Progression of Indian writings in English

In this week's column, I will focus on the progression of Indian writings in English drawing a parallel with the post -colonial evolution of Sri Lankan writings in English.

Since English is a legacy of British colonialism, it is interesting, to examine in brief its evolution in the host countries and how successive generations of writers used it as an effective tool of communication for all. However, my focus will, primarily, be on the use of English as a medium for creative writing and is an expression of the socio-economic realities of the day through literature.

Although the arrival of English in India and its subsequent rooting in the social fabric marked a significant phase in the progression of Indian writings in English, it is important to note the many mediums of interracial contact and acculturation which made possible the emergence of authors of Indian origin in English.

Means of interracial contact and acculturation

In examining the progression of Indian Writing in English in India, it is evident that means of contact and acculturation were possible due to the early -modern literate Indian multilingualism, a product of a highly cosmopolitan culture of Mughal under successive reign of Akbar, Jahangir and Sha Jahan.

The means of interracial contact and acculturation were Employment, Marriage and Family, Religious Conversion and Friendship and Social Relations. The early Indian writers in English primarily belonged to one of these means in acquiring proficiency in English and in the process of acculturation. The travels of Din Mahomet, A Native of Patna in Bengal, Through Several Parts of India, While in the Service of The Honourable The East India Company, Written by Himself, In a Series of Letters to a Friend were among the first texts in English by an author of Indian origin. The stories were published in two volumes in Cork in Ireland in 1794. The author of the publication was Din Muhammad, one of the pioneers of Indian writers in English. According to records, at the time of writing, Din Muhammad established himself in Ireland, and had married a woman of Anglo-Irish stock. Din Muhammad was followed by Cavelli Venkata Boriah and Rammohun Roy. The latter is considered as the point at which Indian- English literature, modern Indian literature and Indian modernity began.

Although the first generation of Indian writers in English were noted for their mimicry of English idioms of the day, latter generations attempted to invent Indian literariness in English in a highly aestheticised and self-conscious form. This movement continued through several stages of Indian writings in English until it was replaced by modernists and the Progressive Writers' movement in the last two decades of the colonial rule in India. One of the principal characteristics of the writers of this period was that they attempted to compose texts with an emphasis on the 'Beauty of expression and sentiments '.

This literary movement within the genre of Indian writings in English was spearheaded mainly by five writers in the nineteenth century; Henry Luois Vivian Derozio, Michael Madhusundan Dutt, Manmohan Ghose and Sarojini Naidu. Sri Lankan writers are familiar particularly with Naidu's work ( some of which have been rendered into Sinhala).

In her poetry Sarojini covered local themes portraying India's rivers, temples and contemporary social milieu representing them in her poetry. Her collections "The golden threshold (1905)", "The bird of time (1912)", and "The broken wing (1912)" attracted a huge Indian and English readership.

One of the significant aspects of this literary movement was that it had not merely aimed at 'arts for art's sake' but impelled by the desire to demonstrate despite numerous constraints, the Indian writers could also achieve the same degree of verbal competency, technical mastery, mellifluousness and imaginative inventiveness as their British counterparts.

However, the importance of this movement lies in its ability to draft the blueprint of Indian-English aesthetics which continue to occupy a prominent space in the twentieth century Indian writings in English. Although the movement hampered the abilities of some Indian -English poets, influence of writers such as Bankimchandra Chatterjee, C. Subramania Bharati and Rabindranath Tagore who were able to transfer Indian sensibilities to English, is still felt on the twentieth century Indian -writings in English. It should be mentioned here that the aesthetic literary movement of India had not resulted from colonialism but sprang as a result of long drawn out contestation of representing India in English by British and Indian writers in English.

Another important phase of Indian-writing in English is the realistic literary movement which was primarily represented by authors like R.K Narayan, Mulki Raj Anand, Raja Rao and G.V Desani. Although it is not possible to examine the corpus of work produced by these Indian writers in English, it is pertinent to briefly examine the defining characteristics of the movement. Unlike the highly aesthetic motives of the nineteenth century poets, realistic cannon was characterised by low mimic mode with the portrayal of contemporary reality, everyday life, individual experiences, shared social phenomenon and the unfolding events of the local and national history.

Of the early Indian writers of the early 20thcentuary Raja Rao's work is very important for several reasons. First, his works are deeply rooted in Brahmanism and Hinduism. In his writings he also looked for spirituality as a means of liberation. His semi-autobiographical novel, The Serpent and the Rope (1960), is based on a story of a search for spiritual truth. This novel established him as one of the finest Indian stylists.

Raja Rao was born on November 8, 1908 in Hassan, in the state of Mysore into a Brahman family. Rao's mother tongue was Kanarese, but all his publications in book form were in English. In the foreword to his widely acclaimed Kanthapura (1938) Rao admitted the difficulties in using "a language that is not one's has not the spirit that is one's own. He highlighted and wrote on "the various shades and omissions of certain thought-movement that looks maltreated in an alien language."

In a way Rao's experience has similar characteristics to Sinhalese literary giants such as Martin Wickremasinghe and Gunadasa Amarasekara and Sri Lankan writer in English such Punyathate Wijenaike, Sita Kulathunga and Alfreda de Silva.

Vinay Dharwadker in an academic article spells out the defining characteristics of the realistic movement as; "The chosen style of the late colonial decades (and subsequently of early post -Independent decades) therefore turned out to be realism, which brought together psychological realism and social realism and with the latter category both humanist social realism (and Marxian Socialist realism). If the poets of the long nineteenth century had achieved limited yet remarkable aestheticisation of Indian-English literature, then what the prose writers of late colonial decades accomplished was the literary invention of Indian contemporaneity, a formation in which the writings of a period succeed in minutely (yet comprehensively) representing the Lebenswelt, or " lived world" of the time"

Indian diasporic literature

An important medium outside the traditional areas of contact and acculturation is the large Indian diasporic writers of English who continue to exert considerable influence on the Indian literary landscape in English. Diasporic Indian writers in English such as Salman Rushdie, Saleem Paradina, Agha Shahid Ali, Bharati Mukherjee, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Kiran Desai and Aravind Adigar come from diverse ethnic, linguistic and cultural backgrounds constitute the Indian diaporic writers in English. As Indian film had carved a niche for itself in the international arena, Indian writing in English has occupied a prominent place at international literary market as several of these writers have won prestigious literary awards such as the Booker Prize.

Compared to Sri Lankan writings in English, Indian writings in English by and large, have achieved maturity in generating its own tropes and idiom which even in a position to influence English literary production and particularly English writings emerging from Asian continent.

One of the important aspects of the progression of Indian writings in English from colonial days to the present is the vast cannon of literary productions both in fiction and non-fiction in English and the institutionalisation of English education. The primary motive of institutionalised English education in India seems not to indigenise English but reorient it within the parameters of English prosody in order to invent Indian literariness and to express Indian sentiments. The inevitable by product of such an enlightened literary movement is to equip the generation with linguistic and literary abilities enabling Indians to stand on their feet among the community of nations in a globalised milieu.