RAJA RAO PAGIDIPALLI LITERATURE

INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY

OF

INDIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE

P.Raja Rao M.A.(Eng), M.Phil, (Ph.D.), M.B.A.

www.rajaraop.wordpress.com

[email protected]

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 RAJA RAO PAGIDIPALLI LITERATURE

INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY

OF

INDIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Introduction:

Indian English literature refers to the body of work by writers in India who write in the English

language and whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of

India. It is also associated with the works of members of the Indian diaspora, such as V.S.

Naipaul, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri and Salman Rushdie, who are of Indian descent.

It is frequently referred to as Indo-Anglian literature. (Indo-Anglian is a specific term in the sole

context of writing that should not be confused with the term Anglo-Indian). As a category, this

production comes under the broader realm of postcolonial literature- the production from

previously colonised countries such as India.

History

IEL has a relatively recent history, it is only one and a half centuries old. The first book written

by an Indian in English was by Sake Dean Mahomet, titled Travels of Dean Mahomet;

Mahomet's travel narrative was published in 1793 in England. In its early stages it was

influenced by the Western art form of the novel. Early Indian writers used English unadulterated

by Indian words to convey an experience which was essentially Indian. Raja Rao's Kanthapura is

Indian in terms of its storytelling qualities. Rabindranath Tagore wrote in Bengali and English

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and was responsible for the translations of his own work into English. Dhan Gopal Mukerji was

the first Indian author to win a literary award in the United States. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, a writer

of non-fiction, is best known for his The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian where he relates

his life experiences and influences. P. Lal, a poet, translator, publisher and essayist, founded a

press in the 1950s for Indian English writing, Writers Workshop.

R.K. Narayan is a writer who contributed over many decades and who continued to write till his

death recently. He was discovered byGraham Greene in the sense that the latter helped him find

a publisher in England. Graham Greene and Narayan remained close friends till the end. Similar

to Thomas Hardy's Wessex, Narayan created the fictitious town of Malgudi where he set his

novels. Some criticise Narayan for the parochial, detached and closed world that he created in

the face of the changing conditions in India at the times in which the stories are set. Others, such

as Graham Greene, however, feel that through Malgudi they could vividly understand the Indian

experience. Narayan's evocation of small town life and its experiences through the eyes of the

endearing child protagonist Swaminathan inSwami and Friends is a good sample of his writing

style. Simultaneous with Narayan's pastoral idylls, a very different writer, Mulk Raj Anand, was

similarly gaining recognition for his writing set in rural India; but his stories were harsher, and

engaged, sometimes brutally, with divisions of caste, class and religion.

Among the later writers, the most notable is Salman Rushdie, born in India, now living in

the United Kingdom. Rushdie with his famous work Midnight's Children (Booker Prize 1981,

Booker of Bookers 1992, and Best of the Bookers 2008) ushered in a new trend of writing. He

used a hybrid language – English generously peppered with Indian terms – to convey a theme

that could be seen as representing the vast canvas of India. He is usually categorised under

the magic realism mode of writing most famously associated with Gabriel García Márquez.

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Vikram Seth, author of A Suitable Boy (1994) is a writer who uses a purer English and more

realistic themes. Being a self-confessed fan ofJane Austen, his attention is on the story, its details

and its twists and turns.Vikram Seth is notable both as an accomplished novelist and poet.

Vikram Seth's outstanding achievement as a versatile and prolific poet remains largely and

unfairly neglected.

Shashi Tharoor, in his The Great Indian Novel (1989), follows a story-telling (though in a

satirical) mode as in the Mahabharata drawing his ideas by going back and forth in time. His

work as UN official living outside India has given him a vantage point that helps construct an

objective Indianness.

Other authors include Ashok Banker, Manoj Das, Vikram Chandra, Anita Desai, Kiran

Desai, Arundhati Roy, Gita Mehta, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Samit

Basu, Raj Kamal Jha, Jhumpa Lahiri, Bharti Kirchner, Khushwant Singh, Vijay Singh, Tarun

Tejpal,Amit Chaudhuri, Amitav Ghosh, Vikas Swarup, Anil Menon, Rohinton Mistry, Suketu

Mehta, Kiran Nagarkar, Bharati Mukherjee, Vandana Singh, Abhay Kumar, Lakshmi Raj

Sharma and Prajwal Parajuly.Vikrant Dutta captures a rare format through his novel in ballad

verse "Ode to Dignity"

One of the key issues raised in this context is the superiority/inferiority of IWE (Indian Writing

in English) as opposed to the literary production in the various languages of India. Key polar

concepts bandied in this context are superficial/authentic, imitative/creative, shallow/deep,

critical/uncritical, elitist/parochial and so on.

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The views of Rushdie and Amit Chaudhuri expressed through their books The Vintage Book of

Indian Writing and The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature respectively essentialise this

battle.

Rushdie's statement in his book – "the ironic proposition that India's best writing since

independence may have been done in the language of the departed imperialists is simply too

much for some folks to bear" – created a lot of resentment among many writers, including

writers in English. In his book, Amit Chaudhuri questions – "Can it be true that Indian writing,

that endlessly rich, complex and problematic entity, is to be represented by a handful of writers

who write in English, who live in England or America and whom one might have met at a

party?"

Chaudhuri feels that after Rushdie, IWE started employing magical realism, bagginess, non-

linear narrative and hybrid language to sustain themes seen as microcosms of India and

supposedly reflecting Indian conditions. He contrasts this with the works of earlier writers such

as Narayan where the use of English is pure, but the deciphering of meaning needs cultural

familiarity. He also feels that Indianness is a theme constructed only in IWE and does not

articulate itself in the vernacular literatures. He further adds "the post-colonial novel, becomes a

trope for an ideal hybridity by which the West celebrates not so much Indianness, whatever that

infinitely complex thing is, but its own historical quest, its reinterpretation of itself".

Some of these arguments form an integral part of what is called postcolonial theory. The very

categorisation of IWE – as IWE or under post-colonial literature – is seen by some as

limiting. Amitav Ghosh made his views on this very clear by refusing to accept the

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EurasianCommonwealth Writers Prize for his book The Glass Palace in 2001 and withdrawing it

from the subsequent stage.

The renowned writer V. S. Naipaul, a third generation Indian from Trinidad and Tobago and

a Nobel prize laureate, is a person who belongs to the world and usually not classified under

IWE. Naipaul evokes ideas of homeland, rootlessness and his own personal feelings towards

India in many of his books.

Jhumpa Lahiri, a Pulitzer prize winner from the U.S., is a writer uncomfortable under the label of

IWE.

Recent writers in India such as Arundhati Roy and David Davidar show a direction towards

contextuality and rootedness in their works. Arundhati Roy, a trained architect and the 1997

Booker prize winner for her The God of Small Things, calls herself a "home grown" writer. Her

award winning book is set in the immensely physical landscape of Kerala. Davidar sets hisThe

House of Blue Mangoes in Southern Tamil Nadu. In both the books, geography and politics are

integral to the narrative. In his novel Lament of Mohini (2000), Shreekumar Varma touches

upon the unique matriarchal system and the sammandham system of marriage as he writes about

the Namboodiris and the aristocrats of Kerala.

Poetry

A much over-looked category of Indian writing in English is poetry. As stated above,

Rabindranath Tagore wrote in Bengali and English and was responsible for the translations of his

own work into English. Other early notable poets in English include Derozio, Michael

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Madhusudan Dutt, Toru Dutt, Romesh Chunder Dutt, Sri Aurobindo, Sarojini Naidu, and her

brotherHarindranath Chattopadhyay.

A generation of exiles also sprang from the Indian diaspora. Among these are names like Agha

Shahid Ali, Sujata Bhatt, Richard Crasta, Yuyutsu Sharma and Vikram Seth.

In modern times, Indian poetry in English was typified by two very different poets. Dom Moraes,

winner of the Hawthornden Prize at the age of 19 for his first book of poems A Beginningwent

on to occupy a pre-eminent position among Indian poets writing in English. Nissim Ezekiel, who

came from India's tiny Bene Israel Jewish community, created a voice and place for Indian poets

writing in English and championed their work.

Their contemporaries in English poetry in India were Jayanta Mahapatra, Gieve Patel, A. K.

Ramanujan, Arun Kolatkar, Dilip Chitre, Eunice De Souza, Kersy Katrak, P. Lal, Kamala

Das,Adil Jussawalla and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, among several others. The younger

generation of poets writing in English include Smita Agarwal, Makarand Paranjape, Nandini

Sahu,Vattacharja Chandan, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Ranjit Hoskote, Sudeep Sen, Anand

Thakore, Deepankar Khiwani, Vivek Narayanan, Hemant Mohapatra, Jeet Thayil, Mani

Rao, Jerry Pinto among others.

India's experimental and avant garde counterculture is symbolized in the Prakalpana Movement.

During the last four decades this bilingual literary movement has included Richard

Kostelanetz, John M. Bennett, Don Webb, Sheila Murphy and many others worldwide and their

Indian couterparts. Vattacharja Chandan is a central figure who contrived the movement.

Prakalpana fiction is a fusion of prose, poetry, play, essay, and pictures. An example of a

Prakalpana work is Chandan's bilingual Cosmosphere (2011).

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Some bilingual writers have also made significant contributions, such as Paigham Afaqui with

his novel Makaan in 1989.

Reference: Wikipedia

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