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India Book Publishing: Hot on English
Interesting fact: India is the third largest English book producing country after the United States and the United Kingdom, and the largest number of books are published in English!
If you have either majored in English Literature in the last few years in India, or have been an avid reader of all sorts of literature, you would have noticed the growing number of Indian authors who are writing in English and having their books published. The year after I began my under graduation, the Delhi University introduced a course on Indian writers and their work for students majoring in English Literature. I, unfortunately, never got to take that course since it began the year after I joined, but to me, as for others, it marked recognition of the growing body of work by Indian authors. Indian English literature was now being treated as an independent entity to be studied and critiqued and admired. However, to a global audience, the significance of these writers has not yet been felt in a huge way. There are still only a handful of authors who have gained international recognition through prestigious awards like the Booker Prize. However, the lack of awareness about this body of literature internationally, is not because of poor quality writing. It is mainly because Indians have to find a market abroad for their kind of writing, which deals with themes that not all readers can identify with. However, it would be incorrect to portray Indian writing in English as some sort of uniform body, as there is still some ambiguity about who to include under its umbrella. Generally speaking, Indian writing in English encompasses all writers of Indian origin who write in English. Surprisingly, many of the more popular Indian writers are those who have either been away from India for a long time or have been born and brought up abroad. However, to gain a better understanding of Indian writing in English, a little history might be helpful. Compared to Western literature in English or Indian literature in regional languages, Indian writing in English is still in its nascent stages, having been around for only a century and a half. It dates back to the 1830s, to Kashiprasad Ghosh, who many consider to be the first Indian poet writing in English. Sochee Chunder Dutt was the first writer of fiction. However, in the beginning, political writing was dominant. Indian writing in English, in its earlier stages, was influenced by the Western art form of the novel. Writers in English at this time used the language without mixing in Indian words to convey an essentially Indian experience. Some of these earlier writers would include Raja Rao Kanthapura, Nirad C Chaudhuri, and perhaps the most well known of all, R K Narayan. Narayan, was initially noticed and helped by the renowned author, Graham Greene, to find a publisher in England. They remained close friends through the years. Greene felt that Narayan’s creation of the fictitious town of Malgudi gave the reader a vivid understanding of the Indian experience. Most Indian children and adults are familiar with Narayan’s “Malgudi days”, either with the writing, or the famous television series about Malgudi. However, many attribute the actual boom of Indians writing in English to Salman Rushdie. Rushdie’s Booker Prize winning novel in 1981, Midnight ’s Children, paved the way for a new style of writing that is now common among almost all the Indian writers in English. He used a mixed language where he generously sprinkled Indian terms through his book to convey his representation of India. Rushdie’s style is usually categorized under the magical realism mode of writing, which is probably best known through Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It is supposedly after Rushdie, that Indian writers began to experiment with the use of language and styles, as compared to Narayan’s more pure form and expression. Authors like Gita Hariharan, feel that Rushdie’s impact on Indian writers was quite decisive as his use of language and Indian themes and settings paved the way for postcolonial writers around the world. Hariharan, herself, is an award-winning author. Her book, “The Thousand Faces of Night” won the Commonwealth Prize. After Rushdie, it still took a while for the impact to be seen in India. It was only in 1985, four years after Rushdie’s successful work, that the first crop of the Indian boom in English writing began. 1985 saw Amitav Ghosh’s, “The Circle of Reason”. In 1986 came Vikram Seth’s, “The Golden Gate” that was applauded as a remarkable verse-novel. 1998 saw some significant pieces of work from authors like I. Allen Sealy, “The Trotternama”, Amitav Ghosh, “The Shadow Lines”, Upamanyu Chatterjee, “English August: An Indian Story”, and Salman Rushdie’s controversial, “The Satanic Verses”. Rohinton Mistry’s, “Such a Long Journey” was short listed for the Booker Prize in 1990. 1992 was the year of “A Suitable Boy” by Vikram Seth, which was accompanied by a never before seen marketing drive in India. This boom in writing was not only in fiction as there were several excellent pieces of academic work in English being churned out as well. The boom was also partly due to the entry of publishers of English fiction in Indian. Writers like R K Narayan, had their work primarily published abroad. Even now a large number of writers get their writing published outside India as this helps to guarantee attention. However, it is not always easy to get Western publishers to accept Indian writing as the market for such work is still limited. Westerners have different concerns and their ability to identify with a culture alien to their own makes marketing foreign literature difficult. New Indian publishers have offered a platform to Indian writers whose books may not conform to western tastes. The first of these publishers to enter India was Penguin India , a joint venture between Penguin Books and the Ananda Bazar Patrika, in 1986. This entry was followed almost immediately by Ravi Dayal Publisher. HarperCollins arrived five years later as the result of a tie up between HarperCollins and Rupa Publishing House. These publishing houses noticed the significant number of readers of English writing in India. They decided to establish themselves locally not only to publish for the domestic market, but also to find writers for the international market. Indian writers use various styles that make their writing vibrant, graphic, and colorful. I personally feel that much of the Indian writing I have read is like Indian food. It’s rich, pungent, and leaves you with a tingly feeling! Other than the hybrid language of mixing Indian terms with English, there are other styles that Indian authors incorporate in their writing. While Vikram Seth uses a purer English and more realistic themes, with attention to the story, its details and nuances, authors like Shashi Tharoor, in his “The Great Indian Novel” (1989) employ satire and a story telling mode like in the Indian classic epic “The Mahabarata”, which switches back and forth in time. Tharoor being a UN official living outside India has a more objective viewpoint on while writing. Arundhati Roy writes in a style that depicts her deeply rooted connection to a place where she grew up in the Indian state of Kerala. In her Booker Prize winning novel, “The God of Small Things”, geography and politics are extremely important elements in her narrative. Other writers like Anita Desai, the author of thirteen novels including three short listed for the Booker Prize, live outside India. For non resident Indian writers like her, distance awards a certain vantage point that gives their writing a unique feel. Their experience of India is often brought out more sharply as they notice details that many Indians living in India may take for granted. So what really binds all these Indian writers in English together? There are several problems this body of work faces, as does any literature in its early stages. For one, even though English is widely spoken in India , the numbers of people who can speak and write in it fluently are a minority compared to the total population. Indian writers in English, as noted by Ravi Dayal of Ravi Dayal Publishers, have a “…very urban sensibility – mature, witty, confident, which speaks to a current audience”. This is not surprising since most of these writers come from urban centers of education like St. Stephens in New Delhi , and several of them live abroad. Therefore their rendition of India is from the vantage point of a middle class, well educated, city bred individual. Another problem that they face is portraying India and the Indian experience through a language that does not have its origins in India. It is a significant phenomenon, that before the mid 1980s, poetry rather than fiction was the dominant mode of expression in English writing in India . This was mainly because of poetry’s ability to build direct communication between author and reader whereas the novel requires the creation of a whole world. A related problem is the audience for their books. How do they make it relevant for non-Indian audiences as well? Some writers try and imagine an audience, while others write primarily for English speaking Indians. Also, India being such a vast country with diverse cultures creates additional problems. Expressions used or the Indian experience in a particular region of India is not the same as that in another region. There are a host of other “obstacles” that this relatively new body of literature faces ranging from hostility to Indians writing in English, which has its roots in India’s struggle for Independence from the British, Indian writers still not having their own individual styles, to marketing one’s work. Even classification problems arise as there are some writers who are not comfortable being included in the Indian writers in English category. Nobel Prize Laureate, V.S Naipaul, a third generation Indian from the West Indies , is usually not classified under this head. Other writers like Jhumpa Lahiri, a Pulitzer Prize winning author from the US , is uncomfortable with the Indian Writers in English label. However, despite the problems that go along with any emerging literature, the presence of international publishing houses like Penguin and Harper Collins shows that there are a huge number of Indians writing in English. There may still be initial problems of being accepted internationally. Westerners still have to acquire a taste for Indian themes, since most of them have preconceived notions about India. However, the point does not lie in its being relatively new, but in the fact that most of this writing is very good. Indians have adapted the English language to express themselves and their experiences in a variety of ways. With India being in the news almost everyday for its achievements in the business and technological world, the global community is realizing that their stereotypical notions of India as a land shrouded in mystery are not true. This recognition and mounting awareness about the country by the global community will peak interest in various aspects of India, including the ever-increasing body of English literature by authors of Indian origin. Some other authors of Indian origin and their work:
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