| Sunil Kumar Assistant Professor (Dept. of English) S.N.K.P. Government College Neem Ka Thana, Sikar (Rajasthan) | Dr. Vinod Khuriwal Assistant Professor (Dept. of English) Govt. Nehru Memorial College Hanumangarh (Rajasthan) |
Abstract
Attia Hosain occupies a distinctive position in Indian English literature as a chronicler of the socio-cultural transformations experienced by the Muslim aristocracy during the late colonial and Partition periods. Her literary oeuvre, particularly Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961) and the short story collection Phoenix Fled (1953), foregrounds the complex interplay between memory, nostalgia, identity, and nationhood. This paper examines how Hosain employs collective memory and nostalgia to reconstruct a rapidly disappearing socio-cultural world. Drawing upon Maurice Halbwachs’ theory of collective memory and Svetlana Boym’s conceptualization of nostalgia, the study argues that Hosain transforms personal recollections into a broader cultural archive of a fractured community. The paper further demonstrates that nostalgia in Hosain’s fiction is not merely sentimental longing for the past; rather, it serves as a critical instrument for interrogating history, identity, gender relations, and the nation-state. Through nuanced portrayals of domestic spaces, family traditions, and the trauma of Partition, Hosain reimagines the transition from “home” as a private domain to “homeland” as a contested political and emotional space. Ultimately, her writings preserve the memory of a vanished world while simultaneously questioning the ideological foundations of nationalism and communal divisions.