A History of Indian English Literature - M.K. Naik

A History of Indian English Literature - M.K. Naik

Preface

Acknowledged 'with civil leer' by many and damned 'with faint praise' by some for a long time, Indian English literature, designated variously as 'Indo-Anglian Literature', 'Indo-English Literature' and 'Indian Writing in English' (and once even regarded unjustly as part of'Anglo-Indian Literature'), is now more than one hundred seventy years old. In spite of the great pioneering efforts of Professor K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar- virtually the father of the serious study of this body of writing- in his Indo-Anglian Literature, The Indian Contribution to English Literature, and Indian Writing in English, a systematic, comprehensive and critical history of this literature, clearly defining its nature and scope, adopting a proper period-division and relating writers and schools firmly to changing India-political conditions had not been attempted. Viewing Indian English literature as essentially a significant by-product of the eventful encounter between India and the Indian ethos on the one hand, and England, the English language and Western culture on the other, the present work tries to trace the course of this literature from eighteen oh nine, the year when probably the first imposition in English of some length by an Indian - namely, V. Boriah's 'Account of the Jains' - appeared to the end of nineteen seventy-nine. While the needs of a systematic chronological survey have been kept in mind throughout, the responsibility of rigorous critical evaluation has not been sought to be evaded. Writers like Sri Aurobindo, Rabindranath Tagore and Sarojini Naidu have often driven critics and reviewers into opposite camps, generating both uncritical adulation and unthinking condemnation. The present work tries to adopt a balanced approach to these writers.

'A work is never necessarily finished', says Paul Valery, 'for he who made it is never complete'. This is perhaps specially true of a history of literature, which involves one single mind's encounters with a large number of authors belonging to different periods and schools and exemplifying different kinds of sensibility. The writing of a literary history must therefore necessarily involve the education of the historian's literary taste, and I must thank the authorities of the Sahitya Akademi for giving me this opportunity to acquire such an education.

I have received much help from numerous friends in the compilation of this history. A forbiddingly large number of books published in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were not easily available-some of them not even in reputed metropolitan libraries. B.A. Olkar-an old friend and a confirmed bibliophile-went expertly hunting in antique book-shops in Bombay, and similar operations zestfully carried out by my young friends, S. Subrahmanya Sarma and R. Raphael in Madras, S. Krishna Bhatta in Bangalore and G.S. Balarama Gupta at Annamalainagar also yielded a sizable harvest. Dr. G.S. Dikshit, Dr. Amalendu Bose, Dr. V.M. Kulkarni, Mr. D.G. Angal, Mr. M.N. Nagaraj, Mr. N.B. Marathe, Dr. Prema Nandakumar, Dr. Shyamala Narayan, and Dr. H.S. Saksena also made much valuable material available to me. Dr. V.K. Gokak, Dr. Chaman Nahal, Dr. Sisir Kumar Ghose, Dr. K. Krishnamoorthy, Mr. Ruskin Bond, Dr. Nirmal Mukherjee, Dr. Sujit Mukherjee, Dr. M. Sivaramakrishna, Dr. K. Ayyappa Panikar, Dr. K.N. Sinha, Mr. Lakhan Deb, Dr. H. Raizada, Dr. R.B. Patankar, Mr. V.D. Trivadi, Dr. Visvanath Chatterjee, Miss Eunice D'Souza and Miss Kaushiki Sen Verma answered my numerous queries (I strongly suspect that during the last two years many of my correspondents must have dreaded the periodic arrival of a hastily written little post-card from Dharwar asking for information).

The librarians and the staff of the following libraries extended their willing co-operation to me: National Library, Calcutta; Tagore Museum and Library, Santiniketan; University of Bombay Library and Asiatic Library, Bombay; Poona University Library, Deccan College Library and Fergusson College library, Poona; Osmania University Library, C.I.E.F.L. Library, Salar-jung Museum Library, Sir Nizamut Jung Library, State Library and Andhra Pradesh Archives, Hyderabad; Bangalore University Library, Bangalore; Mysore University Library, Mysore; Madras University Library, Adyar Library, Presidency College Library, Connemara Library and Tamil Nadu Archives, Madras; Sri Aurobindo Ashram Library and the Romain Rolland Library, Pondicherry, and the Regional Library and Kamatak College Library, Dharwar. To Mr. K.S. Deshpande and his enthusiastic band of colleagues at the Karnatak University Library, Dharwar I owe a special debt of gratitude. The more I asked for, the more responsive they were (a couple of assistant librarians once even allowed themselves to be dragged to the Binding Section to search for the back numbers of periodicals).

In writing about prose of different types-political, historical, philosophical, etc., and criticism of Sanskrit literature and the arts, I had inevitably to depend upon the acknowledged expertise of my University friends belonging to different disciplines-Dr G.S. Dikshit, Dr K. Raghavendra Rao, Dr K. Krishnamootthy, Dr G.K. Bhat, Dr S.S. Settar, Dr R.B. Patankar, Dr L.C. Mulatti and Professor K.J. Shah. Dr Rao and Dr Dikshit also read my typescript and drew my attention to matters that called for a reconsideration. Professor R.G. Chenni assisted in preparing the typescript for the press, Dr C.V. Venugopal read the proofs and compiled the Index with a mastery born of long practice.

I am deeply grateful to all these numerous friends and associates. In the final chapter, I have drawn on my essay, 'In Defence of Indian Writing in English' included in Indo-English Literature edited by Dr K.K. Sharma. The grant of a National Fellowship for three years enabled me to take time off from my normal teaching duties and also made work in the various libraries possible. My thanks are due to the authorities of the University Grants Commission and Kamatak University for this generous gesture.

Before concluding, I must place on record my appreciation of the patience and consideration shown by the Secretary, the Deputy Secretary (Programme) and the other authorities of the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, in extending (more than once) my deadline for submitting the final typescript of this history.

CHAPTER ONE.

The Literary Landscape: The Nature and Scope of Indian English

Literature

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

To enrich unknowing nations with our stores.

What worlds in the yet unformed orient

May come refined with the 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, Indo-English Literature in the Nineteenth Century 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 about India, but their work obviously belongs to British literature. Similarly, translations from the Indian languages into English cannot also form part of Indian English literature, except when they are creative translations by the authors themselves. If Homer and Virgil, Dante and Dostoevsky translated into English do not become British authors by any stretch of the imagination, there is little reason why Tagore's novels, most of his short stories and some of his plays translated into English by others should form part of Indian English literature. On the other hand, a work like Gitanjali which is a creative translation by the author himself should qualify for inclusion. The crux of the matter is the distinctive literary phenomenon that emerges when an Indian sensibility tries to express itself originally in a medium of expression which is not primarily Indian. There is, of course, that infinitesimally small class of Indian society called the Anglo-Indian i.e., the Eurasians, who claim English as their mother tongue; but with notable exceptions like Henry Derozio,

Aubrey Menen and Ruskin Bond, few of them have tried to express themselves creatively in English. But even in their case, the Indian strain in them is bound to condition the nature of both their artistic sensibility and their way of expression. In fact, the poetry of Derozio is a copybook example of this. However, since literature is not a science, there will always be a no man's land in which all attempts at strict definition are in danger of getting lost in a haze. Thus, there are exceptional cases like Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The former, born of a Sri Lankan Tamil father and an English mother, was neither an Indian citizen nor did he live in India; and yet the entire orientation of his thought is so unmistakably Indian that it is impossible not to consider him an Indian English writer. As for Jhabvala, she is virtually an international phenomenon. Born of Polish parents in Germany, she received her education in English, married an Indian, lived in India for more than twenty years, and has written in English. This daughter-in-law of India (though a rebellious one, in her later work) shows such close familiarity and deep understanding of Indian social life (especially in her earlier work) that she has rightly found a place in the history of Indian English literature. On the other hand, V.S. Naipaul's Indian ancestry is indisputable, but he is so much of an outsider when he writes about India and the Indians and so much of an insider while dealing with Caribbean life and character, that there can be no two opinions on his rightful inclusion in the history of West Indian Writing,

It is obvious that Indian English literature, thus defined is not part of English literature, any more than American literature can be said to be a branch of British literature. It is legitimately a part of Indian literature, since its differentia is the expression in it of an Indian ethos. Its use of English as a medium may also give it a place in Commonwealth literature, but that is merely a matter of critical convenience, since the Commonwealth is largely a political entity-and, in any case, this does not in the smallest measure affect the claim of Indian English literature to be primarily a part of Indian literature.

Another problem which the historian of this literature has to face is that of choosing from among the various appellations given to it from time to time-viz., 'Indo-Anglian literature', 'Indian Writing in English', 'Indo-English literature' and 'Indian English literature'. The first of these terms was first used as the title of the Specimen Compositions from Native Students, published in Calcutta in eighteen eighty-three. The phrase received general currency when K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, the pioneer of this discipline, used it as a title to his first book on the subject: Indo-Anglian Literature, nineteen forty-three. He, however, now agrees that '"Indo-Anglian" strikes many as a not altogether happy expression.' He adds, 'I know many are allergic to the expression "Indo-Anglian", and some would prefer "Indo-English". The advantage with "Indo-Anglian" is that it can be used both as adjective and as substantive, but "Indo-Anglian" would be unthinkable. "Indo-Anglian" is reasonably handy and descriptive.' But a major flaw in the term 'Indo-Anglian', as pointed out by Alphonso-Karkala, is that it would suggest 'relation between two countries (India and England) rather than a country and a language.' 'Indo-Anglian' is thus hardly an accurate term to designate this literature. Apart from that, 'Indo-Anglian' also appears to be cursed with the shadow of the Anglican perpetually breathing ecclesiastically down its slender neck, and threatening to blur its identity. (In fact, Professor Iyengar has noted how, in his book, Literature and Authorship in India, 'Indo-Anglian' was changed to 'Indo-Anglican' by the enterprising London printer who, puzzled at so odd an expression, transformed it into something familiar.) For his first comprehensive study of the subject, published in nineteen sixty-two, K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar used the phrase, 'Indian Writing in

English'. Two pioneering collections of critical essays on this literature, both published in nineteen sixty-eight, also followed his example: Indian Writing in English - Critical Essays by David McCutchion and Critical Essays on Indian Writing in English edited by M.K. Naik, S.K. Desai and G.S. Amur. But the term 'Indian Writing in English' has been accused of having a rather circumlocutory air, and while 'Indo-English literature' possesses an admirable compactness, it has, as noted earlier, been used to denote translations by Indians from Indian literature into English. The Sahitya Akademi has recently accepted 'Indian English Literature' as the most suitable appellation for this body of writing. The term emphasizes two significant ideas: first that this literature constitutes one of the many streams that join the great ocean called Indian literature, which, though written in different languages, has an unmistakable unity; and secondly, that it is an inevitable product of the nativization of the English language to express the Indian sensibility. Nevertheless, by whatever name Indian English literature is called, it remains a literary phenomenon worthy of serious scrutiny.