A few years ago, one of the most popular works of fiction in Indian English literature was translated into Tamil and published by a major publisher here. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. The Hindu, the leading English daily from Chennai, promoted the book with unprecedented enthusiasm. Even today For an ordinary Tamil writer, having a few lines mentioned in The Hindu is considered significant recognition. Therefore, it’s natural that Tamil readers eagerly bought that novel. But after just two months of that frenzy, there was an understandable silence. I never heard any good literary reader ever refer to it as worthy fiction. I never saw anyone naturally bring it up in their literary conversations. That novel is based on Kerala culture. I am a Malayali and write in Malayalam as well. I never saw anyone consider that work a good literary piece in Karla, apart from some silly political discussions about its depiction of E.M.S. Namboodiripad.
That is not a single event. R.K. Narayanan’s novels were translated into Tamil fifty years ago. For over fifty years, some of his novels were textbooks at various colleges. They were culturally close to Tamil people. Yet no discerning reader ever considers them as literary pieces. I can mention many writers like Mulkraj Anand and Kushwanth Singh from that generation; the Tamil literary reader labelled them as simple entertainers or propagandists. In the next generation, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children was translated into Tamil efficiently, but no one ever said anything positive about the novel. I can give many examples; not a single Indian English work of fiction created any impact in the Tamil and Malayalam literary fields for these fifty years. I can mention two exceptions. One is Raja Rao; his ‘The Serpent and the Rope’ was accepted by Tamil literary readers of his generation, and the second is Amitav Ghosh. His ‘Shadow Lines; novel was also well received in Tamil. As a short story writer, Majeri Easwerean stands out as an exception.
But, throughout history, nonfiction works written in Indian English created big waves in Tamil thought. For example, the new wave is Ramachandra Guha’s books on Gandhi. Askar Ali Engineer, Ashis Nandi, and Ranajith Guha are just a few of the many authors who have significantly influenced Tamil thought through their works. The influence of certain nonfiction works translated through English to Tamil, such as ‘From Volga to Ganges’ by Rahul Sankrityayan and ‘Yuganta’ by Irawati Karve, is tremendous.
Why did Tamil and Malayalam literary readers completely dismiss Indian English fiction? We have to keep in mind two things. In regional languages, like Tamil, there is a very dedicated community of literary readers. Readers who have deep reading on the classics of world literature and are well-versed in literary theories. They are not in big numbers; usually they belong to a small circle of little magazines. But they have a partisan attitude towards the literate. They dedicate their lives to literature; they spend their money to run little magazines. In fact, they are the creators of literature and art within every Indian regional culture. But I am always surprised to understand that the known personalities of Indian English writing aren’t aware of these active micro movements of Indian literature or any personalities belonging to that movement because they are considering writing as a profession to earn money and fame only. These dedicated literary activists, not mere readers, are the ones who critically judge Indian English fiction.
I belong to this partisan tradition of modern Tamil and Malayalam literature created by Ka.Na.Subramanyam in Tamil and M.Govindan in Malayalam. They taught me that literature is my religion and that writing is nothing shorter than a mission. I spend my own money for publishing little magazines. I wrote only for little magazines, and I created my own readers throughout the world now with the help of modern communication technology. I always try to find these kinds of partisan groups of literature in every language and consider them only as the real personalities of that literary culture. I have no interest in the popular mainstream culture.
Secondly, in Indian languages, the translations of world literature shaped their characteristics and influenced changes. For example, in Tamil, the translation of great Russian, German, and French classics has had a powerful impact. I don’t know why, but English literature did not create much impact in Tamil and Malayalam. I am an exception; for me, George Eliot and Marie Corelli are great literary masters, maybe because my mother was an ardent fan of British literature. I once wrote that I won’t consider a person qualified to discuss literature unless he has read at least five major classics of world literature from five different cultures. I know at least five hundred good readers with that qualification in Tamil and Malayalam.
The Tamil and Malayalam readers are always very fond of classics from other Indian languages. Vaikom Muhammed Bahseer, Takazhi Sivasangara Pillai, O.V. Vijayan, Paul Zakaria, Sivarama Karanth, S.L. Bhairappa, Bibuthibhushan Bandyopatyay, Darasankar Banarjee, Sunil Gangopatyay, Amar Mithra, Ashapurna Devi, Debesh Roy, Adheen Bandobatyay, Qurratulain Hyder, Prem Chand, Giriraj Kishore, and Rajendra Singh Bedi are still read by Tamil readers, and their works are being republished every year. Even modern writers, such as Vivek Shanbag and Kalpatta Narayanan, have dedicated readers in Tamil Nadu. Also there are regional variations in the reception of translated masters; Bimal Mitra and Srikrishna Alanahalli are big figures in Malayalam, though they are not popular in Tamil. Masti Venkatesa Iyangar is very popular in Tamil, not in Malayalam. The reasons cannot be explained objectively.
Therefore, why these dedicated literary readers and critics of Indian languages are brushing aside Indian English writing is a major question that cannot be ignored. I know that there is always a strong element of power in literature, and that power is actually deciding the valuation of literary works. English is the language of the Indian power system—the power of aristocracy, bureaucracy, academia, and media. That is the reason why Indian English is always placed in the center of Indian literature. For example, I have been writing in Tamil for over forty years, and most critics in the Tamil literary community would likely acknowledge that I am a prominent writer in Tamil, both in terms of popularity and quality. But not a single line was written about me at The Hindu, nor was I invited for the Hindu Lit Fest held at Chennai until my first English translation came out—and I refused to take part in it. Every Indian language is actively resisting this dominance of English.
Last day I was told in an interview that Indian English writing is the ‘mainstream’ literature of India. I was really surprised to hear it. What is the percentage of people speaking English in their homes in India? English is the language of our government, our education, and our media. But we are living in our own languages, and literature is the natural expression of life. A work of art is not a judgment from a court or a research paper from a university. It is a scream of pain or a song of joy, and it will emerge only from our mind. The society’s mind is the language in which it speaks and dreams. India ‘feels’ it’s life through its regional languages, which are spoken every day by millions of people. Indian literature can only emerge from those languages.
Even after one century of history, if the Indian English writing cannot make any impact on devoted Indian readers, then for whom are they writing? Their books are selling well because their market is pan-Indian. Their books are filling the libraries of our colleges because we have thousands of English departments throughout the country. But are they being read? If so, who are the readers? I am travelling throughout India and attending a lot of LitFests in these days. I never met a natural, sensible reader for these works. Yes, Chetan Bhagat and Amish Tripathi have their own readers. The newly emerging English-educated middle class in India seeks simple pulp fiction as a form of sophisticated entertainment. This trend began in Indian languages during the sixties. Additionally, there is another group that reads Indian English fiction for sophisticated enjoyment and to gain insight into upper-class life. For modern literature in Indian English, where are the readers? If there are readers, where are the discussions about that literature? I see only simple, regular reviews and academic research, not readers’ responses.
Why is Indian English fiction not interesting to a devoted literary connoisseur from an Indian language? It is the same reason why a work of art from another Indian language is appealing to him. Adheen Bandopadhyay, from Bengali, and S.L. Bhairappa, from Kannada, are considered literary masters in Tamil Nadu, while Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy are simply brushed aside. The creative writers from other languages provide us with deep insights into their cultures by offering detailed, ‘lifelike’ depictions of life with minute nuances. We are living an entirely new life through those works of art and attaining a vision. That is why some characters of fiction from other Indian languages became like historical figures or archetypes in our culture. For example, Manindranath from ‘Nilkantha Pakhir Khonje’ of Adheen Bandobatyay (Bengal) or Mahibat Roy from ‘Sorath, Tara Vaheta Pan’ by Jhaverchand Meghani (Gujarati) are living phenomenons of Tamil literature.
I am not writing this for a self-centered, egoistic Indian English writer who wields the power of English as a weapon; instead, I am addressing someone who genuinely desires to create original works of art and engage in meaningful communication with the soul of a reader, and I hope there are a few such individuals somewhere. A writer must believe in the spiritual power of literature, and it is his duty towards history. This is high time to think about the fact of whether Indian English fiction is performing that duty. An emerging Indian English writer has to raise the question at least to himself personally.
Indian English fiction is often uninteresting to the ideal Indian literary reader because it generally presents an “outsider’s view” of Indian life and culture. Usually, the author has some superficial impressions of the life he depicts, and he nurtures few political and sociological ideas about it. Occasionally, he conducts some research on the subject. However, he is still an outsider; he cannot offer anything original. English, as a language itself, alienates him from the life he is writing. English as a vessel can fetch a small part of the culture, emotion, and vision of that life. While narrated in English, the spirit of Indian life is minutely altered, and a contrived reality is always presented. A serious literary reader would immediately notice the absence of this minute element, which forms the core of literature. The human cognition ability is very minute; art and literature are trying to make it sharper. I can’t say how and why, but this loss is visible in an otherwise well-written, well-edited piece of Indian English fiction within a few pages. In contrast, I quickly sensed the real life and was captivated by it in a poorly translated, plainly narrated work like ‘Sorath, Tara Vaheta Pan.’ I am talking to the reader who can sense what I am trying to explain.
Capturing this essence of life is the real task of literary writing. It is not a craft; a master writer, who achieved outstanding works of art, can fail in this attempt. For example, S.L. S.L. S.L. Bhairappa, the genius of Kannada literature, miserably fails in his later novels, like Avanana, Kavalu, and Yana. It truly represents a writer’s deepest fear. I am always anxious about this failure because I know there is a hand of ‘God’ in creative writing. Something must have happened. Something must emerge from us. To achieve this, the author must lose his subjectivity while writing and become the work itself. That transformation is always missing in Indian English writing. A real reader can easily discover the exact point where the author handed over the rein to the horse. For me, as a reader and a critic, the brilliance, erudition, and craft of a writer means nothing; infact sometimes I feel irritated to see them. I seek real inspiration and emotional evocation only.
Instead, Indian English fiction focuses on presenting a polished text, a result of the collective efforts of editors. This collective activity results in all texts having a standardized language and form, which can be irritating for literary readers. As a critic, I believe a work of art can’t be completely perfect. There are two reasons for that. A work of art is a newly born one; there will be no other work like that. ‘Ananya’ is the Sanskrit word that describes this unique quality. For making a thing perfect, there should be a preexisting ideal for that. The corrections can be done according to that norm. A commercial and practical craft can be perfected, which is not the case for creative arts. Art is subjective at every level, both in creation and appreciation. So it can’t be judged or mastered objectively. The diction of the language can be improved by editing clichés and other errors, and data can be checked. but it can never be made ‘perfect.’
The voice of Latha Mangeshkar is sweet and perfect, but it is suitable for simple songs only. The voice of Kishori Amonkar is deep and wild; we can hear the voices of our village women in it, and occasionally even the sound of animals. It is like the voice of our deities. It is art.
I would say this: imperfection serves as a form of artistic expression. When the inner mind of the writer, or the dream that works through the language, meets a new reality, either inner or outer, it is actually perplexed. When it catches a few, others are missed; when it concentrates on one thing, others are blurred. That is why after writing a work of art, the author is unsatisfied, irritated, and feels betrayed. No genuine author can complete a creative work; he stops working on it and moves towards another one. But for the reader like me, that imperfection element actually provides a ‘gap’ to enter into the subtexts of the work of art. It gives me a space to fill with my imagination. While singing, Madurai Somu just lifts his hands to show the pitch that he cannot reach; a listener can go there through his imagination.
The Indian English writing is often lauded for its style and form. Whenever we mention the mild pretentiousness that is often present in Indian English fiction, we are told that these writers possess great style. But for an avid reader like me, there are several great stylists in British and American writing. Why should I read an Indian writer for style? And what is style in literature? A style is a way of expressing a writer’s mind in a language, but it is not the creation of that particular writer. He is actually harvesting it from the everyday language of people around him. He is picking the best linguistic expressions from the ever-changing oral language. The linguistic sensibility of the writer is his device to select and restructure it as a style. In India English is not a common language; it’s a language of power, business, and education. It is very formal and as dead as a fossil. One cannot create an original style from it. If a writer wants to create an original style in Indian English, he must be very close to the language spoken in Indian streets. Is there any Indian writer with that qualification? Now, the style they are claiming is very cerebral and actually a kind of imitation of Western literary styles and forms. Why should I read this second version when the fine first version is available?
Simply, this is the answer to the question of why Indian English writing has absolutely no impact on Indian thought, culture, and writing. Readers of Indian languages do not consider it, and even Indian English writers draw their inspiration solely from renowned Western masters. Just look at the difference; almost all Indian English writers belong to the upper class, upper-caste circle of India. They are highly educated persons; a lot of them studied in Western universities. They are generally high-placed individuals, academics, English journalists, high officials, and businessmen. None of the writers among them has a simple, common background. No one among them has lived with ordinary Indian people, which is why they rely on news reports about Indian life. They are actually looking down on us. We can see a hidden sneer in most of these writings. I remember an occasion when I was twenty-five years old and reading ‘Rich Like Us,’ a novel by Nayanthara Sahgal, on a train from Trivandrum to Kazaragod. The author’s pretentious humanism left me feeling personally insulted. She wrote with shameful ignorance about Indian culture, the Indian psyche, and Indian spirituality. I just tore that novel into pieces and literally wept. This is what this senseless Indian English writing is doing to us, the ordinary Indian readers.
The Indian English writer has no ‘life’ to write about. So they have only four things to do. Writers can depict their upper-class lives, as seen in A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, which interests the average Indian upper-middle-class reader. They can do extensive research on a subject and give an elaborated, yet lifeless, documentation of a part of Indian history, like Amitav Ghosh’s “Glass House.” They can imitate a Western or Latin American form and style and use an Indian context, like Rushdie at Victory City. Or they can cook simple political correctness or liberal ideas as fiction, like God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. My conception of literature differs significantly from theirs. My model is Isaac Bashevis Singer. They created their own style and vision using their own languages and expressed it in English. I understand and admire the way Wole Soyinka stopped writing in English and started to write in his language.
The primary issue with Indian English fiction is its misrepresentation to the outside world as Indian fiction. Wikipedia says Emma Lee-Potter of The Independent listed ‘A Suitable Boy’ as one of the 12 best Indian novels. How can a Western critic impose such a judgement on us? Can a sensible Indian reader genuinely claim that this particular novel has made any impact on Indian readers? In these past thirty years I never read any literary critic or writer casually mention its impact on him or place it on his favorite list. It is merely a typical Bollywood soap, written with the sneer of a writer who caters to the Western palate, and that sneer is considered satire and style. As a literary critic, I will never list it among the five hundred best Indian novels.
Recently, while speaking with a set of American authors at Charleston in the USA, I mentioned this issue strongly. Indian English fiction is a body created with a purpose to communicate with the Western audience. That is the primary reason it is alien to an Indian reader. It takes its style, form, and mindset from Western fiction, and that is why it is easy to read and enjoy for a Western reader. But actually he is satisfying his colonialist or racist ego only; he is looking at himself in a mirror and enjoying it. If he wants to read real Indian fiction, he has to make an effort. He should understand the cultural nuances and unique emotionality of Indian fiction. Any good literature is basically written to communicate with its people; if an outsider wants to read it, he must move ahead from his own cultural space. A Western reader has to do that because I am taking all kinds of effects to understand and enjoy their fiction. They shouldn’t expect us to write like them.
India, like any eastern country, has its own unique culture and complex relationship with languages. Its fiction will be naturally unique and complicated. For the past hundred years India has been trying to discover its own modern literature. We have to remember that the West created its modern literature two hundred years earlier. The modern literature in India has two major challenges. The first thing is its primary model, Western literature. Another one is its age-old classic tradition. In the beginning the modern literature in Indian languages had these two distinct and rival tendencies. Then it found its dialectics and created its own classics. A Western reader who has a real interest in Indian literature has to understand this struggle and dialectics. If he is satisfied with the texts that are showing his own picture to him, he is missing India. Indian English literature never faced this kind of original problem, and it has no artistic struggle to create itself. It just imitated the language and forms from the West and took India just as an exotic terrain for its stories.
Now is the right time for us to discuss authentic Indian fiction. Simple western critics and reviewers should not be allowed to decide our national literary character. We may have miserable failures; our writing may be naive and imperfect. But we are creating our own literature, and it is the real Indian writing. We have to place it in front of the world. A simple western fiction reader may locate it difficult to read (or, as an American reader said about my short stories, they may be “too Indian”), but we can wait for a sincere literary reader to emerge.
