Most readers of nationalist and anticolonial literature are drawn towards this material because of the radical worldview and affect that it contains. The list of writers who deployed nationalism and anticolonial themes is long and has now become the standard syllabus in most courses on postcolonial literature in universities. In the first half of the twentieth century, literature became an important tool in the hands of anticolonial nationalists who sought not only to understand the processes by which entire swaths of humanity had been enslaved and dominated by primarily European powers, but also to imagine into existence the conditions under which that enslavement and domination could come to an end. This was not a process unique to literary inquiries and experiments: the entirety of the colonized intelligentsia was engaged with trying to imagine what the consequences of colonialism were on a subject population and what alternative political and social arrangements might do for the welfare of the people in general. If we take Gregory Jusdanis's definition, that “[Nationalism] is a revolutionary, progressive, and utopian doctrine, seeking the transformation of the inherited, and quite often, unjust and oppressive order,” it becomes easier to understand why this literary corollary to the independence movement was, in fact, inspiring (2001, 10). The fact that writers from the Indian subcontinent could also rely on an anticolonial figure with as global a reputation as Gandhi plays no small part in the creation of this attractive, politicized canon.