Abstract
The task of compiling chapters for a book as vast in topic as a Handbook of modern Indian literatures is a challenging one. The Introduction takes a self-reflexive look at the project, highlighting the rationale behind the editorial decisions. Noting the paradigm of monolingualism under which much of literary scholarship on Indian literature suffers, the Handbook offers a multilingual and comparative approach to modern Indian literatures. Highlighting the melding of the trajectories of region, language, and borders, along with a close reading of texts and literary archives, the Introduction provides a fuller picture of the energetic space of scholarship on Indian literature even while interrogating and crossing the borders of the nation as narrowly understood. The Handbook will show the deep connections and collaborations across the limits of genre, language, nation, and region, producing a literature of diverse contact zones that generates newer questions of form, location, technique, culture, and society.