The anti-national

In the wake of the events unfolding in the country, let us look at the literature of sedition – and my choice is JM Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians

If the police were to burst into your room while you were sleeping and, putting a gun to your head, ask you to name a literary work that was critical of the idea of the nation, which title would you reveal?

A shared humanity: Stories like We Have Arrived in Amritsar show that violence doesn’t discriminate. But that is a problem. Because our humanity isn’t as universal as we often assume it is. Which explains why I like Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians. It presents a starker picture.

Silencing the adivasi: While reading JM Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, I thought of Govind Nihalani’s film Aakrosh.