Indian English literature (IEL), also referred to as Indian Writing in

English (IWE), is the body of work by writers in India who write in the English
language but whose native or co-native language could be one of the
numerous languages of India. Its early history began with the works of Henry
Louis Vivian Derozio and Michael Madhusudan Dutt followed by Rabindranath
Tagore and Sri Aurobindo.[citation needed] R. K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja
Rao contributed to the growth and popularity of Indian English fiction in the
1930s.[1] It is also associated, in some cases, with the works of members of
the Indian diaspora who subsequently compose works in English.
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 Anglo-
Indian). Although some Indo-Anglian works may be classified under the genre
of postcolonial literature, the repertoire of Indian English literature encompasses
a wide variety of themes and ideologies, from the late eighteenth-century to the
present day, and thereby eludes easy categorization.
History
[edit]
IEL has a relatively recent history, being nearly two centuries old. The first book
written by an Indian in English was The Travels of Dean Mahomet, a travel
narrative by Sake Dean Mahomed, published in England in 1794. IEL, in its early
stages had influence from The Western novel . Early Indian writers used English
unadulterated by Indian words to convey an experience which was essentially
Indian. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838–1894) wrote Rajmohan's Wife and
published it in 1864, making it the first Indian novel written in English. Lal Behari
Dey's Govinda Samanta or the History of a Bengali Raiyat was published in 1874
and the same author's Folk Tales of Bengal: Life's Secret was published in
1912. Bianca, or The Young Spanish Maiden (1878) by Toru Dutt was the first
novel written by an Indian woman. Both Toru Dutt and Krupabai Satthianadhan,
two promising Indian English writers of the nineteenth century died untimely in
their early twenties and thirties respectively. Satthianadhan's autobiographical
novel Saguna: A Story of Native Christian Life was published serially in The
Madras Christian College Magazine from 1887 to 1888. The only other novel by
Satthianandhan is Kamala: The Story of a Hindu Life (1894).
The non-fictional body of prose-works, consisting of letters, diaries, political
manifesto, articles, speeches, philosophical works etc. in Indian English literature
of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, is rich and varied. The
speeches of Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Chittaranjan Das, Bal
Gangadhar Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi and Subhas Chandra Bose, to name only a
few, shaped the destiny of modern India and also the destiny of English language
in India (Auddy, 9-10). Gandhi's Indian Home Rule or Hind Swaraj (1910) was
written in an indigenised variety of the English language and challenged
successfully 'the hegemony of Standard English' (Auddy, 169) even before R. K.
Narayan, M. R. Anand and Raja Rao.
Raja Rao (1908–2006), Indian philosopher and writer,
authored Kanthapura and The Serpent and the Rope, which are Indian in terms of
their storytelling qualities. Kisari Mohan Ganguli translated the Mahabharata into
English, the only time the epic has ever been translated in its entirety into a
European language. Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) wrote in Bengali and
English and was responsible for the translations of his own work into
English. Dhan Gopal Mukerji (1890–1936) was the first Indian author to win a
literary award in the United States. Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897–1999), a writer of
non-fiction, is best known for his The Autobiography of an Unknown
Indian (1951), in which he relates his life experiences and influences. P.
Lal (1929–2010), a poet, translator, publisher and essayist, founded a press in
the 1950s for Indian English writing, Writers Workshop. Ram Nath Kak (1917–
1993), a Kashmiri veterinarian, wrote his autobiography Autumn Leaves, which is
one of the most vivid portraits of life in 20th century Kashmir and has become a
sort of a classic.[who?]
R. K. Narayan (1906–2001) contributed over many decades and continued to
write till his death. He was discovered by Graham Greene in the sense that the
latter helped him find a publisher in England. Greene and Narayan remained
close friends till the end. Similar to the way Thomas Hardy used 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 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 in Swami and Friends is a good sample of his writing style.
Simultaneous with Narayan's pastoral idylls, a very different writer, Mulk Raj
Anand (1905–2004), 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. According to writer Lakshmi Holmström,
"The writers of the 1930s were fortunate because after many years of use,
English had become an Indian language used widely and at different levels of
society, and therefore they could experiment more boldly and from a more
secure position."[1] Kamala Markandeya is an early writer in IEL who has often
grouped with the trinity of R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao. [2] The
contributions of Manoj Das and Manohar Malgoankar to growth of IEL largely
remains unacknowledged.[3]
Later history
[edit]
 Arundhati Roy
Among the later writers, the most notable is Salman Rushdie, born in India and
now living in the UK. 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. Nayantara
Sehgal was one of the first female Indian writers in English to receive wide
recognition. Her fiction deals with India's elite responding to the crisis
engendered by political change. She was awarded the 1986 Sahitya Akademi
Award for English, for her novel, Rich Like Us (1985), by the Sahitya Akademi,
India's National Academy of Letters. Anita Desai, who was shortlisted for the
Booker Prize three times, received a Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her
novel Fire on the Mountain and a British Guardian Prize for The Village by the
Sea. Her daughter Kiran Desai won the 2006 Man Booker Prize for her second
novel, The Inheritance of Loss. Ruskin Bond received Sahitya Akademi Award for
his collection of short stories Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra in 1992. He is also the
author of a historical novel A Flight of Pigeons, which is based on an episode
during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
 Salman Rushdie
Vikram Seth, author of The Golden Gate (1986) and A Suitable Boy (1994) is a
writer who uses a purer English and more realistic themes. Being a self-
confessed fan of Jane Austen, his attention is on the story, its details and its
twists and turns. Vikram Seth is notable both as an accomplished novelist and a
prolific poet.
Another writer who has contributed immensely to the Indian English Literature
is Amitav Ghosh who is the author of The Circle of Reason (his 1986 debut
novel), The Shadow Lines (1988), The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), The Glass
Palace (2000), The Hungry Tide (2004), and Sea of Poppies (2008), the first
volume of The Ibis trilogy, set in the 1830s, just before the Opium War, which
encapsulates the colonial history of the East. Ghosh's latest work of fiction
is River of Smoke (2011), the second volume of The Ibis trilogy.
Rohinton Mistry is an India born Canadian author who is a Neustadt International
Prize for Literature laureate (2012). His first book Tales from Firozsha
Baag (1987) published by Penguin Books Canada is a collection of 11 short
stories. His novels Such a Long Journey (1991) and A Fine Balance (1995) earned
him great acclaim. In a similar vein, M. G. Vassanji was born in Kenya of Indian
descent and emigrated to Canada; he twice won the Giller Prize, for The Book of
Secrets (1994) and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (2003), as well as
the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction for A Place Within:
Rediscovering India (2008), a travelogue.
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. Vikram Chandra is
another author who shuffles between India and the United States and has
received critical acclaim for his first novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain (1995) and
collection of short stories Love and Longing in Bombay (1997). His
namesake Vikram A. Chandra is a renowned journalist and the author of The
Srinagar Conspiracy (2000). Suketu Mehta is another writer currently based in
the United States who authored Maximum City (2004), an autobiographical
account of his experiences in the city of Mumbai. In 2008, Aravind Adiga received
the Man Booker Prize for his debut novel The White Tiger.
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 his The 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. Similarly, Arnab
Jan Deka, a trained engineer and jurist, writes about both physical and ethereal
existentialism on the banks of the mighty river Brahmaputra. His co-authored
book of poetry with British poet-novelist Tess Joyce, appropriately titled A Stanza
of Sunlight on the Banks of Brahmaputra (1983), published from both India and
Britain (2009), evokes the spirit of flowing nature of life. His most recent
book Brahmaputra and Beyond : Linking Assam to the World(2015) made a
conscious effort to connect to a world divided by racial, geographic, linguistic,
cultural and political prejudices. His highly acclaimed short story collection The
Mexican Sweetheart & other stories(2002) was another landmark book of this
genre. Jahnavi Barua, a Bangalore-based author from Assam has set her critically
acclaimed collection of short stories Next Door on the social scenario in Assam
with insurgency as the background.
The stories and novels of Ratan Lal Basu reflect the conditions of tribal people
and hill people of West Bengal and the adjacent states of Sikkim, Bhutan and
Nepal. Many of his short stories reflect the political turmoil of West Bengal since
the Naxalite movement of the 1970s. Many of his stories like Blue Are the Far Off
Mountains, The First Rain and The Magic Marble glorify purity of love. His
novel Oraon and the Divine Tree is the story of a tribal and his love for an age old
tree. In Hemingway style language the author takes the reader into the
dreamland of nature and people who are inexorably associated with nature.
Debates
[edit]
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.
The views of Salman 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 Eurasian Commonwealth 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.
Poetry
[edit]
Early notable poets in English include Derozio, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Toru
Dutt, Romesh Chunder Dutt, Sri Aurobindo, Sarojini Naidu, and her
brother Harindranath Chattopadhyay. Notable 20th Century authors of English
poetry in India include Dilip Chitre, Kamala Das, Eunice De Souza, Nissim
Ezekiel, Kersy Katrak, Shiv K. Kumar, Arun Kolatkar, P. Lal, Jayanta
Mahapatra, Dom Moraes, Gieve Patel, A. K. Ramanujan, Madan Gopal Gandhi,
and P C K Prem among several others.
The younger generation of poets writing in English include Abhay K, Arundhathi
Subramaniam, Anju Makhija, Bibhu Padhi, Ranjit Hoskote, Sudeep Sen, Smita
Agarwal, Makarand Paranjape, Jeet Thayil, Jaydeep Sarangi, Mani Rao, Jerry
Pinto, K. V. Dominic, Meena Kandasamy, Nalini Priyadarshni, Gopi Kottoor, Tapan
Kumar Pradhan, Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Robin Ngangom, Vihang A. Naik and K
Srilata.
Modern expatriate Indian poets writing in English include Agha Shahid Ali, Sujata
Bhatt, Richard Crasta, Yuyutsu Sharma, Tabish Khair and Vikram Seth.
Alternative writing
[edit]
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 counterparts. Prakalpana
fiction is a fusion of prose, poetry, play, essay, and pictures.