More than Language and Literature: Postcolonial Connections and Linguistic Paradigms in Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s Indian English Fiction

This article investigates the interdisciplinary connections between language and literature in the Indian postcolonial context. I argue that a linguistic approach to contemporary Indian English fiction is useful to unpack complex cultural, social and identitarian questions. As a case study, I analyse some of the short stories from The Adivasi Will Not Dance (2017) by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, a contemporary author from a marginalised ethnic group of rural India. My methodology benefits from postcolonial studies, sociolinguistics and critical stylistics, to show how Shekhar reshapes the canon by foregrounding Indian English, borrowings from the Santhali language and registers of specialised discourse.