Raj era eco-thriller debut novel published by Dr Sarah Hussain

A debut novel by Huddersfield PhD researcher Dr Sarah Hussain  is confronting traditional narratives and redresses the balance in writing about the Raj era and British colonialism in India.

In the foothills of the Himalayas is Dr Hussain’s first full-length book and follows on from her novella Escaped From Syria and a short story collection, Sit up, Stand up, Speak up. 

It is the culmination of more than seven years of post-colonial research following on from a Master’s degree that saw Sarah complete her PhD - Lessons of perseverance and patience: Creatively telling the long history of India’s female anticolonial environmentalism – whilst also juggling the demands of being a mother of two. Throw pandemic lockdowns into the mix, and Sarah is understandably proud of the novel that will be published by Foreshore with a launch event to be held at the Huddersfield Literature Festival on 20 April.

The novel encompasses family tragedy, environmental catastrophe and conspiracy in India through the 20th Century, but comes from a very different place compared to traditional fiction about the British Raj era. Works like The Far Pavilions and A Passage To India took a British-centric approach, with Indian characters pushed to the side-lines, while women were often portrayed as powerless victims.

“I love my culture and my heritage, but that does not necessarily mean that I don’t love being British. You can be proud of both,” says Huddersfield-based Dr Hussain, who teaches Humanities at the University's International Study Centre. “This novel was about connecting with my roots and the journey of learning about my history.

"Writing the academic exegesis wasn’t as challenging as writing the novel, which required rigorous editing. It’s like building a house – you build the outside, which is the main structure, but then you have to add all the important details like plastering and decorating. For me, that meant going through draft after draft adding the finer detail.” 

Family, the environment and the struggle for an independent India

Sarah’s book celebrates the women who raised awareness of the damage done to India’s environment by colonialism by drawing attention to a non-violent protest, inspired by the Chipko Movement. This saw women organising themselves to protest against logging and deforestation in the 1960s and 1970s by keeping vigils over and attaching themselves to trees that had been earmarked for felling. There is also a long history of women’s environmental activism that predates the independence era, and the novel pays homage to those unsung female activists.

“The literature I found about the British colonial era in India were very much romanticized depictions, and women were almost wholly absent from this whole narrative. South Asian women were depicted as oppressed or as victims, and they were voiceless,” Dr Hussain adds.

“I found it amazing to discover these women, who were not well-known. I wanted to create a novel that was telling the real story of what happened in the Raj era to acknowledge South Asian women and give them a fairer representation, to show we are not just victims.

Look at the past has modern resonance

An anti-colonial eco-thriller, despite being set decades in the past, Dr Hussain’s novel has an all-too-modern relevance by looking at the effects of deforestation and climate change.

“There is often an assumption that landslides and flooding are just natural disasters but flooding in the region was a result of deforestation. English traders replaced natural broad-leafed tea trees with commercial pine. When they took the broad-leafed trees away, they took away the leaf mould deposit, which means rain cannot be soaked up, resulting in landslides.