Indian Writing In English

This Book Presents A Collection Of Essays And Research Papers On Indian English Poetry And Fiction. It Has Been Classified In Two Sections. Section A Comprises Essays On Poets Such As Toru Dutt, Aurobindo Ghose, Krishna Srinivas And Kamala Das. Section B Contains Essays On Indian English Novelists Like R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao, Bhabani Bhattacharaya, Anita Desai, Khushwant Singh, Kamala Markandaya, Shashi Deshpande, Shobha De, And Arun Joshi. The Research Papers In The Book By Some Distinguished University Teachers And Professors Of English Posted In Indian Universities Cover A Brief Critical Survey Of Indian English Poetry And Novel Since Their Birth Upto The Present Day. A Brief Survey Of Indian English Religious Poetry And Humanistic Trends In Contemporary Indo-English Fiction Has Also Been Included.

Out Of Evil Cometh Good. One Of The Important Consequences Of Colonialism In India Is The Birth Of Indian English Literature. The Process Through Which It Developed Had Three Distinct Stages. In The First Stage There Was Admiration And Imitation Of The Western Models. After The First Flush Was Over, A Reaction Set In. That Was The Second Stage, The Stage Of Resentment And Rebellion. This Naturally Led To The Third Stage The One We Are Passing Through The Stage Of Self-Discovery And Self-Assertion. The Writers Now Draw On The Rich Cultural Heritage Of India And At The Same Time Explore Its Contemporary Relevance. A Writer Of An Independent Country Cannot Afford To Lose Touch With Social Reality And He Must Understand, Transcribe And Recreate It In Verbal Artefact. The Task Is Rendered More Difficult Because The Indian English Writers Are Obliged To Write In A Language They Are Not Born Into. But The Writers Have Remarkably Overcome All These Difficulties And, Looking At The Achievements Of The Indian English Writers, It Can Be Definitely Claimed That Indian Writing In English Has Come Of Age And Has Completely Got Over The Anxiety Of Influence. The Nineteen Essays That Constitute This Volume Cover A Wide Range Of Authors And Subjects. Starting With Nirad C. Chaudhuri, One Of The Greatest Thinkers And Most Controversial Writers Of The Last Century, The Essays Shed New Lights On Different Aspects Of The Makers Of Indian English Literature: Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan, Manohar Malgonkar, Nayantara Sahgal, Bhabani Bhattacharya, Kasthuri Sreenivasan, Vikram Seth, Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai, Arundhati Roy, A.K. Ramanujan And Kamala Das.Since Indian Writing In English Is Prescribed In Most Of The Universities In India, Both The Teachers And The Students Will Find This Volume Very Useful And Anybody Interested In Indian Writing In English Will Also Find These Luminous Essays Intellectually Stimulating.

Contributed articles.

The Indian subcontinent has produced some of the world's greatest writers, and a body of literature unsurpassed in its sustained imagination, impassioned lyricism and sparkling tragi-comedy. Now Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West have collected together the finest Indian writing of the last fifty years. Published to coincide with the anniversary of India's independence, it is an anthology of extraordinary range and vigour, as exciting and varied as the land that inspired it. Including works by: Mulk Raj Anand Gita Mehta Anjana Appachana Ved Mehta Vikram Chandra Rohinton Mistry Upamanyu Chatterjee R. K. Narayan Amit Chaudhuri Jawaharlal Nehru Nirad C. Chaudhuri Padma Perera Anita Desai Satyajit Ray Kiran Desai Arundhati Roy G. V. Desani Salman Rushdie Amitav Ghosh Nayantara Sahgal Githa Hariharan I. Allan Sealy Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Vikram Seth Firdaus Kanga Bapsi Sidhwa Mukul Kesavan Sara Suleri Saadat Hasan Manto Shashi Tharoor Kamala Markandaya Ardashir Vakil

The essays in this book look at the interaction between English and other Indian languages and focus on the pressure of languages on writers and on each other. Divided into two parts, the first part of the book deals with the pressure that English language has exerted, and continues to exert, in India and our ideas of connectedness as a nation in the ways in which we deal with this pressure. The essays emphasise on the emergence of the hybrid language in the Tamil cultural world because of the presence of English (and Hindi); on the politics of ‘anthologisation’; and how Karnad’s Tughlaq deals with the idea of the nation, looking at its historical location. The second part of the book focuses on Indian English literature and deals with how it interacts with the idea of representing the Indian nation, sometimes obsessively, seen both in poetry and novels. The book argues that the writer’s location is crucial to the world of imagination, whether in the novel, poetry or drama. The world is inflected by the location of the author, and the struggle between the language dominant in that location and English is part of the creative tension that provides energy and uniqueness to writing.

Contributed essays.