PHASE 3

To start with our topic I firstly would like to introduce you to the novel that we have chosen
and it's The Anxiety Of Indianness By Meenakshi Mukherji. This novel talks about the
anxiety that an Indian writer faces while writing in the Queen’s language, the anxiety that
they face from their citizens criticizing them for not being proud of their Indian language, and
the anxiety a lot of Indian writers faced but still wrote in English and had gained much fame
in today’s time. The author mentions some names of people like Anita Desai, Jhumpa
Laihari, and many more who achieved international fame but had some other consequences.
So we are going to discuss some of the important points mentioned in the third phase of the
novel.

The third section of Meenakshi Mukherji's book, "The Anxiety of Indianness," starts by
highlighting how difficult it has been for Indian authors to write in English. Because a
language is created by mixing various cultures, dialects, and traditions, the speaker
compares English to a one-stringed instrument as it does not have a blend of these. As an
example, the Hindi language, which is our national language, was developed taking into
account all regions of India. There are, of course, exceptions, such as certain Indians in the
southern portion of the state or even numerous communities where Hindi is a language that
is difficult to speak.

Because people want to include their regional accents in their language, making English the
official language would have made communication even more challenging. Even though
Hindi is our official language, dialects do exist. Different states have different slangs and
accents in that language like we see in Bollywood the stereotypical Hindi that different
people have. It’s a natural tendency to mold a language to communicate it properly.

She describes how writers from India often choose English simply because they hope to
gain a wider audience and international recognition. The anxiety they have is that while they
write in English, their cultural identities will interfere with what they are writing and that they
will be criticized by their fellow citizens. They want their novels to be read by everyone, but if
they write them in their vernacular language, they are limited to that region, and their work is
not read by a wider audience.

She continues by stating that it is difficult for individuals to communicate because the
majority of people in India still do not speak Hindi. For a Hindi novelist, this poses a
challenge. There are two options available to writers from a given region: they can write in
their native language or switch immediately to English. Nothing is in between.

In addition, the author noted that English first became widely spoken in India in the 1930s, a
decade before independence. People didn't consider it vital to learn, so it was obvious that
many people were unaware of this language. Because it was the language of the British,
they reasoned that because they were their enemies, the language they spoke should be
regarded as demeaning. English was only used for administrative purposes during the
colonial era in the 19th and 20th centuries. No literary works were produced during this time.
In those days, Indians who spoke English either worked for British officials or left the country
in search of better opportunities.So it was obvious that the novels that flourished during that
period were in Bengali, Marathi, Urdu, and other bhasha. We first discovered English as an
important language to learn at the end of the colonial era.

The author also names a few authors who wrote in English at a time when few people were
familiar with it. Since most Indians were unable to read them, the novels were written for an
international audience.. She names a few of the pioneering writers from the 1930s who used
a foreign language to write about India. They would either glorify India or inform the global
audience about the situation in India.

They would go so far as to write about how Britishers are destroying India's economy and
neatly dividing it into several parts. Previously, they would highlight the suffering of Indians
and describe it so that readers would have a better understanding of India as a nation and
the Indian people. Raja Rao creates an advaitic, Brahmanic India in The Serpent and the
Rope; in contrast, Anand's novels disprove high culture's assertions by championing the
cause of the paradigmatic Indian poor. Malgudi, from R K Narayan's Malgudi, is a
synecdoche for all of India.

The author also focuses on Indian writers of the current day and how their writings do not
reflect the struggle of Indian writers of the earlier era. English novelists now write them
purely for artistic purposes. They never made the effort to read the earlier generation of
Indian writers' novels and learn how they wrote in English in a manner that was particular for
English novelists as well; instead, they studied the ancient English language from Latin
American texts and native American traditions from the library and other works.

They saw English as a separate language and did not attempt to incorporate it into their
culture. To put it another way, they (post-independence authors) contributed to the creative
aspect of English, something the author claims modern writers do not do. The majority of
writers nowadays have studied overseas, have settled there, or are the second generation
who have an image of their homeland and write only about mixed culture and their history
without even attempting to go into the depths of the nation.
There is no getting away from the burden of India if you want to write in English.