Rashmi Varma, Warwick
This paper examines the case of Patna, a “provincial” capital, once an important ancient city that remained significant up until British rule and Indian nationalism, that is seen to have fallen upon bad times since the mid-1970s. But as the site of the call for “total revolution” in the years leading up to the Emergency, Patna has shaped India’s politics and culture in crucial, albeit neglected ways. So in spite of staggering economic and social backwardness, Patna has a flourishing literary and cultural scene that typically operates in the underground, marginal and interstitial spaces of the city. The paper will examine the literary and cultural forms that have emerged from conditions of peripherality and backwardness in the city. As such, the paper will provide a reflection on the paradoxical parameters that we often use to assess aspects of urban life such as cosmopolitanism, technological development and economic growth. Patna is, in many ways then, the exemplary “shadow city” that haunts theorisations of urban modernity in contemporary India.