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@article{194106,
        author = {Earnest Paul. G},
        title = {Ethical Dislocation and Cultural Alienation: Reading V.S. Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness through the Ethical Philosophy of the Thirukkural},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {10},
        pages = {2746-2752},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=194106},
        abstract = {This paper approaches a critical exploration of V.S. Naipaul and his book, An Area of Darkness with the context of putting the story into perspective with the moral code of the Thirukkural, a classical Tamil text that has been hailed as the most ethical code. The occasion of Naipaul back to India is characterized by large scale cultural alienation and ethical displacement, experiences that are not confined to the personal, but are archetypal of postcolonial predicaments of identity, sense of place and of moral purpose. Comparing incisive and at times disturbing insights into Indian social realities as provided by Naipaul with the moral principles of the Indian traditional ethical text, the Thirukkural, especially its focus on virtue, moral responsibility, truthfulness, and compassion, this paper will enquire about the origins and consequences of ethical crisis in the postcolonial subject. Through the analysis, it has been proven that alienation produced by Naipaul is a result of collision between inherited moral frameworks and parts of realities that were created by colonial history and social stratification. In addition to this, it argues that ethical humanism of the Thirukkural offers a substantive counter-discourse to the despair, cynicism and moral pessimism that are often the order of the day in the prose of Naipaul. Placing a modern postcolonial travel story in conversation with an ancient ethical tradition, the article claims classical moral philosophies remain an active resource of answering the modern questions of ethical responsibility, cultural difference, and finding a sense of belonging in a postcolonial world.},
        keywords = {postcolonial ethics, cultural alienation, moral responsibility, identity crisis, postcolonial literature, moral philosophy, Indian social realities, ethical crisis, classical traditions, sense of belonging},
        month = {March},
        }