A History of Indian English Literature

A History of Indian English Literature

CHAPTER ONE

The Literary Landscape

INDIAN ENGLISH literature began as an interesting by-product of an eventful encounter in the late eighteenth century between a vigorous and enterprising Britain and a stagnant and chaotic India. As a result of this encounter, as F.W. Bain puts it, 'India, a withered trunk ... suddenly shot out with foreign foliage.' One form this foliage took was that of original writing in English by Indians, thus partially fulfilling Samuel Daniel's sixteenth century prophecy concerning the English language:

Who (in time) knows whither we may vent The treasures of our tongue? To what strange shores This gain of our best glory shall be sent T'enrich unknowing nations with our stores. What worlds in th'yet unformed orient May come refined with th'accents that are ours.

The first problem that confronts the historian of this literature is to define its nature and scope clearly. The question has been made rather complicated owing to two factors: first, this body of writing has, from time to time, been designated variously as

'Indo-Anglian literature', 'Indian Writing in English' and 'Indo-English literature'; secondly, the failure to make clear-cut distinctions has also often led to a confusion between categories such as 'Anglo-Indian literature', literature in the Indian languages translated into English and original composition in English by Indians. Thus, in his A Sketch of Anglo-Indian Literature, E.F. Oaten considers the poetry of Henry Derozio as part of 'Anglo-Indian literature'. The same critic, in his essay on Anglo-Indian literature in The Cambridge History of English Literature includes Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu, Rabindranath Tagore and 'Aravindo Ghose' among 'Anglo-Indian' writers along with F.W. Bain and F.A. Steel. Similarly, Bhupal Singh's Survey of Anglo-Indian Fiction deals with both British and Indian writers on Indian subjects. V.K. Gokak, in his book, English in India: Its Present and Future, interprets the term 'Indo-Anglian Literature' as comprising 'the work of Indian writers in English' and 'Indo-English literature' as consisting of 'translations by Indians from Indian literature into English'. In his massive survey, Indian Writing in English, K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar includes English translations of Tagore's novels and plays done by others in his history of Indian creative writing in English, while H.M. Williams excludes these from his Indo-Anglian Literature eighteen hundred to nineteen seventy: A Survey. John B. Alphonso Karkala uses the term 'Indo-English literature' to mean 'literature produced by Indians in English.'

Strictly speaking, Indian English literature may be defined as literature written originally in English by authors Indian by birth, ancestry or nationality. It is clear that neither 'Anglo-Indian Literature', nor literal translations by others (as distinguished from creative translations by the authors themselves) can legitimately form part of this literature. The former comprises the writings of British or Western authors concerning India. Kipling, Forster, F.W. Bain, Sir Edwin Arnold, F.A. Steel, John Masters, Paul Scott, M.M. Kaye and many others have all written