South Asian Review

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Modernism in Indian Poetry in English

Syed Amanuddin

To cite this article: Syed Amanuddin (1976) Modernism in Indian Poetry in English, South Asian
Review, 1:sup1, 1-17, DOI: 10.1080/02759527.1976.11932189

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.1976.11932189

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 MODERNISM IN INDIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH

Syed Amanuddin
Morris College, Sumter SC

There are two ways of looking at modernism in Indo-Anglian poetry - 1)

as an Indian response to the spirit of modernism in British and American

literature, and 2) as a product of the stress of social and political

changes in Indian life. Indo-Anglian poetry like the poetry of other

former British dominions and colonies has both imported and indigenous

elements. The Indo-Anglian writer uses a medium which is now being used

in various parts of the world as a medium of creative expression, and no

writer worth the name writing in English could afford to ignore all the

significant developments in the literature of that language. At the

same time, the Indo-Anglian writer is aware of the literary traditions of

his own country and region. He is influenced by the stress of the social

and political change in his immediate environment. Modernism as a poetic

movement was born in India as a reaction to the monotonous, sapless,

downright adolescent poetry of pre-independence period with its excesses

of romanticism, slavish imitativeness of the British models, and feudal

attitude to life.

What is "modernism"? Oxford English dictionary defines modernism as

"A usage, mode of expression, or peculiarity of style or workmanship, charac-

teristic of modern times." G.S. Fraser in his The Modern Writer and His

~orld speaks of "an imaginative awareness of the stress of social change"

as a characteristic of modernism.l Modernism in England and America began

by the turn of the century although modernist characteristics are apparent

Modernism in Indian Poetry in English PAGE 2

in the works of the nineteenth century poets, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickin-

son, and Thomas Hardy. If we take major socio-political changes into

consideration, we may say modernism began during the First World War.

Literary historians may prefer to begin with the year 1917, the year T.S.

Eliot's Prufrock and Other Observations was first published. Eliot was

hailed as a modern poet because his poetry avoided the debased "romantic

technique,"2 obvious rhythms and metrical patterns, formalized structure,

restricted themes, and pretty pretensions. As Edith Sitwell noted in

Aspects of Modern Poetry, pre-modern poetry in English was "flat and thin,

or shallow and shadowless."3 The modern poet insists that we concentrate

more on the self-contained poem than on the poet. T.S. Eliot declared,

"Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet

but upon the poetry."4 Modern poets were not preoccupied merely with

technique, they also expressed social and spiritual concerns of the modern

man as in Yeats' "Second Coming" and Eliot's "The Waste Land".

It is obvious from the above discussion that modernism in British

and American poetry was a result of several forces including the literary

climate and the stress of social change. We cannot simply relocate these

conditions in India in order to understand modernism in Indian poetry.

Modern age in Indian life probably began with the First War of Independence

in 1857 which manifested signs of Indian nationalism and united the people

of India. It was also the year when the first modern universities were

established in India after a long struggle by ~nlightened Indians such

as Raja Ram Mohan Roy for the introduction of modern education in India.

The English system of education had its impact on every aspect of Indian

~ife which led to the final struggle for independence. When independence
 PAGE 3
Modernism in Indian Poetry in English

was finally achieved in 1947, it was a moment of joy and despair for the

Indians because it meant partition of the country followed by riots, rapes,

murders, refugee problems, and bitter memories for several years to come,

and later even the murder of the great Indian leader who preached the

gospel of love and peace. Independence years were also the years of

further disillusionment when the Indians gradually realized that political

freedom did not necessarily mean freedom from the problems of hunger,

ignorance, illiteracy, over-population, and from the arrogance of bureau-

cracy and the remnants of feudalism.

The Indo-Anglian writers like the other Indian writers have lived

through these stresses of socio-political changes. Any study of modernism

in their poetry should look at these changes and their impact on the Indo-

Anglian poetry. At the same time, we should remember that the Indian

writer in English is using the medium used in various regions of the world

for creative expression. While not forgetting his s~iritual and cultural

kinship with Kalidasa, Kabir, Ghalib, and other masters of Indian literature,

the Indian writer in English cannot help remembering, because of the medium

he uses, his kinship also extends to Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Keats.

As critics, we cannot ignore any of these factors impinging on the Indo-

Anglian writers - their roots are both Indian and alien and so are their

loyalties. In keeping with the noble tradition of India, the Indo-Anglian

writer tries to be a citizen of the world, if not of the universe:

to human kind is my first loyalty

because i am human
to animal world is my second loyalty
because i am an animal
to all matter is my third loyalty
because i am matters
Modernism in Indian Poetry in English PAGE 4

However, it would be foolish to dismiss Indo-Anglian poetry as

6
"a wagon hitched to the engine of English poetry." In the words of

C. D. Narasirnhaiah, essentially Indian poetry in English is a "part

of the literature of India, in the same way as the literatures written

7
in various regional languages are or ought to be." This consciousness

is an important characteristic of modern Indian writers. The nineteenth

century Indo-Anglian writers while forging a tradition and facing the

problems of pioneers in what they thought to be a branch of English

literature, did not consider themselves as a part of Indian literary

tradition. Alphonso-Karkala writes, "Hero-worshipping the British

poets, and piously imitating their themes and moods, the Indo-Anglian
8
poets recollected their emotions almost in futility." Most poets

of the nineteenth century were either educated in England or under

British teachers, and depended on the English critics, writers, and

reviewers for approval and recognition, a tendency which continues to

manifest even to this day among Indian critics who get excited about an

Indian writer when a doctoral dissertation is written on him at an

American university or a prize is awarded in England, and treat such

a recognition as a standard of literary criticism!

Modernism as a technique and philosophy carne to the Indian literary

scene only after the Indian independence, the time when rapid social

and literary developments in England and America brought about a change

in the poetry of those regions and replaced modernism with certain other

. h are re f erre d to as p,ost-rnod ern1srn

. 9
e l ernents wh 1c or avant-gar d"1srn.

Although modernism carne to the Indo-Anglian literary scene rather late

Modernism in Indian Poetry in English PAGE 5

compared with the Western world, it arrived with proper proclamation in

the form of P. Lal's introduction to a small anthology of 51 pages

entitled Modern Indo-Anglian Poetry edited by P. Lal and K. Raghavendra Rao

and published in 1959. Like a true avant-garde, Lal attacks the kind

of poetry that interested the Indian readers of the period. He uses poetic

satisfaction as a criterion and quotes lines from Aurobindo's Savitri

that could turn off any serious reader of poetry:

All there was soul or made of soul-stuff;

A sky of soul covered a deep soul-ground.
All here was known by a spiritual sense:
Thought was not there but a knowledge near and one
Seized on all things by a moved identity.

Aurobindo is a religious philosopher, yogi, and poet, and the significance

of his poetry is because of his mystical philosophy which unless

treated in concrete terms as the Irish poet AE does in his poetry would

leave the reader in the nebulous world of abstration and frustration.

And Lal is naturally frustrated by reading Savitri: "I see nothing:

there is nothing to hang on to. When the eyes are focused to catch a

glimpse of so obviously an entrancing image as 'soul-stuff' or 'soul-

ground,' the picture blurs and slithers off like some theosophical

apparition."lQ What Lal attacked in his sensible introduction was not

so much the poetry of Aurobindo as the kind of poetry that was written

by pre-independence poets and encouraged by the reading public of the

forties and the fifties: "this kind of slushy verse is the dangerous

thing that infects our poetry today . . . . For an offshoot of English

poetry trying to establish roots in rocky ground, having a small and

11
dwindling public, such nebulosity in form can be positively pernicious."
Modernism in Indian Poetry in English PAGE 6

Another poet who is a target of Lal's attack is Sarojini Naidu. Lal

feared his own future as well as the future of poets like him if public

continued to encourage poetry which is a mere "flutter of pretty epithets."

What does Lal himself offer us in his anthology? He presents 21 poets

in 51 pages, and according to his own comments on some of the significant

poets, the anthology does not have much to offer - "rambling sentences

of P.K. Saha, Nissim Ezekiel's "bare-bones" of poetry, Dom Moraes with

his words welded to the situation, "near-neurotic symbolism" of V.D. Trivedi,

and "heaven-knows-what" of Lal's own poetry. The significance of the

anthology is in the manifesto which incorporates the principles,

techniques, and intentions of the poets included in the anthology:

1) poetry must be written in a vital language; 2) poetry must deal

in concrete terms with concrete experience; 3) poetry must be free from

propaganda; 4) significant experimentation in poetry ought to be

commended; 5) all forms of imitation must be condemned; 6) the phase

of Indo-Anglian romanticism ended with Sarojini Naidu; poets should

aim at realistic poetry, reflecting, poetically and pleasingly, the

din and hubbub, the confusion and indecision, the flashes of beauty and

goodness of our age; 7) poets need patronage from benevolent industrial-

ists; 8) in an age of mass approval and hysteria, the need for the private

voice must be emphasized; the lyric form is best suited for the capsule-
12
minded reading public.

This manifesto of Lal's group reminds one of manifesto of a group

of poets in England who shocked by "the vagueness and facility of the

poetry of the day" in 1913 decided 1) to use the language of common

speech, but to employ always the exact word, not merely decorative word;

2) to create new rhythms as the expression of new moods; 3) to allow

Modernism in Indian Poetry in English PAGE 7

absolute freedom in the choice of the subject; 4) to present an image;

5) to produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred or indefinite;

13
and 6) that concentration is the essence of poetry. The parallels

between the two manifestos are clear. Both groups were reacting to

the poetry of romantic excesses, blurred experience and abstractions, and

demanding from poets a language of vitality and concrete experience. The

British group emphasized absolute freedom in the choice of the subject,

but Lal's group wanted realism to be treated "poetically and pleasingly,"

although one doubts the significance of poetry that would attempt to

portray "the confusion and indecision" of our age "poetically and

pleasingly." The problem with poets such as Tagore and Naidu is that

they are too very pleasingly poetical and Lal's group is against their

kind of poetry! Is Nissim Ezekiel too trying to be poetically pleasing

in his"Unhappily Married"?

I loved until my world was waste,

What fate is this I'm captured by?
The world is for the dying, is thel~ more?
The obvious shore beyond the sea.

Ten years later, when Lal published another anthology, Modern

Indian Poetry in English in 1969, modernism had already rooted in

Indian soil and a firm tradition of Indo-Anglian poetry had been

established. Although its title is "Modern Indian Poetry in English,"

poets such as Sri Aurobindo and Sarojini Naidu enjoy some pages in the

anthology. It is interesting to see Naidu's "If You Call Me" with its

"a trembling forest deer/ Or a panting dove" included in this anthology.

Also included in the anthology are daring experimenters like Arvind

Krishna Mehrotra and dull versifiers like Yamini Krishnamurthy on whom the
Modernism in Indian Poetry in English PAGE 8

space is unnecessarily wasted. Modernism lurks somewhere in between these

two extremes. Obviously Lal is not concerned with modernism in this

anthology and the title is misleading. More poets have been added to

the later edition, but no specific school or group is emphasized. Lal's

problem in the present anthology is not so much clearing the way for

himself and his kind of poets, as with the survival of the Indian writing

in English in spite of the development of a sub-culture of a group of

Indians whose values and aspirations are best expressed in English.

The new anthology concentrates chiefly on one problem: why does the

Indian writer write in English? The credo is prompted by a note on

Indian poetry in English by a Bengali writer in The Concise Encyclopedia

of English and American Poets edited by Stephen Spender and Donald Hall.

Responses to Lal's questionnaire by the various poets form a united

defence against the attack of some Indians directed toward English

writing in India. Obviously Lal has attempted to get the support of

every possible poet writing in English even though some of the "poets"

included may not even deserve the label.

The period between the publication of the two anthologies edited

by Lal may be called period of early modernism in Indo-Anglian poetry.

Three significant poets emerged from this movement: P. Lal, Nissim Ezekiel,

and Dom Moraes. Their chief characteristics are: dominance of the

intellectual element, irony, wit,avoidance of feeling, a general academic

tone, and conscious imitation of English and American poets. Perhaps,

the most significant of these three poets is Dom Moraes who is more

an individual than a member of a group. Moraes writes with ease and

 PAGE 9
Modernism in Indian Poetry in English

his words and lines flow smoothly:

Till locked locked locked with the body of the poem

I voyage past my darkness into light
By an act like the act of lovers who,
Riding through death upon each other's thighs
Create, within their death, a life, a voice.lS

He uses the conversational style and does not try to be merely "pleasingly

poetical," and his effective images prevent his poetry from degenerating

into bad prose:

I have grown up, I think, to live alone,

To keep my old illusions, sometimes dream
Glumly that I am unloved and forlorn,
Run away from strangers, often seem
unreal to myself in the pulpy warmth of a sunbeam.
I have grown up, hand on th~ primal bone,
Fighting the sand for speech, fighting the stone. 16

His tone is confessional in "Letter to My Mother":

I am ashamed of myself
Since I was ashamed of you.

Your eyes are like mine,

When I last looked in them
I saw my whole country,
A defeated dream
Hiding itself in prayers,
A population of coroses.l7

There is an implied protest in the poem. Unlike other poets of this group,

Dom Moraes treats sexual themes with boldness which indicates his kinship

with later modern Indo-Anglian poets. One way of classifying the twentieth

century Indo-Anglians is by their attitude to sex: Rabindranath Tagore and

Nizamat Jung are romantic idealists, Lal and Ezekiel are inhibitists, and

oom Moraes, A. K. Ramanujan, Gauri Deshpande, and Syed Amanuddin are

romantic realists. 18 Lal and Ezekiel would talk about love but rarely

suceed in recreating or dramatizing the experience:

The bride is always pretty, the groom

Modernism in Indian Poetry in English PAGE 10

A lucky man. The darkened room.

Roars out the joy of flesh and blood.
The use of nakedness is good.l9

The above lines from Ezekiel's poem "Marriage" should be read in the

context of Lal's second principle in the manifesto: "We think that poetry

must deal in concrete terms with concrete experience. That experience may

be intellectual or emotional of historical-tragical-pastoral-comical, but

it must be precise and lucidly and tangibly expressed. It is better to

suggest a sky by referring to a circling eagle in it than to say simply

'the wide and open sky'." The early moderns in their search for

preciseness and lucidity sacrificed intensities. The cliche "flesh and

blood", the awkward rhyme "blood" and "good", and the clumsy line without

any significant experience or meaning, "the use of nakedness is good", make

one wonder if the poets of Lal-Ezekiel group were really serious about their

manifesto. At least, Aurobindo has his mystical philosophy to offer and

Naidu has her lyricism - the early moderns could offer mostly the "bare-

bones" of poetry. Ezekiel said in an interview, "I have imitated Eliot,

Pound, Yeats and others, but never very well. My own voice has often been

muffled or confused by random and temporary influences. That is the

main weakness of my verse."20 In the same interview, Ezekiel declared,

"There are no major poets in early modern period of Indo-Anglian poetry."

Ezekiel's is a muffled and confused voice as he himself realizes; Lal is

a better translator than a poet probably because he spends all his creative

energy in what he calls "transcreation," and Dom Moraes, whether he is con-

scious or not, writes so differently from Lal-Ezekiel group that one would

call him a bridge between the early moderns and later moderns, and probably

would produce better poetry in the seventies along with later moderns.
Modernism in Indian Poetry in English PAGE 11

One would have thought that the early moderns who started writing under the

influence of the spirit of free India would have felt liberated in the use

of language and theme, but they seem to write their poetry under some strange

constraints which result in their muffled and confused voice.

Poets such as Lawrence Bantleman, B.J. Daruwala, Gauri Deshpande, A.K.

Ramanjuan, Syed Amanuddin, G.S. Sharat Chandra, Kamala Das, Shiv K. Kumar,

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Pritish Nandy, and H.B. Kulkarni belong to another

group of modern poets who may be called later moderns. V.K. Gokak may like

to call them "neo-moderns".22 Some of their dominant characteristics are:

a sense of alienation, a search for identity, a social consciousness, a love

for experimentation, and an interest in their own personal emotion and

experience. They are essentially romantic realists. Although they occasion-

ally share with the early moderns and interest in the lucid and the clear,

they have a greater love of irony and verbal play and they tend to explore

complex range of human ex9erience which is often the experience of the poets

themselves. They are not over enthusiastic about the exact word (what does

that mean anyway?) , but they do pay attention to the choice of words and

attempt to treat their experience in concrete terms often using appropriate

imagery. One should remember, however, this group is not bound by any

single manifesto, and each voice is an independent voice. One of the signi-

ficant poets of this group is A.K. Ramanujan. He writes in his poem "Self-

Portrait":

I resemble everyone
but myself, and sometimes see
in shop-windows,
despite the well-known laws of optics
the portrait of a stranger,
date unknown,
often signed in a corner
Modernism in Indian Poetry in English PAGE 12

by my father. 23

Ramanujan's style is simple and so are his themes. He writes about a

water bug in "The Striders":

No, not only prophets

walk on water. This bug sits
on a landslide of lights
drowns eye-
deep
into its strip
of sky.24

Ramanujan writes with Larkinian observation of his surroundings. Lawrence

Bantleman's poetry has images of striking originality. Filth, dirt, and

loneliness are his predominant themes:25

Poor bladders
and bad weather and steam
from urinators
colour the dream.

B.J. Daruwala is essentially a quester and the problems of self and truth

interest him more than the dirt and filth around him in Indian streets,

although he is aware of the "syphylitic prostitute" and the "stench of the

hospital's vomit."26 Syed Amanuddin explores the complexities and contra-

dictions of human personality and discovers Rama and Ravana within his own

being, and also writes poetry of social realism and protest:

in the narrow lanes of my country

i have seen walking ulcers
shitting n pissing in the morning
and carrying their naked dangling things
fighting with angryflies n unwasheddogs
for crumbs from the garbage

in townhalls men in creasy whites

are busy talking of fiveyearplans
and in remoter parts philosphers sit in yogic dream27

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is another poet of social realism and protest:

i am so used to your cities with a

Modernism in Indian Poetry in English PAGE 13

chain reaction of suburbs

where while families live in bathrooms
and generations are pushed out of skylights
and the next one sticks out its head
like a tapeworm through the frozen shit.28

The above poems contradict the view expressed by another contemporary

Indo-Anglian poet: "Indian poets in English are drawing room poets who

have never gone out into the streets to find out things for themselves.

They live by proxy in their fashionable Malabar Hill apartments, Lake

Garden bunglaows or in the pseudo-world of drugs and foreign-mission-

sponsored readings. They cannot write major poetry."29 However, with some

exceptions most Indo-Anglian poets remain drawing-room poets. Another

major weakness of their poetry is that they are conscious academics. One

critic said, "Most of the poets of the thirties, forties, fifties and six-

ties take in the 'revolution' of the poetry written in Europe and elsewhere.

They have responded whole-heartedly to the models from abroad." 30 Although

this critic seems to imply such an imitation of the models from abroad to

be a strength of Indo-Anglian poetry, it is actually its chief weakness.

Most Indo-Anglian poets have been better imitators than original creators.

We cannot speak of a major poet unless his voice is distinct enough to make

him a model for poets both from India and abroad. It seems most Indo-Anglian

poets are too much of scholars to be effective creative writers. In a country

of millions of illiterates, only a tiny minority of educated Indians use

English for creative expression, and understandably Indo-Anglian poetry is

dominated by the academics. But the academics should come out of their study

in order to experience life in all its rawness, in its boredom and beauty,

its mire and misery, and fun and fury in the streets and ghettos, in the

marketplace and stinking public urinals, on the city pavements and in the
 PAGE 14
Modernism in Indian Poetry in English

hutments, in the polluted factory and unspoiled primitiveness and rugged-

ness of the Indian countryside. They must also stop swearing by the text-

books of grammar and poetics, and also stop imitating poets, both Indian

and foreign, consciously. They should stop writing for other poets,

professors, reviewers, or judges of prizes.

While the poets who are academics should try to be less academic in

tone and technique in their poetry in order to produce poetry of major

significance, it is also important that the Indian academics should take

more serious interest in the Indo-Anglian literary scene. Some of the

Indian critics have taken interest in the Indo-Anglian novel probably

because of the Western interest in this genre (and this interest is often

more sociological than literary) , but very few Indian academics have

applied their scholarly and critical skills to a systematic study, analysis,

comparison, and evaluation of Indo-Anglian poetry. C.D. Narasinhaiah's

statement, "the time is not yet propitious to take a stand on their (Indo-

Anglian) efforts, because there still isn't a sufficient body of poetry

which has advanced beyond the initial stages of experimentation and promise,"21

may be true of the poets of the fifties and sixties, but the seventies have

produced distinct voices who deserve better attention from the academics.

Another Indo-Anglian critic rightfully complains about the state of scholar-

ship in Indo-Anglian studies - a serious student can rarely have access to

either primary or secondary sources.32 The Indo-Anglian scholarship is marked

by the absence of critical studies of individual writers, definitive editions

of their works, and selected or collected works of significant poets. Devel-

opment of a major talent in Indo-Anglian poetry does not have to be the

result of literary climate produced by the academics, but they certainly

 PAGE 15
Modernism in Indian Poetry in English
can further its cause.

The Indo-Anglian modernism has not yet reached a point of exhaustion

unlike English and American modernism. Indo-Anglian poetry which began as

a conscious branch of the literature of England, has gradually developed

its peculiar regional or national character during the twentieth century.

However, the tendency to imitate the English models persisted during the

first phase of modernism which lasted from the fifties to the early sixties.

During the late sixties and early seventies have emerged many new voices,

independent, revolutionary, and daring experimenters with theme and tech-

nique, who are gradually taking over the Indo-Anglian poetry scene and who

promise to be among the distinct voices of world poetry in English with

loyalties both to the Indian culture which started as "a wagon hitched to

the engine of English poetry," is now not only running on its own independ-

ent track, but also seems to be waiting for an opportunity to be a leader

of world poetry in English.

 NOTES
1
G. s. Fraser, The Modern Writer and His World (Baltimore: Penguin Books,
1970) m p. 11.
2
D. E. s. Maxwell, The Poetry of T. s. Eliot (New York: Humanities Press,
1966) 1 P• 4.
3
Quoted in Maxwell, p. 5.

4
T. s. Eliot, Selected Essays (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1950), p. 7.

5
Syed Amanuddin, "Citizen of the Universe," Lightning and Love (Sumter,
South Carolina: Poetry Eastwest, 1973), p. 9.
6
v. K. Gokak, ed., The Golden Treasury of Indo-Anglian Poetry, 1828-1965
(New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1970), p. xxii.
7
C.D. Narasinhaiah, The Swan and the Eagle (Simla: Indian Institute of
Advanced Study, 1969), p. ix.
8
John B. Alphonso-Karkala, Indo-English Literature in the Nineteenth Century
(Mysore: The Literary Half-Yearly, University of Mysore, 1970), p. 34.
9
See this writer's essay, "Avant- Gardism in American Poetry," Creative Moment,
II (Spring, 1973).

10
P. Lal and K. Raghavendra Rao, eds., Modern Indo-Anglian Poetry (New Delhi:
Kavita, 1959), p. ii.
11
Ibid., pp. ii-iii.
12
Ibid., pp. xi-xiii.
13
Michael Roberts, ed. "Introduction," The Faber Book of Modern Verse (London:
Faber and Faber, 1936), p. 15.
14
Nissim Ezekiel, "Unhappily Married," Modern Indo-Anglian Poetry, p. 26.
15
Dom Moraes, "Shyness," Poems 1955-1965 (New York: McMillan Company, 1966),
p. 11.
16
"Autobiography," Poems 1955-1965, p. 29.
17
"·Letter to My Mother," Poems 1955-1965, p. 80.
18
See this writer's essay, "Love and Sex in Indo-English Poetry,"
Creative Moment, III (Fall, 1974), p. 15.
19
Modern Indo-Anglian Poetry, p. vi.
20
"Suresh Kohli Interviews Nissim Ezekiel," Mahfil - A Quarterly of South
Asian Literature, VIII (Winter, 1972), pp. 9-10.
21
Ibid.
22
Gokak, p. xxv.
23
A. K, Ramanujan, The Striders (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 21.
2
ibid., p. 1.
25
See this writer's review of Lawrence Bantleman's Man's Fall and Woman's
Fallout (1964) and Kanchanjanga: A Sornbolical Poem (1967) in Mahfil,
VI (1970), pp. 149-150.
26
See this writer's review of B. J. Daruwala's The Wheel of Fire and Other
Poems (1966) in Mahfil, VI(l970), pp. 150-151
27
"Ulcers," Poems of Protest (Sumter, South Carolina: Poetry Eastwest, 1972),
p. 15. Also see "When I Look into the Mirror," and "Nirvana," The
Children of Hiroshima (Mysore: Kavyalaya, 1970).
28
"Bharatmata - A Prayer," Mahfil, VI (1970) , p. 1.
29
"Suresh Kohli Interviews Pritish Nandy," Mahfil, VII (Winter, 1972), p. 13.
30
H. H. Anniah Gowda, "Contemporary Indian Verse in English," Indian Literature
of the Past Fifty Years, ed. C. D. Narasimhaiah (Mysore: University of
Mysore, 1970), p. 825.
31
The Swan and the Eagle, p. 36.
32
G. s. Balarama Gupta, "Some Reflections on Indian Writing in English," Essays
on Indian Writing in English (Gulbarga: JI\iE Publications, 1975), pp.4-8.