From Kashmir Through Biafra to Webaz: Decolonisation and Spatial Negotiation in Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun and Julius Angwah’s Before Our Eyes

Abstract

This paper examines why three strips of land whose demand for independence led to bloody conflicts, ethnic cleansing and unprecedented displacements. It focuses on Kashmir’s attempted secession from India and Pakistan, Biafra from Nigeria and Webaz (which is a metaphor for British Southern Cameroons) asked to return to her initial federal state. The paper hypothesises that these led to militancy resulted from the change in world order after the Second World War which exposed the ineffectiveness of the British policy of Indirect Rule in her colonies and the later postindependence multifaceted dynamics. These complexities transformed Kashmir, Biafra and Webaz into bloody theatres for ethno-religious and political conflicts that have been going on for over fifty years now. Using Salman Rushdie, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Angwah Julius in Shalimar the Clown, Half of a Yellow Sun and Before Our Eyes, it indicts how the cultural imprints left by British colonisation and the multifaceted problems intersect with local resistance, economic interests, and cultural shifts to create secessionist movements. Drawing from the Postcolonial theory, it assesses how decolonisation creates cultural pluralism, hybrid identities and resistance in subaltern groups. The paper engages local voices, policy proposals, reimages educational and transnational networks, resource exploitation, ecological changes and environmental justice movements to evince that Rushdie, Ngozi and Angwah blend history, fiction, setting and style through characters that negotiate new North-South and South-South spaces. This leads to new hybrid economic structures and cultural identities that align with post-colonial aspirations for inclusive and equitable development that address historical disparities.