CC-9 History Literary and Social Background

Derozio - as the father of Indian English Poetry

Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809-31), the 'harp of India', was the son of an
Indo-Portuguese father and an English mother. Beginning a biography of the Indian poet Derozio
is daunting and could well begin from the time that Vasco Da Gamma came to India. The
complex historical events that produced this poet require a little background discussion.
Derozio was raised in economic and social repression which typified conditions
surrounding the Anglo-Indian community. That this was indeed the case was surprising,
considering that his father worked for J. Scott and company, owned his property, had a home of
good size, and educated his children in some of the best schools which Anglo-Indian children
were permitted to attend.
A precocious child, he had already taken to writing in his teens. After completing his
school education, he worked for some time as a clerk in Calcutta and on an indigo plantation at
Bhagalpur, and also tried his hand at journalism before joining the Hindu College, Calcutta, as a
lecturer. Here, his fearless spirit of inquiry, his passion for ideas, his reformist idealism and his
romantic enthusiasm fired the imagination of many a student. Under his leadership, a debating
club and a magazine (The Parthenon) were started to discuss all subjects under the sun. It
included Hindu religious practices, the rights of women and political issues. Orthodox Hindu
society in Calcutta was seriously alarmed at these activities. The mounting pressure of hostile
public opinion finally compelled the College authorities to dismiss Derozio from service in 1831
on the charge of corrupting the minds of youth. Undaunted, he started a daily, The East Indian,
but suddenly died of cholera six months later. In his all too brief poetic career lasting hardly half
a dozen years.
Derozio published two volumes of poetry: Poems (1827) and The Fakeer of Jungheera:
A Metrical Tale and Other Poems (1828). The shorter poems show a strong influence of British
romantic poets in theme, sentiment, imagery and diction, with some traces of neo-classicism. His
satirical verse and the long narrative poems clearly indicate his special affinity with Byron.
The Fakeer of Jungheera is an extremely competent narrative of the tragic life of Nuleeni, a high
caste Hindu widow, rescued from the funeral pyre by a young robber chief, whose love she

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returns. Her relatives, however, are determined to reclaim her. In the ensuing battle, the lover is
killed and is finally united in death with the heart-broken Nuleeni.
E. F. Oaten makes an assessment of Derozio as 'the national bard of modern India.' A
poet of slender actual achievement, Derozio, a lamp too early quenched remains a writer of sadly
unfulfilled promise. Mr. oaten has not inaptly compared Derozio to Keats, for in both men there
was a passionate temperament combined with unbounded sympathy with nature. Both died while
their powers were not yet fully developed.

“Famous trio” of Indian English Novel

The nineteen thirties were the seed-time of modern independent India. The Gandhian
movements were in full cry, the organization Marxist parties of diverse hues, the involvement in
the War in 19 and many such cataclysmic events were taking place. It was indeed, a whirlwind.
The Indian English novel of the period was dee influenced by the epoch-making political social
and sociology ferment caused by the Gandhian movement. The most signific event in the history
of Indian English fiction in the 1930s was the appearance on the scene of its major trio: Mulk Raj
Anand, R. Narayan and Raja Rao.
Mulk Raj Anand, the eldest of the three, has also been prolific. Born in Peshawar in a
Hindu coppersmith family, Anandh narrated the story of his upbringing in the autobiographical
Apolo for Heroism (1946). His fiction has been shaped by what he calls the double burden on my
shoulders, the alps of the Europe tradition and the Himalayas of my Indian past.' Both these
theme receive perhaps their best fictional treatment in Anand's first novel Untouchable (1935). It
describes an eventful day in the life of Bak a young sweeper from the outcastes' colony of a
north India cantonment town. In his two chronicles of coolies - Coolie (19% and Two Leaves
and a Bud (1937), Anand turns to the lot another class of the underprivileged. A luckier Punjabi
peasant is t protagonist of the ambitious trilogy - The Village, Across the Black Waters and The
Sword and the Sickle. The Big Heart is undoubtedly a very good effort, though marred at the end
b compulsive preaching. The Big Heart was Anand's last now before Independence. His first
utterance after Independence w Seven Summers, an engaging fictional account of his childhood
and the first of a long projected series of autobiographical novels.
Fortunately, Anand returned to his peasants in The Old Woman and the Cow. The 'cow' is
Gauri, a simple peasant girl forsaken by her husband and actually sold to a rich merchant by her

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mother Anand returned to the autobiographical vein in Morning Face (1970) which brought him
Sahitya Akademi Award in 1972. The strength of Anand's fiction lies in its vast range, its wealth
of living characters, its ruthless realism and its strong humanitarian compassion. Rashipuram
Krishnaswamy Narayan had his education entirely in South India. He is of India, even of South
India. He uses the English language much as we used to wear dhotis manufactured in
Lancashire-but the thoughts and feelings, the stirrings of the soul, the wayward movements of
the consciousness, are all of the soil of India.
After some hand-to-mouth journalism for a few years, Narayan published his first novel,
Swami and Friends, in 1935. This novel for the first time created the now famous 'Malgudi', and
seemed at the time to have a formal kinship with Richard Crompton's ‘William’ Novels. Two
more Narayan novels appeared in quick succession: Bachelor of Arts and The Dark Room. Then
the war came and Narayan was apparently obliged to bide his time. He edited the short-lived
Indian Thought, wrote for papers occasionally, and conserved his powers. The end of the war
meant the return of spring, and The English Teacher (1945) was followed by Mr Sampath, The
Financial Expert, and Waiting for Mahatma (1955). An American tour was presently organized
by the Rockefeller Foundation, and the fruits of this adventure are The Guide and My Dateless
Diary. The Guide brought him the Sahitya Akademi award in 1960 and it is his finest novel. It
teases us into thought to an extent no other novel of his does. Narayan's fiction is imbued with a
strong 'sense of place'. His setting, Malgudi, develops from novel to novel but always possesses a
genius locus which gives reality to his men and women.
Raja Rao is the youngest of the trio. He hails from an ancient South Indian Brahmin
family. Raja Rao has not been a prolific novelist, having written just four novels, beginning with
Kanthapura (1938) which is perhaps the finest evocation of the Gandhian age in Indian English
fiction. It is the story of a small South Indian village caught in the maelstrom of the freedom
struggle of the 1930s. The Serpent and the Rope has a strong autobiographical colouring. The
novel deals with the theme of higher love, the ultimate union of the soul with God. The Cat and
Shakespeare is another attempt at philosophical fiction, though in a new direction. Comrade
Kirillov is a long short story rather than a novel. The book reads like an extended character
sketch. Rao's fiction obviously lacks the social dimension of his two major contemporaries. But
even with his small output, his position is the most 'Indian' of Indian English novelists. He is the
finest painter of the east-west confrontation.

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 The theme of Partition Novel in Indo-English Literature

The Partition of India, a momentous event in Indian history, continues to tantalize

historians, haunt the Indian psyche and cast its shadow on our social and political life. It is
closely linked with the chronicle of our freedom struggle that made the actual liberation of the
country from foreign yoke an experience of violence, slaughter and exile for many. One of the
most massive demographic dislocations in history, with its attendant human tragedy, it defies
chroniclers to come to grips with it in all its dimensions.
The Indian partition fiction narrates human experiences. The main theme of the partition
novel is to describe the worst passion in the human heart. The whole partition literature tells a
tragic story of the millions of people on both sides of the border who had been born and brought
up there. Several generations of their ancestors had been born and brought up on the soil, and
now they were suddenly excelled only because they worshipped one God and not another. That is
why it can be said that with all other reasons communalism is one major aspect of the partition of
India. There was communal hatred between Hindus / Sikhs and Muslims. This hatred completed
the mission of demands of blood and human lives. The death danced in the form of sectarian
violence for a long time on the eve of the partition.
An acclaimed poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz lamented the brutalities and atrocities of partition,
―This stain covered daybreak, this night bitten dawn. This dawn is not that dawn we craved for.
Muslims living in India migrated to Pakistan and Hindus and Sikhs living in Pakistan migrated to
India leaving behind everything; their ancestral homes, tradition and culture and becoming
refugees with empty hands. Women became the largest sufferers, who were assaulted, tortured,
sexually abused and abducted by the men of opposite communities in the name of religion.
The common element in all these literature is pathos and the common themes of these
literary giants were violence, brutality, communal riots, bigotry, arson, exploitation, abduction,
rape, murder etc. The writers of the partition literature presented the disastrous situations of
partition in a different way than the historians depicted. Their literary works embody the human
suffering agony and trauma of partition. Writers such as Krishan Chander, Rajinder Singh Bedi,
Amrita Pritam, K.S. Duggal, Saadat Hasan Manto, Nanak Singh, Asmat Chugtai and others
have revolved their writings on the subjects of partition. In English Salman Rushdie‘s
Midnight’s Children, Khushwant Singh‘s Train to Pakistan, K.A. Abas‘s Inquilab, Bapsi

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Sidhwa‘s Ice Candy Man and Bribe, in Hindi Yashpal‘s Jhoota Sach, Bhishma Sahani‘s
Tamas, and in Urdu Saadat Hasan Manto‘s short-stories like Toba Tek Singh, Aakhri Salute,
Titwal Ka Kutta, Khol Do, Thanda Gosht etc. and other works by various writers in different
languages presented the insight of hardships that common innocent people faced and endured in
this nasty battle of power and politics.
The first novel which described the trauma of partition was Khushwant Singh‘s Train to
Pakistan, in 1956, through which he made people of the Indian subcontinent aware of the
hollowness of such mass fratricide and brings out the futility of bloodshed and condemns the
partition of India. He presented the events and incidents that happened during the partition
realistically, as it was a common practice during the time of partition to strip off the man‘s
trousers to check whether he was a Hindu or a Muslim. In his novel Train to Pakistan, a
circumcised man remarks: “Where on earth except in India would a man's life depend on
whether or not his foreskin had been removed? It would be laughable if it were not tragic.”
Thus, Singh depicts a state of madness in people which made them act insanely during the
partition and it is obvious that if a man drinks the poison of communalism and hatred, he will
naturally do such insane and lunatic acts. In this novel, the plot of the story revolves around the
village of Mano Majra located on the banks of river Sutlej near the Indo-Pak border. All the
communities of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh lived there in peace and harmony for centuries. The
activities of the village were dependent on trains. From morning to evening there was hustle and
bustle of trains. One day a train arrived from Pakistan carrying dead bodies of Hindus. This
created distrust and restlessness among people in the village.
Another story based on the theme of brutalities of partition is Bapsi Sidhwa‘s Ice Candy
Man, it revolves around a young Parsee girl, Lenny, who witnessed the brutalities and horrors
of partition. A maid Shanta worked in this Parsee girl‘s house and was wooed by a string of
lovers. Among them, Massuer and Dilnawaz (Ice Candy Man) were in competition with each
other in winning her favours. The maid was taking care of Lenny with innate love and affection.
There was peace and harmony in the city of Lahore. People were living peacefully and
affectionately until the news of the partition broke. All the peace and harmony were shattered.
The Ice Candy Man killed the Masseur out of sheer hatred and jealousy. Then one day a train
came from India with dead bodies and sacks full of breasts. In this incident, Dilnawaz‘s sister
was also killed, which caused disgust and hatred in his mind towards all Hindus. He joined the

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rioters and took part in barbaric and violent events. He even abducted the maid whom he loved
so much but forced her into prostitution just because she was a Hindu. Later he married her but
she was saved from prostitution by the help of Lenny‘s relatives and was shifted to refugee
camps in Amritsar India. The most pathetic and disturbing aspect of partition is that people who
lived together with peace and love as brothers for generations became enemies, thirsty for each
other‘s blood and even molested women of each other‘s community. This is a shameful blot on
the faces of societies of both nations which is almost depicted in all the literature related to the
partition of India.
Women remained the worst sufferers of partition. They suffered all sorts of humiliation,
violence, torture and barbarism. They were abducted, molested, raped and killed, and mutilated
the breasts of women who came in trains. The easiest way of taking revenge on the opposite
community was to dishonour their women, and they were victimized largely. They could not
even go to their original homes as they lost their purity. The partition literature is filled with
themes and stories based on oppression, brutalities, and madness without any reason. The theme
of violence and trauma is a common chord in the partition literature that connects all literary
pieces produced on this theme. The partition of India is not merely a historical event but also an
emotional and heartrending story of untold miseries, sufferings and the plight of humankind.
Apart from novels based on the theme of violence of partition, there are also a large
number of short stories that show the plight of common people who suffered during the
communal riots and brutalities of partition and reveal the disgust and anger of the innocent
people, who were directly or indirectly victimized during this period. Like Saadat Hasan
Manto‘s short story Toba Tek Singh presents Bishen Singh, a lunatic in the story who wants to
be neither in Pakistan nor in India but in the village Toba Tek Singh to which he belongs.
Through this character, Manto presents the pain and grief of millions of people who were forced
to migrate from their native lands.

Feminist movement/ Women Writers

Feminism as a movement gained potential in the 20th century, marking the culmination
of two centuries, struggle for cultural roles and socio political rights- a struggle, which first
found its expression in Mary Wollstonecraft’s ‘Vindication of Rights of Women’ in the year
1792.

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 The increasing prominence of the movement can be observed across three waves, the first
one being political, the second one being cultural and the third one being academic. The first
wave of feminism began in 19th and 20th century, in the USA and in the UK. It was a struggle
for equality and property rights for women. Suffrage groups and activist organisations were
developed. An important text related to this concept is Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s
Own’, which asserted the importance of women’s independence and through Judith’s character
explicated how the patriarchal society prveneted women from relaising their creative potential.
The second wave of feminism which was characterised by a critique of patriarchy in
constructing the cultural identity of women. It began in 1960’s -1970’s. Simone de Beauvoir in
‘The Second Sex’ famosuly stated- ‘One is not born, but rather becomes a woman’ - highlights
the factthat women have always been defined as the ‘other’, the lacking, the negative, on whom-
Freud attributed the concept of ‘penis-envy’. Transcending their domestic and personal spaces,
woman began to venture into the hither to male dominated terrains of career and public life.
Marking its entry into the academic field, the presence of feminism was reflected in journals,
publishing houses and academic disciplines. Mary Ellumann’s ‘thinking about woman’, Kate
Millet’s ‘Sexual Politics’, Betty Friedan’s ‘The Feminine Mystique’ marked the major works of
this phase.
Post 1980’s, marked the third wave, where the feminism has been actively involved in
academics and also with other inter-disciplinary associations. It included Marxism,
Psychoanalysis and Post-Structuralism - dealing with the issues such as- language, writing,
sexuality and many others. Elaine Showalter in her work ‘Towards a Feminist Poetics’
intorduced the concept of ‘Gynocriticism’ - a criticism of gyno texts, by women who are not
passive consumers but active producers of ‘meaning’. In expressing their Concerns third wave
feminism actively subertered co-opted and played on seemingly sexist images and symbols.
Furthermore, the third wave was very much inclusive of women and girls of colour than the first
and the second wave. In its diverse and various forms such as liberal feminism, cultural audical
feminism, black feminism and several others continuoues its struggle for a better world for
women. Feminism and the feminist movement not only got limited to literature but also found
radical expression in arts, painting, architecture and in various other fields.