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Though
foreign in its origin, English has been adopted in India as a
language of education and literary expression besides being an
important medium of communication amongst the people of various
regions. The beginning of Indian literature in English is traced
to the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, by
which time English education was more or less firmly established
in the three major centers of British power in India - Calcutta,
Madras and Bombay. Ram Mohan Roy (1774-1833), a social reformist
from Bengal who fought for widow remarriage and voting rights for
women, was the pioneer of Indian writing in English.
Roy insisted that for India to be included among the
world's nations, education in English was essential. He,
therefore, campaigned for introduction of scientific education in
India through the English medium.
Raja
Ram Mohan Roy was followed in the early 19th century in Bengal by
the poets Henry Derozio and Michael Madhusudan Dutt. Dutt started
out writing epic verse in English, but returned to his native
Bengali later in life. The poems of Toru Dutt (1855-1876), who
died at a tender age of 21, and the novel Rajmohan's
Wife by Bankimchandra Chatterjee have received academic
acceptance as the earliest examples of Indian literature written
in English. Toru Dutt not composed poetry in English, but more
interestingly, translated French poetry as well. Her best works
include Ancient Ballads
and Legends of Hindustan.
However, the most famous literary figure of this era was
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), who won the Nobel Prize for
literature in 1913 for his book Gitanjali,
which is a free rendering of his poems in Bengali.
Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949) was a great poetess whose romanticism
charmed readers in India and Europe. Her Golden
Threshold (1905) and The
Broken Wing (1917) are works of great literary merit.
Aurobindo Gosh (1872-1950) was a poet philosopher and sage, for
whom poetry was akin to a form of mediation. His epic, Savitri
and Life Divine (2
vols.) are outstanding works in English literature. It may be
mentioned that most Indian writers in English from the early
period hailed from Calcutta, the first stronghold of the British,
than other places in the country.
The
freedom struggle resulted in a revolutionary brand of writing that
voiced sentiments against the British Empire. Several political
leaders from different parts of the country emerged as literary
figures such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpath Rai, Kasturi
Ranga Iyengar and T. Prakasham. The English language became a
sharp and strong instrument in the hands of Gandhiji, who edited
and wrote for papers like 'Young
India' and 'Harijan'. He also wrote his autobiography, 'My Experiments With Truth', which is known for its literary flair.
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) stands out as another prominent
leader who excelled in writing prose. He is particularly
remembered for his Glimpses
of World History, Discovery of India and An
Autobiography (1936).
Mulk Raj Anand, R K
Narayan and Raja Rao were among the earliest Indian novelist
writing in English, who began to write in the early thirties.
Mulk Raj Anand (b.1905), best known for his short story 'The Lost Child', has written numerous works of prose, poetry and
drama. His novels Coolie
(1933), Untouchable
(1935) and The Woman and the
Cow (1960) reveal his concern for the downtrodden and
underprivileged in India. R.K. Narayan is another prolific figure
in Indian English writing. Most of his work, starting from his
first novel Swami and
Friends (1935) is set in the fictional town of Malgudi, which
captures the Indian ethos in its entirety while having a unique
identity of its own. Malgudi is perhaps the single most endearing
"character" R.K.Narayan has ever created. Bachelor
of Arts (1937), The
Financial Expert (1952) The
Guide (1959) and Waiting
for the Mahatma (1955) are his other popular novels. The last
of the harbingers of Indian English literature is Raja Rao
(b.1909), whose novel Kanthapura
(1938), set in rural India, established him as a major figure on
the Indian literary scene. Raja Rao's other three novels are The Serpent and the Rope (1960) and The Cat and Shakespeare (1965).
Nirad Choudhuri (1897-1999) was another internationally
renowned Indian writer whose autobiography An
Unknown Indian (1951) catapulted him into a celebrated
international author.
Later
novelists like Kamala Markandaya (Nectar
in a Sieve, Some Inner
Fury, A Silence of Desire, Two
Virgins), Manohar Malgaonkar (Distant
Drum, Combat of Shadows,
The Princes, A Bend in the Ganges and The
Devil's Wind), Anita Desai (Clear
Light of Day, The
Accompanist, Fire on the Mountain, Games
at Twilight), and
Nayantara Sehgal captured the spirit of an independent India,
struggling to break away from the British and traditional Indian
cultures and establish a distinct identity.
In
the 1980's and 90's, India emerged as a major literary nation.
Salman Rushdie's Midnight's
Children became a rage around the world, even winning the
Booker Prize. The worldwide success of Vikram Seth's The
Golden Gate made him the first writer of the Indian Diaspora
to enter the sphere of international writers and leave an
indelible mark on the global literary scene. Other novelists of
repute of the contemporary times include Shobha De (Selective
Memory), G.V. Desani, M Ananthanarayanan, Bhadani
Bhattacharya, Arun Joshi, Khushwant Singh, O.V. Vijayan, Allan
Sealy (The Trotternama),
Sashi Tharoor (Show
Business, The Great Indian Novel), Amitav Ghosh (Circle
of Reason, Shadow Lines), Upamanyu Chatterjee (English August, The Mammaries of the Welfare State), Raj Kamal Jha (The
Blue Bedspread), Amit Chaudhuri (A
New World), Pankaj Mishra (Butter
Chicken in Ludhiana, The Romantics) and Vikram Chandra (Red
Earth and Pouring Rain,
Love and Longing in Bombay). The latest Indian writer who took
the world with a storm was Arundhati Roy, whose The
God of Small Things won the 1997 Booker Prize and became an
international best-seller. Rohinton Mistry, Firdaus Kanga, Kiran
Desai (Strange Happenings in
the Guava Orchard), Sudhir Kakar (The Ascetic of Desire), Ardeshir Vakil (Beach Boy) and Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter
of Maladies) are some other renowned writers of Indian origin.
Former
Prime Minister P.V.Narasimha Rao's The
Insider; Satish Gujral's A
Brush with Life; R.K.Laxman's The
Tunnel of Time, Prof. Bipin Chandra's India
After Independence, Sunil Khilnani's The
Idea of India, J.N.Dixit's Fifty
Years of India's Foreign Policy, Yogesh Chadha's Rediscovering Gandhi and Pavan K.Varma's The Great Indian Middle Class are notable works of the recent times.
The
mid-20th century saw the emergence of poets such as Nissim Ezekiel
(The Unfurnished Man), P
Lal, A K Ramanujan (The
Striders, Relations,
Second Sight, Selected Poems),
Dom Moraes (A Beginning),
Keki Daruwalla, Geive Patel, Eunice de Souza, Adil Jussawala,
Kamala Das, Arun Kolatkar and R. Parthasarathy, who were heavily
influenced by literary movements taking place in the West such as
Symbolism, Surrealism, Existentialism, Absurdism and Confessional
Poetry. These authors used Indian phrases alongside English words
and tried to reflect a blend of the Indian and the Western
cultures.
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