Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 137

Akshara: An International Refereed Research Journal

of English Literature and Language
ISSN: 0975-5373; E-ISSN: 2583-4738
Vol. 15, May 2023, pp. 137-184
Edited by Vijay Kumar Roy
https://www.waoar.org/akshara/

Indian English Literature:

Issues and Dimensions
Susheel Kumar Sharma*

Abstract
The paper problematizes various issues, like nomenclature, sense and sensibility,
Indian-English and suitability as teaching materials, related to “Indian English
Literature” and discusses them in all possible dimensions. The discussion on the
appellation concentrates on “Indo-Anglican Literature”, “Indo-English Literature”,
“Indo-Western literature” and “Indian English Literature”. The reasons for the last
term being dumped by the literary historians, creative writers and critics in favour of
“Indian Writing in English” are explored. It is argued that the makers of this hybrid
literature neither use Indian English nor do they display Indian sense and sensibility.
The paper contests the claim that the diasporic writings are Indian writings. It is
postulated that the themes of this literature do not enlighten the reader about the
concerns of the main Indian society in the light of the matrix of the multinational
publishers and the displaced authors in the capitalists and globalized world. If this
literature could be used to achieve the objectives of NEP-2020 and if it could be
taught in Indian regional languages are the other issues taken up.
Keywords: Globalization, Indian English, Indian English Literature, Indian sensibility,
Indo-Anglican Literature, Indo-English Literature, Indo-Western literature,
NEP-2020

*Professor of English, University of Allahabad, Prayagraj - 211002, India.

Email: [email protected]
© 2023 The Author. Published by Paragon International Publishers. Open Access Under
CC BY 4.0 licence.
138 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

What Should I Call You Mr. Hybrid Literature?

Let me begin talking of the trends in Indian English Literature from the name itself.
In the introduction to his anthology The Vintage Book of Indian Writing, Rushdie
has used several appellations for the body of literature in English in India viz. Indo-
Anglian, Indo-English, Indian writing in English, English-language Indian writing,
English-language Literature, Indian novel in English and for the contributors, Indian
writers working in English, English-language writer of Indian origin and non-English-
language Indian writers (1997: x-xxii). M. K. Naik, whose canvas of study is much
larger than that of Rushdie, is also conscious of the difficulty in choosing a name for
this hybrid literature: “Another problem which the historian of this literature has to
face is that of choosing from among the various appellations … ‘Indo-Anglian
literature’, ‘Indian Writing in English’, ‘Indo-English Literature’ and ‘Indian English
Literature’.” (1989: 4) P. K. Rajan too hints at the importance of the issue of naming
this literature when he writes: “In the earlier critical scene the nomenclature of this
literature itself was a topic of prolonged discussion. Indo-Anglian, or Indo-English,
or Indian English, or Indian Literature in English?” (2006: 12) In a different vein and
tenor Arvind K. Mehrotra calls: “many … names [– like] Indo-English, India-English,
Indian-English, Indo-Anglian, and even Anglo-Indian and Indo-Anglican ludicrous.
‘Kill that nonsense term’, Adil Jussawalla said of Indo-Anglian, and ‘kill it quickly.’”
(The Oxford India Anthology 2003: 1) Although Rajan opines that “… it is pointless
to continue the debate any further” (2006: 12), Jeet Thayil in his book, 60 Indian
Poets (2008), carries the debate further by maintaining:
Those who write in English — a small, Westernized, middle-class minority
… are known only unto themselves. This has led to crises of identity, to a
few inelegant labels for the writing – ‘Indo-English’, ‘Indo-Anglian’, ‘Indian
English’ – and to a charged debate that has carried on for at least eighteen
decades. (xi)
From the point of the historiography of a literature which is almost 225-year-old, it is
quite fascinating to go through the literature and debates to understand the
etymological evolution of the terms and names that many scholars consider rather
insignificant and therefore tend to use them carelessly.
Earlier than the name Indian English Literature, four terms were in vogue:
Anglo-Indian Literature, Indo-Anglian Literature, Indo-Anglican Literature and
“Indian Literature in English”. I have written two detailed articles, one each dealing
with the term “Anglo-Indian” and “Indo-Anglian”. (They are available on
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 139

www.academia.edu for reading and downloading free.) So, I shall not be dwelling
upon those two terms.
The history of the third expression, “Indo-Anglican”, is brief enough to be narrated
in a paragraph or two. This appellation was given by some printer/proof-reader/
publisher and not by any author/critic/litterateur. Since the word ‘Indo-Anglian’ does
not find an entry in the commonplace dictionaries, it is considered to be unacceptable
by some Englishmen; it was, therefore, changed to “Indo-Anglican” by an unnamed
English printer/ proof-reader1 while producing Iyengar’s Literature and Authorship.
Iyengar narrates this incidence in his Indian Writing in English thus:
In another book, Literature and Authorship in India, published at about
the same time in London, ‘lndo-Anglian’ was printed by mistake as ‘Indo-
Anglican’. It was wartime, and the book had been printed off without the
proofs being passed by me. To the printer my ‘Indo-Anglian’ had evidently
appeared an odd expression, and on his own authority he had changed it to
‘Indo-Anglican’. This evoked a lively protest in the Illustrated Weekly of
India of 14 November 1943 by ‘Autolycus’:
To me so curious an adjective can only connote something connected
with the Church of England in India. ‘Anglican’ cannot, and surely
never could, be treated as a variant of the word ‘English’ ... The
word is worse than ‘Anglo-Indian’ which has at least acquired a
new meaning since it was officially recognized as the modern
equivalent of Eurasian.
I wrote explaining the circumstances, and in a subsequent issue ‘Autolycus’
condoned the lapse and expressed himself in favour of Indo-Anglian’, the
expression I had actually used. (Iyengar 3-4)
Iyengar has repeated the same story in his interview with Makarand Paranjape as
well, which was published in Indian Literature (vol. 41, no. 1. pp. 166-177). Despite
this, several scholars have taken the term ‘Indo-Anglican’ seriously and have used
it in their discussions and the titles2. Of late, this term seems to have gone out of
favour. Thus, we are left with “Indian Literature in English” and “Indian English
Literature”.
Let me focus on the term “Indian English Literature” in this paper. This term
came into vogue with M. K. Naik’s History of Indian English Literature published
by Sahitya Akademi in 1982. This name had been suggested, after serious
deliberations, by a widely represented committee of Professors of English, constituted
140 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

for the purpose by Sahitya Akademi. Naik’s above-cited book had been a part of the
national project of writing history of the literatures in India. Its two sequels (viz.
Indian English Literature 1980-2000: A Critical Survey by M. K. Naik and
Shyamala A. Narayan, 2001 and Indian English Literature 2001-2015: A Critical
Survey by Shyamala A. Narayan, 2020), not a part of the national project, were
published as individual efforts. It may also be noted that at least in his five volumes
Naik has used different expressions. These volumes are: Perspectives on Indian
Drama in English (OUP, 1977, with Shankar Mokashi-Punekar), Aspects of Indian
Writing in English: Essays in Honour of Professor K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar
(Macmillan, 1979), Perspectives on Indian Prose in English (Abhinav Publications,
1982), Perspectives on Indian Poetry in English (Abhinav Publications, 1984),
Perspectives on Indian Fiction in English (Abhinav Publications, 1985). Two of
these books were published before 1982, one in 1982 and two after 1982 (the year
of Sahitya Akademi’s publication). The last three of these Perspectives were
published by Abhinav Publications, New Delhi. It appears from this data that either
because of the insistence of the publisher or because of some legal contract with
the publisher Naik was stuck up with the expression “Indian Literature (Prose/
Poetry/ Drama/Fiction) in English” after the official adoption of the name “Indian
English Literature”. In the subsequent publications in the following years, Naik used
the names such as The Indian English Short Story: A Representative Anthology
(Arnold-Heinemann, 1984), Studies in Indian English Literature (Sterling
Publishers, 1987), Twentieth Century Indian English Fiction (Pencraft
International, 2004), Indian English Poetry: From the Beginnings Up to 2000,
(Pencraft International, 2006), Indian English Fiction: A Critical Study (Pencraft
International, 2009) which vindicate the stand of Sahitya Akademi.
The appellation “Indian English Literature” has not been used by the later literary
historians (like Arvind K. Mehrotra, Ulka Anjaria, M. Prabha, Rosinka Chaudhuri,
and E. Dawson Varughese) of this body of literature, and anthology editors (like
Pritish Nandy, K Ayyappa Paniker, Saleem Peeradina, Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth
West, Sheshalatha Reddy, Eunice De Souza, Amit Chaudhuri, Mohan Ramanan,
et al., Goutam Karmakar, Arundhathi Subramaniam, E.V. Ramakrishnan and Anju
Makhija, Sudeep Sen and Jeet Thayil, etc.). Even the critics (like V. A. Shahane, M.
Sivaramkrishna, Bruce King, M. K. Naik, Rosinka Chaudhuri, Smita Agarwal, Sudhir
K. Arora, Rajni Singh and R. K. Singh, Santosh Kumar Padhy, Amar Nath Prasad
and Bithika Sarkar, Vijay Kumar Roy, Arnab Kumar Sinha, et al, Birendra Pandey,
Zinia Mitra, Sangita Padhi, Debasish Lahiri and Pradipta Mukherjee, etc.) have
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 141

shied away from using this appellation in their books. Iyengar kept on changing his
use of the term. He gave up “Indo-Anglian” in favour of “Indian Writing in English”
as is clear from the titles his books like Indo-Anglian Literature (1943), The Indian
Contribution to English Literature (1945) and Indian Writing in English (1962).
But he has stuck to Indian Writing in English, though his last book has run into
several editions up to 2013. Even, the historians, creative writers and critics have
favoured Iyengar’s last term. The indifference to the term, Indian English Literature,
is problematic and needs to be discussed. Has the official term been dumped by the
larger group/users consisting of historians, litterateurs and critics in a natural manner
as sometimes the unconscious flow of language or is the term being avoided as a
conscious decision?
The Inanity of ‘Indian English-Literature’
The expression Indian English Literature can be read/understood as ‘Indian English-
Literature’ or as ‘Indian-English Literature’. Let me discuss the ramifications of
both these readings one by one. Many critics, particularly in the early phase of
writing (read before August 1947) could not conceive this hybrid literature to be an
independent literature but tried to understand it an appendage to English Literature.
It was not a case of some kind of elitism or racism but that was a historical necessity.
K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar’s The Indian Contribution to English Literature (1945)
is an excellent example of this tendency. One should not presume that the situation
was pertinent only during the colonial times but it persists even in independent India
as is evident from the following remarks of Shiv K. Kumar:
… contemporary Indian poetry written in English has achieved international
recognition, ... I can say quite confidently that our poets can compare
favourably with Australian, Canadian or New Zealand poets even though
the latter have the advantage of writing in their native tongue. [The work
of] several of our poets … has appeared in such prestigious magazines as
The Sewanee Review, Tice New York Times, Poetry (Chicago), New
Letters, Western Humanities Review, Ariel, Meanjin, etc. The BBC has
also broadcast the work of many of our poets in its overseas programmes.
(1)
Similarly, Jayant Mahapatra in his discussions with the author of this article also
maintained that Indian poetry in English was not derivative anymore but had attained
an independent identity and is as good as English poetry being produced anywhere
in the world. Thus, both Kumar and Mahapatra see an affinity between English
142 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

literature in Britain and in India. However, no authentic literary history has considered
this literature to be a part of English Literature. No Indian authors (writing in English)
have been discussed along with British authors by any British literary historian.
Even the writings of the British residing in India were treated differently and it was
given the name of “Anglo-Indian Literature.”
The best treatment given to the Indian authors, who were also the British citizens
prior to independence, was the inclusion of some of the authors in the chapter
entitled “Anglo-Indian Literature” of 14 volume of the Cambridge History of
English Literature (1916). These Indian authors had not been given a place in
Edward Farley Oaten’s earlier survey which was a Le Bas prize winning essay,
Sketch of Anglo-Indian Literature (1908). The essay competition had been
organised by Cambridge University as a Golden Jubilee tribute to India’s annexation
to the British crown in 1857. According to Oaten, Anglo-Indian Literature is a creation
of those Englishmen who wrote about their first-hand encounter with India while on
furlough or after retirement and those who were “Englishmen in mind”, “English in
thought and aspiration” and who “never lost bias towards that of England” and who
printed/published in England owing partly to lack of facilities in India (Oaten [1916]
1953: 331). “[An] Anglo-Indian writer must, as a rule, make his appeal mainly to the
public in England and only secondarily to the English community in India. [...] Anglo-
Indian literature is based in origin, spirit and influences upon two separate countries
at one and the same time” (Oaten [1916] 1953: 331-332). Keeping in mind the
“potential of [its] development in the future” (Oaten [1916] 1953: 332), Oaten included
amongst Anglo-Indian litterateurs the authors from “domiciled community of European
or mixed origin” ([1916] 1953: 332) and educated Indians (of pure blood). The
literature of the latter had “attracted little notice in comparison with the writings of
the English immigrant population” (Oaten [1916] 1953: 332). Thus, Oaten broadens
the spectrum of Anglo-Indian literature by including in it the writings of non-Anglo-
Indians as well. Though Oaten rates those Indians “who attempted imaginative
literature in English” very poorly and says “very few succeeded in writing anything
of permanent interest” ([1916] 1953: 341-342), yet in contrast to his past practice he
devotes about two pages of the 21-page chapter (pp. 331-351) to them. He refers to
the contribution of Bankim Chandra Chatterji and Romesh Chunder Dutt, who
developed their talent in Bengali under the influence of English and the social activists
like Ram Mohan Roy, Keshab Chandra Sen, Kashinath Trimback Telang, Bahramji
Malabari and “hundreds of other Indians” who used English “for their own purposes
almost as if it had been their mother tongue” (Oaten [1916] 1953: 341-342). He
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 143

debunks creative authors like Michael Madhu Sadan [sic] Dutt, Malabari, Govind
Chandra Dutt and “hundred others” (Oaten [1916] 1953: 341) though he has some
praise for Toru Dutt with whom the discussion comes to an end in his chapter. Let
us try to understand the treatment given to Rabindranath Tagore by the British
literary historians to understand this phenomenon.
Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 for his collection
Gitanjali published in London in 1912. The prize did not come to an Indian but it
came to a British citizen but hardly any relevant book of literary history by British
historians discusses the (de)merits of Tagore as a poet. As a matter of fact, not a
word, alongside the British, about him is ever mentioned in the British literary histories.
He is mentioned in a chapter on “Anglo-Indian Literature” by George Sampson in
The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature (1941: 909). Sampson
mentions in this chapter Sarojini Naidu, Manmohan Ghosh, Aravindo [sic] Ghosh
and Rabindranath Tagore and, like Oaten, he debunks them. That Sampson makes
a difference between a Native British and a subject British is clear. Is Sampson
making a difference between the sensibilities of a native Indian and a British Indian
too? Can it be described as literary racism on the part of the British historians? Are
the historians applying the criterion suggested by Oaten: “appeal mainly to the public
in England” to Tagore and others like him? Or are they going by the colour of the
skin, passport and location? On this basis, it is clear that any unionism on the basis of
language alone will not be sufficient. The colour of the skin, the geographical location,
the subject-matter and sensibility will always be taken into account while assessing
the work and assigning the author his/her place in the country’s literary/social history.
Or, one has to presume that as an evaluator he is honest but owing to his limitations
he is not able to appreciate Tagore and others.
In the post-Independent India, the national priority changed and since India was
no more a British colony, there sprang up the need to define and assert our identity
in different walks of life. Conforming to this requirement, in 1980s, Sahitya Akademi
started bringing out histories of various literatures in different languages recognised
by it, for example, A History of Tamil Literature, A History of Kannada Literature,
History of Maithili Literature and A History of Indian English Literature. It can
easily be noticed that Sahitya Akademi has used a compound noun (“the name of
the language” + “literature”) in each of these titles. For example, Tamil is the language,
and literature refers to literature written in that language. Whatever is applicable to
The History of Tamil Literature is equally applicable to A History of Indian English
Literature. Going by this logic “Indian English” is the language being used in the
144 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

title. Does “Indian English” mean an Indian’s language or Indians’ language can be
a matter of some conjecture but there is no doubt that majority of Tamil or Telugu or
Kannada or Hindi speakers live in India but the majority of English users are outside
India. So, while Tamil may have some regional dialects, English has some International
dialects/varieties. Indian English is a recognised variety of English. It shall not be
out of place to mention that “English” or “Indian English” does not find a mention in
the eighth schedule of the Indian Constitution though an award is regularly given by
Sahitya Akademi for the writings in this language. So, the stand of Sahitya Akademi
and the Government on the issue of English are different. The “Official Language
Act 1963 (as updated from time to time)” mentions English but it does not mention
its variety/dialect (indiacode.nic.in). In practice, the Government of India patronises
British English and not any other variety of English. In case of Hindi, either the
dialect has not been mentioned but the Government patronises Kauravi dialect of
Hindi. The question that arises here is whether “Indian English” can be assumed to
be any other variety of English by Sahitya Akademi? None of the authors, except
Raja Rao, has admitted to be using Indian English in his/her writings. Nor do they
vouch for it or for “Indian Language” unlike the American authors who proclaim to
be using “American Language”, to use an expression of Webster’s New World
Dictionary of the American Language. Sahitya Akademi, the national body, is
right in promoting this variety of English, as national identity and national pride must
go hand in hand. The language being used to produce a significant body of literature
has to reflect it. However, this move of Sahitya Akademi has not got the support of
the litterateurs in English. From amongst the Indian novelists, poets, dramatists and
critics, only Raja Rao frankly admits: “We cannot write like the English. We should
not.” (v) When I met Jayant Mahapatra on April 29, 2023 at his residence, he said
that he was using “English” and not “Indian English” in his poetry. He supplemented
his statement further by saying that his poems got published in Times Literary
Supplement or in some American magazines along with those of A. D. Hope and
others, because his language (English) was evaluated to be at par with that of the
native users. His poetry in his own estimate was the poetry in “English” and not in
“Indian-English”. He has a point in defending and justifying his position. He, like
many others, goes a step further by decrying “Indian-English” as an inferior variety
of English. It is quite easy to understand that the Indian authors neither can afford to
use “Indian English” nor can they extend support to the movement of strengthening
it since most of them wish to be published and recognised in the West first; the value
of Western acclaim is higher for them than the national identity/pride. To put the
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 145

matter straight, no evaluation of the Indians’ writing in English has been undertaken
by the critics or the linguists on this basis. Unfortunately, even Sahitya Akademi has
not taken this factor into account while awarding the prize to those who write in
English.
Literature in ‘Indian-English’
One’s language is one’s individual, societal and national identity marker. Every user
uses some or the other dialect or patio of the language. Since a dialect attains the
status of a standard language because of the political and economic convenience,
the location and the identities of a user attain centrality. Though linguistically speaking,
all varieties of a language are considered to be equally important and have an equal
value, the users’ attitude towards them makes some superior and others inferior.
The dialects of a language may vary in terms of the accents, words and structures
people use in their speech. A dialect of a language is different from the rest in four
respects: Syntactical divergences, Dictional (including variations in spellings)
divergences, Phonetic divergences and divergences in Suprasegmental
(prosodic) features. British English is different from American English and so is
Indian English different from British/ American/ Australian English and others. In
writings it may be difficult to identify suprasegmental features unless the author also
is very particular about displaying them. Whether a particular dialect can be
considered to be an independent language, depends not only on the economic and
political clout of its users but also on the literary productions in it. Besides, the issue
of national and community pride also play a role in its evolution. The emergence of
American English as an independent variety is a case in point. The case of Indian
English is to be viewed and understood in this light. Indian authors consider Indian-
English to be an inferior variety of English. However, the movement of Indian English
was spearheaded by Braj B. Kachru and his team sitting in Illinois with little support
from Indian academia and no support whatsoever from the Indian, Indian-diasporic-
authors and Indian government.
Many critics consider the language of the Indian-diasporic-authors to be Indian
English. They generally cite the example of Salman Rushdie who uses some
expressions popularized by Hindi cinema and some street-slang in his Midnight’s
Children. Rushdie describes it as the chutnification of the language. The question is
whether Rushdie’s language should be termed ‘Indian English’ or it is just a stylistic
experimentation. Many others like, Chinua Achebe (in his trilogy Things Fall Apart,
No Longer at Ease, and Arrow of God) and Ngugi wa Thiong’o in his Petals of
146 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

Blood at the international level and some Indians like Upamanyu Chatterjee (in
English, August and The Mammaries of the Welfare State), Arun Kolatkar
(Mehrotra, A. K., editor. Arun Kolatkar, Collected Poems in English. Bloodaxe
Books, 2010.) at national level have tried to make use of Indian expressions in their
writings. (Kothari & Snell). To me, these are the examples of not Indian English but
stylistic experimentation. It appears to me that it should not be called even
chutnification (as a tasteful chutney requires mingling of various ingredients in a
right proportion) but should be called sprinkling of pepper and salt on some boiled
dish which does not require any sense of proportion or skilled effort but caters to an
individual’s taste/trait. Some critics consider Nissim Ezekiel’s language to be ‘Indian
English’ though he uses British English throughout except in some like “Ten Poems
in Indian English” where he basically makes fun of Indians and their language,
Indian English. Linguists hold that chutnification, if used for a long duration, may
create a pidgin which may develop into a language in due course of time (Urdu for
example) but not a variety of language. These authors on the contrary look for an
international union and support based on “English-user-brotherhood” which indirectly
means “ignoring Indian nationalist concerns”. However, Microsoft and Google have
started recognising and using this variety at their platforms. The Indian professors/
academia through Sahitya Akademi have given a recognition to it. Once upon a
time, Central Institute of English, now called English and Foreign Language University,
Hyderabad also used to promote its cause.
There is a related issue of the appropriateness of using English in depicting
India. If the native sensibility can be narrated or described in a foreign tongue as it
used to be hotly debated by the Indian academia once upon a time. The significance
of this issue can be gauged from the fact that almost every chapter in Shyamala
Narayan’s Indian English Literature 2001-2015: A Critical Study has a discussion
on it.
Contemporary playwrights have shown that the question, “Can a play, written
in English present the Indian reality?” is no longer relevant. Mahesh Dattani
was once asked why he does not write in an Indian language; his answer
was that he does write in an Indian language, it happens to be English. As
Sanjana Kapoor of Prithvi Theatre observed, “I believe we have got over
our insecurities and are brave enough to speak in our own language today—
our language which is our own English! We are talking of things that affect
and concern us, in a language that is clearly ours too.” (Narayan 268)
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 147

The words of Dattani and Sanjana do not have the same sincerity as those of Raja
Rao. In fact, the authors located in the Indian metropolis try to be more British than
the British themselves and more American than Americans themselves, not only in
their subject matter but also in their language. These “urban elitist authors” undermine
Indian religious and social values and consider themselves to be the sole
representatives of India. They do not hesitate in using choices epithets to demean
Indian society and Indian government even on the slightest disagreement with their
views. I shall be elaborating on the issue in the latter sections of the paper. I have
evaluated several theses talking about Indian sensibility in one or other author but in
none of them this issue and identity of Indian English has been raised.
With the emergence of the post-colonial discourse the issue has resurfaced. In
fact, the language issue is the core concern of the postcolonial thinkers. We may
gain some insights from the debates on the issue in the similarly situated countries.
Let me bring in the African experience to get some insights on the issue. The language
debate between Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Chinua Achebe has long defined the
discourse about the language use in African literature.
Since literature is unimaginable and inconceivable outside the context of
language, the issue of its use is central in the discussions in not only African
Literature but also in the postcolonial writings. Colonization of Africa, like
everywhere else, brought about cultural alienation; one form of which is in
the form of diffusion of the European languages into the African culture
which rendered the African languages quite underprivileged. This can be
attributed to the fact that the European languages were used as the medium
of instructions in schools consequently making them to be the languages of
the African elite. Most of the early literary writers including Ngugi wa
Thiong’o, Chinua Achebe, Leopold Senghor and Wole Soyinka adopted the
use of these imposed languages. But with the need to define African
literature, there has been a debate about the language which the African
literature should adopt for it to be regarded as African literature. This debate
has brought ideological division among the African writers with some, like
Ngugi questioning the circumstances under which the African writers
accepted ‘the fatalistic logic of the unassailable position of English in our
literature’ while others, like Achebe, supporting the use of the European
languages with the view that ‘it will be able to carry the weight of his
African experience.’ (Mokaya, Web.)
148 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

On the other hand, Achebe advocates to “Africanize” English. He suggests to

do it by infusing words, phrases, idioms, songs, proverbs, stories, dialogue, etc. from
the African languages into the writings. Achebe, thus, offers the writers a practical
means of reaching a wider audience and it ensures African literature a prominent
space in the global literary landscape. This is what Mulk Raj Anand also advocated
and did in Indian context.
In Decolonising the Mind (1986) and Something Torn and New (2009), Ngugi,
on the contrary, laments the devastating losses that resulted and are still resulting
from the dismantling of indigenous languages under colonialism. He deplores that
the imperialism of English language continues even after the official liberation from
English/European control. He is quite optimistic that Africans can recover their lost
selves by re-engaging with their mother tongues and employing translation as an
essential tool to access literary works produced across the continent. I am sure the
Indians may learn some lessons from this debate. However, the Indian authors
writing in English are perhaps not ready to reclaim India as they are more interested
in the English unionism referred to above. Jeet Thayil puts it very cleverly: “Indian
poetry, wherever the writers are based, should be seen as one body of work.” (xvii).
There is hardly an anthology of Indian poetry that does not have diasporic voices
being presented as authentic Indian voices. Sudeep Sen, for example writes: “The
poets who are presented in these pages live in India and the broader Indian diasporas
such as the United States and Canada, United Kingdom and Europe, Africa and
Asia, Australia and the Pacific.” (The Yellow Nib 2012: 4/289).
While Indian English has been accepted in the software like MS Word, the
indifference of the Indian authors, teachers and research scholars in India in using it
is a matter of concern. There is hardly any institutional support in the form of
Government machinery, educational institutes or publishing industry. Though at one
stage Central Institute of English, Hyderabad (EFLU, Hyderabad) was conceived
to develop Indian English, it does not popularise Indian English today. Since more
authors claim to be using ‘English’ and not ‘Indian-English’, the term “Indian English
Literature” has gone out of favour. Like the former colonial masters, these authors
consider ‘Indian-English’ to be non-standard English, even after seventy-five years
of Indian independence. Having discussed the language used by this body of literature
let me turn my attention to its content.
Sense & Sensibility
Now let me turn to the second meaning of the Janus-faced epithet “Indian English
Literature”. What happens if one treats it as “Indian English-Literature”? One needs
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 149

to understand the concept of Indianness in order to appreciate the implications of

this term and explore Indian writings in English in its light. Ananda Coomaraswamy
says:
Each Race contributes something essential to the world’s civilization in the
course of its own self-expression and self-realization. The character built
up in solving its own problems, in the experience of its own misfortunes, is
itself a gift which each offers to the world. The essential contribution of
India, then, is simply her Indianness; her great humiliation would be to
substitute or to have substituted for this own character (svâbhâva) a
cosmopolitan veneer, for then indeed she must come before the world empty-
handed. (Coomaraswamy 1)
F. Max Müller specifies some of the elements of Indianness:
If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly
endowed with all the wealth, power, and beauty that nature can bestow – in
some parts a very paradise on earth – I should point to India. If I were
asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its
choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life,
and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention
even of those who have studied Plato and Kant – I should point to India.
And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, we
who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and
Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective
which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more
comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this
life only, but a transfigured and eternal life – again I should point to India.”
(Max Müller 5)
However, the Indianness of the Indian English-Literature is hotly contested. M.
Prabha holds that the origins of Indian Writing in English are “traceable to the ICS
(IFS/IAS), the boxwallah and the feudatory. Their loyalty to the British, even after
they left, exceeded loyalty to their motherland and its people.” (150) This tendency
is not new as has already been mentioned in the foregoing paragraphs. In his book
The Renaissance in India (1918), James Cousins, who was popularly addressed
as Kulapati by his Indian friends, denounces the efforts of the Indian authors writing
in English to be a part of English literature in very strong words:
150 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

But if … some young Indians are impelled to express themselves in poetry

in the English language, I would beg of them to avoid the thing called Anglo-
Indian poetry. It is no more theirs than pure English poetry, and it is far more
dangerous. They may try their sitar with English poetry – and fail, and in
the failing may learn a valuable lesson; but they may try it with Anglo-
English poetry – and succeed, and in succeeding, achieve a useless mediocrity.
(Cousins 1918: 176-77)
The denouncing comes on two counts viz. sensibility and language. “Transference
of technical beauties of verse or prose from one language to another can only be
about as successful as an attempt to convey the music of the vina through the
pianoforte – not to mention the vulgar European baby harmonium which is ruining
Indian voices and coarsening … .” (Cousins 1918: 152) Since the literature written
in someone else’s tongue does not reflect originality he cautions the younger writers
lest they should become mere imitators: “… You will never sing your own song if
you are content to echo another’s: four lines struck from the vina of your own heart
experience or mental illumination will be worth infinitely more to you and the world
than reams of mimicry.” (Cousins 1918: 156)
Cousins considers literature to be a purposive art that involves the art of
communication, subject matter and sensibility:
The link between the literature of one race and that of another is, therefore,
mainly formed of the stuff that may be communicated through the mental
organism, and may be appreciated for its significance, scarcely at all for its
own expression. That stuff will be compounded of two main substances,
the ideal and the philosophy out of which the literary expression has grown;
and any true appreciation of the work of the writers of the Renaissance in
India (who, like their great predecessors, and their great living Master,
Rabindranath, write in their own languages), must be based on a sympathetic
understanding of such ideal and philosophy. In the case of the Western
reader there is also required a considerable revision of current notions as to
the nature of ideals in creative literature, and as to the relationship of
philosophy and literature. (Cousins 1918: 153)
It is in this background that he considers literature to be a matter of sensibility
and wishes the Indians to express theirs by maintaining their unique identity in their
writings as well:
That is the first and probably also the last thought should be impressed upon
those young Indians who have felt or will feel the urge to expression in
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 151

poetry that comes through the new birth of the renascent spirit. ‘Be
yourselves first: do not fall under the illusory notion that you are fulfilling
your ideal in desiring to write as good blank verse as Tennyson, or as fine
lyrics as Swinburne.’ (Cousins 1918: 155-56)
He further explains his position:
If they must write in English, let it be in the English language only: let them
keep themselves unspotted of its point of view, temperament, its mannerisms;
for their repetitions of these will fail of conviction, which is one of the
absolute essentials of art, since they can never disguise the fact that they
are imitations, and Nature abhors imitation more that she does a vacuum:
there is a chance of filling a vacuum, but none of turning an imitation into an
original. (Cousins 1918: 177)
He urges Indian authors writing in English (not their mother-tongue) to write with
Indian spirit:
… the poets of India’s future, that, if they are compelled to an alternative to
writing in their mother-tongue, let it be, … Indian in spirit, Indian in thought,
Indian in emotion, Indian in imagery, and English only in words. … Let their
ideal be the expression of themselves, but they must be quite sure that it is
their self, not merely faint echoes and shadows from others or from the
transient phases of desire. (Cousins 1918: 179)
He has different expectations from an Indian author and he wants them not to
lose their identity by imitating others:
The more intensely themselves Indian writers are, the more intensely Indian
they will be; and the more intensely Indian they are the most certainly they
will fill their place as a string on the vina of the Divine Player at whose
finger-tips tremble the raga and the ragini of the wandering forth and the
home-coming of the worlds. Let them not be led away by talk of modernity
and cosmopolitanism: poetry has nothing to do with ancient or modern, but
only with now, and the true cosmopolitanism will not be achieved through
the ignoring of nationality but through fulfilment. (Cousins 1918: 180)
He has a strong belief that Indians think and write in a different way than the
people of Europe. He, therefore, writes:
… the realm called “supernatural” that would have made the critic’s hair
stand on end, I was influenced by the repetition of the idea that art has
nothing to do with such things, into a vague fear that the critic might be
152 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

right. India, however, gave me the complete confidence that is necessary to

literary creation. She showed me the examples of Mirabai and Tukaram
and Rabindranath Tagore, in whom life, religion and philosophy are one, and
sing themselves in the poetry of spiritual joy. (Cousins 1918: 164)
He writes further:
It is this quality of spiritual vision that seems to me to be the supreme
characteristic of Indian poetry. … I am convinced that, if Indian poetry is to
be a living influence in the English-speaking world – and I sincerely hope it
will, for God knows it is needed—the way toward such influence must be
by the living thing in the poetry. It is this living thing in the poetry. (Cousins
1918: 171-72)
It is in this sense that Cyril Modak uses the term ‘Indo-Anglian’ and justifies the
inclusion and teaching of familiar (i. e. Indian) poetry to the young students who can
relate themselves to the thought, images, allusions, metaphors, similes, epithets and
music of its language. Gwendoline Goodwin also uses the criteria suggested by
Cousins to select poems and poets in her anthology. V. K. Gokak also considers the
point of view of the author important in deciding the identity of the literature. (160)
He writes:
Indo-Anglian journalism is an ‘Anglo-Indian’ enterprise which was gradually
‘indo-anglianised’. Indeed, both the Anglo-Indian and ‘Indo-Anglian’
categories continued to exist side by side for a long time, the one representing
the imperial and the other the national point of view. The demarcation in
substance has disappeared with Independence and such distinctions as prevail
now represent the ideologies that are active in the country. (Gokak 167)
In his write up “What Is an Indian Poem?” Arvind K. Mehrotra, through the example
of Arun Kolatkar, tries to explicate Indianness in terms of acceptance in Indian and
as well Western traditions. He writes:
So there it is, your Indian poem. It was written in a Bombay patois by a poet
who otherwise wrote in Marathi and English. It then became a part of two
literatures, Marathi and Indian English, but entered the latter in a translation
made in American idiom, one of whose sources, or, if you will, inspirations,
was an American translation of a nineteenth-century Roman poet. (Mehrotra,
60 Indian Poets, 392)
What Mehrotra suggests seems to be a very rigorous exercise in which a bi-lingual
poet is trying to survive. I wonder if Mehrotra’s own poetry could be described
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 153

Indian on this criterion. I wonder if even Tagore’s Gitanjali may be described

Indian if the suggested parameters of language and inspiration are applied.
Does Indian English Literature Include Literature of Indian
Diaspora?
Sudeep Sen in his discussion mentions the title of a forthcoming book from Red
Hen, USA An Anthology of Indian and Indian Diasporic Writing (Sen 2019:
30). The title indicates that there is a difference between Indian and diasporic writings.
However, when the said book actually came out it was titled Future Library:
Contemporary Indian Writing (edited by Hasan & Chattarji, 2022). One can keep
on conjecturing about the turns and twists – the politics of location, publication and
marketing – that the title underwent between 2019 and 2022, between the time of
conceiving a book and the finished product. However, many reviewers, literary
historians, Indian scholars and research supervisors do not make any distinction
between the writings of the diasporic writers and those of the Indian writers though
there is a great difference between the two. For example, the literary histories by
K. R. S. Iyengar, M. K. Naik and Arvind Mehrotra have given an equal treatment to
expatriates like V. S. Naipaul, G. V. Desani, Nirad C. Chaudhury, Agha Shahid Ali,
G. S. Sharat Chandra, Salman Rushdie, Meena Alexander to name just a few. They
do not discriminate among the writers on the basis of their passports/locations. But,
the differences in their writings and those located in India have not gone and should
not go unnoticed in matters of language and sensibility.
In this context, R. S. Sharma (2002) rightly notes that an expatriate author “living
in England or America is constantly subjected to native speech and generally lays
behind current English usage.” (208) So, the first difference between these groups
is that of their exposure to the language. Not sufficient research has gone into this
aspect as the critics have largely concentrated only on those authors who either are
diasporic authors or who keep their one leg in India and another in some Western
land. Again, to bring the point home, it shall not be out place to quote, generally only
the partially quoted letter of W. B. Yeats to his friend William Rothenstein from
Riversdale on May 7, 1935 (?) in full, regarding the proficiency of English in the
second language situation:
My dear Rothenstein, Damn Tagore. We got out three good books, Sturge, Moore
and I, and then, because he thought it more important to see and know
English than to be a great poet, he brought out sentimental rubbish and
wrecked his reputation. Tagore does not know English, no Indian knows
154 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

English. Nobody can write with music and style in a language not learned
in childhood and ever since the language of his thought. Nobody can
write with music and style in a language of his thought. I shall return to
the question of Tagore but not yet – I shall return to it because he has published
in recent [? years], and in English, prose books of great beauty, and these
books have been ignored because of the eclipse of his reputation as a poet.
Yours, W. B. Yeats. (Wade 834-35, emphasis added)
Secondly, his/her “own immediate milieu and personal experience combined with
direct observation, but his/her proper domain is different from that of the India-
based writer.” (Sharma 2002: 210). Thirdly, “he/she daily faces problems in adjusting
to a new culture, suffers a feeling of restlessness.” (Sharma 2002: 210). Fourthly,
according to R. S. Sharma, “Within American or British literature they will have a
dubious foothold; they are not as strong … as the black or the Jewish writers of
America.” (210) So, Sharma concedes that a diasporic author is in an advantageous
position because of his/her location/language vis-à-vis an Indian author but their
productions are of second rate compared to their American/ British counterparts. In
other words, R. S. Sharma says, the writings of the diaspora are better than those
who write from India but inferior to those of their counterparts in the newfound
homelands. In the light of various awards won by these authors, R. S. Sharma’s
claim may be highly contentious for some though there is some grain of truth in it.
Let me quote Sudeep Sen from two of his books to substantiate what I say:
Taking into consideration the quality of the contents in this anthology, I
would provocatively assert that the best English poetry written by Indians in
the contemporary national and international literary arena is perhaps as
good or superior to Indian fiction in English as a whole. There is bravura,
experimentation, risk-taking, innovation, erudition, and delightfully uninhibited
and fine use of language by the poets here. And for the best of them, this
book is just a mere show window displaying only a small slice of the authors’
individual oeuvre that is wide-ranging and impressive. (The HarperCollins
2012: 24)
“Indian poetry in English has a longer and more distinguished tradition than
Indian fiction in English,” asserts literary critic and novelist Pankaj Mishra
in The Times Literary Supplement (December 3, 2004). Bloodaxe, a leading
UK poetry publisher, in a catalogue item states, “Many Indian poets were
mining the rich vein of ‘chutnified’ (Salman Rushdie’s word) Indian English
long before novelists like Rushdie and Upamanyu Chatterjee started using
it in their fiction.
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 155

Historically all that may well be true, but the ground reality of the story of
Indian poetry in English is completely different. Very little is known about
Indian poetry and poets, within and more so outside India. If some are
known, they happen to be within very tight and narrow confines of the
poetry circles and university reading circuits. Beyond the initiated groups,
not many follow or read contemporary English poetry, though ironically a
great number write it. (Sen, “ConText / Foreword”, The Yellow Nib 2012)
No wonder that the diasporic authors too want to be considered as Indian authors
as has also been indicated above. However, R. S. Sharma desires a separate category/
name for them, under the title “Indo-Western writers (or Indo-British and Indo-
American)”, for these expatriates under the broad rubric of Indian writing in English
so that they are distinguished from Indian English writers. He does so because this
group has more exposure to English, and their locational experiences are different
from those of the writers located only in India. Sharma’s newly suggested term
suggests a distinct advantage of language of this community over other Indian-
diaspora. But there are hardly any diasporic authors writing in English but located
anywhere else except in Britain or America. I know of only one, Tabish Khair,
located in Denmark, but he too teaches English there. So, the new appellation is not
required as there are hardly any authors from other geographical locations. This
appellation is also not a condition-free and hassle-free label as Sharma also fixes a
specific duration-limit for this category to stay. This category will stand “until they
become totally assimilated with the Western culture or establish an independent
identity – cultural and literary—or until we reach the cosmopolitan culture and
literature with a single identity.” (Sharma 2002: 211) This duration is going to be
infinite as a matter of fact, as the two conditions may never be met in reality. Hence,
there is hardly a possibility of this difference being bridged so it should be accepted
as an inevitable dilemma. However, giving the diaspora an equal treatment is not
simply an aesthetic issue as has been made out by some critics like Iyengar, Krishna
Rayan, K. Ayyappa Paniker and many others3 but is fraught with various kinds of
dangers that will be explicated in the forthcoming paragraphs. The marginalized
diasporic authors in the foreign lands marginalise the Indian authors in their homeland,
who are not paid sufficient attention as the former occupy the latter’s legitimate
space. The fictionists like Romen Basu, Kavery Nambisan, Neelum Saran Gaur, T.
V. Reddy, Ramesh K. Srivastava, Basavaraj Naikar, Mona Verma, etc., playwrights
like Pratap Sharma, Vera Sharma, Charan Das Sidhu, R. P. Singh, etc. and poets
like R. K. Singh, A. N. Dwivedi, Charusheel Singh, P. C. Katoch, I. K. Sharma,
156 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

Smita Tewari, and many others have been ignored in Indian literary history not
because of their poor quality but because the diasporic authors were given more
prominence.
Much of the diasporic writing came to prominence in the nineteen-eighties, after
the success of Salman Rushdie’s magnum opus, Midnight’s Children (1981). This
timeline is important as all those who migrated to the UK or elsewhere with their
parents in 1947 have come of an age to express themselves. Many authors have
abandoned their native land (remember Scott’s “My Native Land”) at some point of
time and have relocated themselves on their own in foreign lands not to become
global but to seek greener pastures in a “better place” – not the third world but the
first world – not the south block but the capitalist world – mainly the US, though in
some cases this could be via Canada or the UK or some other place. Their selection
of the land also speaks a great deal about their commitment, priorities, perceptions
and personal agenda. No wonder that the place of their location and the place of a
multinational’s location are one and the same – the capitalist world. Both of them
know that there is a burgeoning middle class in a highly populated India that has
much free time to indulge in gossips (= light reading); that they have a purchasing
capacity to buy costlier books in English (= to look more fashionable and modern);
to brag of their sophisticated tastes (= British/American mannerism); to keep
themselves more up-to-date about books (= not to gain knowledge); that they detest
to buy books in regional languages (= cheap, substandard and ghettoised writing);
that they like to drop names to look more cultured (= remember Eliot’s “... the
women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo”) and consider culture and religion a
matter of ridicule under the influence of Marx/Modernism (= intellectualism). This
middle class in India, even at the cost of several losses and miseries like to send
their children to English medium schools where English and English mannerisms are
taught to make their children more useful for the job market mainly in the form of
multinational companies. Otherwise also in India there is a tradition of giving more
respect to people with higher education. Keeping all this in mind plans are made to
exploit this class and commissioned books are churned out to cater to the tastes of
this new class of reading public. It has been pointed out earlier that a beauty-queen/
model is needed to market all kinds of products and this work can be carried out
only by a native model. One can also note that a desi model is needed to do the
marketing of not only the global products (e.g. “Loreal Hair Products” are marketed
by Aishwarya Rai) but also the glocalized products (e.g. “Kaun Banega Carorepati”
is advertised by Amitabh Bachchan) or even the local products (e.g. “Pataka Tea”
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 157

is endorsed by Urmila Matondkar); a Noami Campbell or a Caroline Winnberg or a

Mayo Okawa or a Ngoli Onyeka Okafor is not needed for marketing in India.
Similarly, an L. H. Myers or a John Masters or an E. M. Forster or a Rudyard
Kipling or an M. M. Kaye or a Paul Scott will not be a proper choice to target the
burgeoning Indian middle class market but somebody who is “Indian in blood and
colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect” (Macaulay, Web.),
somebody who is “‘a learned native’ ... familiar with the poetry of Milton, the
metaphysics of Locke, and the physics of Newton (read Einstein or Hawkins to
make it look modern)” (Macaulay, Web.); somebody who believes that he is “to
educate a people who cannot ... be educated by means of their mother-tongue”
(Macaulay, Web.); somebody who believes “the dialects commonly spoken among
the natives of ... India contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are
moreover so poor and rude” (Macaulay, Web.); somebody who believes “[English]
stands pre-eminent even among the languages of the West. It abounds with works
of imagination not inferior to the noblest ... with models of every species of eloquence,
– with historical composition, which, considered merely as narratives, have seldom
been surpassed, and which, considered as vehicles of ethical and political instruction,
have never been equalled – with just and lively representations of human life and
human nature, – with the most profound speculations on metaphysics, morals,
government, jurisprudence, trade, – with full and correct information respecting
every experimental science which tends to preserve the health, to increase the
comfort, or to expand the intellect of man” (Macaulay, Web.) is needed to market
the product. Pride verging on belligerence as finds reflection in the Minutes about
his language comes to Macaulay, not only because of the pride he has in his nativity
but also because of his coming from the class of the colonial masters out to debunk
the ruled. This belligerence was also a part of the essential strategy of the East
India Company – a powerful global business house. The products of English education
gain this belligerence in inheritance. This is the reason why these postcolonial authors
“elected as spokespersons for their nation are at times disliked in their home countries”
(Ponzanesi 119). The authors, who like Macaulay, believe in the superiority of the
English language and the white, Anglo-Saxon and perhaps Christian race come
handy to the publisher and they form a good union and enter into a contract to fulfil
each other’s aspirations. The big amounts of advance royalty to such authors are
given and publicised in the form of news-items (Nilanjana Roy, Web.). The book
churned out by such an author is a sort of made-to-order product prepared for a
particular market; the book/product is given publicity through various means of
158 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

advertisements to attract different target groups: the pre-publication and post

publication reviews of this book are arranged to target scholars and general reading
public; the book is released with a great fanfare in the presence of “cultural
connoisseurs”; ‘Meet the Author’ programmes are arranged to attract “academicians
and other intellectuals”; interviews of the author on media are held, which are unlike
Karan Thapar’s hard hitting ‘Devil’s Advocate’, as one does not understand who
tries to good humour whom in them; book reading sessions are organised like film
music is released to rouse the curiosity of the general public/prospective buyers.
This commissioned book may therefore be equated to propaganda material which is
another form of advertisement aimed at still a new target market in the form of
highly educated, professional, moneyed Indian middle class both at home and abroad
(Indian middle-class Diaspora which has come into existence in contrast to the
Diaspora in the form of “girmitia labour”). To cater to the needs of such a market an
author who understands the socio-cultural psyche of the middle class and also the
nuances of culture of the Diaspora is explored/readied. This recluse author comes
handy to those who were on the lookout for him/her; (s)he already has abandoned
his land; (s)he has learnt the ropes of English language and culture and (s)he thinks
and feels like a white man besides being culturally sensitive to her/his former master.
No one else could have understood the needs of Indian middle class in a better way
than this author. On the authority of Bourdieu, Sandra Ponzanesi says, “… our
choices and tastes are determined by social affinities.” (113) Therefore, the question
‘who writes for whom and why’ needs to be probed deeper before appreciating
such literature. However, the gullible young men and women from far and nook of
the country, mainly from the lower middle-class, looking for a career in English
Literature (with their aspiration to make a faster buck and perhaps sick of their
helplessness), are made to think that Indian writing in English has come a long way
and Indian talent is ultimately being recognised by the west (colonial aspiration of
wishing for a few words of appreciation from the masters = servility syndrome).
They not only buy their books but also conduct research on tracing out “Indian
sensibility” in such authors and do not stop till they have found it. After all they want
their (Indian) affinity to be proved/strengthened with these “fellow-native” authors.
Since the subtle point being made here requires some elaboration, an actual incident
needs to be narrated to clarify the issue: some ‘B’ approached some ‘A’ and enquired
of him if he knew Pranabda, the President of India. ‘A’ readily admitted that he
knew him and gave out all the information that were needed of a well-read and up-
to-date person with a good general knowledge to prove his assertion. ‘B’ was quite
impressed and said, “I am convinced that you are quite close to Pranabda; kindly
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 159

help me; I want my son to be transferred from J & K to Odisha; Pranabda being the
Supreme commander of the forces can easily do it; a recommendation from you will
help me and my son.” ‘A’ politely replied, “I know Pranabda but he does not know
me.” The point that is made being out here is that it is not necessary for Pranabda to
know either ‘A’ or ‘B’ but it is for ‘A’ and ‘B’. Similarly, it is not the necessity of the
author to personally know a scholar back home but it is that of the scholar to know
the author. But there is something more to it in case of the author/researcher
relationship. ‘B’ is looking for greener pastures elsewhere and therefore takes
inspiration from this “successful Indian author cum cousin” and glorifies him/her for
mutual gratification. Some of the Indian scholars mainly from the muffasil towns try
to contact some of these authors to seek a personal interview for academic purposes.
When no reply is received by them, they seek some time for a written interview and
propose to send a written questionnaire. When even that is not answered they
presume that either their letter has not reached “the great author” or (s)he is on
some international assignment or (s)he is busy reading and thinking for a new book.
The author is imagined to be too busy even to acknowledge receipt of the
communication. Little do these scholars realise that their effort is being spurned and
they are being slighted by a person whom they revere as “great”. Not only are they
snubbed but the entire nation is affronted by them as a worthless country. That is
why they had abandoned India and looked for greener pastures in the more prosperous
lands. In such a situation, the theme and purpose of the commissioned book, imagined
to be a literary piece about India/Indian Diaspora, can very easily be guessed. Thus,
to consider the commissioned book a piece of literary work only may be a grave
mistake as it rather might be a part of the larger conspiracy to denigrate India, a
former colony; a product to have a desired sale should have all the necessary
ingredients needed for its marketing. Such things are not new as is evident from the
following observation of Gandhi: “We have become used to understanding from
pre-British days, that the art (perfected by the British) of government includes the
harnessing of the secret services of men learned, and reported to be honest and
honourable for shadowing suspects and for writing up the virtues of the government
of the day as if the certificate had come from disinterested quarters.” (Gandhi
“Drain Inspector’s Report” 540) In today’s context one may read “government”
along with “multinational companies.”
Again, a person with a middle-class aspiration and the colonial mindset wants to
have some relationship with those of his country cousins who are successful in the
first world. This explains why “a success story” like that of Piyush Bobby Jindal
160 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

being elected to the post of Governor of Louisiana in the US made a news headline
in Indian media. Bobby has Indian roots but he, being an American, is obliged to look
and to be an American to the core. He is trying his best to adapt to his (new found)
identity; he professes Roman Catholic sect of Christianity and not Hinduism to
become more acceptable to the society he wants to be associated with. If there is a
conflict between India and the US, as an American, he is obliged to consider this
country (India) which his parents had abandoned, perhaps, with contempt as a hostile
nation. But his success was glamorised on the Indian electronic media; for the
whole day of his victory his given-up relatives were televised with questions like:
“How do you feel to know that one of your relatives has become a Governor? Did
he ring you up? When did you last receive his call?” The poor relative had to admit
very softly, “There has been no contact with him for several years.” Our young
researchers and their innocent supervisors unknowingly behave like the over
enthusiastic reporter who is trying to find love in a place where it does not exist.
No model/advertiser, however great (s)he may be, goes against the diktats of
the manufacturer of a product to be advertised and sold. For example, can Amitabh
Bachchan, generally described as the super hero of this millennium, having got his
fees (his share in the market profits), dare to say that he has never used Navratna
tel (a brand of hair oil which he advertises)? Is he hoodwinking his fans or advising
them in all sincerity in the concerned advertisement? Like a model, an author has
only a limited role to play in the globalized/glocalized market economy. Only a novice
will believe that an author, who has taken huge advances, works for his own interests,
presents his true feelings and remains oblivious of the publishers’ interests. Publishers
are there in the market not for the service of literature but to do business. “The
thumping economic advance [was] conferred on Roy … [for] a new star on the
occasion of India’s fiftieth anniversary of independence … had to be created … [to
stay in business] in terms of modalities of multinationals”. (Ponzanesi 116, emphasis
added). Hector Tobar reports how Jonathan Cape Lessing’s own publisher rejected
one of her stealth novels saying it was “not commercially viable” and how similarly
another publisher declined to publish her book considering it as “too depressing” to
be successful though they became famous once they were published. (Tobar, Web.)
Therefore, the publisher is well within his rights to expect to get not a realistic book
but to have a material to cater to the market needs by having all those ingredients as
required and necessary to sell a book. In such a situation there is no question of the
will of the author. No author can be given huge advances if her/his book does not
sell well. Thus, it is very clear that the books by such authors become important
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 161

“products” (cf. artefacts) not because of their intrinsic value but because of
extraneous considerations—sometimes because of the advance amounts doled out
to them and sometimes because of the “suspect awards”.
The Nobel Prize is run by a self-perpetuated committee. They vote for
themselves and get the world’s publishing industry to jump to their tune. I
know several people who have won, and you don’t do anything else for a
year but Nobel. They are always coming out with new torments for me.
Downstairs there are 500 things I have to sign for them. (Ulin, Web.)
Further, on getting the news of the award of Nobel Prize Doris-Lessing is said to
have remarked: “Who are these people? They’re a bunch of bloody Swedes”
(Farandale, Web.)
It shall not be out of place to briefly refer to the discourse of films as well. A new
genre of films has come to exist that may be described as Diaspora Films. Many of
these films meant for the audience located in the west are aimed at presenting India
as an exotic land and some ridicule Indian customs and ways. Such films are also
nominated for various prizes under various categories and tags. However, those
produced for Indian audience back home have altogether a different tenor and
ethos. There is no denying that it is mainly because of the technological exchange/
collaboration with the west that the Indian film industry has boomed a great deal;
but the development of technology is just a matter of time– some people get it early
and some others a little late.

Role of the Publishers

On the basis of publication, two kinds of books are easily visible: one published by
multi-national publishing houses and another by small time-publication (both visible
and invisible). The authors that are lapped up by the multi-national publishers are
generally those who have deliberately chosen to stay in the Western developed
countries unlike the girmitias of the yore. Times have changed and market-needs
have changed and so have the needs of a labour market. The transformation in this
market of labour class from slaves to girmitias to daily wagers or contractual labour
is easily visible.
In consumer markets advertisements play an important role; “beautiful” people
are needed to lure “ugly” people to become like them so that some strain on their
time and money could be put. One can easily understand as to why there was a
sudden spurt of activities in finding out hidden beauty queens and label them as
“Miss India”, “Miss Asia Pacific”, “Miss World”, “Miss Universe”, “Miss Galaxy”
162 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

etc. with the advent of new economic policies in India in the nineties. Even those
feminists who advocate the use of the title “Ms” in place of “Miss/Mrs”
enthusiastically participate in such events and justify the organisers and the participants
as a matter of the concerned women’s choice and those who oppose them are
branded as “right reactionary forces”. Thus, the larger issue of maintaining human
dignity by keeping the (fe)male bodies away from lustful (fe)male gaze and that of
engaging a (fe)male body to further the capitalist intentions/profits by increasing
“lust and greed” in a society and thereby promoting violence are side tracked. This
analogy has been advanced to understand the phenomenon of the rise of the authors
like V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Bharati Mukherji, Arundhati Roy,
Kiran Desai, Khaled Hosseini and Aravinda Adiga. All these authors have been
named randomly; they are being discussed here to understand the matrix of the
capitalists and the authors; of course there is a lot not only to understand but also to
disagree. Some of the readers of this article may not find my analogy of a model to
describe an author palatable. To the attention of such readers, I bring the following
passage of Sandra Ponzanesi:
As the earlier transition from industrialization (focus on production) to
advanced capitalism and globalization (focus on worldwide spreading of
consumption based on the outsourcing of developed countries), the literary
industry now – with a different intensity and of course with different
modalities – has shifted its focus from supplying potential audiences to
planning them. Rather than merely reading submitted manuscripts and
discovering new talent, they now proceed as if on a hunting campaign
aiming to locate authors even before they have attempted to write, and
commissioning subjects, topics, and areas to reach one major goal: to
create a demand for the product, a real thirst for consumption prior to
production. (116, emphasis added)
The small-time publishers generally do not have a world-wide network to promote
and sell their publications. They cannot arrange for big events like TV Talk Shows,
Book Release Events, Full-page Interviews in the newspapers/ TV and magazines,
Full-page Book-Reviews in the newspapers, Pre-release Public Ceremonies, etc.
to affect the reading public’s opinions. They are not likely to discover authors unlike
their multinational counterparts. No wonder even those who are published by them
as first timers desert them in favour of big publishers. For example, Writers Workshop
(a Kolkata-based literary publisher) has published about four thousand titles of poetry,
novels, drama, and other literary works but they are hardly known outside Kolkata.
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 163

They have published many authors like A. K. Ramanujan, Asif Currimbhoy, Agha
Shahid Ali, Adil Jussawalla, Arun Kolatkar, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Chitra Banerjee
Divakaruni, Gieve Patel, Hoshang Merchant, Jayanta Mahapatra, Joe Winter, Keki
N. Daruwalla, Kamala Das, Meena Alexander, Mani Rao, Nissim Ezekiel, Pritish
Nandy, Poile Sengupta, R. Parthasarathy, Ruskin Bond, Shiv K. Kumar, Saleem
Peeradina, Vikram Seth, etc. in their earlier writing careers (in some cases their
first works were published by this publication house) who have become famous
subsequently. All these authors later switched on their loyalties and moved on to get
themselves published by multinationals. The focus of Writers Workshop has been
on: experimental literature of the present day, and translations from Sanskrit and
other classical Indian languages. Generally, the small-time publishers, unlike their
big counterparts, are not in a position to dictate terms to the authors in terms of their
subject-matter and the themes, etc. In other words, while a big publishing house
“forms the taste” and “creates a canon” the small publishing largely has no role in
forming either.
Is There Any Grey Matter?
M. Prabha in her book The Waffle of the Toffs raises an important question regarding
this literature. She says that by reading a literature of any language say Tamil,
Telugu, French or Spanish one expects to know something about the contemporary
concerns of the society. However, no one can claim to know about Indian society by
reading contemporary Indian drama/poetry/fiction in English though most of the
poets/fictionists have either been university professors or Oxbridge gentry. Jayant
Mahapatra also concedes this when he says: “When Nissim Ezekiel gave a lead to
the new poetry in the fifties, his work was freed of all social responsibilities. In
many ways, the poet did not pay attention to what a work of art said; he concentrated
only on how it was said.” (Mahapatra 2) Prabha also approvingly quotes Chinua
Achebe to highlight the duty of “educating and regenerating” the readers. (144) In
the same vein, let me ask a very pointed question: how many novels, dramas or
poems have been written about the national issues like Ram Janmabhoomi Movement,
Students’Agitation in the wake of Mandal Commission, Kashmir problem, Manipur
issues (Irom Chanu Sharmila’s protests, etc.), Kargil War, or international issues
like Cold/ Iraq / Ukraine War in this body of literature? They work mostly on very
narrow patch of territory mainly concerned with their own dilemmas. No wonder,
nobody cares for this literature. One may refer to Sudeep Sen’s opinion (see supra)
as a proof of my contention.
164 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

One may also refer to the similar concerns raised by V. K. Gokak. According to
him “The Indo-Anglian writers come from microscopic minority group, ... write
with an eye on an outlandish reading public and [pick] up themes and situations that
might appeal to the West” (164). Gokak classifies Indo-Anglian authors into two
groups. In the first group fall those Indo-Anglian writers who
very nearly [approximate] to English writing in [their] accent, tone vocabulary,
syntax and style, by reason of the writer’s interest or domicile, [and tend]
to lose, … Indianness of thought and vision. [Such] Indo-Anglians, … [being]
fond of cosmopolitan living, have plenty of the flavour of conversational
English in their writings. The latest fashions in language, which they
assimilate and employ in their writing, make them more ‘Anglian’ than Indian.
They tend to write about India from the outside rather than inside. (Gokak
162)
In other words, this group represents what Macaulay had conceived as: “Indian[s]
in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.”
(Macaulay: Minute) Another group of Indo-Anglian authors, according to Gokak,
consists of those
who are true to Indian thought and vision cannot escape the Indian flavour
even when they write in English. Their style is, in a great measure, conditioned
by the learned vocabulary of the subject on which they write, - philosophy,
sociology, criticism and the like. Even when they write fiction, they depend,
for their effect, on picturesque Indian phrases and their equivalents in
English. When it comes to writing poetry, they are invariably reminiscential
in their style and phrasing. We know, as we read that the writer is conforming,
consciously or unconsciously, to the Romantic, Victorian, Georgian or
Modernist tradition. (Gokak 162-163)
Gokak concludes:
… Indo-Anglian writing … is either predominantly ‘Anglian’ or ‘Indian’.
Very rarely is a synthesis of the two perceptible in sustained works of art.
This does not mean that Indo-Anglian writers who are predominantly ‘Indian’
are all victims and not masters of style. But it is the mastery of a style
which is peculiarly Indo-Anglian.” (163)
In this situation, according to Gokak, “a good deal of Indo Anglian fiction or poetry
falls short of the level that our greatest writers have touched in their own languages.”
(Gokak 164) Some critics4 have accepted Gokak’s suggestion and have used “Indo-
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 165

English” for this hybrid literature though it has not widely been accepted because it
is quite impractical for a publisher or a lay reader.
Now let me rivet my attention on some of the “major Indian writers in English”
mentioned above one by one. The Indian writer has come a long way since the
frank admittance of Raja Rao: “We cannot write like the English. We should not.”
(v) But, Salman Rushdie in his book, The Vintage Book of Indian Writing, holds,
“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.” (viii) Times have changed and with it has the ethos; historical reality has
given place to economic reality; gone are days to vociferate, “British, Quit India”
(angrezo bharat chhodo); we now send official delegations in hordes to invite
foreign capital and companies. Many of the “so called Indian” authors feel more at
home in the foreign lands than in India; many of them stay in the first world of
English; they visit India on short trips simply to collect their material for the books
they are working on. India baiting comes naturally to them because they neither try
to understand India from Indian perspective nor are they worried about her problems.
For them India is a saleable commodity therefore they use it/ its tag to achieve their
goals. Therefore, it is not a matter of surprise if their fiction has been branded the
fiction of India baiters. For example, Stephen Schiff writes about Naipaul: “... Naipaul
didn’t mind baiting his enemies, sometimes outrageously. ... why a culture like mine
or like the one in India, from which I come ancestrally ...” in his books like India: A
Million Mutinies, An Area of Darkness and India: A Wounded Civilization.
(books.google.co.in) About Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children Mujeebuddin
Syed writes, “... after the India baiting of V. S. Naipaul and Nirad C. Chaudhuri,
[Midnight’s Children] seemed to present, despite a certain cynicism about its own
method, a newer and fresher picture of India and Indianness.” (95) “A newer and
fresher picture of India and Indianness” in Midnight’s Children enraged Mrs. Indira
Gandhi so much that she sued Salman and his publisher and they had to tender an
unconditional apology to her. (Siddiqui, Web.) Mrs. Gandhi was not alone to be irked
by Rushdie but he has offended the Muslim community as well by misrepresenting
Islam in his writings. (Patel, Web.) This he has been doing perhaps to prove his
secular credentials to the western world and become more acceptable to a largely
Christian society.
Though Vikram Seth does not exactly fall into the category of India baiters yet
his concerns are certainly not Indian. I would like to quote from my own review of
The Golden Gate: “By giving its award for 1988 to The Golden Gate, the Sahitya
166 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

Akademi has promoted a book which is totally alien to Indian culture in its theme
and ethos, which has neither Indian characters nor Indian psyche nor even Indian
locale. Can the experimentation or the mark of best seller be the only criterions for
the much-coveted award? What kind of values does Sahitya Akademi want us to
cherish by promoting such a book?” (Sharma 1989: 66)
Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things “became a literary sensation even
before it actually came out in print. It is said that it had been read by all fifteen
people when it was pronounced a bestseller.” (Marwah 13) Geeta Doctor has raised
doubts about the greatness of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things: “Is it
great literature? ... We do not ask for greatness of literature these days. We are
quite relived with entertainment or better still seduction.” (4) In a similar vein A. N.
Dwivedi writes: “Arundhati Roy has written her novel with the Western readership
in mind… [the book] does not promote the cause of Indian aesthetics… it is a little
painful and disquieting to see an Indian writer making the work of literature a mere
saleable commodity. … [she should have desisted] from … unnecessary incestuous,
immoral scenes … in keeping with Indian spirit and culture.” (2) Charges of obscenity
against the book were raised and a court case ran almost for a decade. The book is
an interesting matrix of class segregation in the Marxist Kerala – two subjects dear
to the capitalist class. It shall not be out of place to quote Arundhati Roy on India:
I don’t even feel comfortable with this need to define our country. Because
it’s bigger than that! How can one define India? There is no one language,
there is no one culture. There is no one religion, there is no one way of life.
There is absolutely no way one could draw a line around it and say, “This is
India” or, “This is what it means to be Indian.” (Jana, Web.)
By implication she suggests that India is not a nation because it does not profess one
religion, one culture and one language. In questioning the idea of India Arundhati is
echoing the colonial debate about this nation and also echoes European idea of a
nation. Arundhati Roy does not seem to accept either Gandhi’s or Nehru’s notion of
India rather she seems to accept the European notion of a nation.
Arundhati Roy readily accepted Booker prize but refused to accept much coveted
national award from India’s Academy of Letters (Sahitya Akademi) “in protest
against the Indian Government toeing the US line by ‘violently and ruthlessly pursuing
policies of brutalisation of industrial workers, increasing militarisation and economic
neo-liberalisation’.” (Deccan Herald) I do not know if Ms. Roy is familiar with
Jeanette Winterson (the author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit) who maintains,
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 167

“This country [The UK] is so in thrall to America. We’re such lapdogs to them and
that will skew things with the judges.” (Silverman, Web.)
I do not know if she has ever pondered over British industrial policy, military
policy, and economic neo-liberalisation otherwise she would have realised that they
are mere appendages to US policies; I doubt if she could ever dare to take on Tony
Blair for ravaging Iraq or Margaret Thatcher’s rejection of Argentine claims over
Falkland islands (and a consequent war) but she has always been mudslinging Indian
government – whether it is the issue of Narmada dam or Kashmir or terrorists’
protection or the attack on Indian parliament. Man Booker prize is run by a business
house; only a novice believes that its economic/political interests are not kept in
view while giving away an award. It is something like a social welfare project of a
multinational company which uses the opportunity to create a market for its products.
I doubt if she has ever raised doubts about the credentials and business interests of
the group that sponsors/backs Man Booker Prize which she so proudly flaunts; I do
not know if she is familiar with John Pilger who dismisses the Booker as “only one
award that represents the views of a clutch of mostly elite, London-centric,
conservative-liberal judges”. (Saxena, Web.) I wish to know her take on this prize
or on Pilger. If Arundhati’s intentions and acts are dubbed as “anti-Indian” in the
back drop of the double standards she maintains, it should not come as a surprise.
In her reply to Amanda Meer’s “You consider yourself an American writer”,
Bharati Mukherji did some plain speaking about her past allegiance to India and
newly found realities in an interview. The reply is so interesting that it needs to be
quoted in full:
I totally consider myself an American writer, and that has been my big
battle: to get to realize that my roots as a writer are no longer, if they ever
were, among Indian writers, but that I am writing about the territory about
the feelings, of a new kind of pioneer here in America. I’m the first among
Asian immigrants to be making this distinction between immigrant writing
and expatriate writing. Most Indian writers prior to this, have still thought of
themselves as Indians, and their literary inspiration, has come from India.
India has been the source, and home. Whereas I’m saying, those are
wonderful roots, but now my roots are here and my emotions are here in
North America. I’m not writing like a Richard Ford or a John Updike, that’s
not the only America. It has many pluralities. I’m writing about an American
immigrant group who are undergoing many transformations within
168 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

themselves. And who, by their very presence, are changing the country.
America is not the America that, until recently, has come through in
contemporary popular fiction. (Meer, Web.)
She had shown similar allegiance to Canada before migrating to the US. However,
not every writer of her stature shows this sort of courage to do plain speaking. Her
reply, in fact, has answered several questions about such writers and their writings.
Kiran Desai came to lime light because of the Betty Trask Prize from the British
Society of Authors in 1998 for her first novel Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard.
“[It] is an ironical novel satirizing Indian mentality. It openly makes fun of our sense
of propriety and logic. The major satire of the novel is the Indian sense of religiosity.”
(Tiwari, Web.) While describing the book the reviewers in India Today use all
those ingredients that I have talked above to lure a prospective buyer, “... Hullabaloo
could be a case of hype and hope rather than soul, but the phenomenal advances
that Kiran has got (an estimated Rs. 50 lakh), an initial print run of 50,000 each in
the US and UK, early excerpts in the New Yorker and in the Salman Rushdie-edited
anthology, Vintage Book of Indian Writing, is a pointer that another little Indian girl
is on the threshold of big things.” (Binoo and Pais, Web.)
Let me also talk about an author from Afghanistan, once a part of India. The
doctor turned author Khaled Hosseini is the son of an Afghan diplomat who sought
asylum for himself and his family in Northern California after the Russian intrusion
into Afghanistan. He has had nearly a secular upbringing. (Hosseini, Web.) No
wonder, his books have been written in the backdrop of “Soviet Union invasion” and
against the “regime of Taliban”. The charge of the anti-Muslim incitement against
Khaled Hosseini has been levelled because his books have a tenor against Islam
and he has a pro-American stance.
All these authors have been living in the US/UK and have seen that society with
close quarters but they generally do not write about it, unlike their British counterparts
as Forster etc., though they can very well do that as well. Vikram Seth, for example,
has written about American yuppies in his The Golden Gate in a meticulous manner.
The novel deals with Californian psychology and awareness and “suggests intimate
knowledge of Californian mores, from its bill boards and bumper stickers to personal
ads and pet psychiatrists. The Golden Gate is filled with details about California
that natives sometimes overlook because of excessive familiarity.” (qtd. by Sharma
1989: 66) The book was successful by all means. But, most of the Indian expatriates,
as a matter of fact, save not only their energy but also their ink to deride the native
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 169

cultures. In these days of “Clash of Civilizations” who will be a better author-agent

than Salman Rushdie or Khaled Hosseini to deride the Muslims and present an
authentic picture of a Muslim society from a western perspective? The result in the
form of Satanic Verses and A Thousand Splendid Suns is for everyone to see.
Both these authors present Muslims as not only intolerant villains but also as uncultured
people because a large number of the prospective readers at whom the book is
aimed want them to be projected like this.
Mahatma Gandhi described Katherine Mayo’s Mother India (1927) as “Drain
Inspector’s Report”. It shall not be out of place to quote from Gandhi’s review of
the book:
This book is cleverly and powerfully written. The carefully chosen quotations
give it the false appearance of a truthful book. But the impression it leaves
on my mind is that it is the report of a drain inspector sent out with the one
purpose of opening and examining the drains of the country to be reported
upon, or to give a graphic description of the stench exuded by the opened
drains. If Miss Mayo had confessed that she had come to India merely to
open out and examine the drains of India, there would perhaps be little to
complain about her compilation. But she declared her abominable and patently
wrong conclusion with a certain amount of triumph: ‘the drains are India’.
(Gandhi, “Drain Inspector’s Report” 539-40)
Whatever Gandhi has said about Mayo’s book is applicable to Adiga’s The White
Tiger as well. The White Tiger has won the coveted Man Booker Prize “... perhaps
[because] the most drastic and bitter facts ... have impressed the judges, who have
got a revealing inside into India. ... the book, as a whole, presents the crude, dark
and naked facts about India, and that has added all the merits for the award... .”
(Khan 84) Similarly, Sudhir K. Arora charges Adiga of presenting an incomplete
truth and calls the awarded prize “A Freakish Booker”. “Even the head of the jury,
Michel Portillio, [calls] it a work that shows the ‘dark side of India – a new territory’
... for many of us, our worst fears have come true – the West is once again using
our poverty to humiliate us.” (Saxena, Web.) No wonder such books become instant
best sellers (to recollect Mayo’s Mother India was reprinted twelve times between
May and December in 1927, the year of its first publication and thirty-three times
between 1927 and 1931) and are also nominated for some prize or the other.
It is not that Indians do not want to discuss their problems or realities or that they
do not take their criticism sportingly or that they do not want to improve their situation,
Indians or that they are status quoists. The Indians are by and large not averse to
170 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

the criticism of their beliefs, faiths, thinking and practices. As a matter of fact, the
authors in Indian languages have been very severely criticising various Indian ways.
Who could be a greater critic of Indian religious and social practises than Kabir?
Swami Dayananda was a bitter critic of Sanatan Hindu practices. Gandhi did not
agree with so many practices of Hindus and suggested reform. Can a bitterer picture
of Indian reality be presented than what has been done by Prem Chand? Does
Phanishwar Nath Renu not present a very grim and harsh picture of poverty in the
Indian countryside? Does Qurratulain Haider not describe the sufferings of Muslim
women in a belligerently male dominated and stingingly poverty-stricken society?
Who could satirise autocratic tendencies in Indian politics and bureaucracy in more
acerbic terms than Shrilal Shukl? What is Dalit Literature if not a stringent criticism
of caste/social hierarchies? Because of my limitations I have referred to the authors
in Hindi only. The list of such authors from Indian literature in other languages can
still be longer. These authors have neither been considered offensive nor has a
charge of their being guided by pecuniary considerations or their working at the
behest of some business house been lavished against them. It is so because of
different treatment and the handling of the same subject matter at the hands of two
persons: while one shows how to counter the reality called poverty, the other
showcases poverty to make it a saleable item. It is their motive and mind-set that
critics raise their protest against. Poverty for Indians is not just an economic parameter,
it is also a way of life. “Willing acceptance of poverty” and “poverty in the midst of
plenty” are the key concepts in the Gandhian economics which is inclusive of his
ideas of Non-violence, Trusteeship, Aparigraha (Non-possession), Swadeshi (Using
locally made goods) and the like. Indians voluntarily accept multiple pluralities in
every walk of life. So, it is the issue of contentment on the basis of acceptance, not
coercion. Rushdie does not seem to like the Indian delineation of the subject matter.
It is partly because of this as well that he dismisses the writings in other languages
than English. For further light on the issue let me turn to Gandhi again. He equates
western education to false education. He does not like education to be given just for
the sake of literacy. Gandhi asks: “Will you add an inch to his happiness [by giving
this type of education]? Do you wish to make him discontented with his cottage or
his lot? ... [This education] does not make men of us. It does not enable us to do our
duty. ... Character-building has the first place in it. A building erected on [the
foundation of the Indian ancient school system] foundation will last.” (Hind Swaraj
82-84) We can replace “education” in the above Gandhian discourse by “writings of
these authors”. None of the books of the authors mentioned above withstand the
test on Gandhian parameters.
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 171

Prospects: NEP 2020

We teachers also have to ponder if IWE can fit into the paradigms of National
Education Policy 2020. The policy focuses on Indian culture and its revival. It suggests
a three-language formula with a special focus on mother tongue/home language.
One generally emulates the social and political elites – learning English is just one
way of doing it. By adopting English as a means of creativity and communication
one feels empowered and closer to the erstwhile ruling class and assumes oneself
to be an elite. However, the people with low self-esteem and colonial mind-set are
likely to be the end losers in the era of globalization at least in terms of the loss of
plurality and individuality; the loss of identity generally leads to alienation, frustration
and depression. To substantiate my thesis let me take up an example of text-books
in engineering stream as their impact is easily visible though things are no better in
other disciplines. Whatever text-books are taught in a civil engineering course in
MIT are also prescribed in IIT, Mumbai and the same teaching material percolates,
sometimes through their desi versions, via NIT’s and other engineering colleges to
distant places like Imphal. This ends up in having similar types of buildings from
New York to Mumbai to Nagpur to Kolkata to Shillong and to Kohima. This sort of
“development activity” in the form of globalised/Americanised concept of
construction not only destroys the plurality in terms of the building materials, building
styles, living patterns, local needs and the like but it also generates discontent and
disparities of various sorts; nay the whole ecology of the area is affected. It creates
related demands for items like iron (= more excavations) and cement (= more
quarries) to raise them and electric gadgets (= more plastic and iron) and electricity
(= more coal or nuclear energy) to run and maintain them. The global politics of
electricity can be equated to the politics of hunger in a developing society.
When even a “global power like India” is arm twisted by bigger economies (=
powers) on the issue of power generation the fate of smaller fries can easily be
imagined. The result of all this is that a third world country remains a third world
despite all sorts of destruction of its culture and ecology—nay in most of the cases
they are almost in debt trap. The easiest way in such a situation for a teacher is to
adhere to the government diktats and remain a mute spectator/wage-earner to witness
all this and in turn be an indirect party in causing frustration and discontent amongst
the youths of this country. But that is not the job of an enlightened teacher/intellectual.
Therefore, they have to rise to the occasion and think beyond the ready-made solutions
delved out to them by various agencies.
172 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

If Physics or Mathematics or Sanskrit can be taught in English or Hindi, can’t

Indian English Literature be taught in the native language? I would again like to
quote Gandhi for those who see English as a necessity in English Studies in the
wake of Globalization and who, therefore, would like to prescribe these authors for
the sake of their English/style:
To give millions a knowledge of English is to enslave them. The foundation
that Macaulay laid of education has enslaved us. ... It is worth noting that,
by receiving English education, we have enslaved the nation. Hypocrisy,
tyranny, etc. have increased. English-knowing Indians have not hesitated to
cheat and strike terror into the people. (Hind Swaraj 84-85)
I wish all these authors to realise what they have been doing to India at the behest
of the capitalist world, by becoming their agents knowingly or unknowingly. I wish
they be more responsible and stop playing to the gallery of the globalised agenda
and good sense prevails upon them so that the true value of literature in reflecting
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam finds cogitation in their writings.
Conclusion
In the foregoing pages an effort was made to understand as to why the term “Indian
English Literature” has not found favour with a large number of literary historians,
litterateurs and researchers and critics in India. The reason largely lies in the matrix
of sensibility and associations. Since to a large number of the practitioners of this
literature, being an Indian is largely a matter of just name or accident, they do not
display any relatable associations with her nor do they hold the relationship in
respectable and venerable terms. They are not for Indian brotherhood but aspire to
have a world-wide English language brotherhood, even if it is at the cost of Indian
interests and pride. The group has been making all out efforts to get English included
in the eighth schedule of the Indian Constitution. With the foreign backing they wish
to recolonise the Indian space by occupying the language and cultural space.
Therefore, some watch dogs are needed who keep the issue of national identity and
national pride in their minds against the divisive forces, out to sell India for their
petty gains. It shall not be far from truth to say that they are a sort of snooze of neo-
colonization.
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 173

Endnotes:
1. The adherents of the Church of England are called Anglicans. The Church
is, therefore, also known as Anglican Church; it is the dominant denomination
of Christianity in England.
2. To substantiate my claim here are only some titles mainly culled from
www.worldcat.org/: “What Is Indo-Anglican Poetry.” Salient, vol. 11, no.
1, 17 March, 1948, p. 4; Margaret Lindley Koch’s MA Thesis “Tradition
and Chance in the Indo-Anglican Novels of the Post-Independence Era”
(1974); Lintotage Nihal Asoka Fernando’s “The Treatment of the Theme
of Sociocultural Interaction in Indo-Anglican Fiction, 1935-1976: The Novels
of Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and R.K. Narayan” (Dissertation, Flinders
University of S. Aust., 1986); Rajeshvaraprasada Narayana Singh’s Indo-
Anglican Poetry: Its Birth and Growth (1987); Vikram Chandra’s “Indo-
Anglican Writers: Where the Mind Is without Fear” (The Hindu, 19 Dec.,
1999); Nandini Sahu’s “Kaleidoscope of the Indian Society - The Voice of
Indo-Anglican Women Poets” (kavinandini.blogspot.com/2008); Gopal Mallik
Thakur’s A Handbook of Indo-Anglican Poems (2010); Ardhendu De’s
“Indo-Anglican Fiction of the Post-Independence Era”
(ardhendude.blogspot.com/2013); Somnath Sarkar’s “Essay on Indo-
Anglican Poetry & Poets” (eng-literature.com/2016), Kumuda Ranjan
Panda’s blog entitled “Indoanglican Literature” and Rituraj Trivedi’s “A. K.
Ramanujan: A Leading Indo-Anglican Poet” (2022). There are at least two
Indian universities that are offering courses under the title: “Indo-Anglican
Writing: Literary History” (B.A. Part III Examination, Year-2017, Maharaja
Ganga Singh University, Bikaner) and “Indo-Anglican Fiction” (Paper Code:
BAGEO401CC, Hemchandracharya North Gujarat University, Patan, CBCS
Syllabus 2011, hngu.ac.in). Certain Websites such as www.worldcat.org/
and https://books.google.co.in/ use the term “Indo-Anglican” in their
bibliographical data though the book uses the term “Indo-Anglian” in its
title. For example, let us have a look at the following entry in
www.worldcat.org/: A. Williams, Indo Anglican Literature 1880-1970:
A Survey, South Asia Books, 1977 but the book uses the title “Indo Anglian
Literature”. Similarly, in the case of Murli Das Melwani’s Critical Essays
on Indo-Anglian Themes, Writers Workshop, 1971, the https://
books.google.co.in/ wrongly uses “Indo-Anglican” in place of “Indo-
174 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

Anglian”. It appears that the data entry operator is making these changes
unauthorisedly as was done in case of Iyengar’s book.
3. Iyengar highlights the issue of Indianness and at the same time wishes “to
measure IWE by the best English (or Anglo-American) standards.” (IWE
774) This leads to what he describes as “Janus-faced predicament” (IWE
774) both for the author and the critic. K. Ayyapa Paniker writes: “… the
problem has also troubled scholars trying to assess the value of Indian Writing
in English” (11) and he evokes Krishna Rayan, Bruce King and John O.
Perry in this context. Let me quote Paniker himself to give a glimpse of the
issue: Krishna Rayan suggests that “the difficulty experienced by a foreign
(British or American) critic of Indian Writing in English is not the cultural
distance between the author and his critic, but the interference of factors
other than aesthetic which distort our perceptions.” (11-12) “John O. Perry
is also acutely aware of the problems related to the proper reading and
interpretation of Indian English Poetry.” (13)
4. Here some examples: Uma Parameswaran’s An Indo-English Minstrel:
A Study of Manjeri Isvaran’s Fiction (1971), Ronald Shepherd’s Aspects
of Identity in the Indo-English Novel: A Study of Three Novelists: Raja
Rao, R. K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand (1974), Klaus Steinvorth’s The
Indo-English Novel: The Impact of the West on Literature in a
Developing Country (1975), K. K. Sharma’s Indo-English Literature: A
Collection of Critical Essays (1977), Shankar Mokashi-Punekar’s
Theoretical & Practical Studies in Indo-English Literature (1978),
Meenakshi Mukherjee’s “Indo-English: A Natural Part” (1980), A. N.
Dwivedi’s Studies in Contemporary Indo-English Verse, vols. 1 & 2
(1984), O. P. Saxena’s Glimpses of Indo-English Fiction, vol. 1 & 2 (1985),
Fawzia Afzal-Khan’s Cultural Imperialism and the Indo-English Novel
Genre and Ideology in R. K. Narayan, Anita Desai, Kamala
Markandaya, and Salman Rushdie (1993), Adapa Ramakrishna Rao &
M. Sivaramakrishna’s When East Meets West: Indian Thought in Anglo-
Indian and Indo-English Fiction (1994), Indira Nityanandam & ýReena
Kothari’s Indo-English Fiction: The Last Decade (2002), Isukapalli
Venkateswarlu’s The Impact of Gandhism on Indo-English Fiction (2003),
G. D’Cruz’s “My Two Left Feet: The Problem of Anglo-Indian Stereotypes
in Post-Independence Indo-English Fiction” (2003), Krishna Kant Singh’s
Indian English Poetry Before Independence: A Study of Fifteen Indo-
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 175

English Poets Before 1947 (2004), Arvind M. Nawale’s Indo-English

Fiction New Perspectives (2011), Satvinder Kaur’s Indianness in Pre
and Post Independence Indo English Poetry (2019).

Works Cited

� Achebe, Chinua. Arrow of God. John Day, 1967.

� —— . No Longer at Ease. Obolensky, 1961.
� ——. Things Fall Apart. Astor-Honor, 1959.
� Agarawl, Malti, editor. English Literature: Voice of Indian Diaspora.
Atlantic, 2009.
� Agarwal, Smita. Marginalized: Indian poetry in English. Rodopi, 2014.
� Anjaria, Ulka. A History of the Indian Novel in English. Cambridge UP,
2015.
� Arora, Sudhir K. Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger: A Freakish Booker.
Authorspress. 2011.
� _____. Cultural and Philosophical Reflections in Indian Poetry in
English. 4 Vols. Authorspress, 2016.
� Binoo, John K., and Arthur J. Pais. “Kiran Desai Makes a Much-hyped
Debut with ‘Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard’.” India Today, Updated 12
March 2013, https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/society-the-arts/books/
story/19980309-kiran-desai-makes-a-much-hyped-debut-with-hullabaloo-in-
the-guava-orchard-825890-1998-03-08.
� Boehmer, Elleke, and Rosinka Chaudhuri. The Indian Postcolonial: A
Critical Reader. Routledge, 2011.
� Chatterjee, Upamanyu. English, August: An Indian Story. Faber & Faber,
1988.
� _____. The Mammaries of the Welfare State. Penguin Books, 2001.
� Chaudhuri, Amit. The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature. Picador
India, 2016.
� _____. The Vintage Book of Modern Indian Literature. Vintage Books,
2004.
176 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

� Chaudhuri, Rosinka. The Literary Thing: History, Poetry and the Making
of a Modern Cultural Sphere. Oxford UP, 2013; Peter Lang, 2014.
� _____, editor. A History of Indian Poetry in English. Cambridge UP,
2016.
� Coomaraswamy, Ananda. The Dance of Shiva: Fourteen Indian Essays.
The Sunwise Turn, 1918.
� Cousins, James H. The Renaissance in India. Ganesh & Co., 1918. Preface
is dated June 1918, https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.203914.
� “Sahitya Akademi Award: Arundhati Roy Rejects Honor.” Deccan Herald,
16 Jan. 2006, https://web.archive.org/web/20130821132821/http://
www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0116-01.htm.
� De Souza, Eunice. Early Indian Poetry in English: An Anthology 1829-
1947. Oxford UP, 2005.
� De Souza, Eunice, and Lindsay Pereira. Women’s Voices: Selections from
Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Indian Writing in English.
Oxford UP, 2004.
� Doctor, Geeta. “Avenging Angel.” Review of The God of Small Things by
Arundhati Roy. Indian Review of Books, 16 April-15 May, 1997, pp. 4–5.
� Dwivedi, Amar N. “Reversing the Gear: A Critique of Arundhati Roy’s The
God of Small Things (1997).” Arundhati Roy’s Fictional World: A
Collection of Critical Essays, edited by A. N. Dwivedi, B.R Publishing
Corporation, 2001, pp. 1–3.
� Dwivedi, O. P., editor. Literature of the Indian Diaspora. Pencraft
International, 2011.
� Eliot, T. S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Poetry Foundation,
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-
song-of-j-alfred-prufrock.
� Farandale, Nigel. “Doris Lessing: Her Last Telegraph Interview.” The
Telegraph, 17 Nov. 2013, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/
10455494/Doris-Lessing-her-last-Telegraph-interview.html.
� Gandhi, M. K. “Drain Inspector’s Report.” The Collected Works of
Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 34, 22 Nov. 2013, https://www.gandhi heritageportal.
org/cwmg_volume_thumbview/MzQ=#page/566/mode/2up.
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 177

� _____. (1938). Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule. Navjivan Publishing

House, 2009.
� Gokak, V. K. English in India: Its Present and Future. Asia Publishing
House. (n.d.), https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.460832.
� Goodwin, Gwendoline, editor. Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry. John
Murray, 1927, https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.176578.
� Government of India, Official Language Act 1963, https://
www.indiacode.nic.in/handle/123456789/1526?sam_handle=123456789/
1362.
� Guralnik, David B., editor. Webster’s New World Dictionary of the
American Language. Grand Central Pub, 1987.
� Hasan, Anjum, and Sampurna Chattarji, editors. Future Library:
Contemporary Indian Writing. Red Hen Press, 2022
� Hosseini, Khaled. “‘The Kite Runner’ Soars Into Theaters: Interview by
Sara Shereen Bakhshian.” Beliefnet, 8 Nov. 2013, https://
www.beliefnet.com/entertainment/movies/2007/12/the-kite-runner-soars-
into-theaters.aspx.
� Iyengar, K. R. Srinivasa. Indian Contribution to English Literature [The].
Karnatak Publishing House. 1945, https://archive.org/details/indiancontributi
030041mbp.
� _____. (1962). Indian Writing in English. Sterling, 2013.
� _____. Indo-Anglian Literature. PEN & International Book House, 1943.
https://archive.org/details/IndoAnglianLiterature.
� _____. Literature and Authorship. George Allen and Unwin, 1943.
� Iyengar, K. R. Srinivasa, and Makarand Paranjape. “K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar
in Conversation with Makarand Paranjape.” Indian Literature, vol. 41, no.
1, Jan. – Feb. 1998, pp. 166-177, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23341325.
� Jana, Reena. “The Salon Interview: Arundhati Roy.” Salon, 30 Sept. 1997,
https://www.salon.com/1997/09/30/00roy/.
� Karmakar, Goutam. The Lie of the Land: An Anthology of Indian Poetry
in English. Sahitya Akademi, 2019.
178 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

� Khan, M. Q. “The White Tiger: A Critique.” Journal of Literature, Culture

and Media Studies, vol. 1, no. 2, July-Dec. 2009, pp. 84-97.
� King, Bruce. Modern Indian Poetry in English. Oxford UP, 1987.
� Kothari, Rita. “The Middle Class in India: An Overview.” Summerhill:
IIAS Review, vol. 16, no. 2, winter 2010, pp. 59-64.
� Kothari, Rita, and Rupert Snell. Chutnefying English: The Phenomenon
of Hinglish. Penguin India, 2011.
� Kumar, Shiv K. Contemporary Indian Literature in English. Indian
Institute of Advanced Study, 1992.
� Lahiri, Debasish, and Pradipta Mukherjee. 21st Century Perspectives on
Indian Writing in English A Time to Turn. Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
2023.
� Lau, Lisa, and E. Dawson Varughese. Indian Writing In English And
Issues Of Visual Representation: Judging More Than A Book By Its
Cover. Palgrave Pivot, 2015.
� Macaulay, T. B. “Minute on Indian Education, dated the 2nd February 1835.”
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/
txt_minute_education_1835.html.
� Mahapatra, Jayant. “about ourselves…”, Chandrabhaga 19, Plus Series,
vol. 19, 2021, p. 2.
� Marwah, Anuradha. “The Second Coming of Indian Fiction in English: 1990s
and After.” Illuminati, vol. 4, 2013-14, pp. 9–15.
� Meer, Ameena. “Interview with Bharati Mukherjee.” Bomb, 1 Oct. 1989,
https://bombmagazine.org/articles/bharati-mukherjee/.
� Mehrotra, Arvind Krishna, editor. Arun Kolatkar: Collected Poems in
English. Bloodaxe Books, 2010.
� _____. A History of Indian Literature in English. Columbia UP, 2003.
� _____. An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English. Permanent
Black, 2003.
� _____. A Concise History of Indian Literature in English. Permanent
Black, 2008.
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 179

� _____. (1992). The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian

Poets. Oxford UP, 2003.
� _____. “What is an Indian Poem?” 60 Indian Poets, edited by Jeet Thayil,
Penguin Books, 2008.
� Mishra, Jayakant. History of Maithili Literature. Sahitya Akademi, 1976.
� Mishra, Pankaj. The Times Literary Supplement, 3 Dec. 2004, p. 10, https:/
/profilbaru.com/article/Indian_poetry_in_English.
� Mitra, Zinia, editor. Indian Poetry in English: Critical Essays. PHI
Learning, 2012.
� Mokaya, Vincent Nyauma. “The Language Debate in African Literature.”
h t t p s :/ / w w w. a c a d e m i a . e d u / 8 0 1 5 8 8 8 /
THE_LANGUAGE_DEBATE_IN_AFRICAN_LITERATURE.
� Mugali, Sri Ram. History of Kannada Literature. Sahitya Akademi, 1975.
� Müller, K. M. F. Max. India: What Can it Teach Us? A Course of Lectures
Delivered before the University of Cambridge. Funk & Wagnalls,
Publishers, n. d.
� Naik, M. K. Aspects of Indian Writing in English: Essays in Honour of
Professor K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar. Macmillan, 1979.
� _____. (1982). A History of Indian English Literature. Sahitya Akademi,
1989.
� _____. Indian English Fiction: A Critical Study. Pencraft International,
2009.
� _____. Indian English Poetry: From the Beginnings Up to 2000.
Pencraft International, 2006.
� _____. The Indian English Short Story: A Representative Anthology.
Arnold-Heinemann, 1984.
� _____. Perspectives on Indian Fiction in English. Abhinav Publications,
1985.
� _____. Perspectives on Indian Poetry in English. Abhinav Publications,
1984.
180 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

� _____. Perspectives on Indian Prose in English. Abhinav Publications,

1982.
� _____. Studies in Indian English Literature. Sterling Publishers, 1987.
� _____. Twentieth Century Indian English Fiction. Pencraft International,
2004.
� Naik, M. K., and Shankar Mokashi-Punekar. Perspectives on Indian
Drama in English. Oxford UP, 1977.
� Naik, M. K., and Shyamala A. Narayan. Indian English Literature 1980-
2000: A Critical Survey. Pencraft International, 2001.
� Naipaul, V. S. India: An Area of Darkness. Heinemann, 1990.
� _____. India: A Million Mutinies Now. Heinemann, 1990.
� _____. India: A Wounded Civilization. Heinemann, 1990.
� Nandy, Pritish, editor. Modern Indian Poetry. Heinemann, 1975.
� Narayan, Shayamala A. Indian English Literature 2001-2015: A Critical
Study. Pencraft International, 2020.
� Oaten, Edward Farley. (1916). “Anglo-Indian Literature.” Cambridge
History of English Literature, vol. 14, edited by A. C. Award and A. R.
Waller, 1953, rpt., pp. 331-342.
� _____. A Sketch of Anglo-Indian Literature. Kegan Paul, 1908. https://
ia600303.us.archive.org/0/items/sketchofangloind00oateuoft/
sketchofangloind00oateuoft.pdf.
� Padhi, Sangita. Indian Poetry in English: A Critical Study. Atlantic, 2018.
� Padhy, Santosh Kumar. The Home Bound Vision: Contemporary American
and Indian Poetry in English. Authorspress, 2008
� Pandey, Birendra. Indian Poetry in English. Atlantic, 2001.
� _____. Indian Women Novelists. Sarup & Sons, 2001.
� Paniker, K. Ayyappa. Modern Indian Poetry in English. Sahitya Akademi,
rpt., 2012.
� Patel, Ismail Isa. “Mis/Representations of Islam: Reading Salman Rushdie’s
The Satanic Verses.” SCRIBD, 26 Sept. 2012, http://www.scribd.com/doc/
107049639/Mis-Representations-of-Islam-Reading-Salman-Rushdie-s-The-
Satanic-Verses-By-Ismail-Isa-Patel-London-1998.
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 181

� Peeradina, Saleem. Contemporary Indian Poetry in English: An

Assessment and Selection. Macmillan, 1972.
� Ponzanesi, Sandra. “Boutique Postcolonialism: Literary Awards, Cultural
Value and the Canon.” 19 Sept. 2013, http://www.uu.nl/wiredup/sandra/
Ponzanesi[1]%20boutique%20postcolonialism. Also published in Fiction
and Literary Prizes in Great Britain, edited by Wolfgang Görtschacher
and Holger M. Klein, Praesens Verlag, 2006, pp. 107–134.
� Prabha, M. The Waffle of the Toffs: A Sociocultural Critique of Indian
Writing in English. Oxford & IBH Publishing, 2000.
� Prasad, Amar Nath, and Santiago John Peter Joseph, editors. Indian Writing
in English: Critical Ruminations – 2 Volumes. Sarup & Sons, 2006.
� Prasad, Amar Nath, and Bithika Sarkar, editors. Critical Response to Indian
Poetry in English. Sarup & Sons, 2008.
� Rajan, P. K. “Indian English Literature: Changing Traditions.” Littcrit,
vol. 32, no. 1 & 2, 2006, pp. 11-23.
� Ramakrishnan, E. V., and Anju Makhija. We Speak in Changing
Languages: Indian Women Poets 1990-2007. Sahitya Akademi, 2017.
� Ramanan, Mohan, et al. Contemporary Indian Poetry in English. Sahitya
Akademi, 2017.
� Rao, Raja. (1938). Kanthapura. Oxford UP, 2005.
� Reddy, Sheshalatha. Mapping the Nation: An Anthology of Indian Poetry
in English, 1870-1920. Anthem Press, 2012.
� Roy, Nilanjana. “The Golden Bait.” Business Standard, 12 July 2013,
http://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/the-golden-bait-
113071201059_1.html.
� Roy, Vijay Kumar, editor. Post-Independence Indian Poetry in English:
New Experimentation. Alfa Publications, 2015.
� ___. The Social, Cultural and Spiritual Dimensions of Modern Indian
Poetry in English. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017.
� Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. Jonathan Cape, 1981.
� Rushdie, Salman, and Elizabeth West, editors. The Vintage Book of Indian
Writing 1947 – 1997. Vintage, 1997.
182 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

� Sampson, George. (1941). The Concise Cambridge History of English

Literature. Cambridge UP, 1959, https://archive.org/details/
in.ernet.dli.2015.18336.
� Saxena, Shobhan. “Fact not Fiction.” The Times of India, 19 Oct., 2008,
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/deep-focus/fact-not-
fiction/articleshow/3613508.cms
� Schiff, Stephen. “The Ultimate Exile.” Conversations with V. S. Naipaul,
edited by Feroza F. Jussawalla, UP of Mississippi, 1997. 10 Nov. 2013,
https://books.google.co.in.
� Scott, Sir Walter Scott. “My Native Land.” Poetry Nook, https://
www.poetrynook.com/poem/my-native-land.
� Sen, Sudeep. Converse: Contemporary English Poetry by Indians. Pippa
Rann Books & Media, 2022.
� _____, editor. The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry by Indians
1950—2010. HarperCollins India, 2012.
� _____, editor. Midnight’s Grandchildren: Post-Independence English
Poetry from India. Struga Poetry Evenings, 2004.
� _____, editor. Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians. Sahitya
Akademi, 2019.
� _____, editor. The Yellow Nib: Modern English Poetry by Indians.
Belfast: Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queens University. E Book.
July 2012.
� Shahane, V. A., and M. Sivaramkrishna. Indian Poetry in English: A
Critical Assessment. Humanities Press, 1981.
� Sharma, R. S. “The Question of Indianness.” Indian Writing in English:
The Last Decade, edited by Rajul Bhargava, Rawat Publication, 2002.
� Sharma, Susheel Kumar. “Indo-Anglian: Connotations and Denotations.”
East European Journal of Psycholinguistics, vol. 1, 2018, pp. 45-69,
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1435964.
� _____. “A Review of Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate.” Meerut Journal
of Comparative Literature and Language, 2 Oct.1989, pp. 60-66.
Indian English Literature: Issues and Dimensions 183

� _____. “What is in a Name?: Problematic of Anglo-Indian Literature.”

International English Studies Journal (Studia Anglica Resoviensia), vol.
15, no. 1, 2018, pp. 70-102.
� Siddiqui, Shahid. “Salman Rushdie and Freedom of Expression.” The Milli
Gazette, 8 Feb. 2012. http://www.milligazette.com/news/3184-salman-
rushdie-and-freedom-of-expression-try-it-with-holocaust.
� Silverman, Rosa. “Jeanette Winterson Launches Latest Attack on New
Man Booker Prize Rules.” The Telegraph, 02 Oct. 2013, http://
www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booker-prize/10350567/Jeanette-
Winterson-launches-latest-attack-on-new-Man-Booker-Prize-rules.html.
� Singh, Rajni, and Ram Krishna Singh. Indian Poetry in English: In Search
of Identity. Authorspress, 2012.
� Sinha, Arnab Kumar, et al., editors. Contemporary Indian English Poetry
and Drama: Changing Canons and Responses. Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, 2019.
� Subramaniam, Arundhathi. Another Country: An Anthology of Post-
Independence Indian Poetry. Sahitya Akademi, 2013.
� Syed, Mujeebuddin. “Midnight’s Children and Its Indian Con-Texts.” Journal
of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 29, no.2, 1994, pp. 95-108, https://
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002198949402900209?
journalCode=jcla. Also in Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children: A Book of
Readings, edited by Meenakshi Mukherjee, Pencraft International, 1999.
� Thayil, Jeet, editor. 60 Indian Poets. Penguin Books, 2008.
� Thiong’o, Ngugi wa. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language
in African Literature. East African Educational Publishers, 1986.
� _____. Petals of Blood. Heinemann, 1986.
� _____. Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance. BasicCivitas
Books, 2009.
� Tiwari, Shubha. “A New Godman is Born.” Boloji, 2 Jan. 2012, https://
www.boloji.com/articles/11748/a-new-godman-is-born.
� Tobar, Hector. “Doris Lessing Remembered: Provocative, Blunt,
Unforgettable.” Los Angeles Times, 17 Nov. 2013, http://www.latimes.com/
184 Akshara, Vol. 15, May 2023

b o o k s / j a c k e t c o p y/ l a - e t - j c - d o r i s - l e s s i n g - r e m e m b e r e d -
20131117,0,2096019.story#axzz3qHDHK9F6.
� Ulin, David L. “Doris Lessing Reveled in Her Status as A Contrarian.” Los
Angeles Times, 18 Nov. 2013, http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/
l a - e t - jc - d o r is - l es s i ng - a p p r e c i a t io n- 2 0 1 3 111 8 , 0 , 3 3 5 7 5 5 .
story#axzz3qHDHK9F6.
� Varughese, E. Dawson. Reading New India: Post-Millennial Indian
Fiction In English. Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.
� Varataracan, Mu. A History of Tamil Literature. Sahitya Akademi, 1988.
� Wade, Allan, editor. The Letters of W. B. Yeats. Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954,
https://archive.org/details/dli.bengal.10689.1732.
���

___________
Note: Revised text of the keynote address delivered on 24th February 2023 in the
National Seminar on “Trends and Dimensions in Indian English Literature”,
Government J. P. Verma P. G. College, Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, India.