An Overview of the History of Indian Writing in English

Indian writing in English refers to literature written in the English language by

authors of Indian origin or descent. It is a significant and distinct literary tradition
that emerged during the colonial period in India and continues to flourish today.
Indian writing in English has its roots in the British colonization of the Indian
subcontinent, which began in the 17th century and lasted until India gained
independence in 1947.

The earliest known examples of Indian writing in English can be traced back to the
18th century when Indian authors started using English as a medium of expression.
However, it was during the 19th century that Indian writers began to produce notable
works in English literature. Initially, most of these writers were influenced by British
literary forms and themes, and their works often focused on social and cultural
aspects of colonial India.

One of the pioneers of Indian writing in English was Raja Rammohan Roy, a social
reformer and scholar, who wrote extensively on topics such as religious and social
reform. Another important figure was Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, who is
regarded as one of the earliest novelists in Indian literature. His novel "Anandamath"
(1882) is considered a seminal work in Indian writing in English.

The early 20th century witnessed the emergence of several notable Indian writers in
English, including Rabindranath Tagore, who was the first non-European to be
awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Tagore's poetry and plays, translated
into English, brought global recognition to Indian literature. Other influential writers
of the time included Sarojini Naidu, Mulk Raj Anand, and R.K. Narayan.

Post-independence, Indian writing in English underwent a significant

transformation as writers began to explore a wide range of themes, styles, and
genres. These writers, often referred to as the "postcolonial" or "Indo-Anglian"
writers, tackled issues of identity, cultural conflicts, and the social and political
challenges faced by independent India. Prominent authors from this era include R.K.
Narayan, Raja Rao, Bhabani Bhattacharya, and Kamala Markandaya.
In recent decades, Indian writing in English has experienced a surge in popularity
and recognition both within India and globally. Several Indian authors have achieved
critical acclaim and international success. Writers such as Salman Rushdie,
Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Aravind Adiga, and Jhumpa Lahiri have
won prestigious literary awards and gained a substantial readership worldwide.

Indian writing in English is characterized by its diverse voices, rich cultural tapestry,
and the blending of Indian and Western literary traditions. It reflects the
complexities of Indian society, its history, traditions, and the challenges faced by its
people. Indian authors writing in English have made significant contributions to
world literature and have played a vital role in shaping the literary landscape of
India.

Colonial Era (1800s-1947):

1.1 Raja Ram Mohan Roy: (22 May 1772 – 27 September 1833) was an Indian
reformer who was one of the founders of the Brahmo Sabha in 1828, the precursor of
the Brahmo Samaj, a social-religious reformmovement in the Indian subcontinent.
Known as the "Father of Indian Renaissance," Roy championed social and
educational reforms through his works, including "The Precepts of Jesus." His most
popular journal was the Sambad Kaumudi. It covered topics like freedom of the
press, induction of Indians into high ranks of service, and separation of the executive
and judiciary.

1.2 Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay: (26 or 27 June 1838 – 8 April 1894) was
an Indian novelist, poet, essayist and journalist. He was the author of the 1882
Bengali language novel Anandamath, which is one of the landmarks of modern
Bengali and Indian literature. He was the composer of Vande Mataram, written in
highly sanskritized Bengali, personifying Bengal as a mother goddess and inspiring
activists during the Indian Independence Movement. Chattopadhayay wrote fourteen
novels and many serious, serio-comic, satirical, scientific and critical treatises in
Bengali. He is known as Sahitya Samrat (Emperor of Literature) in Bengali.
Anandamath

Anandamath (trans. The Abbey of Bliss) is a Bengali historical novel, written by

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and published in 1882. It is inspired by and set in
the background of the Sannyasi Rebellion in the late 18th century, it is considered
one of the most important novels in the history of Bengali and Indian literature. Its
first English publication was titled The Abbey of Bliss (literally Ananda=Bliss and
Math=Abbey).

Vande Mataram, "Hail to the Motherland ", first song to represent India - as the
Motherland was published in this novel.

The story takes place during the Bengal famine of 1770 CE. It begins with an
introduction to Mahendra and Kalyani, a couple trapped in their hamlet Padachinha
during a famine with neither food or water. They make the decision to leave their
hamlet and relocate to the next metropolis, where they will have a greater chance of
surviving. The couple becomes separated throughout the course of events, and
Kalyani is forced to run through the forest with her newborn to avoid being caught by
robbers. She passes out on the brink of a river after a long chase.Jiban, a Hindu
“Santana” (who were not actual sanyasis but common people who took the sign of
sanyasis and deserted their households in order to rebel against the British East
India Company), took the daughter to his home and handed her over to his sister
while he relocated Kalyani to his ashram.

Mahendra, the husband, is now more interested in joining the monastic brotherhood
and helping the Mother Nation. Kalyani wants to assist him in realising his
aspirations by attempting suicide and thereby releasing him of worldly
responsibilities. Mahatma Satya joins her at this juncture, but before he can assist
her, he is apprehended by East India Company soldiers, who believe that other
monks are fueling the insurrection against Company control.He notices another
monk who is not wearing his unique robes and sings while being carried away.

The second monk decodes the song, saves Kalyani and the infant, and transports
them to a rebel monk stronghold. The monks also provide shelter to Kalyani’s
husband, Mahendra, and the two are reunited. The rebel leader depicts the three
faces of Bongo Mata (Mother Bengal) as three goddess idols worshipped in three
separate rooms to Mahendra:

The rebels’ power grows with time, and their numbers increase. They relocate their
headquarters to a modest brick fort, feeling more confident. With a huge force, the
East India Company attacks the fort. The rebels have blockedade the adjacent river
bridge, but they lack artillery and military skills. The East India Company makes a
tactical retreat over the bridge during the conflict. The East India Company men are
chased into the trap by the Sannyasis’ undisciplined army, who lacks military
expertise. When the bridge is crowded with insurgents, the East India Company
cannon opens fire, killing many people.Some rebels, though, manage to take some of
the guns and return the fire on the East India Company’s lines.

This novel includes the song Vande Mataram. “I bow to thee, Mother,” Vande
Mataram says. It inspired freedom warriors in the twentieth century, and the first
two stanzas of the song became India’s national anthem after independence.

1.3 Rabindranath Tagore: (7 May 1861– 7 August 1941) was a Bengali poet,
writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He reshaped
Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and
beautiful" poetry of Gitanjali, he became in 1913 the first non-European and the first
lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as
spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain
largely unknown outside Bengal. He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society.
Referred to as "the Bard of Bengal",Tagore was known by sobriquets: Gurudeb,
Kobiguru, Biswokobi.

Rabindranath Tagore’s most well-known work, Gitanjali, is a collection of poems that

came out in India in 1910. Tagore then turned it into English prose poems called
Gitanjali: Song Offerings. It was published in 1912 with an introduction by William
Butler Yeats.

Tagore based the poems in Gitanjali on devotional songs from India in the Middle
Ages. He also wrote music to go with these words. Love is the main theme, but some
poems also talk about the struggle between spiritual longings and earthly desires. A
lot of the images he uses come from nature, and the mood is mostly low-key and
quiet. Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 in part because of this
collection, but not everyone agrees that it is his best work.

Theme of Geetanjali

The main idea in Gitanjali is mysticism, which also brings up a number of other
ideas. According to Indian philosophy, mysticism is the highest stage where the
human soul is in direct contact with God. A mystic thinks that the world we see with
our eyes and ears is not real and that there is a more real world behind it that can
only be understood spiritually, not through the senses. The mystic tries to get in
touch with the inner, ultimate reality in a way that is direct and intuitive. In some
ways, realism and common sense are at odds with mysticism. Mysticism is not
something that can be explained logically. All mystics try to separate themselves
from the outside world and connect with the world inside. This type of mysticism is
based on the ideas of renunciation, detachment from the world, and asceticism.
Tagore was influenced by a lot of mystic writers, such as Walt Whitman, Kahlil
Gibran, and, to some extent, Sri Aurobindo. Still, Tagore’s version of mysticism is a
little bit different from the first. He doesn’t completely doubt what he thinks and
what he feels. He doesn’t try to get away from real life, but he does enjoy the joy of
living. He doesn’t deny sense experience, but instead turns it into a way to have a
spiritual experience. Nor does he have the slightest desire to be a monk. His strong
humanism keeps his mysticism in check and keeps it from getting out of hand.

Story of Gitanjali

Gitanjali is divided into two parts. To begin, the majority of these songs are
composed as dialogues between the poet and God. Even if God’s messages were not
always spoken, the poet expresses his prayers and sentiments. Aside from certain
personal prayers, some songs are also directed to the Bharatvidhata—the God of
India. In two songs, He mor chitto punyatirthe jagore dhire (song number 106) and
He mor durbhaga desh (song no 108), the poet urged his countrymen to band
together against both internal and external calamities. It is important to understand
that Gitanjali was composed in British India. When the protests against the British
government became violent and nonviolent, the poet appealed to Bharatvidhata to
awaken his compatriots into the paradise of wisdom and labour. He also asked for
the abolition of caste prejudice.

The poet’s prayers are not for mortal or material things. They aspire to live a better
life. According to Yeats, these songs arose from immense sadness and intense
emotion. A single line of his poetry may make anyone forget about the world’s
problems. Gitanjali’s songs can help us purify our bodies and minds in order to grow
closer to God. Although the God of Rabindranath is the God of beauty, intelligence,
and perfection, he is neither a religious or traditional god. This God has no unique
picture, nor has the poet ever represented his God by symbols. He resembles the
notion of a supernatural force, the God of the Upanishads. The opening song in the
collection, Amar matha nata kore dao he tomar charandhular pore, appears to be a
prayer from the poet to his God to forcefully lower the poet’s head before the
Almighty. The fundamental message of the hymn, however, is that the devotee must
give up his pride in order to get ultimate peace and contentment from his God. In
Bipode more raksa kato, he prayed to his God for strength and courage to tackle his
issues.

Rabindranath depicted death as the only way to reach his God. Death seems to him
as a calm ocean where he may relax when his earthly life has ended. Gitanjali’s songs
have a strong link to nature. These songs are generally written during the monsoon
season, autumn, or spring. When nature bestows her gifts on us by adorning our
surroundings with fresh pictures, lights, fruits, and flowers, we become new and pure
in our devotion to God. Song nos. 11 and 13—amra bedhechi kasher guchha and
Amar nayana vulano ele—describe autumn festivals, whereas song no. 12 Amala
dhabala pale legeche mandomadhur hawa is composed in the rain. Songs 16 through
20 highlight various aspects of the rainy season.

Gora
Gora (is a novel by Rabindranath Tagore, set in Calcutta (now Kolkata), in the 1880s
during the British Raj. It is the fifth in order of writing and the longest of Tagore’s
twelve novels. It is rich in philosophical debate on politics and religion.Other themes
include liberation, universalism, brotherhood, gender, feminism, caste, class,
tradition versus modernity, urban elite versus rural peasants, colonial rule,
nationalism and the Brahmo Samaj.

The story mainly revolves around its protagonist, Gormohan alias 'Gora', a ‌staunch
Hindu Brahmin.Gora is a young man with a well-built body, good stature, white
complexion, and a heavy voice. Because of his physique, he is the head of his circle of
friends. Despite not being handsome, Gora is considered attractive because of his
heavy speech and high stature. Gora's best friend is Binoybhushan aka Binoy. Binoy
is a friendly and handsome young man. He has a special affection for Gora's mother
Anandamayi, and regards Anandamayi as his mother as he was orphaned as a child.
One day Binoy meets a Brahmo Samaji Paresh Babu and his daughter Sucharita
when their wagon crashes outside Binoy's house. Binoy helps them, and starts
visiting their house. And then Binoy is introduced to Paresh Babu, his wife
Varadasundari, his eldest daughter Lavanya, middle daughter Lalita, and younger
daughter Leela. Along with them, he is introduced to Sucharita, the adopted
daughter of Paresh Babu, and Satish, Sucharita's real brother. At the time of the story
there is an ongoing conflict between the Brahmo Samaj and Hinduism; as Gora is a
staunch Hindu who believes in untouchability, he forbids Binoy to meet Paresh Babu
and his family. This leads to an argument between the two. Gora accuses Binoy of
being attracted to Paresh Babu's daughter, but Binoy denies this. Gora's father
Krishnadayal, a good friend of Paresh Babu, one day urges Gora to visit Paresh
Babu's house to inquire about his well being. When Gora goes there, Binoy is already
present, disappointing and angering Gora. There, Gora is introduced to Haran alias
Panu Babu, who is Bengali but has special affection for the British. Haran Babu is a
special head of the Brahmo Samaj, and is going to marry Sucharita. Due to Gora's
being Hindu, he does not get the same respect at Paresh Babu's house as Binoy did.
He gets into an argument with Haran Babu. Sucharita, who earlier saw Gora as
inferior because of his fanaticism, supports Gora by not supporting Haran Babu in
the debate. Gora is then very angry with Binoy, but due to his special affection for
him cannot leave him.
Later, Gora has to go to Paresh Babu's house once again, where Gora's love for
Sucharita awakens; Sucharita reciprocates those feelings. Gora, who has sworn that
he will never marry, feels deeply guilty about this and immediately sets off on an
unknown journey. Varadasundari gets along well with Magistrate Brownlow, and she
chooses Binoy and Lalita to star in a show at his house. Gora travels to a village
which is haunted by the atrocities of the magistrate and the superintendent. He vows
to bring justice to the village and rebels against the magistrate. Enraged by this, the
magistrates send Gora to jail for a month without trial for any crime. Hearing this,
Lalita, who cannot tolerate injustice, is enraged. Due to this she comes home
overnight on a steamer with Binoy. The steamer incident — that a Brahmo girl has
come alone with a Hindu boy at night — stirs up the Brahmo Samaj. Lalita becomes
notorious, so Varadasundari blames Binoy. Binoy agrees to join the Brahmo Samaj
under societal pressure, but Gora objects to it, with Lalita also forbidding Binoy from
doing so.

After being released from prison, Gora starts visiting Sucharita's house. Sucharita
accepts Gora as her guru. Meanwhile, Binoy and Lalita get married. When one day,
when Krishnadayal falls ill, he informs Gora of the truth about his origins. He
explains that Gora is not actually his son, but the son of a Christian Irishman. They
had met when he lived in Etawah; when war broke out there, Gora's military father
was killed. Gora's mother was dependent on Krishnadayal's goodwill and gave birth
to Gora in his house, dying in the process. Krishnadayal has raised him since. In that
one moment, Gora's whole life is destroyed, the religion for which he sacrificed his
whole life having rejected him. Eventually, Gora accepts Paresh Babu as his guru,
after drinking water from Lachmiya's hand.

1.4 Sarojini Naidu: (13 February 1879 – 2 March 1949) was an Indian political
activist and poet. She was the former Governor of Uttar Pradesh. A proponent of civil
rights, women's emancipation, and anti-imperialism, she played an important role in
the Indian independence movement against the British Raj. She was the first Indian
woman to be president of the Indian National Congress and to be appointed
governor of a state. A poetess and freedom fighter, Naidu's poetry collection, "The
Golden Threshold," earned her recognition as the "Nightingale of India."
Naidu began writing at the age of 12. Her play, Maher Muneer, written in Persian,
impressed the Nizam of Kingdom of Hyderabad.

Naidu's poetry was written in English and usually took the form of lyric poetry in the
tradition of British Romanticism, which she was sometimes challenged to reconcile
with her Indian nationalist politics. She was known for her vivid use of rich sensory
images in her writing, and for her lush depictions of India.She was well-regarded as a
poet, considered the "Indian Yeats".

Her first book of poems was published in London in 1905, titled "The Golden
Threshold". The publication was suggested by Edmund Gosse, and bore an
introduction by Arthur Symons. It also included a sketch of Naidu as a teenager, in a
ruffled white dress, drawn by John Butler Yeats. Her second and most strongly
nationalist book of poems, The Bird of Time, was published in 1912. It was published
in both London and New York, and includes "In the Bazaars of Hyderabad". The last
book of new poems published in her lifetime, The Broken Wing (1917).It includes the
poem "The Gift of India", critiquing the British empire's exploitation of Indian
mothers and soldiers, which she had previously recited to the Hyderabad Ladies' War
Relief Association in 1915. It also includes "Awake!", which was dedicated to MA
Jinnah and with which she concluded a 1915 speech to the Indian National Congress
to urge unified Indian action. A collection of all her published poems was printed in
New York in 1928. After her death, Naidu's complete poems, including unpublished
works, were collected in The Feather of the Dawn (1961), edited by her daughter
Padmaja Naidu.

Naidu's speeches were first collected and published in January 1918 as The Speeches
and Writings of Sarojini Naidu, a popular publication which led to an expanded
reprint in 1919 and again in 1925.

1.5 Mulk Raj Anand: (12 December 1905 – 28 September 2004) was an Indian writer
in English, recognised for his depiction of the lives of the poorer castes in traditional
Indian society. One of the pioneers of Indo-Anglian fiction, he, together with R. K.
Narayan, Ahmad Ali and Raja Rao, was one of the first India-based writers in English
to gain an International readership. Anand is admired for his novels and short
stories, which have acquired the status of classics of modern Indian English
literature; they are noted for their perceptive insight into the lives of the oppressed
and for their analysis of impoverishment, exploitation and misfortune.

Anand studied at Khalsa College, Amritsar, graduating with honours in 1924 before
moving to England. While working in a restaurant to support himself, he attended
University College London as an undergraduate and later studied at Cambridge
University, earning a Ph.D in Philosophy in 1929 with a dissertation on Bertrand
Russell and the English empiricists. During this time he forged friendships with
members of the Bloomsbury Group.He became known for his protest novel
Untouchable (1935), followed by other works on the Indian poor such as Coolie
(1936) and Two Leaves and a Bud (1937). He is also noted for being among the first
writers to incorporate Punjabi and Hindustani idioms into English, and was a
recipient of the civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan. Anand was a lifelong socialist.
His novels attack various aspects of India's social structure as well as the legacy of
British rule in India; they are considered important social statements as well as
literary artefacts. Anand himself was steadfast in his belief that politics and literature
remained inextricable from one another. He was a founding member of the
Progressive Writers’ Association and also he helped in drafting the manifesto of the
association.

His work includes poetry and essays on a wide range of subjects, as well as
autobiographies, novels and short stories. Prominent among his novels are The
Village (1939), Across the Black Waters (1939), The Sword and the Sickle (1942), all
written in England; Coolie (1936) and The Private Life of an Indian Prince (1953) are
perhaps the most important of his works written in India. He also founded a literary
magazine, Marg, and taught in various universities.

Untouchable

The book was first published in 1935. Later editions carried a foreword written by E.
M. Forster. In 2004, a commemorative edition including this book was launched by
Indian then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Set in the north Indian cantonment town Bulashah, Untouchable presents a day in
the life of a young Indian sweeper named Bakha. The son of Lakha, head of all of
Bulashah's sweepers, Bakha is intelligent but naïve, humble yet vain. Over Bakha's
day, various major and minor tragedies occur, causing him to mature and turn his
gaze inward. By the end of the novel, Anand makes a compelling case for the end of
untouchability because it is an inhumane, unjust system of oppression. He uses
Bakha and the people populating the young man's world to craft his argument.

Bakha's day starts with his father yelling at him to get out of bed and clean the
latrines. The relationship between the father and son is strained, in part due to
Bakha's obsession with the British, in part because of Bakha's laziness. Bakha ignores
his father but eventually gets up to answer the demands of a high-caste man that
wants to use the bathroom. This man is Charat Singh, a famous hockey player. At
first, Singh also yells at Bakha for neglecting his cleaning duties. However, the man
has a changeable personality. It isn’t long before he instructs Bakha to come to see
him later in the day so he can gift the young sweeper with a prized hockey stick. An
overjoyed Bakha agrees.

High on his good fortune he quickly finishes his morning shift and hurries home,
dying of thirst. Unfortunately, there is no water in the house. His sister Sohini offers
to go fill the water bucket. At the well, Sohini must wait behind several other outcasts
also queued up. Also waiting for water is Gulabo, mother of one of Bakha's friends
and a jealous woman. She hates Sohini and is just barely stopped from striking the
young woman. A priest from the town temple named Pundit Kali Nath comes along
and helps Sohini get water. He instructs her to come to clean the temple later in the
day. Sohini agrees and hurries home with the water.

Back at home Lakha fakes an illness and instructs Bakha to clean the town square
and the temple courtyard in his stead. Bakha is wise to the wily ways of his father but
cannot protest. He takes up his cleaning supplies and goes into town. His sweeping
duties usually keep him too busy to go into town, and so he takes advantage of the
situation by buying cigarettes and candies.

As Bakha eats his candies, a high-caste man brushes up against him. The touched
man did not see Bakha because the sweeper forgot to give the untouchable's call. The
man is furious. His yelling attracts a large crowd that joins in on Bakha's public
shaming. A traveling Muslim vendor in a horse and buggy comes along and disperses
the crowd. Before the touched man leaves he slaps Bakha across the face for his
impudence and scurries away. A shocked Bakha cries in the streets before gathering
his things and hurrying off to the temple. This time, he did not forget the
untouchable's call.

At the temple, a service is in full swing. It intrigues Bakha, who eventually musters
up the courage to climb up the stairs to the temple door and peer inside. He's only
standing there for a few moments before a loud commotion comes from behind him.
It is Sohini and Pundit Kali Nath, who is accusing Sohini of polluting him. As a crowd
gathers around, Bakha pulls his sister away. Crying, she tells him that the priest
sexually assaulted her. A furious Bakha tries to go back to confront the priest, but an
embarrassed and ashamed Sohini forces him to leave. Bakha sends his sister home,
saying he will take over her duties in town for the rest of the day.

Distraught over the day's events, Bakha wanders listlessly before going to a set of
homes to beg for his family's daily bread. No one is home, so he curls up in front of a
house and falls asleep. A sadhu also begging for food comes and wakes him. The
owner of the house Bakha slept in front of comes out with food for the sadhu. Seeing
Bakha, she screams at him and refuses to give him food. She finally agrees to give
him some bread in exchange for him sweeping the area in front of her house. As
Bakha sweeps, the woman tells her young son to relieve himself in the gutter where
Bakha is cleaning so he can sweep that up too. A disgusted Bakha throws down the
broom and leaves for his house in the outcasts' colony.

Back at home, it's only Lakha and Sohini. Rakha, Bakha's younger brother, is still out
collecting food. Bakha tells his father that a high-caste man slapped him in the
streets. Sensing his son's anger, Lakha tells him a story about the kindness of a
high-caste doctor that once saved Bakha's life. Bakha is deeply moved by the story
but remains upset. Soon after storytime, Rakha comes back with food. A ravenous
Bakha starts to eat but then is disgusted by the idea of eating the leftovers of the
high-caste people. He jumps up and says he's going to the wedding of his friend Ram
Charan's sister.

At Ram Charan's house, Bakha sees his other friend, Chota. The two boys wait for
Ram Charan to see them through the thicket of wedding revelers. Ram Charan
eventually sees his friends and runs off with them despite his mother's protestations.
Alone, Chota and Ram Charan sense something is wrong with their friend. They coax
Bakha to tell them what's wrong. Bakha breaks down and tells them about the slap
and Sohini's assault. Ram Charan is quiet and embarrassed by Bakha's tale, but
Chota is indignant. He asks Bakha if he wants to get revenge. Bakha does but realizes
revenge would be a dangerous and futile endeavor. A melancholic atmosphere falls
over the group. Chota attempts to cheer Bakha up by reminding him of the hockey
game they will play later in the day. This reminds Bakha that he must go and get his
gift from Charat Singh.

Bakha goes to Charat Singh's house in the barracks, but cannot tell if the man is
home. Reluctant to disturb him or the other inhabitants, Bakha settles under a tree to
wait. Before long, Singh comes outside. He invites Bakha to drink tea with him and
allows the untouchable to handle his items. Singh's disregard for Bakha's supposed
polluting presence thrills Bakha's heart. Thus he is overjoyed when Singh gives him a
brand-new hockey stick.

Ecstatic about this upswing to his terrible day, Bakha goes into the hockey game on
fire. He scores the first goal. The goalie of the opposite team is angry over Bakha's
success and hits him. This starts an all-out brawl between the two teams that ends
when a high caste player's younger brother gets hurt. Bakha picks up the young boy
and rushes him home, only to have the boy's mother accuse him of killing her son.
The good mood destroyed, Bakha trudges home, where his father screams at him for
being gone all afternoon. He banishes Bakha from home, saying his son must never
return.

Bakha runs away and takes shelter under a tree far from home. The chief of the local
Salvation Army, a British man named Colonel Hutchinson, comes up to him. He sees
Bakha's distress and convinces the sweeper to follow him to the church. Flattered by
the white man's attention, Bakha agrees, but the Colonel's constant hymn singing
quickly bores him. Before the two can enter the church the Colonel's wife comes to
find him. Disgusted at the sight of her husband with another "Blackie", she begins to
scream and shout. Bakha feels her anger acutely and runs off again.

This time Bakha runs towards town and ends up at the train station. He overhears
some people discussing the appearance of Mahatma Gandhi in Bulashah. He joins
the tide of people rushing to hear the Mahatma speak. Just as Bakha settles in to
listen, Gandhi arrives and begins his speech. He talks about the plight of the
untouchable and how it is his life's mission to see them emancipated. He ends his
speech by beseeching those present to spread his message of ending untouchability.
After the Mahatma departs, a pair of educated Indian men have a lively discussion
about the content of the speech. One man, a lawyer named Bashir, soundly critiques
most of Gandhi's opinions and ideas. The other, a poet named Sarshar, defends the
Mahatma passionately and convincingly. Much of what they say goes above Bakha's
head, so elevated are their vocabulary and ideas. However, he does understand when
Sarshar mentions the imminent arrival of the flushing toilet in India, a machine that
eradicates the need for humans to handle refuse. This machine could mean the end
of untouchability. With this piece of hope, Bakha hurries home to share news of the
Mahatma's speech with his father.

Post-Independence Era (1947-present):

2.1 R.K. Narayan: (10 October 1906 – 13 May 2001) was an Indian writer and
novelist known for his work set in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi. He was
a leading author of early Indian literature in English along with Mulk Raj Anand and
Raja Rao.

Narayan's mentor and friend Graham Greene was instrumental in getting publishers
for Narayan's first four books including the semi-autobiographical trilogy of Swami
and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts and The English Teacher. The fictional town of
Malgudi was first introduced in Swami and Friends. The Financial Expert was
hailed as one of the most original works of 1951 and Sahitya Academy Award winner
The Guide was adapted for the film (winning a Filmfare Award for Best Film) and for
Broadway.

In a career that spanned over sixty years Narayan received many awards and
honours including the AC Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature, the
Padma Vibhushan and the Padma Bhushan, India's second and third highest civilian
awards,and in 1994 the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, the highest honour of India's
national academy of letters.[3] He was also nominated to the Rajya Sabha, the upper
house of the Indian Parliament.

Swami and Friends is the first of a series of novels written by R. K. Narayan, is set
in British India in a town called Malgudi. The second and third books in the trilogy
are The Bachelor of Arts and The English Teacher.
The novel follows a ten-year-old schoolboy, Swaminathan, and his attempts to court
the favour of a much wealthier schoolboy, Rajam.

Malgudi Schooldays is a slightly abridged version of Swami and Friends, and

includes two additional stories featuring Swami from Malgudi Days and Under the
Banyan Tree.

Swaminathan is a lazy schoolboy who lives with his father, mother, and grandmother
in Malgudi. He attends the Albert Mission School with his friends Samuel, Sankar,
Somu, and Mani. The arrival of a new student, Rajam—the son of a wealthy police
superintendent—threatens Swami's popularity. After an initial rivalry, Swami and
Rajam reconcile and become friends.

A protest, part of Gandhi's non-cooperative movement, erupts through the town.

Swaminathan, participating in the protests, breaks the window of the headmaster's
room. Rajam's father leads a violent crackdown of the protest. The next day, a
distressed Swami runs away from the school after the headmaster vows to punish
participating students. He is subsequently expelled from Albert Mission and is
compelled to enroll in the stricter and more rigorous Board High School.

Rajam and Swaminathan start a cricket club, gathering friends together for practice
after school, in which Swami is chronically tardy due to his relatively late-afternoon
dismissal from Board High School. With a match scheduled, Swami pleads with his
new headmaster to allow him to leave class early; he refuses. An undeterred Swami is
caught committing truancy after asking a doctor to write a note of absence and is
beaten and expelled by the headmaster.

Now expelled from two schools, and fearing his father's wrath at home, Swami runs
away from town. Becoming lost and hungry, Swami regrets his decision. Meanwhile,
Swami's father attempts to locate his missing son. Swami is discovered by a man
carrying a cart who promptly contacts his parents. Swami's relief at returning home
turns to dismay when his friends report that they have lost their cricket game, and
Rajam declares the end of their friendship.

One night, Mani informs Swami that Rajam and his family are relocating to another
city. Swami wakes up early the next day to attempt to reconcile and bid his farewell
to Rajam, gifting him a copy of Hans Christen Anderson's Fairy Tales. He asks
Rajam, as the train speeds away, if he would ever return, but his reply is drowned out
by the sound of the locomotive. Swami weeps, wondering if Rajam would ever think
of him again.

2.2 Vikram Seth: (born 20 June 1952) is an Indian novelist and poet. He has
written several novelsand poetry books. He has won several awards such as Padma
Shri, Sahitya Academy Award, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, WH Smith Literary
Award and Crossword Book Award. Seth's collections of poetry such as Mappings
and Beastly Tales are notable contributions to the Indian English language poetry
canon.

Seth has published eight books of poetry and three novels. In 1980, he wrote
Mappings, his first book of poetry. The publication of A Suitable Boy, a 1,349-page
novel, propelled Seth into the public limelight. His second novel, An Equal Music,
deals with the troubled love-life of a violinist. Seth's work Two Lives, published in
2005, is a memoir of the marriage of his great-uncle and aunt.

In addition to The Golden Gate, Seth has written other works of poetry including
Mappings (1980), The Humble Administrator's Garden (1985), All You Who Sleep
Tonight (1990) and Three Chinese Poets (1992). His children's book, Beastly Tales
from Here and There (1992) consists of 10 stories about animals. He has written a
travel book, From Heaven Lake: Travels through Sinkiang and Tibet (1983), an
account of a journey through Tibet, China and Nepal. A sequel to A Suitable Boy, A
Suitable Girl, was announced in 2009.

2.3 Anita Desai: (born 24 June 1937), is an Indian novelist and the Emerita John E.
Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a
writer she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. She received a
Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya
Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters. She won the British Guardian Prize
for The Village by the Sea (1983). Her other works include The Peacock, Voices in
the City, Fire on the Mountain and an anthology of short stories, Games at Twilight.
She is on the advisory board of the Lalit Kala Akademi and a Fellow of the Royal
Society of Literature, London.
Clear Light of Day is a novel published in 1980 by Indian novelist and three-time
Booker Prize finalist Anita Desai. Set primarily in Old Delhi, the story describes the
tensions in a post-partition Indian family, starting with the characters as adults and
moving back into their lives throughout the course of the novel. While the primary
theme is the importance of family, other predominant themes include the
importance of forgiveness, the power of childhood, and the status of women,
particularly their role as mothers and caretakers, in modern-day India.

The novel is split into four sections covering the Das family from the children's
perspective in this order: adulthood, adolescence and early adulthood, childhood,
and a final return to an adult perspective in the final chapter.

The story centres on the Das family, who have grown apart with adulthood. It starts
with Tara, whose husband Bakul is India's ambassador to the US, greeting her sister
Bimla (Bim), who lives in the family's Old Delhi home, teaching history and taking
care of their autistic brother Baba. Their conversation eventually comes to Raja, their
brother who lives in Hyderabad. Bim, not wanting to go to the wedding of Raja's
daughter, shows Tara an old letter from when Raja became her landlord, in which he
unintentionally insulted her after the death of his father-in-law, the previous
landlord. The section closes with the two sisters visiting the neighbours, the Misras.

In part two of the novel, the setting switches to partition-era India, when the
characters are adolescents in the house. Raja is severely ill with tuberculosisand is
left to Bim's ministrations. Aunt Mira ("Mira-masi"), their supposed caretaker after
the death of the children's often absent parents, dies of alcoholism. Earlier, Raja's
fascination with Urdu attracts the attention of the family's Muslim landlord, Hyder
Ali, whom Raja idolizes. After recovering from TB, Raja follows Hyder Ali to
Hyderabad. Tara escapes from the situation through marriage to Bakul, leaving Bim
to provide for Baba alone, in the midst of the partition and the death of Gandhi.

In part three Bim, Raja and Tara are depicted awaiting the birth of their brother
Baba in pre-partition India. Aunt Mira, widowed by her husband and mistreated by
her in-laws, is brought in to help with Baba, who is autistic, and to raise the children.
Raja is fascinated with poetry. He shares a close bond with Bim, the head girl at
school, although they often exclude Tara. Tara wants to be a mother, although this
fact brings ridicule from Raja and Bim, who want to be heroes.
The final section returns to modern India and shows Tara confronting Bim over
Raja's daughter's wedding and Bim's broken relationship with Raja. This climaxes
when Bim explodes at Baba. After her anger fades, she decides that family love is
irreplaceable and can cover all wrongs. After Tara leaves, she goes to her neighbours
the Misras for a concert, where she is touched by the unbreakable relationship they
seem to have. She tells Tara to come back from the wedding with Raja and forgives
him.

In Custody (1984) is a novel set in Delhi, India by Indian American writer Anita
Desai.It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984. Deven earns a living by
teaching Hindi literature to college students. As his true interest was in Urdu poetry,
he jumps at the chance to meet the great Urdu poet, Nur. Under the advice of his
friend Murad, an editor of a periodical devoted to Urdu literature, Deven procures a
secondhand tape recorder so that he can help transcribe Urdu's early poetry, as well
as conduct an interview or even write the memoirs of Nur. However, things do not
happen as he expects them to.

Devens' old friend Murad visits Deven unexpectedly with an offer for him to
interview a great Urdu poet Nur Sahjahanabadi who lives in Chandni Chowk, Old
Delhi for his magazine. Deven is fond of Urdu poetry. He accepts the offer. At first,
he thinks that he is getting a chance to sit before a great Urdu poet but after reaching
his house he notices the unbearable condition of Nur's house. When he meets Nur,
he refuses to give an interview by saying that Urdu is now at its last stage and soon
this beautiful language will not exist. But he shows some trust in Deven. But Deven
gets annoyed by the condition of Nur's house and drops the idea of interviewing Nur.
Murad again convinces him to interview Nur with the help of tape recorder so that it
can be further used for audio learning by Urdu scholars. Deven, who is a poor
lecturer, asks for money from the college for a tape recorder. He goes to a shop to
buy, where the shopkeeper, Jain, offers him a second hand tape recorder. At first
Deven refuses to purchase it but later Jain convinces him that it is a machine with
good quality and his own nephew Chikua will help them to operate it while recording
the interview. Unwillingly, Deven agrees to purchase it. Nur's first wife promises
Deven that she can arrange a room for Deven if he gives her some money. Deven
arranged the money for the payment to her by the college authority with the help of
his colleague-cum-friend Siddiqui. He then goes to Delhi with Chiku for recording,
but he fails to record the interview. Now, he not only has no recording but also has to
bear the expenses like payment demanded by poet, his wife, nephews of Jain, etc.

2.4 Salman Rushdie: (born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British-American

novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily
deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western
civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent. Rushdie's second novel,
Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the
best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th
anniversary of the prize.

After his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), Rushdie became the subject of
several assassination attempts and death threats, including a fatwa calling for his
death issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran.

In 1983, Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was
appointed a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 1999.
Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature.

Rushdie's first novel, Grimus (1975), a part-science fiction tale, was generally ignored
by the public and literary critics. His next novel, Midnight's Children (1981),
catapulted him to literary notability. This work won the 1981 Booker Prize and, in
1993 and 2008, was awarded the Best of the Bookers as the best novel to have
received the prize during its first 25 and 40 years. Midnight's Children follows the life
of a child, born at the stroke of midnight as India gained its independence, who is
endowed with special powers and a connection to other children born at the dawn of
a new and tumultuous age in the history of the Indian sub-continent and the birth of
the modern nation of India. The character of Saleem Sinai has been compared to
Rushdie.

After Midnight's Children, Rushdie wrote Shame (1983), in which he depicts the
political turmoil in Pakistan, basing his characters on Zulfikar Ali Bhuttoand General
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Shame won France's Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best
Foreign Book) and was a close runner-up for the Booker Prize. Both these works of
postcolonial literature are characterised by a style of magic realism and the
immigrant outlook that Rushdie is very conscious of as a member of the Kashmiri
diaspora.
Rushdie wrote a non-fiction book about Nicaragua in 1987 called The Jaguar Smile.
This book has a political focus and is based on his first-hand experiences and
research at the scene of Sandinista political experiments.

His most controversial work, The Satanic Verses, was published in 1988. It was
followed by Haroun and the Sea of Stories in 1990. Written in the shadow of a fatwa,
it is about the dangers of story-telling and an allegorical defence of the power of
stories over silence.

In addition to novels, Rushdie has published many short stories, including those
collected in East, West (1994). The Moor's Last Sigh, a family epic ranging over some
100 years of India's history was published in 1995. The Ground Beneath Her Feet
(1999) is a remaking of the myth of Orpheus that presents an alternative history of
modern rock music. Following the novel Fury, set mainly in New York and avoiding
the previous sprawling narrative style that spans generations, periods and places,
Rushdie's 2005 novel Shalimar the Clown, a story about love and betrayal set in
Kashmir and Los Angeles, was hailed as a return to form by a number of critics.

In his 2002 non-fiction collection Step Across This Line, he professes his admiration
for the Italian writer Italo Calvino and the American writer Thomas Pynchon, among
others. His early influences included Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bulgakov, Lewis
Carroll, Günter Grass and James Joyce. Rushdie was a personal friend of Angela
Carter's and praised her highly in the foreword of her collection Burning your Boats.

2008 saw the publication of The Enchantress of Florence, one of Rushdie's most
challenging works that focuses on the past. It tells the story of a European's visit to
Akbar's court, and his revelation that he is a lost relative of the Mughal emperor.

His novel Luka and the Fire of Life, a sequel to Haroun and the Sea of Stories, was
published in November 2010 to critical acclaim.

2015 saw the publication of Rushdie's novel Two Years Eight Months and
Twenty-Eight Nights, a shift back to his old beloved style of magic realism. This
novel is designed in the structure of a Chinese mystery box with different layers.
Based on the central conflict of scholar Ibn Rushd (from whom Rushdie's family
name derives), Rushdie goes on to explore several themes of transnationalism and
cosmopolitanism by depicting a war of the universe which a supernatural world of
jinns also accompanies.
In 2017, The Golden House, a satirical novel set in contemporary America, was
published. 2019 saw the publication of Rushdie's fourteenth novel Quichotte,
inspired by Miguel de Cervantes' classic novel Don Quixote.

In 2021 Languages of Truth, a collection of essays written between 2003 and 2020
was published.

Rushdie's fifteenth novel Victory City, described as an epic tale of a woman who
breathes a fantastical empire into existence, was published in February 2023. The
book is Rushdie's first released work since he was attacked and injured in 2022.

Midnight’s Children

Midnight's Children is a loose allegory for events in 1947 British Raj India and after
the partition of India. The protagonist and narrator of the story is Saleem Sinai, born
at the exact moment when India became an independent country. He was born with
telepathic powers, as well as an enormous and constantly dripping nose with an
extremely sensitive sense of smell. The novel is divided into three books.

The first book begins with the story of the Sinai family, particularly with events
leading up to the fall of British Colonial India and the partition. Saleem is born
precisely at midnight, 15 August 1947, therefore, exactly as old as independent India.
He later discovers that all children born in India between 12 a.m. and 1 a.m. on that
date are imbued with special powers. Saleem, using his telepathic powers, assembles
a Midnight Children's Conference, reflective of the issues India faced in its early
statehood concerning the cultural, linguistic, religious, and political differences faced
by a vastly diverse nation. Saleem acts as a telepathic conduit, bringing hundreds of
geographically disparate children into contact while also attempting to discover the
meaning of their gifts. In particular, those children born closest to the stroke of
midnight wield more powerful gifts than the others. Shiva "of the Knees", Saleem's
nemesis, and Parvati, called "Parvati-the-witch," are two of these children with
notable gifts and roles in Saleem's story.

Meanwhile, Saleem's family begin a number of migrations and endure the numerous
wars which plague the subcontinent. During this period he also suffers amnesia until
he enters a quasi-mythological exile in the jungle of Sundarban, where he is
re-endowed with his memory. In doing so, he reconnects with his childhood friends.
Saleem later becomes involved with the Indira Gandhi-proclaimed Emergency and
her son Sanjay's "cleansing" of the Jama Masjid slum. For a time Saleem is held as a
political prisoner; these passages contain scathing criticisms of Indira Gandhi's
over-reach during the Emergency as well as a personal lust for power bordering on
godhood. The Emergency signals the end of the potency of the Midnight Children,
and there is little left for Saleem to do but pick up the few pieces of his life he may
still find and write the chronicle that encompasses both his personal history and that
of his still-young nation, a chronicle written for his son, who, like his father, is both
chained and supernaturally endowed by history.

2.5 Arundhati Roy: (born 24 November 1961) is an Indian author best known for
her novel The God of Small Things (1997), which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in
1997 and became the best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. The
Ministry of Utmost Happiness, in June 2017 was published and the novel was
chosen for the Man Booker Prize 2017 Long List. She is also a political activist
involved in human rights and environmental causes.

God of Small Things

The story is set in Aymanam, part of Kottayam district in Kerala, India. The novel has
a disjointed narrative; the temporal setting shifts back and forth between 1969, when
fraternal twins Rahel, a girl, and Esthappen, a boy, are seven years old, and 1993,
when the twins are reunited.

Ammu Ipe is desperate to escape her ill-tempered father, known as Pappachi, and
her bitter, long-suffering mother, known as Mammachi. She leaves Ayemenem, and
to avoid returning, she marries a man only known by the name of Baba in Calcutta.
She later discovers that he is an alcoholic, and he physically abuses her and tries to
pimp her to his boss. Ammu gives birth to Estha and Rahel, leaves her husband, and
returns to Ayemenem to live with her parents and brother, Chacko. Chacko has
returned to India from Englandfollowing his divorce from an English woman,
Margaret, and the subsequent death of Pappachi.

The multi-generational, Syrian Christian family home in Ayemenem also includes

Pappachi's sister, Navomi Ipe, known as Baby Kochamma. As a young girl, Baby
Kochamma fell in love with Father Mulligan, a young Irish priest who had come to
Ayemenem. To get closer to him, Baby Kochamma converted to Roman Catholicism
and joined a convent against her father's wishes. After a few months in the convent,
she realized that her vows brought her no closer to the man she loved. Her father
eventually rescued her from the convent and sent her to America for education.
Because of her unrequited love for Father Mulligan, Baby Kochamma remained
unmarried for the rest of her life, becoming deeply bitter over time. Throughout the
book, she delights in the misfortune of others and constantly manipulates events to
bring calamity.

The death of Margaret's second husband Joe in a car accident prompts Chacko to
invite her and their daughter, Sophie, to spend Christmas in Ayemenem. On the road
to the airport to pick up Margaret and Sophie, the family visits a theater, and on the
way, they encounter a group of Communist protesters who surround the car and
humiliate Baby Kochamma. Rahel thinks she sees amongst the protesters Velutha, a
servant who works for the family's pickle factory, Paradise Pickles and Preserve, and
does extra chores for Mammachi. Later at the theater, Estha is sexually molested by
the "Orangedrink Lemondrink Man", a vendor working at the snack counter. Estha's
traumatic experience factors into the tragic events at the heart of the narrative.

Rahel's assertion that she saw Velutha in the Communist mob, causes Baby
Kochamma to associate Velutha with her humiliation at the protesters' hands, and
she begins to harbor enmity toward him. Rahel and Estha form an unlikely bond
with Velutha and come to love him. Ammu soon gets attracted to Velutha mainly
because of her children's love towards him, and eventually, they begin a short-lived
romantic affair. Velutha is a Dalit, the lowest caste, meaning his romance with
Ammu is forbidden, and culminates in tragedy for the family.

When her relationship with Velutha gets exposed by Velutha's father, Vellya Paapen,
Ammu is locked in her room and Velutha is banished. In a fit of rage, Ammu blames
the twins for her misfortune and calls them "millstones around her neck."
Distraught, Estha and Rahel decide to escape. Their cousin, Sophie also joins them.
During the night, as they try to reach the History House, an abandoned house across
the river, their boat capsizes and Sophie drowns. When Margaret and Chacko return
from a trip where they had gone to arrange Margaret's and Sophie's return trips, they
see Sophie's corpse laid out on the sofa.

Baby Kochamma goes to the police and accuses Velutha of being responsible for
Sophie's death. A group of policemen hunt Velutha down, savagely beat him for
crossing caste lines, and arrest him on the brink of death. The twins, huddling in the
abandoned house, witness the horrific scene. Later, when they reveal the truth to the
chief of police Thomas Mathew, he is alarmed. Not unknown to the fact that Velutha
is a Communist, he is afraid that if word gets out that the arrest and beating were
wrongful, it will cause unrest among the local Communists led by Comrade K.N.M
Pillai. Mathew threatens to hold Baby Kochamma responsible for falsely accusing
Velutha. To save herself, Baby Kochamma tricks Estha and Rahel into believing that
the two of them would be implicated as having murdered Sophie out of jealousy and
would surely be incarcerated with Ammu. She thus convinces them to lie to the
inspector that Velutha had abducted them and had murdered Sophie. Velutha dies of
his injuries overnight.

After Sophie's funeral, Ammu goes to the police to tell the truth about her
relationship with Velutha. Afraid of being exposed, Baby Kochamma convinces
Chacko that Ammu and the twins were responsible for his daughter's death. Chacko
kicks Ammu out of the house and forces her to send Estha to live with his father.
Estha never sees Ammu again. Ammu dies alone in a motel a few years later at the
age of 31.

After a turbulent childhood and adolescence in India, Rahel gets married and goes to
America. There, she divorces before returning to Ayemenem after years of working
dead-end jobs. Estha and Rahel, now 31, are reunited for the first time since they
were children. They had been haunted by their guilt and their grief-ridden pasts.
Toward the end of the novel, Estha and Rahel engage in incestuous sex, and it's said
that "what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief." The novel
comes to an end with a nostalgic recounting of Ammu and Velutha's love affair.

Contemporary Authors:
3.1 Jhumpa Lahiri: (born July 11, 1967) is an American author known for her short
stories, novels, and essays in English and, more recently, in Italian. Her debut
collection of short-stories Interpreter of Maladies (1999) won the Pulitzer Prize for
Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her first novel, The Namesake (2003),
was adapted into the popular film of the same name.

Unaccustomed Earth (2008) won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story
Award, while her second novel, The Lowland (2013), was a finalist for both the Man
Booker Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction. In these works, Lahiri
explored the Indian-immigrant experience in America.

3.2 Amitav Ghosh: (born 11 July 1956) is an Indian writer. He won the 54th
Jnanpith award in 2018, India's highest literary honour. Ghosh's ambitious novels
use complex narrative strategies to probe the nature of national and personal
identity, particularly of the people of India and South Asia. He has written historical
fiction and also written non-fiction works discussing topics such as colonialism and
climate change.

Ghosh studied at The Doon School, Dehradun, and earned a doctorate in social
anthropology at the University of Oxford. His first novel The Circle of Reason was
published in 1986, which he followed with later fictional works including The
Shadow Lines and The Glass Palace. Between 2004 and 2015, he worked on the Ibis
trilogy, which revolves around the build-up and implications of the First Opium War.
His non-fiction work includes In an Antique Land and The Great Derangement:
Climate Change and the Unthinkable.

Ghosh holds two Lifetime Achievement awards and four honorary doctorates. In
2007 he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India's highest honours, by the
President of India. In 2010 he was a joint winner, along with Margaret Atwood of a
Dan David prize, and 2011 he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Blue Metropolis
festival in Montreal. He was the first English-language writer to receive the award.

Ghosh's notable non-fiction writings are In an Antique Land (1992), Dancing in

Cambodia and at Large in Burma (1998), Countdown (1999), and The Imam and
the Indian (2002, a collection of essays on themes such as fundamentalism, the
history of the novel, Egyptian culture, and literature. His writings appear in
newspapers and magazines in India and abroad. In The Great Derangement:
Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016), Ghosh discussed modern literature and
art as failing to adequately address climate change. In 2021, The Nutmeg's Curse:
Parables for a Planet in Crisis was published. In it, Ghosh discussed the journey of
nutmeg from its native Banda Islands to many other parts of the world, taking this as
a lens through which to understand the historical influence of colonialism upon
attitudes towards Indigenous cultures and environmental change.

3.3 Arvind Adiga: (born 23 October 1974) is an Indian writer and journalist. His
debut novel, The White Tiger, won the 2008 Man Booker Prize. Adiga's debut novel,
The White Tiger, won the 2008 Booker Prize and has been adapted into a Netflix
original movie The White Tiger. He is the fourth Indian-born author to win the prize,
after Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, and Kiran Desai. V. S. Naipaul, another
winner, is ethnically Indian but was born on the Caribbean island of Trinidad. (More
recently, Geetanjali Shree won the International Booker Prize for her novel Tomb of
Sand). The novel studies the contrast between India's rise as a modern global
economy and the lead character, Balram, who comes from crushing rural poverty.

The White Tiger

Balram Halwai narrates his life in a letter, written in seven consecutive nights and
addressed to the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao. In his letter, Balram explains how he,
the son of a rickshaw puller, escaped a life of servitude to become a successful
businessman, describing himself as an entrepreneur.

Balram was born in a rural village in Gaya district, where he lived with his
grandmother, parents, brother and extended family. He is a smart child but is forced
to leave school in order to help pay for his cousin's dowry and begins to work in a
teashop with his brother in Dhanbad. While working there he begins to learn about
India's government and economy from the customers' conversations. Balram
describes himself as a bad servant but a good listener and decides to become a driver.

After learning how to drive, Balram finds a job driving Ashok, the son of one of
Laxmangarh's landlords. He takes over the job of the main driver, from a small car to
a heavy-luxury described Honda City. He stops sending money back to his family and
disrespects his grandmother during a trip back to his village. Balram moves to New
Delhi with Ashok and his wife Pinky Madam. Throughout their time in Delhi, Balram
is exposed to extensive corruption, especially in the government. In Delhi, the
contrast between the poor and the wealthy is made even more evident by their
proximity to one another.

One night Pinky Madam takes the wheel from Balram, while drunk, hits something
in the road and drives away; we are left to assume that she has killed a child. Ashok's
family puts pressure on Balram to confess that he had been driving alone. Ashok
becomes increasingly involved in bribing government officials for the benefit of the
family coal business. Balram then decides that killing Ashok will be the only way to
escape India's Rooster Coop – Balram's metaphor for describing the oppression of
India's poor, just as roosters in a coop at the market watch themselves get
slaughtered one by one, but are unable or unwilling to break out of the cage.[7]
Similarly, Balram too is portrayed as being trapped in the metaphorical Rooster
Coop: his family controls what he does and society dictates how he acts.

After killing Ashok by stabbing him with a broken bottle and stealing the large bribe
Ashok was carrying with him, Balram moves to Bangalore, where he bribes the police
in order to help start his own taxi business.

Just like Ashok, Balram pays off a family whose son one of his taxi drivers hit and
killed. Balram explains that his own family was almost certainly killed by Ashok's
relatives as retribution for his murder. At the end of the novel, Balram rationalizes
his actions and considers that his freedom is worth the lives of his family and of
Ashok. And thus ends the letter to Jiabao, letting the reader think of the dark
humour of the tale, as well as the idea of life as a trap introduced by the writer.

3.4 Kiran Desai: Kiran Desai (born 3 September 1971). Her novel The
Inheritance of Loss won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics
Circle Fiction Award. Kiran Desai is the daughter of novelist Anita Desai.

The Inheritance of Loss

The story centres around the lives of Biju and Sai. Biju is an Indian living in the
United States illegally, son of a cook who works for Sai's grandfather. Sai is an
orphan living in mountainous Kalimpong with her maternal grandfather Jemubhai
Patel, the cook, and a dog named Mutt. Her mother was a Gujarati and her father a
Zoroastrian orphan himself. Author Desai alternates the narration between these two
points of view. The action of the novel takes place in 1986.
Biju, the other character, is an illegal alien residing in the United States, trying to
make a new life for himself, and contrasts this with the experiences of Sai, an
anglicised Indian girl living with her grandfather in India. The novel shows both
internal conflicts within India and tensions between the past and present. Desai
writes of rejection and yet awe of the English way of life, opportunities to gain money
in America, and the squalor of living in India. Through critical portrayal of Sai's
grandfather, the retired judge, Desai comments upon leading Indians who were
considered too anglicised and forgetful of traditional ways of Indian life.

The retired judge Jemubhai Patel is a man disgusted by Indian ways and customs --
so much so, that he eats chapatis (a moist South Asian flatbread) with knife and fork.
Patel disdains other Indians, including the father with whom he breaks ties and the
wife whom he abandons at his father's home after torturing her. Yet Patel never is
fully accepted by the British, despite his education and adopted mannerisms.

The major theme running throughout The Inheritance of Loss is one closely related
to colonialism and the effects of post-colonialism: the loss of identity and the way it
travels through generations as a sense of loss. Some characters snub those who
embody the Indian way of life, others are angered by anglicised Indians who have
lost their traditions; none is content.

The Gorkhaland movement is used as the historic backdrop of the novel.

Poets:
4.1 Nissim Ezekiel: 16 December 1924 – 9 January 2004) was an Indian Jewish
poet, actor, playwright, editor and art critic. He was a foundational figure in
postcolonial India's literary history, specifically for Indian Poetry in English.He was
awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1983 for his collection, "Latter-Day Psalms",
by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters.
Ezekiel's poetry, collected in "Night of the Scorpion" and "Hymns in Darkness,"
explored themes of identity, spirituality, and the complexities of modern life.

4.2 Kamala Das: (born Kamala; 31 March 1934 – 31 May 2009), popularly known
by her one-time pen name Madhavikutty and married name Kamala Das, was an
Indian poet in English as well as an author in Malayalam from Kerala, India. Her
liberal treatment of female sexuality, marked her as an iconoclast in popular culture
of her generation. Kamala Das was a confessional poet whose poems have often been
considered at par with those of Anne Sexton and Robert Lowell.
Das, also known as Kamala Surayya, challenged societal norms through her bold and
confessional poetry, as seen in "The Descendants" and "The Old Playhouse."
4.3 Agha Shahid Ali: (4 February 1949 – 8 December 2001) was an Indian-born
poet, of Afghan and Indian descent, who immigrated to the United States,and
became affiliated with the literary movement known as New Formalism in American
poetry. His collections include A Walk Through the Yellow Pages, The Half-Inch
Himalayas, A Nostalgist's Map of America, The Country Without a Post Office, and
Rooms Are Never Finished, the latter a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001.
Ali expressed his love and concern for his people in In Memory of Begum Akhtar and
The Country Without a Post Office, which was written with the Kashmir conflict as a
backdrop. He was a translator of Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz (The Rebel's Silhouette;
Selected Poems), and editor for the Middle East and Central Asia segment of Jeffery
Paine's Poetry of Our World. He also compiled the volume Ravishing DisUnities:
Real Ghazals in English. His last book was Call Me Ishmael Tonight, a collection of
English ghazals, and his poems are featured in American Alphabets: 25
Contemporary Poets (2006) and other anthologies.
Known for his lyrical and evocative poetry, Ali's collections like "The Beloved
Witness" and "The Veiled Suite" explored themes of love, loss, and the Kashmir
conflict.
4.4. Arun Kolatkar: (1 November 1932 – 25 September 2004) was an Indian poet
who wrote in both Marathi and English. His poems found humour in everyday
matters.
Kolatkar's poetry collection, "Jejuri," blended mythology, spirituality, and everyday
observations to paint a vivid picture of Indian society and culture. The poem
sequence deals with a visit to Jejuri, a pilgrimage site for the local Maharashtrian
deity Khandoba (a local deity, also an incarnation of Shiva).

4.6. Meena Kandasamy: Ilavenil Meena Kandasamy (born 1984) is an Indian

poet, fiction writer, translator and activist from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
Meena published two collections of poetry, Touch (2006) and Ms. Militancy (2010).
From 2001-2002, she edited The Dalit, a bi-monthly alternative English magazine of
the Dalit Media Network

Dramatists:

5.1 Girish Karnad: (19 May 1938 – 10 June 2019)[was an Indian actor, film
director, Kannada writer, playwright and a Jnanpith awardee. He wrote his first play,
the critically acclaimed Yayati (1961), while still at Oxford. Centred on the story of a
mythological king, the play established Karnad’s use of the themes of history and
mythology that would inform his work over the following decades. Karnad’s next
play, Tughlaq (1964), tells the story of the 14th-century sultan Muḥammad ibn
Tughluq and remains among the best known of his works.

5.2 Vijay Tendulkar: (6 January 1928 – 19 May 2008) was a leading Indian
playwright, movie and television writer, literary essayist, political journalist, and
social commentator primarily in Marāthi. His Marathi plays established him as a
writer of plays with contemporary, unconventional themes. He is best known for his
plays Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe (1967), Ghāshirām Kotwāl (1972), and Sakhārām
Binder (1972)

5.3 Mahesh Dattani: (born 7 August 1958) is an Indian director, actor, playwright
and writer. He wrote such plays as Final Solutions, Dance Like a Man, Bravely
Fought the Queen, On a Muggy Night in Mumbai, Tara, Thirty Days in September
and The Big Fat City.

He is the first playwright in English to be awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award

Dattani's plays like "Final Solutions" and "Dance Like a Man" tackled themes of
religious tensions, gender roles, and the complexities of identity in contemporary
India.
Conclusion:

The history of Indian Writing in English encompasses a wide array of authors, poets,
and dramatists who have contributed significantly to the literary landscape, both in
India and globally. From the colonial era to the present day, these literary figures
have captured the essence of Indian society, culture, and the human experience
through their diverse and thought-provoking works. Their contributions have shaped
the narrative of IWE and continue to inspire future generations of writers to explore
and express their unique perspectives. The rich tapestry of Indian Writing in English
reflects the ever-evolving nature of Indian literature, ensuring its relevance and
influence in the years to come.