Indian Writing in English 1794-2004 - Soka University Repository

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194 xxvi xxvii xxviii xxix xxx xxxi xxxii For a detailed discussion of all three writers and their ideological positions see, Vinay Dharwadker, "The Historical Formation of Indian-English Literature," in Literary Cultures in History, ibid., pp. 220-21. C. A. Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire Part 2, Vol. 1 of The New Cambridge History of India, ed., by Gordon Johnson, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) p. 70. Vinay Dharwadker, "The Historical Formation of Indian-English Literature," in Literary Cultures in History, ibid., pp. 206-216. Bapsi Sidhwa, "Creative Process in Pakistani English Fiction," in South Asian English: Structure, Use, and Users, ed., Robert J. Baumgardner, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), pp. 231-32. Raja Rao, "The Caste of English," in Awakened Conscience: Studies in Commonwealth Literature, C. D. Narasimhaiah ed., (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1978). Rao states, "It would then be correct to say as long as we are Indian—that is, not nationalists, but truly Indians of the Indian psyche—we shall have the English language with us and amongst us, but as one of our own, of our caste, our creed, our sect and of our tradition" (p. 421). And again, "Hindi is our national language. It is spoken and understood by nearly three hundred and fifty million out of the six hundred million people of India. But then one could say and rightly: look at the Brahmins, they were not even proportionately as numerous as those who speak English and yet they were so powerful. Though this statement is strictly correct you should not, in all frankness use it, for India today is a secular state, and there is neither Brahmin nor non-Brahmin, Hindu or Muslim. We all are Sri. There is neither Pandit nor Maulana, nor that extraordinary combination of symbols represented by M. R. Sri (which meant Maharaja Raja Sri, a South Indian honorific), Thus Mr. Frank Anthony, the Anglo- Indian leader, is Sri Anthony. Likewise, since India is secular, the English language too loses its superior caste, and becomes the language of India" (p. 422). K. Satchidanandan, Indian Literature: Positions and Propositions, (Delhi: Pencraft International, 1999). In "Introduction: Towards Positioning Indian Literature," Satchidanandan argues that though Indian writing in English is a "legitimate product" it occu- pies a "peripheral region" of Indian literature there is a "disparity" between the hype and its real literary ability to reflect the Indian social and spiritual reality p. 14. The term Indo-Anglian was probably first coined in 1883 to refer to specimen English com- position of native students and was an inversion of the racially imprecise and sometimes pejorative term Anglo-Indian. Adil Jussawala categorically disapproved of Indo-Anglian as a term referring to Indian writing in English and suggested that Indians ought to kill that "nonsense term." A. K. Mehrotra reiterated Jussawala's sentiment in his book, but the term which earlier referred to Anglo-Indian writers like Corbett, Kipling and Forster now inexactly refers to a larger body of literary and cultural identity of Indian writers writing in English. Harish Trivedi refers to the dubious identity of Indo-Anglian literature as the "half caste" offspring of English literature. See Harish Trivedi, "Reading English, Writing Hindi: English Literature and Indian Creative Writing," in Rethinking English: Essays in Literature, Language, History, ed., Svati Joshi, (New Delhi Trianka, 1991), p. 202. In recent criticism the term "Indian -English literature" seems to be more acceptable and more representative of such writ-
ing. xxxiii K Satchidanandan believes that any essentialist attempt to construct Indian literature would only lead to creating a "parody" of the Indian reality, as it would ignore the rich multiplicity and plurality. See, K. Satchidanandan, "Signing in Different Scripts" in Authors, Texts, Issues: Essays on Indian Literature, (New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2003). xxxiv Edward Said, Orientalism, (New York: Vintage, 1979). Said points out that, "Many of the most interesting postcolonial writers bear their past within them—as scars of humiliating wounds, as instigation for different practices—as urgently reinterpretable and redeployable experiences, in which the formerly silent native speaks and acts on territory taken back from the empire ..."(p. 32). xxxv Subha Rao believes that Indian writing in English represents the voice of the urban rich and educated combined with their aspirations to realize an "Un-Indian life"; and therefore it echoes the voice of the colonizer Prospero masquerading as the voice of Caliban (p. 12). Rao argues that the strong desire to succeed in an alien language such as English generates a false standard of success and mental development that will not allow the Indian writer in English to really succeed. (p. 14.) See T. V. Subha Rao, Indian Writing in English: Is There Any Worth in It? (Madurai: Koodal, 1976). xxxvi See Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature, (Oxford: OUP, 1977) for a discussion on the relationship of class in relation to either the emergence of new structures of feeling as it happened in England from 1700 to 1760, break or contradiction in class norms for example in England from 1780 to 1830 or 1890 to 1930, pp. 134-35. xxxvii Svati Joshi, "Rethinking English: An Introduction," in Rethinking English: Essays in Literature, Language, History, ed., Svati Joshi (New Delhi: Trianka, 1991). Joshi elaborates upon the lack of connection between the English text and the Indian material world. She writes "The question that have been pressing upon us have to do with the problematic status of teaching English in the post-colonial situation. The departments of English literature form a large and unified institution within the system of higher education in India. Liberal assump- tions about English literature as `universal' and `normative', and orthodox critical methods that deny any possibility of connecting the English text with our material world, continue to inform much of our pedagogical activity" (p. 1). xxxviii Vinay Dharwadker, "The Historical Formation of Indian-English Literature," in Literary Cultures in History ibid. Dhardadker also believes that Christian missionary schools like Loretto Convent Calcutta, St. Xavier College Bombay and St. Stephen's College Delhi were quite "influential" both in the colonial and postcolonial periods providing education to Indian- English writers such as Jhumpa Lahirim Bharati Mukherjee, Adil Jussawalla, Amitav Ghosh and others (p. 215). xxxix Ranga Rao first noticed many novelists from St. Stephen's College Delhi like Sealy, Ghosh, Chatterjee, Tharoor, Gopal Gandhi getting published in national and international presses. See Ranga Rao, Review of Gopal Gandhi's novel Refuge, The Indian Express, 8 April 1990, p. 108. xl Mulk Raj Anand, "Reflections on the Novel," in Commonwealth Literature: Problems of Response, ed., C. D. Narasimhaiah ed., (Delhi: Macmillan India, 1981). Mulk Raj Anand states, "Although we in India owe a good deal to the European or rather English novel, from 195
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