theory. I adopt the term imaginary (i) because my focus is on the way ordinary people “imagine” their social surroundings and this is often not expressed in theoretical terms, but is carried in images, stories, and legends.’ See Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), p. 23.

¹⁰ Dilip Menon, ‘Review of Ananya, Vajpeyi, Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India’, H-Asia, H-Net Reviews, February 2015, available at http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=40651, [accessed 28 November 2025].

¹¹ Natarajan writes, ‘Often, I feel that if I do this kind of drudgery and think in this manner I will die early. But neither could I escape the hotel’s drudgery, nor would I get sufficient return for it. Then, I thought of stopping to write these stories. Even that was also not possible. As Telugu is not my mother tongue, unless I read profusely, my writing activity will not continue properly. To read in that manner, I do not have the capacity to buy books. Some good-spirited fellow may give books. But, finding leisure is like the horns of the horse. The recent talk is that the eight-hour work per day has come to the hotel workers of Tenali. I do not know through which route it has come. Ninety-five out of a hundred including me have been still doing ten to twelve hours of bull-drudgery. In these conditions, how can one read and write? One can see that the laws are being made by the Government, but not their implementation. For the namesake, there is a labour office and a labour officer too.

‘I came across several so-called respectable people who had asked what the need of education for the hotel server was. I have never worn good clothes since my birth. Moreover, this hotel work does not have any guarantee. Till now, I have lost this job more than twenty-five times and starved days together. As I do not have any doubt that my life in the future is going to be the same, I get an untoward fear regarding how the remaining lifetime will be spent. After having gained independence, I thought that the situation would not be the same. At least, there would be a twenty percent improvement in this life’s journey. I was expectant that the money I get from publishers by writing stories would be enough to cure my disease of fits at least. Even, that came to naught. Hence, it would not be a mistake to assume that I am not a citizen of independent India.’ Natarajan, ‘Naa Dainika Samasyalu’, p. 41 (emphasis added).

¹² Koselleck, Futures Past, p. 266.

¹³ In one of his poems, the famous modern Telugu poet Gurajada Apparao (1861/62–1915) writes ‘If [we] evaluate and determine and categorize people based on their good and evil qualities there are only two castes among human beings.’ Gurajada Apparao, Gurujadalu: Mahakavi Gurajada Apparao Samagra Rachanlu [The Guru’s Pathways: Complete Works of Great Poet Gurajada Apparao] (Hyderabad: Emesco, 2012), p. 57.

¹⁴ Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. edn (London: Verso, 2006) is the path-breaking and influential study of the phenomena of nationalism, first published in 1983.

¹⁵ Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 149–179; Sudipta Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995); M. T. Ansari, Islam and Nationalism in India: South Indian Contexts (New York: Routledge, 2015); Meera Ashar, ‘Show or Tell? Instruction and Representation in Govardhanram’s Saraswatichandra’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 50, no. 3, 2016, pp. 1019–1049; Partha Chatterjee, ‘The Nation in Heterogeneous Time’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 38, no. 4, 2001, pp. 399–418; Shivarama Padikkal, ‘Inventing Modernity: The Emergence of the Novel in India’, in Interrogating Modernity: Culture and Colonialism in India, (eds) Tejaswini Niranjana et al. (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1993), pp. 220–241; Shvetal Vyas Pare, ‘Writing Fiction, Living History: Kanhaiyalal Munshi’s Historical Trilogy’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 48, no. 3, 2014, pp. 596–616.

¹⁶ Padikkal, ‘Inventing Modernity’, p. 222.

¹⁷ Tanika Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2015), p. 163.

¹⁸ Julius J. Lipner, ‘Introduction’, in Bankimcandra Chatterji, Anadammath, or The Sacred Brotherhood, (trans.) Julius J. Lipner (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 52 (emphasis added).

¹⁹ V. Ramaswamy Sastrulu and Sons, ‘Peetika’ [Preface], in Bankimcandra Chatterji, Durgesa Nandany (Madras: V. Ramaswamy Sastrulu & Sons, 1916), p. iii (my translation).

²⁰ Tanika Sarakar, Hindu Nationalism in India (London: Hurst & Company, 2021), pp. 10–33; Lipner, ‘Introduction’, p. 71. Sugata Bose, The Nation as Mother and Other Visions of Nationhood (Gurgaon: Penguin Random House India, 2017), pp. 1–31.

²¹ Vyas Pare, ‘Writing Fiction, Living History’, pp. 600–601. See also Christophe Jaffrelot, Gujarat Under Modi: The Blueprint for Today’s India (Chennai: Context, 2024), pp. 27–30.

²² Gopal, Literary Radicalism; Talat Ahmed, Literature and Politics in the Age of Nationalism: The Progressive Writers’ Movement in South Asia, 1932–56 (New Delhi: Routledge, 2009); Rakhshanda Jalil, Liking Progress, Loving Change: A Literary History of the Progressive Writers’ Movement in Urdu (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014).

²³ Priya Joshi, In Another Country: Colonialism, Culture, and the English Novel in India (New York: Columbia, 2002), p. 210.

²⁴ Aamir R. Mufti, Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 183.

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ Ibid. (emphasis in original).

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ Ulka Anjaria, Realism in the Twentieth-Century Indian Novel: Colonial Difference and Literary Form (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 8.

³⁰ Javed Majeed, ‘Literary Modernity in South Asia’, in India and the British Empire, (eds) Douglas M. Peers and Nandini Gooptu (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 273.

³¹ Ibid., pp. 273–274 (emphasis added).

³² Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts, (trans) Todd Samuel Presner and others (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), p. 110.

³³ The first conference of the All-India Progressive Writers’ Association took place on 10 April 1936.

³⁴ Velcheru Narayanarao, Telugulo Kavita Vipalavala Svarupam [The Structure of Poetic Revolutions in Telugu] (Illinois: Taanaa Prachuranalu, 2008), pp. 130–156. Likewise, Velcheru characterizes Bhava Kavitvam (Romantic poetry) as a revolution. See ibid., pp. 92–129.

³⁵ A close friend and writer, Aluri Bhujangarao, writes, ‘After participating in those classes and coming back, a lot of change has come in Natarajan and Prakasam. At the moment, I don’t have a memory of what they have learnt in those classes. But, the public in Tenali used to discuss so much about the literary school.’ Aluri Bhujangarao, Sahithya Batasari-Sarada (S. Natarajan): Smruthi Sakalalu (Literary Traveller-Sarada [S. Natarajan]: The Fragments of Memory) (Tenali: Sahithya Samskrithika Samstha, 2009), p. 28.

³⁶ Sri Sri is regarded as the most influential Telugu poet of the twentieth century. His collection of poetry Maha Prasthanam (The Great Journey) influenced generations of Telugu readers. Most of the poems in this collection were written between 1934 and 1940. S. Natarajan was greatly influenced by these poems. Aluri writes, ‘Book-reading has become part of our lives … Natarajan and Prakasam used to write profusely. They used to discuss literature and politics continuously. Those may be the days when Kutumbarao’s Chaduvu (The Education) and Sri Sri’s Mahaprasthanamm were first published. Why, because Natarajan always used to sing the songs “Padandi Munduku” (Move Forward) and “Jaganathuni Rathachakralosthunai” (The Wheels of the Chariot of Jaganath are coming).’ Aluri, Sahithya Batasari-Sarada, p. 39.

³⁷ Sarada, Sarada Sahityam: Kathalu, Galphikalu, Lekhalu Letters [Sarada’s Literature: Stories, Sketches, Letters], (eds) Valluru Siva Prasad and Sarachandra Jyothisri (Guntur: Andhra Pradesh Abudaya Rachaitala Sangham, 2020), pp. 21–22.

³⁸ Gudipati Venkata Chalam was one of the most influential literary figures of the twentieth century in the Telugu public sphere. He began his literary career in the early twentieth century, and wrote short stories, novels, and musings. Some of his works became highly sensational and controversial, sparking debate among his readers. His most popular and controversial novel is Maidaanam (1927), which narrates the story of a Brahmin woman named Rajeswari. Due to her growing boredom in her marriage, she elopes with a person named Aameer. Outside the bounds of society, they live happily at the edge of a river for some time. But when Rajeswari becomes pregnant, it creates tension in their relationship. Ameer tries to force her to go for an abortion, but initially she resists the idea. As a means of emotional blackmail, Ameer leaves Rajeswari all alone. Finally, she succumbs to the pressure from Ameer and gets her pregnancy aborted. Meanwhile, Rajeswari makes the acquaintance of a younger person named Meera. Ameer cannot bear the relationship between Rajeswari and Meera. In a fit of anger, Ameer commits suicide by stabbing himself. The novel has a rather unconventional and radical plot, and its form and content remain a contentious issue among critics from various schools of thought. The novel proposes a radical path for the emancipation of women from the restrictions and limitations of a boring marital life. Furthermore, it questions the very basis of the bourgeois family system. Apart from this novel, Gudipati Venkata Chalam wrote numerous short stories, novels, and other pieces.

³⁹ S. Natarajan, ‘Rachaitalku Pratipalam Evvakapovato Garhyam’ [Not Giving Remuneration to Writers is Condemnable], in Abudaya, Arasam Edupadula Prastanam (Progress: Seventy Years Journey of the PWA), (eds) Saratchandra Jyothisri and Valluru Siva Prasad (Hyderabad: Visalandhra Publishing House, 2013), p. 33.

⁴⁰ Sarada, Sarada Sahityam, pp. 54–55. Likewise, Saadat Hasan Manto wrote a short story titled ‘Naya Qanun’ (The New Constitution). For an interpretation of Manto’s story, see Faisal Devji, ‘An Impossible Founding’, Global Intellectual History, vol. 8, no. 1, 2021, pp. 97–104.

⁴¹ Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics. Vol. 1: Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 115.

⁴² The fifteenth-century Bhajan was written by Narsinh Mehta in the Gujarati language. This was Gandhi’s favourite prayer song, regularly rendered at Sabarmati Ashram.

⁴³ Padma is from Sarada’s Manchi-Chedu; Parvathy is one of the protagonists of his other major novel, Edi Satyam (What is the Truth?).

⁴⁴ Sarojini is from Manchi-Chedu and Sambasivarao is from Edi Satyam.

⁴⁵ Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘Introduction: From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition’, in From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition, (eds) Dipesh Charabarty, Rochona Majumdar and Andrew Sartori (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 1–10.

⁴⁶ Joya Chatterji, ‘Citizenship and Nation-building after Independence: South Asian Experiences’, in Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century (Gurugram: Penguin Random House, 2023), pp. 84–203; Shalini Sharma, ‘“Yeh Azaadi Jhooti Hai!”: The Shaping of the Opposition in the First Year of the Congress Raj’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 48, no. 5, September 2014, pp. 1358–1388.

⁴⁷ Sharma, ‘“Yeh Azaadi Jhooti Hai!”’, p. 1360.

⁴⁸ V. Ramakrishna, ‘Literary and Theatre Movement in Colonial Andhra: Struggle for Left Ideological Legitimacy’, Social Scientist, vol. 21, no. 1 and 2, 1993, p. 79. For an overview of the fate of the Progressive literary moment in post-colonial South Asia, see Hafeez Malik, ‘The Marxist Literary Movement in India and Pakistan’, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 26, no. 4, 1967, pp. 649–664. For an excellent interpretation of the government’s use of force on the Left Movement in another region of South India, see Dilip M. Menon, ‘Community and Conflict, 1940–1948’, in his Caste, Nationalism and Communism in South India: Malabar 1900–1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 159–189.

⁴⁹ Bamidipati Jaganatha Rao, ‘Patakulanu Parigenthichindi’ [Gripped the Readers], Sakshi [The Witness], vol. 5, no. 164, 2012, p. 4 (emphasis added; my translation).

⁵⁰ Editor, ‘Rachaita “Sarada”’ [Author Sarada], Andhra Patrika, no. 47, 1954, p. 13 (my translation).

⁵¹ Sarada, Manchi-Chedu in Sarada Rachanalu-Modati Samputam [Sarada’s Writings, First Volume] (Vijayawada: Visalandhra Publishing House, 2015), p. 233 (my translation).

⁵² Partha Chatterjee, ‘The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question’, in Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, (eds) Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989), pp. 233–253; Sonal Shukla, ‘Govardhanram’s Women’, in Ideals, Images and Real Lives: Women in Literature and History, (eds) Alice Thorner and Maithreyi Krishnaraj (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2000), pp. 192–215.

⁵³ Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness, p. 152.

⁵⁴ Sangeeta Ray, En-gendering India: Woman and Nation in Colonial and Postcolonial Narratives (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), p. 49.

⁵⁵ Peter J. Schwartz, After Jena: Goethe’s Elective Affinities and the End of the Old Regime (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2010), pp. 18–24.

⁵⁶ Franco Moretti, The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture (London: Verso, 2000).

⁵⁷ Sarada, Manchi-Chedu, pp. 155–156 (emphasis added; my translation).

⁵⁸ Ibid., p. 156.

⁵⁹ The author of Nirmala is Premchand, first published in Hindi in 1928. Nirmala is married off to a much older widowed person by her mother as she could not afford to give a dowry. Premchand, Nirmala, (trans.) Alok Rai (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013).

⁶⁰ Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature (London: Merlin Press, 1988), p. 121; Homi K. Bhabha, ‘DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation’, in Nation and Narration, (ed.) Homi K. Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 291–322.

⁶¹ Swargaseema is a popular Telugu movie that was released in 1945. It is directed by B. N. Reddi. The time of the action of the novel is explicitly indexed with reference to this famous Telugu movie.

⁶² This is the name of a Telugu year as it is specified by Panchangam (astronomical calendar). According to this calendar, each era consists of 60 years and each is given a specific name. The New Year starts on the day of Ugadi and is given a specific name. The name of the year also characterizes the nature of the year. According to this calendar, Dhata years are 1876, 1937, 1997, and 2056.

⁶³ Sarada, Manchi-Chedu, p. 190 (emphasis added; my translation). Similarly, after becoming a prostitute, Padma becomes conscious of the changes that growing age have brought to her face, and she can continue in that profession for a short period only.

⁶⁴ Sarada, Manchi-Chedu, p. 233 (emphasis added; my translation).

⁶⁵ Dakshayagnam (The Ritual Sacrifice of Daksha) narrates the story of Daksha and his rivalry with Shiva. Most significantly, the goddess Parvathy is called Sati in Dakshayagnam. Sati indicates the pinnacle of Hindu womanhood. Sati also shows a woman who burns herself on her husband’s funeral pyre.

⁶⁶ Tanika Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), pp. 51–52.

⁶⁷ Sarada, Manchi-Chedu, p. 282 (my translation).

⁶⁸ Lukács, The Theory of the Novel, p. 80.

⁶⁹ Premchand, Sevasadan, (trans.) Snehal Shingavi (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005).

⁷⁰ Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 143

⁷¹ I draw this phrase from Charles Bernheimer’s book with this title. Charles Bernheimer, Figures of Ill Repute: Representing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century France (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997).

⁷² Sarada, Manchi-Chedu, p. 177 (my translation).

⁷³ Bernheimer, Figures of Ill Repute.

⁷⁴ Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Calcutta: National Book Agency, 1993), p. 94 (emphasis in original).

⁷⁵ Quoted in Susan Buck-Morss, ‘The Flaneur, the Sandwichman and the Whore: The Politics of Loitering’, New German Critique, vol. 39, Autumn 1986, p. 101.

⁷⁶ Quoted in ibid., p. 120.

⁷⁷ Ibid., p. 111.

⁷⁸ Mary Gluck, ‘The Flaneur and the Aesthetic Appropriation of Urban Culture in Mid Nineteenth-Century Paris’, Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 20, no. 5, 2003, p. 53.

⁷⁹ Quoted in Buck-Morss, ‘The Flaneur, the Sandwichman and the Whore’, p. 112.

⁸⁰ Sarada, Manchi-Chedu, p. 167.

⁸¹ Ibid., p. 202.

⁸² Mufti, Enlightenment in the Colony, p. 198.

⁸³ Sarada, Manchi-Chedu, p. 236.

⁸⁴ M. T. Ansari, Islam and Nationalism in India: South Indian Contexts (New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 141–142.

⁸⁵ Narayanarao, along with Veyipadagalu written by V. Satyanarayana, was given the first prize in the competition of novels conducted by Andhra University in 1934. Adivi Bapiraju, Narayanarao (Hyderabad: Visalandhara Publishing House, 2010).