Indian Writing in English 1794-2004 - Soka University Repository

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192 Read him Ghalib's discourse just once to show how. (Jo yeh kaheye Rekhta kiunkar ho rashk-I-Farsi' Guftta Ghalib aik bar parh key usey soona ke `Youn'.) Asserting Urdu's distinctiveness and, for some, superiority over Persian was simpler to do than to locate the language in the social setting of north-western India. Incorporating Urdu into Hindustani without separating it from Hindi identified it with Persian and Sanskrit alike" (p. 105). xi For more information about Gandhi's views on language see Gandhi's "Letter to Vasumati Pandit Dated November 12, 1924" in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. XXV, (Delhi: The Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, May 1967). In the letter Gandhi advises Pandit not to worry about mistakes as "Language is a medium for communication of thought . Everything is all right so long as there is nothing wrong in the thought. A demon sitting in an aeroplane is not worthy of our respect, but a sadhu sitting in a bullock cart is" (p. 309). xii Gandhi felt that the vernacular languages and Hindustani should be used within the country as legal and administrative languages while English as the language of diplomacy abroad. In his "Presidential Address at Belgaum Congress December 26 , 1924" in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. XXV, ibid., Gandhi said, "The official language for provincial gov- ernments, legislatures and courts, within a definite period, to be the vernacular of the province; of the Privy Council, the final court of appeal, to be Hindustani; the script to be either Devanagri or Persian. The language of the Central Government and of the Central Legislature to be Hindustani, The language of international diplomacy to be English" (p. 481). xiii We can see the influence of the English Romantics such as Shelley and Keats on the writings of Jai Shaker Prasad or Sumitranandan Pant. Premchand's realism was undoubtedly reminis- cent of Charles Dickens and Bankim Chandra's Durgesh Nandini closely resembled, if not a plagiarized version of, Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. xiv It is possible to argue that many Indian-English novelists use themes, characters and at times even locales that are essentially Indian but their choice of the English medium does not trans- form them into non-Indian writers. Mulk Raj Anand's Private Life of an Indian Prince, Manohar Mulgonker's The Princess, even Raja Rao's The Serpent and the Rope (though located in England and France nevertheless has characters like Rama and Savithri are Indian) or R. K. Narayan's Malgudi novels (South Indian life) are quintessentially Indian in theme and sensibility though written in English. xv Srinivasa Iyengar, Indian Writing in English, (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1973), p. 5. xvi Obviously we must exclude the works of Rudyard Kipling (Barrack-Room Ballads, Plain Tales from the Hills, The City of Dreadful Nights), E. M. Forster (A Passage to India), Pearl S Buck (Come My Beloved) or Louise Broomfield (The Rains Came) from the canon of Indian writing in English as they belong to the category of either English or American literature though their themes might be Indian. xvii R. C. Churchill and George Sampson, The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature, (ELBS, 1972), p. 742. xviii This seems to be the opinion of many literary scholars and writers like Aijaz Ahmad (In
Theory) and Salman Rushdie (Mirrorwork). xix The early eighteenth century also saw an increase in the political and economic fortunes of the British in India encouraging them to adopt a nabob-style large retinue of indigenous domestic help and after 1725 this quickened the Anglicization of a section of the Indian popu- lation. Secondly the Company's army began to recruit Muslim soldiers from the Mughal army in the mid-eighteenth century and an increasing number of lower caste Hindus, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians, Sikhs, Gurkhas and Nepalis were also anglicized. xx Vinay Dharwadker, "The Historical Formation of Indian-English Literature," in Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia. Sheldon Pollock ed., (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 213. xxi For a new reassessment of the use of English in India in the latter half of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries before the formal introduction of English in India in 1813 see Vinay Dharwadker, "The Historical Formation of Indian-English Literature," in Literary Cultures in History, ibid., pp. 199-267. xxii For a detailed discussion of Indians learning Portuguese, Dutch, French and subsequently English in the seventeenth and eighteenth century to function as intermediaries in European trade centers see Burton Stein, A History of India, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998). Many of the dubhasis who became personal agents of company officials were later called baniyas or banyans in colonial Bengal. Most baniyas performed menial tasks taking care of household spending but there were rich and influential banias like Gokul Ghosal baniya to Harry Verelst or Cantu Babu (Krishna Kanta Nandy) baniya to Warren Hastings. When widespread corrup- tion amongst Company officials forced Governor Generals Cornwallis and Wellesley to abol- ish the institution of dubhasis, the scholarly dubhasis became assistants to colonial adminis- trator scholars helping the former interpret the Persian/Sanskrit/Dravidian or Indo-Aryan languages and tradition. For more information on the influence of dubhiyas see P. J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 45 and Bernard S. Cohn, An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 503 xxiii Vinay Dharwadker, "The Historical Formation of Indian-English Literature," in Literary Cultures in History, ibid. pp. 210-11. xxiv For a more detailed account of Rammohun Roy's works see M. K. Naik, A History of Indian English Literature, (New Delhi: Sahitya Akedemi, 1982), pp. 14-48; Mohun Lal ed., Encyclopedia of Indian Literature Vol. 4, Navaratri to Sarvasena, (New Delhi: Sahitya Akedemi, 1991), pp. 3708-9. For his life see Saumyendranath Tagore, Raja Rammohun Roy, (New Delhi: Sahitya Akedemi, 1966), pp. 14-30. xxv They also wrote verse in English. On Din Muhammad see Michael H. Fisher ed. The Travels of Dean Mahomed 1759-1851 in India, Ireland and England, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997) p. 136; on Boriah see M. K. Naik, A History of English Literature, (New Delhi: Sahitya Akedemi, 1982), p. 13; on Rammohun Roy's see Saumyendranath Tagore, Raja Rammohun Roy, (New Delhi: Sahitya Akedemi, 1966) p. 32 and Mohan Lal, Encyclopedia of Indian Literature Vol. 4, Navaratri to Sarvasena, (New Delhi: Sahitya Akedemi, 1991), p 3708. Also see Stephen Hay ed., Sources of Indian Tradition 2nd ed. Vol. 2., Modern India and Pakistan, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 34. 193
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