Who wants to be a cosmopolitan?

This article explores two political discourses—composite culture and cosmopolitanism—as divergent, indeed competing, modes of advocating cultural pluralism. The first part of the article considers the genealogy of each construct and explores the theoretical differences between the two. The second part turns to the question of how composite culture and cosmopolitanism are configured in narrative terms in recent works of fiction and film. The primary focus is on Hindi author Manzoor Ahtesham’s 1986 novel Sukha Bargad (A Dying Banyan in English translation). The novel illustrates the withering of composite culture from the perspective of a brother and sister growing up in post-Independence Bhopal. To provide a comparative framework, two recent works of Anglophone fiction are drawn into the discussion: Aravind Adiga’s novel White Tiger (2008) and Vikas Swarup’s novel Q & A, the basis for the movie Slumdog Millionaire. These texts may be read as critiques of cosmopolitanism from the subaltern position. The article asks whether composite culture and cosmopolitanism remain relevant in neo-liberalized India, while also calling for further research on these issues using literary texts in Hindi and Urdu.