The Parody of the Sacred: A Study of the Characters in the Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor
Dr. Punyashree Panda, Ms. Sulagna Mohanty

Abstract
This paper seeks to explore the elements of Parodia sacra present in the text The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor. Intermingled with myth, Tharoor’s novel playfully stretches from the 1930s to 1980s India. From the choosing of the sacred text to exploring the characters with a new postcolonial perspective, Tharoor shows his colossal force to transform the epic The Mahabharata into parodia sacra through a contemporary fictional re-telling of same through his aforementioned novel. This paper aims at finding the parodic components and the revisionist discourse existent in the text by a meticulous study of the characters portrayed in The Great Indian Novel.

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