DECOLONIAL PERSPECTIVE ON LITERARY SPACE: INTERSECTION OF ENVIRONMENT, CULTURE AND IDENTITY IN TWILIGHT IN DELHI AND IN CORDOBA

Abstract

Ahmad Ali’s Twilight in Delhi and Alamgir Hashmi’s In Cordoba challenge colonial narratives and reclaim identities that have been marginalized and lost under the shadow of colonialism by Using the decolonial ideas of Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo, Edward Said’s Orientalism, and Anibal Quijano’s Coloniality of power. The core concern of the study is how both texts reimagine historical landscapes that have been damaged by imperial violence. Twilight in Delhi shows how Old Delhi's culture and environment fell apart while the British were in charge and portrays the identity crisis from which colonized Muslims are going through by describing how indigenous traditions and rituals are fading and Mughal heritage is being erased. In the same way, In Cordoba brings back Islamic Spain as a place of spiritual and historical memory also highlights that how colonial rule changed literary space and how language and narrative can fight imperial discourse; how memory and poetry can keep spiritual continuity alive. Ngũgĩ's criticism of language alienation, Said's exposure of the East-West binary, and Quijano's theory of epistemic domination help us understand these works as decolonial gestures.