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Research Article | Open Access
Volume 14 2022 | None
A MAGNUM OPUS OF CULTURAL MEMES IN NOVEL DELHI BY KHUSHWANT SINGH
Dr.Harsha Patil
Pages: 7472-7478
Abstract
Delhi(1990), a novel by Khushwant Singh is a historical account of the anonymous narrator duration showcase the tremors and troubles faced by the city Delhi, a place iconic of the historical changes which at times has been created, destroyed and recreated. The narrator's relationship with the eunuch Bhagmati is a scope of deep analysis as Bhagmati impersonates Delhi. Cultural meme is a term coined by Richard Dawkins in his book 'The Selfish Gene' that culture is composed of memes which can be defines as a 'cultural unit shared and passed down in different periods'. Dawkins’s concept of memes represent culture through semantic word fragmentation, word frequency statistics and synonym merging methods. They construct dynasty cultural meme vectors. In other words they resemble biological genes through which culture can be identified in a fine grained way. In Delhi, Khushwant Singh through a historical narrative style reflects the historical exploits of Delhi and his sexual exploits encompassing historical events related to the creation of Delhi, its golden chapters with Mir Taqi Mir to the times of Nadir Shah and Aurangzeb and the devastation Delhi Sikh riots, treating cultural units of India shared and passed on in different periods as cultural memes. The idea of Bhagmati impersonating Delhi has been analysed in magnum opus of contemporary cultural units. 'Cultural memes' was a word coined by Richard Dawkins in his book 'The Selfish Gene’ followed later by definitions given by Sperber, Blackmore, Dennet and Olesen. In the words of Dawkins
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