Cold War and the Politics of Religious Identity in South Asian Fiction

Abstract

Since the turn of the twenty fist century and with the publication of The Kite Runner in
2003 by Khaled Hosseini, South Asian fiction reflects the Cold War politics and its
impact on the contemporary South Asian fiction writing. This paper aims to highlight
the role the Cold War has played in the construction of religious identities as depicted
in the selected text. The constructed religious identities such as Mujahideen and of
Taliban were used as political tools by the US to construct relations of power in the
region of Afghanistan. The text has been analyzed through Close Reading method. The
selected passages which reveal the use of religion for political purposes were further
gleaned to decode the implication of power politics on the region. While employing
postcolonial theory, it has been concluded that the identities constructed during Cold
War era have been used to construct relations of power.