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Abstract
The increasing role of Indian English historical novels has been as a counter-discursive practice where marginalized regional historiographies have been reclaimed and reinscribed in creative ways. Basavaraj Naikar's The Sun Behind the Cloud is one such fictional practice where the forgotten political, cultural, and social history of Karnataka is excavated through creative storytelling. This paper seeks to explore how Naikar's fictional work becomes a discursive practice where history is reconstructed through the interstices of archival thinking and creative imagination to reclaim the forgotten history of Karnataka. Through the theoretical framework of historical novels, postcolonial historiography, and cultural memory, this paper seeks to uncover how The Sun Behind the Cloud portrays kingship, resistance struggles, social stratification, and collective memory. By contextualizing The Sun Behind the Cloud in the broader text of Indian English historical novels, it can be proposed that Naikar's fictional work not only reinscribes the forgotten history of Karnataka as a regional entity in Indian English novels but also challenges the dominant modalities of traditional historical discourse as well. The fictional work becomes an important attempt at reinscribing forgotten historiographies through the modalities of the literary.
Keywords: Basavaraj Naikar, Historical Fiction, Karnataka History, Regional Memory, Postcolonial Historiography, Indian English Novel