Authors : Md. Mazed Ali; Dr. Shabina Khan

Volume/Issue : Volume 10 - 2025, Issue 12 - December

Google Scholar : https://tinyurl.com/yj7kwcu3

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.38124/ijisrt/25dec957

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Abstract : This collection of essays explores the regional Indian literatures as vibrant sites of cultural adaptation, where continuity and change are contingently negotiated through sustained practice in writing. Breaking out of the frames of preservative or resistance-oriented understanding, it develops an argument that regional literatures do not simply preserve inherited traditions but reinvent them in order to engage with emerging social realities. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship from postcolonial studies, cultural memory, and vernacular literary history, the work conceptualizes adaptation as a central analytical framework for understanding Indian literary modernity. Although comparative references are drawn from a number of regional contexts, the analysis foregrounds Bengali literature as a persistent case study. From the indigenisation of the novel in the nineteenth century to post-Partition narratives and contemporary short fiction, Bengali literature shows how literary cultures absorb modern forms, ethical dilemmas, and historical ruptures without dissolving into cultural dissolution. Figures such as Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Rabindranath Tagore, Manik Bandopadhyay, and Mahasweta Devi illustrate the functions of literature in mediating inherited moral worlds with emerging social conditions. The study further shows how cultural memory, reflective nostalgia, and the localization of modernity enable literature to sustain regional identity while accommodating transformation. Through foregrounding adaptation rather than rupture, the work makes three contributions to postcolonial literary studies: it challenges homogenizing national and global narratives; reconceptualizes continuity as an evolving process rather than static preservation; and situates literature within lived cultural environments shaped by memory, ethics, and social negotiation. The study finally places regional Indian literatures not as diminished cultural residues but as resilient, adaptive practices that continue to shape identity and meaning in a rapidly changing India.

Keywords : Regional Indian Literatures, Cultural Adaptation, Bengali Literary Tradition, Cultural Memory and Identity, Indian Literary Modernity, Postcolonial Vernacular Studies.

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