Formal Liberation, Substantive Exclusion: Postcolonial Paradox in Devanooru Mahadeva's Odalala and Chinua Achebe's No Longer at Ease

Ravi Kumar M S; Prof. Dr. Varadesh Hiregange

doi:10.63363/aijfr.2026.v07i03.5841

Formal Liberation, Substantive Exclusion: Postcolonial Paradox in Devanooru Mahadeva's Odalala and Chinua Achebe's No Longer at Ease

Author(s)	Mr. Ravi Kumar M S, Prof. Dr. Varadesh Hiregange
Country	India
Abstract	Postcolonial literary studies have long interrogated the gap between political independence and lived social realities in formerly colonized societies. While early post-independence narratives often celebrated national liberation, subsequent scholarship has emphasized how colonial structures of power persist in altered forms within new nation-states. Thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and Homi K. Bhabha have shown that independence frequently reproduces hierarchies through cultural mimicry and the rise of elite classes aligned with colonial modes of governance. Parallel to this, B. R. Ambedkar’s analysis of caste as a system of graded inequality highlights how formal legal equality in India has failed to dismantle deeply embedded social stratifications. Within literary studies, African and South Asian texts have independently explored these contradictions. Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease portrays the moral and institutional dilemmas faced by an educated Nigerian elite navigating postcolonial bureaucracy, while Dalit writers like Devanooru Mahadeva foreground the persistence of caste-based exclusion despite constitutional guarantees of equality. However, these traditions are often studied in isolation, limiting a broader understanding of how different forms of structural oppression intersect across postcolonial contexts. Recent scholarship has begun to advocate for South-South comparative frameworks that move beyond Eurocentric theoretical models to examine shared histories of marginalization and resistance. Yet there remains limited work that directly compares Dalit literature with African postcolonial narratives through a unified conceptual lens. This study addresses that gap by examining how both traditions articulate the persistence of social exclusion after formal liberation. By bringing together Ambedkarite thought, postcolonial theory, and close textual analysis, the research situates these texts within a broader discourse on the paradoxes of freedom, citizenship, and equality in postcolonial societies.
Keywords	postcolonial paradox of liberation, graded inequality, colonial mimicry, Dalit literature, African postcolonial fiction, substantive exclusion, Devanooru Mahadeva, Chinua Achebe
Field	Sociology > Linguistic / Literature
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 3, May-June 2026
Published On	2026-05-18
DOI	https://doi.org/10.63363/aijfr.2026.v07i03.5841

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Formal Liberation, Substantive Exclusion: Postcolonial Paradox in Devanooru Mahadeva's Odalala and Chinua Achebe's No Longer at Ease

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