History Of Indian Writing In English
HISTORY OF INDIAN ENGLISH NOVEL(Pre-Independence)
Novel(work of prose fiction) is a popular medium to express the characteristics of the society. It works as a mediator between the novelist and the society.
Novel did not generate in India but it has been brought by the British on the Indian English literary ground. It originated in Europe and with the establishment of European colonies , it stepped into the non -European countries. It appeared on the Indian English literary scene following the British colonization in India. Now it is flourishing because of the great efforts of Indian writers. But it took a long time to start as in the beginning , it had to face a number of problems- medium of expression, culture and prejudice against English. The Indian novel is an example of literary hybridization of the Indian content and the Western form.
Fiction was the last to arrive on the Indian literary scene. The earliest fictional efforts- tales rather than novels proper- appeared in journals.
Kylash Chunder Dutt's "A Journal of 48 hours of the Year” 1945 was published in “The Calcutta Literary Gazette" in 1835. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's (1838-94) first and only novel in English "Rajmohan's Wife" was serialised in the Calcutta weekly, The Indian field in 1864 but it appeared in book form only in 1935. It is rather melodramatic tale of the trials of a typical long suffering Hindu wife, Matangini, at the hands of her husband Rajmohan, who is a bully. The setting is an East Bengal village in the late 19th century. A 15 page fragment comprising the English translation, in Bankim Chandra's own handwriting, of his Bengali novel, "Devi Chaudhurani"(1869) has also survived.
From the 1860s up to the end of 19th century, stray(minor) novels continued to appear mostly by writers from the Bengal and Madras Presidencies with Bombay lagging far behind. Some of these novels were however published not in India but in London. There were no novelists with a sizable output to their credit. A majority of these novels are social and a few historical and their models are obviously the 18th and 19th century British fiction, particularly Daniel Defoe and Henry Fielding and Walter Scott. An interesting development is the surprisingly early appearance of women novelists though female education took a long time to spread. Novels by as many as three women novelists appeared before the turn of the century. Toru Dutt's unfinished novel, "Bianca or the young Spanish Maiden"(1878), a romantic love story set in England appeared. There were also novel called "Kamala, A Story of Hindu Life (1895) by Krupabai Satthianadhan and Shevantibai's" A Sketch of a Bombay High Caste Hindu Young Wife "(1895).
Minor novelists
Among the novels to be published between 1864 and 1900 were Ram Punt's" The Boy of Bengal", Tarachand's "The Scorpions or Eastern Thoughts ", Lal Day's "Govinda Samanta" or "The History of a Bengal Rakyat" etc.
With the turn of the century, novelists with a somewhat larger output began to appear. Romesh Chunder Dutt translated two of his own Bengali novels into English. "The Lake of Palms : A Story of Indian Domestic Life" (1902) is a realistic novel of social reform with widow re-marriage as one of its themes. "The Slave Girl of Agra, an Indian Historical Romance"(1909) is set in the Mughal Period.
Two prominent Madras contemporaries of these Bengal novelists were A. Madhaviah and T. Ramakrishna Pillai. Madhaviah wrote Thillai Govindan first published as "A Posthumous Autobiography edited by Pamba". This is an absorbing account, probably autobiographical, of the mental development of a contemporary South Indian Brahmin youth. Under the impact of Western education he loses weight but in the end his rediscovery of The Gita brings him peace. The same author's "Clarinda" is a historical romance dealing with the career of a woman Christian convert of Tanjore.
T. Ramakrishna Pillai wrote two historical romances . "Padmini" (1903) is a love story in which the heroine, a village maiden prefers a poor but high souled lover to an aristocratic usurper. Pillai also wrote "A Dive for Death".
Of the four novels of Sirdar Jogendra Singh, who hailed from Punjab, the first three were published in London and the last in Lahore. "Nur Jahan, the Romance of an Indian Queen" (1909) is a historical novel of the Mughal age. "Nasrin, An Indian Medley" (1911)is a realistic study of decadent aristocratic life in North India. "Kamla" and "Kamini" are social fiction.
Minor novelists
Apart from these prominent novelists, there are again stray novelists by many writers from Bengal and Madras Presidencies as well as Bombay. For example, ST Ram's "Cosmopolitan Hindustani" (1902), BK Sarkar's "Man of letters", MM Munshi's "Beauty and Joy"(1914).
The Indian novel of the period was deeply influenced by the political, social and ideological ferment caused by the Gandhian movement. The fiction of KS Venkataramani (1891-1951) chronologically one of the earliest novelists of the period, is an example of this. His first novel, "Murugan, the Tiller" (1927) contracts the careers of two young South Indian friends, Kedari, a flashy materialist finally ruined by his own chicanery and Ramu, an introvert whose spirit of public service brings him spectacular rewards after an unpromising beginning. The novel ends with Ramu's founding of an ideal colony on Gandhian principles to which he retires with his repented friend. The impress of Gandhism is even stronger on Venkataramani's second novel, "Kandan, the Patriot: A Novel of New India in the making"(1932)
Another novelist is ASP Ayyar who wrote novels like "Three men of Destiny"(1939) and "The Legion Thunder Past "(1947).
A fellow Tamil, Krishnaswamy Nagarajan wrote two novels which stand above the work of Venkataramani and Ayyar. "Athavar House"(1937) is a family chronicle dealing with an old Maharashtrian Vaishnava Brahmin family settled in the south for generations. The action covers the economic vicissitudes in the life of the joint family, the ferment of the Gandhian age, the stresses and strains of complex family relationships and the inevitable clash between Orthodoxy and new ideas. Krishnaswamy also wrote "Chronicles of Kedaram" (1961)
The most significant event in the history of Indian English fiction in the 1930 years was the appearance of three major writers : Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan and Raja Rao. Their first novels were published in 1935,1935 and 1938 respectively.
MULK RAJ ANAND (1905-2004)
Mulk Raj Anand is the eldest of the three major writers who has also been the most prolific. Born in Peshawar (now in Pakistan), in a Hindu coppersmith family, Anand has narrated the story of his upbringing in the autobiographical "Apology for Heroism" (1946). He says :
“ I grew up like most of my contemporaries, a very superficial ill-educated young man without any bearings."
Two critical illnesses during early years had given the boy a reflective turn of mind which was counterbalanced by his native Punjabi realism and activism. Participating in the Gandhian movement while at college, he suffered a brief imprisonment. He sailed for England for doing Research and philosophy in 1924. There he became interested in the study of Indian art and also became in touch with avant garde(innovative) movements and left wing politics and even joined the international Brigade during the Spanish civil war. On his return home he founded in 1946 the art magazine called "Marg".
NOVELS BY MULK RAJ ANAND--
His literary career started with the novel "Untouchable" (1935), a chilling expose of the day-to-day life of a member of India’s untouchable caste. It centers around one day in the life of Bakha, a young sweeper. He is an untouchable , a member of the lowest caste in traditional society. In "Coolie" (1936) he discloses the plight of a poor 15 year old Indian boy, Munnoo, who is trapped in servitude as a child labourer. "Two Leaves and a Bud" (1937) shows a peasant, Gangu who becomes a victim of exploitation while trying to protect his daughter from being raped by a British Colonial officer. Then came his trilogy— "The Village" (1939), "Across the Black Waters" (1941), "The Sword and the Sickle" (1942), ‘called Lalu trilogy’ and their themes are on boyhood, youth and early manhood. His novel "Morning Face" won him The National Academy Award. It contains elements of his spiritual journey as he struggles to attain a higher sense of self-awareness. He puts in his novels, joys and sorrows of his heart. He himself expresses frankly:
“The connection between my life and writing is more intimate than in other novelists. I write as I live. My life is my message.”
Raja Rao (1908-2006)
Raja Rao was the youngest of the three writers. He hailed from an ancient South Indian Brahmin family. Part of his childhood was spent with his grandfather who was spiritually inclined and this fact becomes significant when one considers the concerned with spiritual values that characterizes this novelist's work. He was deeply influenced by the sages. Swami Atmanand became his Guru. He had been away from India since 1929 when he sailed for France to do research on the mysticism of the West. For the last fifty years, except for the periodic visits home, of long or short duration, he had been abroad, though he moved from France to the USA in 1965. Unlike Anand and Narayan, Raja Rao has not been a prolific novelist.
NOVELS BY RAJA RAO--
Having written only few novels beginning with "Kanthapura" (1938) which has the theme of the impact of Gandhi’s teaching on non-violent resistance against the British of an obscure Mysore village in South India. He borrows the style and structure from Indian vernacular tales and folk-epic. His next novel "The Serpent and the Rope" (1960), winner of the Sahitya Academy Award, 1963, shows the relationship between Indian and Western culture. Its protagonist, Ramaswamy, a young Brahmin, goes to France for the sake of studies and marries a French college teacher who sees her husband above all as a Guru. She leaves her husband and becomes a Buddhist and renounces worldly desires. His other novels are "The Cat and Shakespeare" (1965), "Comrade Kirillov" (1976) and "The Chessmaster and His Moves"(1988).
His place in the realm of Indian English fiction is safe. Like most Indian novelists in English, he is an stylist, symbolist, mythmaker, the finest painter of East-West encounter and a philosophical novelist.
Rabindranath Tagore(1861-1940), one of the greatest poets of all time, wrote several novels. But his novels as a whole may not claim to have attained the stature of his best poetry. It is because the plots of the novels are slender. They do not reveal the architectural skill as in the works of his predecessors like Bakinchandra
Chattopadhyaya. Tagor’s novels are mostly studies in psychology and are concerned with unravelling complexities of the human heart and fathoming the mystery of the human soul. Of the dozen novels, long and short, that Tagore wrote “Choker Bali”(1902) was his notable achievement. reasonably successful. This novel was the beginning of a new pathway. The next novel, “Naukhadubi” (1905) appeared in Tagore‟s life-time in an authorised English translation as “The Wreck” (1909).Tagore‟s is most ambitious work of fiction was undoubtedly “Gora”,
(1910)Gora, the protagonist, is a very staunch follower of Hinduism and has very high regards for his religion.He grows up as an orthodox Hindu till he learns that , his mother is Irish. A revelation of truth about birth of Gora comes as a shock for him that transforms the whole course of life and thought process of the protagonist.
Novel(work of prose fiction) is a popular medium to express the characteristics of the society. It works as a mediator between the novelist and the society.
Novel did not generate in India but it has been brought by the British on the Indian English literary ground. It originated in Europe and with the establishment of European colonies , it stepped into the non -European countries. It appeared on the Indian English literary scene following the British colonization in India. Now it is flourishing because of the great efforts of Indian writers. But it took a long time to start as in the beginning , it had to face a number of problems- medium of expression, culture and prejudice against English. The Indian novel is an example of literary hybridization of the Indian content and the Western form.
Fiction was the last to arrive on the Indian literary scene. The earliest fictional efforts- tales rather than novels proper- appeared in journals.
Kylash Chunder Dutt's "A Journal of 48 hours of the Year” 1945 was published in “The Calcutta Literary Gazette" in 1835. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's (1838-94) first and only novel in English "Rajmohan's Wife" was serialised in the Calcutta weekly, The Indian field in 1864 but it appeared in book form only in 1935. It is rather melodramatic tale of the trials of a typical long suffering Hindu wife, Matangini, at the hands of her husband Rajmohan, who is a bully. The setting is an East Bengal village in the late 19th century. A 15 page fragment comprising the English translation, in Bankim Chandra's own handwriting, of his Bengali novel, "Devi Chaudhurani"(1869) has also survived.
From the 1860s up to the end of 19th century, stray(minor) novels continued to appear mostly by writers from the Bengal and Madras Presidencies with Bombay lagging far behind. Some of these novels were however published not in India but in London. There were no novelists with a sizable output to their credit. A majority of these novels are social and a few historical and their models are obviously the 18th and 19th century British fiction, particularly Daniel Defoe and Henry Fielding and Walter Scott. An interesting development is the surprisingly early appearance of women novelists though female education took a long time to spread. Novels by as many as three women novelists appeared before the turn of the century. Toru Dutt's unfinished novel, "Bianca or the young Spanish Maiden"(1878), a romantic love story set in England appeared. There were also novel called "Kamala, A Story of Hindu Life (1895) by Krupabai Satthianadhan and Shevantibai's" A Sketch of a Bombay High Caste Hindu Young Wife "(1895).
Minor novelists
Among the novels to be published between 1864 and 1900 were Ram Punt's" The Boy of Bengal", Tarachand's "The Scorpions or Eastern Thoughts ", Lal Day's "Govinda Samanta" or "The History of a Bengal Rakyat" etc.
With the turn of the century, novelists with a somewhat larger output began to appear. Romesh Chunder Dutt translated two of his own Bengali novels into English. "The Lake of Palms : A Story of Indian Domestic Life" (1902) is a realistic novel of social reform with widow re-marriage as one of its themes. "The Slave Girl of Agra, an Indian Historical Romance"(1909) is set in the Mughal Period.
Two prominent Madras contemporaries of these Bengal novelists were A. Madhaviah and T. Ramakrishna Pillai. Madhaviah wrote Thillai Govindan first published as "A Posthumous Autobiography edited by Pamba". This is an absorbing account, probably autobiographical, of the mental development of a contemporary South Indian Brahmin youth. Under the impact of Western education he loses weight but in the end his rediscovery of The Gita brings him peace. The same author's "Clarinda" is a historical romance dealing with the career of a woman Christian convert of Tanjore.
T. Ramakrishna Pillai wrote two historical romances . "Padmini" (1903) is a love story in which the heroine, a village maiden prefers a poor but high souled lover to an aristocratic usurper. Pillai also wrote "A Dive for Death".
Of the four novels of Sirdar Jogendra Singh, who hailed from Punjab, the first three were published in London and the last in Lahore. "Nur Jahan, the Romance of an Indian Queen" (1909) is a historical novel of the Mughal age. "Nasrin, An Indian Medley" (1911)is a realistic study of decadent aristocratic life in North India. "Kamla" and "Kamini" are social fiction.
Minor novelists
Apart from these prominent novelists, there are again stray novelists by many writers from Bengal and Madras Presidencies as well as Bombay. For example, ST Ram's "Cosmopolitan Hindustani" (1902), BK Sarkar's "Man of letters", MM Munshi's "Beauty and Joy"(1914).
The Indian novel of the period was deeply influenced by the political, social and ideological ferment caused by the Gandhian movement. The fiction of KS Venkataramani (1891-1951) chronologically one of the earliest novelists of the period, is an example of this. His first novel, "Murugan, the Tiller" (1927) contracts the careers of two young South Indian friends, Kedari, a flashy materialist finally ruined by his own chicanery and Ramu, an introvert whose spirit of public service brings him spectacular rewards after an unpromising beginning. The novel ends with Ramu's founding of an ideal colony on Gandhian principles to which he retires with his repented friend. The impress of Gandhism is even stronger on Venkataramani's second novel, "Kandan, the Patriot: A Novel of New India in the making"(1932)
Another novelist is ASP Ayyar who wrote novels like "Three men of Destiny"(1939) and "The Legion Thunder Past "(1947).
A fellow Tamil, Krishnaswamy Nagarajan wrote two novels which stand above the work of Venkataramani and Ayyar. "Athavar House"(1937) is a family chronicle dealing with an old Maharashtrian Vaishnava Brahmin family settled in the south for generations. The action covers the economic vicissitudes in the life of the joint family, the ferment of the Gandhian age, the stresses and strains of complex family relationships and the inevitable clash between Orthodoxy and new ideas. Krishnaswamy also wrote "Chronicles of Kedaram" (1961)
The most significant event in the history of Indian English fiction in the 1930 years was the appearance of three major writers : Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan and Raja Rao. Their first novels were published in 1935,1935 and 1938 respectively.
MULK RAJ ANAND (1905-2004)
Mulk Raj Anand is the eldest of the three major writers who has also been the most prolific. Born in Peshawar (now in Pakistan), in a Hindu coppersmith family, Anand has narrated the story of his upbringing in the autobiographical "Apology for Heroism" (1946). He says :
“ I grew up like most of my contemporaries, a very superficial ill-educated young man without any bearings."
Two critical illnesses during early years had given the boy a reflective turn of mind which was counterbalanced by his native Punjabi realism and activism. Participating in the Gandhian movement while at college, he suffered a brief imprisonment. He sailed for England for doing Research and philosophy in 1924. There he became interested in the study of Indian art and also became in touch with avant garde(innovative) movements and left wing politics and even joined the international Brigade during the Spanish civil war. On his return home he founded in 1946 the art magazine called "Marg".
NOVELS BY MULK RAJ ANAND--
His literary career started with the novel "Untouchable" (1935), a chilling expose of the day-to-day life of a member of India’s untouchable caste. It centers around one day in the life of Bakha, a young sweeper. He is an untouchable , a member of the lowest caste in traditional society. In "Coolie" (1936) he discloses the plight of a poor 15 year old Indian boy, Munnoo, who is trapped in servitude as a child labourer. "Two Leaves and a Bud" (1937) shows a peasant, Gangu who becomes a victim of exploitation while trying to protect his daughter from being raped by a British Colonial officer. Then came his trilogy— "The Village" (1939), "Across the Black Waters" (1941), "The Sword and the Sickle" (1942), ‘called Lalu trilogy’ and their themes are on boyhood, youth and early manhood. His novel "Morning Face" won him The National Academy Award. It contains elements of his spiritual journey as he struggles to attain a higher sense of self-awareness. He puts in his novels, joys and sorrows of his heart. He himself expresses frankly:
“The connection between my life and writing is more intimate than in other novelists. I write as I live. My life is my message.”
Raja Rao (1908-2006)
Raja Rao was the youngest of the three writers. He hailed from an ancient South Indian Brahmin family. Part of his childhood was spent with his grandfather who was spiritually inclined and this fact becomes significant when one considers the concerned with spiritual values that characterizes this novelist's work. He was deeply influenced by the sages. Swami Atmanand became his Guru. He had been away from India since 1929 when he sailed for France to do research on the mysticism of the West. For the last fifty years, except for the periodic visits home, of long or short duration, he had been abroad, though he moved from France to the USA in 1965. Unlike Anand and Narayan, Raja Rao has not been a prolific novelist.
NOVELS BY RAJA RAO--
Having written only few novels beginning with "Kanthapura" (1938) which has the theme of the impact of Gandhi’s teaching on non-violent resistance against the British of an obscure Mysore village in South India. He borrows the style and structure from Indian vernacular tales and folk-epic. His next novel "The Serpent and the Rope" (1960), winner of the Sahitya Academy Award, 1963, shows the relationship between Indian and Western culture. Its protagonist, Ramaswamy, a young Brahmin, goes to France for the sake of studies and marries a French college teacher who sees her husband above all as a Guru. She leaves her husband and becomes a Buddhist and renounces worldly desires. His other novels are "The Cat and Shakespeare" (1965), "Comrade Kirillov" (1976) and "The Chessmaster and His Moves"(1988).
His place in the realm of Indian English fiction is safe. Like most Indian novelists in English, he is an stylist, symbolist, mythmaker, the finest painter of East-West encounter and a philosophical novelist.
Rabindranath Tagore(1861-1940), one of the greatest poets of all time, wrote several novels. But his novels as a whole may not claim to have attained the stature of his best poetry. It is because the plots of the novels are slender. They do not reveal the architectural skill as in the works of his predecessors like Bakinchandra
Chattopadhyaya. Tagor’s novels are mostly studies in psychology and are concerned with unravelling complexities of the human heart and fathoming the mystery of the human soul. Of the dozen novels, long and short, that Tagore wrote “Choker Bali”(1902) was his notable achievement. reasonably successful. This novel was the beginning of a new pathway. The next novel, “Naukhadubi” (1905) appeared in Tagore‟s life-time in an authorised English translation as “The Wreck” (1909).Tagore‟s is most ambitious work of fiction was undoubtedly “Gora”,
(1910)Gora, the protagonist, is a very staunch follower of Hinduism and has very high regards for his religion.He grows up as an orthodox Hindu till he learns that , his mother is Irish. A revelation of truth about birth of Gora comes as a shock for him that transforms the whole course of life and thought process of the protagonist.
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