Chapter -II

HISTORY OF INDIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE

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 Chapter -II
History of Indian English Literature

Indian literature, through its umpteen legends and folklore in prehistoric times,
is unanimously recognized and acknowledged as one of the oldest literature in the
world. India possesses twenty-two officially accredited languages and a colossal
variety of literature has been produced and reproduced in these languages. It thus
becomes evident that history of Indian literature assimilates within itself an endless
variety of untold stories and facts from ancient, medieval and comparatively modern
times, which can be personified as a living entity. Encompassing within the historical
aspect, Indian literature lays considerable stress upon oral and written forms. both of
which were the primary patterns of successive transmittance. As is known from
ancient Indian history. Hinduism was the most predominating religious faction that
ever ruled in pre—Christian era, induced lasting impressions upon the literary
scenario. Hindu literary traditions dominated a sizeable part of Indian culture. Apart
from the Vedas (comprising Upanishads, Samhitas) Brahmanas and Aranyakas are
considered the cardinal sacred form of knowledge, there also exists other scholarly
work to fulfill this Hindu written and oral custom.
History of Indian literature comes about in a wholesome domain through the
Hindu epic like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata treatises such as Vaastu Shastra
in architecture and town planning and Arthashastra by Kautilya (also admired as
Chanakya) making political science and involvement in politics household in ancient
India. Prehistoric devotional Hindu poetry, play and songs sweep the subcontinent
with almost distinct imagery noticed in the gradual evolvement of literature in India.
Indeed, if looked into rather deeper, it can be noticed that history of literature in India
can be smoothly divided into three periods. comprising the ancient, the medieval and
modern or contemporary. The period of the ancient Indian literature can be delineated
by those very first orally transmitted valuable treatises in the guru-shishya mode
which gradually were replaced and revived in the Vedic Period, denoting just the
commencement of Golden Age in India, through Sanskrit literature. Second in line
the era of medieval Indian literature, witnessed a shift towards much more religious
zealousness in regional divisions, although Sanskrit was still retained as the essential

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penmanship language. The Bhakti Movement was largely responsible for such a
breakaway from the - ancient „Golden Moments‟. After considerable historical
movements, inventions, discoveries, treatise- framing and near—wars concerning
Indian literature, the time had come for indigene literature to witness its travel
towards contemporary Indian literature. This phase was a significant time during the
post—Christian era, to define the ideal metamorphosis of Indian rebellious writers
and their fuming socialism in the umpteen Indian Independence movements and
thereafter.
Among the best known works re-delineating history of Indian literature and its
inherent involvement with present Indian scenario, Kalidasa and Tulsidas (legendary
for his epic Hindi poem based on the Ramayana, named the Raamcharitmaanas) top
the ancient and medieval times. Tamil poetry of the „Sangam poetry‟. which dates
back to 1st century B.C. is also considerably celebrated it own right. Keeping Hindu
literary customs aside from the history of literature in India, Islamic influence perhaps
comes second in the illustrious lineage of literary development. Indeed, the advent of
Islam in India, through the Persian Silk Route, had brought a significant change of
style in writing, speaking or preserving. During the medieval period, during where
India was mostly under Muslim rule, Indian Muslim literature flourished, most
notably in Persian and Urdu poetry and prose. Descending a bit down towards modern
times, amongst the contemporary Indian literature Rabindranath Tagore, an institution
by himself, had become India‟s first Nobel laureate for his poetic works in Gitanjali.
A thing to feel extremely proud of, so far India‟s premier literary honour, the
„Jnanpith‟ award, has been bestowed seven times upon Bengali writers, which
indicates the richness of literature in Bengali language.
The history of Indian literature is the historical development of writings in
prose or poetry, which aims at providing education, entertainment and enlightenment
to its readers, as well the development of the literary techniques employed in the
communication of these pieces.
Indian literature in English however possesses a relatively recent history; it is
actually only one and a half centuries old. History of Indian English literature
enlightens readers that the first book written by any Indian in English was by Sake
Dean Mahomet, titled Travels of Dean Mahornet; Mahomet‟s travel treatise was
published in 1793 in England. In an endeavour to rectify and equalize some of the
materialistic and ravenous, hence compromising, practices of the East India Company
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servants, the English Parliament had approved the Charter Act, which had made
England responsible for the educational betterment of the natives. The subsequent
English Education Act, prompted by Thomas Babington Macaulay‟s ill—famed
„minute” on Indian education, made English the medium of Indian education and
English literature a disciplinary subject in Indian educational institutions) Indian
English Literature has matured from a sapling to a firmly rooted tree that blooms with
its entirety still awaiting its yet-to-come metamorphosis. Indians. however, did not
take to penning in English in a day - it took umpteen historical events and illustrious
and notable personalities to bring Indian writing in English to its contemporary
eminence. Not much surprising enough, Indian literature in English and its historical
evolvement had happened alongside the consolidation of British imperialism in India.
There however exists „a variety of opinion about the first definitive Indian text in
English. although critics come to the agreement that history of Indian English
literature dates back to at least the early 19th century. In its early stages, the narration
was influenced by the Western art form of the „novel‟ Early Indian writers made
thorough use of unadulterated English by Indian words to communicate an experience
and understanding which was fundamentally and in essence, Indian. Its beginnings
had received their impetus from three sources - the British government‟ s education
reforms, the endeavour of missionaries and, the response and acceptance of English
language and literature by upper—class Indians. First, there were the educational
reforms called forth by both the Charter Act of 1813 and the 1835 English Education
Act of William Bentinck. The basic historical perspective of English Indian literature
is an effort to contextualize the growth and rise of this genre - from its inception to its
present-day glory. In the contemporary Indian scenario, the country possesses a
sizcable number of populace that has English as either primary or secondary language
of means of communication. This is precisely because India had once served as a
colony of the then British Empire, for close to 200 years, thus calling for a very
precise and exact solid reason for history of Indian English literature and its consistent
blooming. However India‟s association with the British and hence English is even
older. It is now a universally acknowledged fact that Mughal Emperor Jahangir had
granted William Hawkins license to trade in India in the year 1608 and that was when
the English had placed its first step upon the Oriental soil. in the due course of history.
British concluded their conquest of India in a triumphant and scheming manner. Thus,
the spread of English language along with the Empire in India was not quite a bolt
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from the blue, but rather a much expected aspect. English replaced Persian as the
court language in early 1 9th century and interpreting and relating to English became
a matter of survival for the urban class rather than a matter of conceit. As a new block
of population began to emerge from the grass-roots, English language spread its
wings together with it. English literature in India also began to gather its gradual
historical ripening.
Most of the early exponents of English Literature in India were however
British, which is yet again, not surprising, because back then India was perhaps not in
a state under British domination to reproduce native English brilliancy. On the other
hand, leaving some of the much later Indian exponents, history of Indian English
literature belonged solely to the socialite British class. The likes of George Orwell,
Rudyard Kipling and Jim Corbett had lent the preliminary push (although in the
indeed initial and budding times of Indian English literature, these men themselves
were quite abhorrent of native living and style of possibly everything) that was later
carried on by several British authors. Rabindranath Tagore. Michael Madhusudan
Dutt, Rishi Aurobindo Ghosh, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sarojini Naidu who contributed
much profoundly to the historical maturity of English literature in India, initially had
represented the natives, serving as the pre— Independent mouthpiece to these hapless
men. But it was only in the mid nineteen seventies that a new breed of „boarding-
school educated‟, elite brand of Indian English authors started to rise forth on the
global radar. These lent the much-needed life blood to English literature with their
crisp, bantering yet subtly humorous and realistic fictions that were devoured all over
the world.
The history of English language and literature in India starts with the advent
of the East India Company (an English company established and formed to develop
trade with the new British colonies in India and south-eastern Asia) in India. The East
India Company was formed in 1599, at a meeting participated by leading London
merchants and after more than 150 years, the Company held the key to the domination
of Bengal and India in general. The Battle of Plassey was fought in 1757, but Lord
Clive had refused the liability of Diwali or revenue administration and it was in 1722
that the East India Company took over its duty. And still later, precisely in 1790, the
liability for administering criminal justice was also bestowed upon the Company. The
Company was, however, interested in political authority and supremacy only to the
degree that such supremacy would manifold and multiply its own dividends. It was
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directly interested neither in Empire building nor in the „Kingdom of Christ‟ - and
certainly not in the repression or augmentation of indigenous culture. But there
existed exceptions as Warren Hastings had established the Calcutta Madrasah in 1781,
Sir William Jones had established the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784 and Sir
Thomas Munro too was much bemused and stupefied by the Indian ancient cultural
wonders. These men came to be renamed as the „Brahmanised Britons‟, because they
admired Indian culture and strongly approved the idea of introducing Western
civilization or Christianity into India in any form.
By the commencement of the 19th century. Britain - or East India Company -
was more or less the master of the situation in India. In 1813 the commercial
monopoly of the Company was lent a curtain call and the British in India acquired,
beside police functions, educating and civilizing deputation as well. History of
English literature in India, had by this time, taken much gigantic proportions, with the
nascent buds beginning to bloom in a yet unsure direction. However, in such a
context, a token grant of rupees one lakh per year was granted for education and the
proposal was to promote only Oriental education. Printing presses in different parts of
the country and books in the vernacular language as well as in English were begun to
be issued since the beginning of the 18th century. Together with grammars,
dictionaries and translations, the printing presses also brought out the first ever
[Link] - James Augustus Hickey‟ s Bengal Gazette (1780) and others came after
in due course. Last to arrive in the illustrious history of Indian English literature, were
the private schools that imparted English education. Such schools had been started as
early as 1717 at Cuddalore near Madras, 1718 in Bombay (by Richard Cobbe, a
chaplain) and 1720 in Calcutta, endowed by the Thomlinsons, closing in the
establishment of Hindu College in 1817.
Begun by Raja Ram Mohan Roy and his friends - David Hare and Sir Edward
Hyde East, the Hindu College had become the Presidency College in 1855. still
recognized as one of the most premier educational institutes in Kolkata. Western
education was fast being circulated in different parts of India and was performing
much better than the institutions imparting oriental and indigenous education. The
Orientalists and the Anglicists continued to bicker and squabble still, but it was quite
apparent that the former were steadily losing ground and Lord Macaulay‟s celebrated
„Minute‟ decided the issue at last. History of English literature in India was thus
gaining its higher grounds by being uplifted and rejuvenated under the still good—
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hearted Britishers, striving for excellence in the Indian native scenario. Macaulay had
declared that it was obligatory, mandatory and possible to make the natives of these
country good English scholars and that to the end our efforts ought to be directed.‟ On
7th March, 1835, Lord William Bentinck had also resolved that “the great object of
the British Government ought to be the promotion of European Literature and science
among the natives of India, and all funds appropriated for the purpose of education
(1)
would be best employed on English education alone.” From 1835 it was thus
ushered in the „Anglicising Period‟ in the historical development of English literature
for India. However, such an audacious British move was yet rather hanging in the
midsection, with the natives yet to decide the upcoming ill-effects and malicious
English domination, which could only be shovelled out in the mid 20th century.
During the 20 years between 1835 to1855 the number of those educated in
English had been rapidly increasing. It is said that even in 1834-5, 32,000 English
books sold in India, as against 13,000 in native Indian languages. The vogue for
English books increased, and the demand cammore from English educated Indians
than from the Englishmen in India. Westernways — in manners and customs- became
current in bigger towns and cities. 1n 1853 the first railway was established in India,
in 1854 the first telegraph line and a modern postal system were inaugurated.
Distance was being abridged and a common medium of communication was being
established. Modern European scientific techniques (including medicine and surgery)
were slowly being introduced in India. It was thus thought that India was eventually
progressing from its static and secure medievalism to a dynamic modernism.
Indians started with reading, speaking and comprehending English, and they
soon started writing also. Once this started, Indian writing in English had to range
from the most utilitarian prose to the most ambitious verse-epics. On the other hand,
Indian writing in English was but only one of the manifestations of the new creative
urge in India — what is often referred to as the literary Renaissance in India. The
study of English literature stimulated literary creation in Bengali, Marathi, Telegu,
Gujrati and other Indian languages. “ Indo-Anglian literature had the same origin as
the other modern literature in India, though here the foreign element seemed more
pronounced. The filiations between the modern Indian literatures (including Indian
English Literature) and English literature have been close.”(2)
To understand clearly the environment in which Indo-Anglian literature grew
and prospered, it is necessary to understand the growth of English education in India.
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There Was a time when many sober-minded persons in India believed that English
was introduced in India as a medium of instruction with a view to creating a class of
clerks and sycophants, who should be nurtured on an un-Indian culture.“English as a
medium of instruction may or may not have created English-knowing clerks, but it
also encouraged the cultivation and mastery of English as a language. This produced
great thinkers, politicians, and later on poets, novelists and dramatists in English. “(3)
As far back as 1792, Charles Grant, one of the Directors of the East India
Company, pleaded for the English language, as “a vehicle for imparting Western
ideas.” But his was a voice in the wilderness till Indian patriots like Raja Ram Mohan
Roy (1772-1833) with official support from Macaulay, turned the scale in favour of
English as a language for schools and colleges. In 1813, the East India Company
agreed to spend not less than one hundred thousand rupees each year for, “the revival
and improvement of literature and encouragement learned natives of India.” The
result was the Sanskrit Schoo1 Calcutta. Raja Ram Mohan Roy, in his letter to Lord
Ainhers wrote, “When this seminary of learning (Sanskrit School in Calcutta) was
proposed, we understood that the Government in England had ordered a considerable
sum of money to be annually devoted to the instruction of its Indian subjects. We
Were filled with sanguine hopes that this sum would be laid out on employing
European gentlemen of talent and education to instruct the natives of India in
Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Anatomy and other useful sciences
which the natives of Europe had carried to a degree of perfection that has
raised them above the inhabitants of other parts of the world,” Raja Ram Mohan Roy,
Prince Dwarkanath Tagore (1794—1846) and their Brahmo friends, were convinced
that a Western system of education with English as the medium of instruction was the
only way for the re-birth of a new and renascent India. To them the older type of
Sanskrit education was nothing but, “grammatical niceties and metaphysical
distinctions of title or no practicable use to the professors or to the societies.”(4)
Then came Macaulay‟s „Minute.‟ He writes, “Whether we look at the intrinsic
value of our literature or at the particular situation of this country, we shall see, the
strongest reason to think that, of all foreign tongues, the English tongue is that which
wou!d be the most useful to our native subjects.” These words have lent themselves to
some prejudicial misunderstanding. Macaulay cannot be blamed as an English
imperialist bent only on creating a slavish class of English knowing clerks. We must
remember the words in the Minute that followed the previous sentence “To that class
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we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects. of the country, to enrich those
dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to
render them by decrees, fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the
population.”
The death sentence he pronounced on Indian languages and literatures has
been Worded rather arrogantly. “English” he said, “is better worth knowing than
Sanskrit or Arabic. That the natives are desirous to be taught English and not desirous
to be taught Sanskrit or Arabic ; that they will do for the Hindoo what they have done
for the Tartar.” This led to the establishment of the Hindu College in Calcutta in
1816. Lord William Bentinck‟s Government went all out for Macaulay‟s views and
„English education alone‟ English became not only the official language of India, but
also the language for schools and colleges. Colleges sprang up in Bombay and Madras
and this started a new era in the history of Indian culture. Professors and lawyers,
judges and journalists, administrators and public speakers imbibed the philosophy,
culture, political thought, science and literature of Europe through these channels.
Western thoughts and western progress were thrown open to the people of India,
through their knowledge of English. Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Keshub Chandra Sen
(1838—1884) and other reformists welcomed this widening of the mental horizons
and exhorted their countrymen to awake, arise and march ahead on the path of
progress.
Thus the story of English in India begins on March 7, 1735, with the
announcement of Lord William Bentinck‟s decision to favour, “English Education
alone‟ and “a knowledge of English literature and science through the medium of the
English language.” This impact of western learning brought into existence new
thought life in India began to take a new form and context from that date.
The third contributing factor was the work of Christian missionaries. Christian
missionaries came with the sole purpose of spreading the gospel of Christ throughout
the length and breadth of India, but along with proselytization they did extensive
pioneering work in the field of education. They started Serampore College in 1818.
Other missionary schools and colleges came to be established in course of time
imparting Western education through the medium of English. Various missions
started printing presses and published useful books besides Christian literature. They
also studied and published books on Indian languages and literature. “Some of the
presses—the Wesley Mission Press at Mysore, the Basel Mission Press at Mangalore
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and the Baptist Mission Press in Calcutta, to name only three-remain to this day active
agencies for the dissemination of knowledge.”(5) Margaret Macnicol has pointed out
about works produced by missions, “Very little, if any. of their writings in the
vernacular will rank as literature, but they gave an impetus to the scientific study of
the vernaculars as a literary vehicle that was of immense service - to those Who were
destined to use it in verse or prose later on.
Their work fulfilled a standing need. Grammars, Dictionaries, Graded Readers
etc., came from their pens. Kittels‟ „Kannada Dictionary‟, Gundert‟s „Malyalam
Dictionary‟, Bronson‟s „Assamese Dictionary‟, Caldwell‟s “Comparative Grammar of
the Dravidian Language”, „Gujarati Pathmala” by Rev, T. L, Wells, Taylor‟s
“Gujarati Grammar”, etc. did the necessary spade work, which always must precede a
literary renaissance. These missionary scholars and learned men like Lewis Rice,
Brown, Cotter, F. E. Key Nicol Macnicol did yeoman‟s service through their
contribution which forms the bedrock on which the edifice of .IndoAnglian literature
is built.
This progress of Western education was given a new fillip by the birth and
growth of English journalism in India. “Hicky‟s Bengal Gazette, the first newspaper
of modern India was founded at Calcutta by James Augustus Hicky in l780.”(6) Dr.
Iyengar remarks, “Although the first native newspaper had been started as early as
1818, indigenous journalism began making steady progress only after 1833, when the
system of licenses and restrictions was abolished and a fair measure of liberty was
conceded to the press. More especially since the last quarter of the nineteenth century,
journals conducted by Indians, in the Indian languages no less than English, have
been shaping themselves into popular and efficient agencies of instruction in the
several spheres of Indian life.”(7)
Newspapers in English as well as in Indian languages demanded more and
more food from Indian writers. They also increased the hunger of the people for new
and better reading. Gradually, this gave more and more scope to Indian writers, who
had something to say and who knew how to put it in an attractive form. There was
another aspect-, which led to the proficiency of Indians in mastering the language of
their masters. Lord Hardinge‟s resolution of 1844 put a premium on proficiency in
English for government service. This, in its turn, put English in the position of a
highly coveted language which guaranteed a comfortable living and a status in
society. As more and more people wanted English education, to meet this general
10
demand, schools and colleges, taught all the Subjects in English, even in the
secondary schools. Consequently Indians gradually mastered this alien tongue of their
rulers and many of them like Toru Dutt and others wielded the English language so
ably that they could write it with ease and grace.
The English language and its literature were now not confined to Bengal alone
but were thrown open to the whole of India. These universities produced students
and professors, who could speak and write English with fluency. The wealth of
English literature dazzled the minds of the new intellectuals. These men from the
universities, in the long run, brought about India‟s political and cultural renaissance.
Eventually, the earliest writings of the Indians in English were in prose and
were limited to the drafting of a well-turned-out speech or a pamphlet on social
reform. From drafting of speeches and report writing to writing literature is a far cry.
India, at least in the field of fiction, was yet to make a beginning. Early Indo-Anglian
fiction appeared when Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott had become classics and
Dickens had written most of his novels in England .„ when in France, Balzac and
Alexander Dumas were in their grave ; when in Russia, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy had
published most of their important novels.
And with such great and immortal landmarks in world literature towering in
front of her, India made a humble beginning in the field of literature in English. India
was far behind Indo-Anglian writers were handicapped by the necessity of expressing
themselves in a foreign language which many of them had learned only through
books. Naturally their language was bound to be stilted and bookish, lacking the right
idiom and polish.
Since English is not the mother tongue of most of the Indian novelists, one is
led, at times, to feel that with this handicap of the language, the Indian novelist is
having an exercise in futility and that be can never carve out a place of his own in the
broad stream of English literature.
“A few others take an apparently scientific stand and argue that only through
an Indian language can an Indian consciousness be expressed and that the attempt of
the Indian novelist in English to depict the life of those whose emotional and
intellectual life is fashioned by a different language is characterized by a total absence
of the mutual nourishment between the writer and his society. It also points out that
since the writers for a Western audience he will inevitably fails to present a true

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image of India in as much as in his own interest he will try to create an image that is
most saleable.”(8)
One cannot overlook the fact that English has struck deep roots in India and
has been the lingua franca of the intelligentsia for over a century. In the foreward to
his novel Kanthapura, Raja Rao has aptly remarked that English is the language of our
„intellectual make up.‟“We are all instinctively bilingual, many of us writing in our
language and in English. We cannot write like the English. We should not. We cannot
write only as Indians. We have grown to look at the large world as part of us. Our
method of expression therefore has to be a dialect which will someday prove to be as
distinctive arid colorful as the Irish or the American. ..The tempo of Indian life must
be infused into our English expression even as the tempo of American or Irish life has
gone into the making of theirs.”
Difference in language is an incidental factor which is becoming less and less
important. One notices today the emergence of an Australian literature, a Canadian
literature, a West Indian literature, a South African literature, a Nigerian and a West
African literature--all written in English, but all as different from each other as
American literature is from British. The same argument will justify treating Indo-
Anglian literature as a separate entity within the Indian context rather then relating it
to British literature.“Of course, an important difference remains. American literature
like; Australian or English—Canadian literature—is the natural expression of an
English-speaking people. This condition does not obtain in India because much of
Indo-Anglian fiction is written in a language that in most cases is not the first
language of the writer nor is it the language of daily life of the people about whom the
novels are written.”(9) Yet, where there is a will, there is always a way and gradually
functional prose gave place to poetry; the novel came last in the field of. Indo-Anglian
literature. Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Toru Dutt, Rabindra
Nath Tagore, and Shri Aurobindo Ghosh are a few of the great Indo-Anglian writers,
who are no more with us. Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan, D. F. Karaka, Khuswant
Singh, Mrs. R. Prawer Jhabwala, Kamala Markandeya. Anita Desai and a host of
other writers are the front rank fiction writers of to-day.
It is true that the best brains of the country wrote mainly in the vernacular,
because the provincial „language being the language of the people was best suited for
the expression of the innermost urges of the nation. “English as an Indian literary
medium wore an artificial look, especially when it was realized that the mother-
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tongue satisfied the inner urge for expression better than any other medium.”(10)
Accordingly, we see that Hari Narayan Apte and Agarkar had become classics in
Marathi ; in Gujarati, poet Dayaram, „was just dead and gone and Dalpat Ram,
Narmad and Navalram were dominating the field. in Bengali, Bankim Chandra, the
first graduate of the Calcutta University had already become a name and Rabindra
Nath Tagore and Sharad Chandra Chaterjee, were the Titans in the field of Bengali
literature.
There was another reason why many gifted writers wrote in their mother
tongue. It was difficult to carve out anything like a place of honour in literature by
writing in English, because Englishmen refused, to accept as literature the writings of
Indo-Anglian authors and if any recognition was accorded to them it was tardy and
given in a patronizing tone. “Despite the spread of the knowledge of English among
the educated classes of India, Indians wrote comparatively little that can be regarded
as permanent additions to English literature.”(11) Whereas competition was nominal in
vernacular literature, fame and honour invariably came to those, who wrote even with
mediocre ability. And lastly, even for the educated intellectuals opportunities of
seeing their English writings in print were few and far between, whereas the
vernacular press provided full scope and comparatively easy opportunities to such
writers. This explains why such a small number of people devoted themselves to
writing in English. Such people were mostly Indians, who like Toru Dutt, had the
benefit of European education; or they were the people who had the right connections,
opportunities and encouragement in the field of publication. There were also some
determined persons who fought their way to fame by sheer hard work.
The Renaissance‟ is a French word which means “revival” or „reawakening”.
The word has been used by noted scholars, J.H. Cusins and it is said that there is a
Renaissance in India, as there was a Renaissance in Europe in the 15th and 16th
centuries. “However the Indian Renaissance, if there is one, differs in several respects
from the Renaissance in the West. In the West there was a period of about a thousand
years when the glorious past of Europe lay forgotten. Then there was a revival of
ancient Greek and Roman mythology, literature and art. There was also a re-
awakening of the mind to the wonder and beauty of die world, including the human
body. There was no such dark age in India and non such reawaking or revival. Indian
Renaissance is entirely different from that of Europe.”(12)

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 As far as India is concerned Renaissance means a recovery of old National
ideals and these old National ideals and their recovery is of utmost importance to
India and to the world at large. India is a new rising force, entirely different from any
other force of the world. Its genius is entirely different. She is likely to play a crucial
role in world affairs. First, she has to re-make herself and then re-make the world.
Therefore, the first question shall be considered first, and after we have examined
what she has done with herself we shall be in a position to evaluate what she is likely
to do with time world, and what is to be her likely influence in world affairs.
It is rather the first point of view that for the question what India means to
make of her own life must precede the wider question what her new life may mean to
the human race. And it is, besides, likely to become before long an issue of pressing
importance.
The Indian Renaissance is more like the Celtic revival in Ireland. Both took
place after a long period of dark and eclipsing English influence. Both countries have
tried and are still trying to recapture their old natural ideals. Their national spirit has
re-awakened and it is likely to find self- expression in many new forms. In India this
reawakening has become more pronounced since the political outburst of 1905.
The Indian Renaissance is yet a formless chaos full of conflicting tendencies.
Here and there a few points are more sharply defined than they do not as yet have a
sufficient hold of the general mind except in the case of rare influences. Such people
are the torch-bearers and in pioneers in the new awakening that is taking place.
It so seems that in India there is a great Shakti, who is awakening a new
world, a new and alien environment, and finds herself shackled in all her limbs by a
multitude of gross or minute bonds, bonds self-woven by her past, bonds recently
imposed from outside and is struggling to free from them, to arise and proclaim
herself, to cast abroad her spirit and set her seal on the world. We have on every side a
sound of the slow fraying of bonds here and there a sharp tearing and napping, but
freedom of movement has not yet been attained. The giant goddess does not yet walk
about freely and inspire the Indian Renaissance and actions of man.
In India there is an amazing continuity of the past and the present and so some
are inclined to say that there has been no re-awakening in India for India has always
been awake. But the superimposition of European culture lead to a period of decay
and disintegration and this made such a re-awakening essential. India must acquire
new science and technology, if she to play her rightful role in world-affairs. It was
14
time for India to free herself from scholastic Punditism, which has largely been
responsible for her decline.
When we consider the Renaissance of India, we have to take into account
these factors (a) the great past of Indian culture which lapsed into torpor when the
European influence was superimposed on it (b) the period of western influence when
it seemed that Indian culture would soon die a death (c) The period when India came
Out of this torpor and the forward movement began a decade ago.
Indian spirituality saved her from disaster when any other nation have
perished. This spirituality saved her from critical moments and the spirituality has
always been the striking point of her regeneration. “But certainly the outward
members were becoming gangrened: the power of renovation seemed for a moment to
be beaten by the powers of stagnation and stagnation is death.”In times to come
Indian soul shall remain the same, but there is likely to be a great change in her body.
The Indian Renaissance would mean the shaping of a new intellectual and cultural
[Link] writers have stressed Indian spiritually and other worldliness and
Indian writers have been taken in by such false and one-sided views.A better
understanding of Indian art and culture had now emerged Indian scholars are now
stressing in the field of protected activity of day to day life. The greatness of Indian
art is being [Link] one-sided view of Indian culture is now proving to be wrong.
It was so in the case of Germany also. Germany, at one time, was great in philosophy
and music, but had blundered in life and been unable to make the most of its
materials, so it was commonly thought that this was a nation of unpractical dreamers,
idealists, erudites and sentimentalists, patient, decile and industrious certainly, but
politically inapt,—“admirable, ridiculous Germany”? Europe had a terrible awakening
from that error. When the renaissance of India is complete, she will have an
awakening not of the same brutal kind certainly, but startling enough as to the real
nature and capacity of the Indian spirit.
Spirituality is indeed the master-key to the Indian mind. India has always been
conscious of the divine immanence but this does not mean that she has been blind to
the reality of life in this world.
India realized from the very beginning that beyond man there were a number
of gods and mystical others behind their god. There was thus a chain of gods with the
supreme God at the highest level.

15
 She also realized that by the exercise of intelligence and will-power man could
be one with the finite and attain godhood. He could thus become a Brahman in the
real sense of the word.
For over a Century and half Indian intellectuals have been studying English,
English has entered the complex fabric of India‟s life and culture today. The first
three decades of the Nineteenth Century marked the beginning of English writing in
India but it was a period of slow incubation, Rammohan Roy mastered the English
language and wrote forceful English before Macaulay wrote his minute. Kashiprasad
Ghosh, Derozio, Hasan Ali and Mohan Lal belonged to the Pre-MaCaulay period.
They were unusually talented and English became a natural part of their mental make-
up. They tried their hands at creative writing. But these writers could not constitute a
trend. Their writings cannot be evaluated against, nor related to the history and
geography of the India of their time.
The study of the English language strengthened in the years that followed
MaCaulay‟s Minute on Education in India and with the implementation of the
educational policy of MaCaulay, a social, cultural, and literary renaissance swept over
the whole of India. Complete Anglicization of India was Macaulay‟s ultimate aim. He
equated the process of Anglicization with civilization and Christianity was an integral
part of the civilization. But in a country like India having one of the oldest heritage of
culture and civilization of its own, MaCaulay‟s dream of civilizing‟ and anglicizing
the country mentally and intellectually was not fulfilled; nor did his expectation that
the people of India would renounce their past history, traditions and culture
materialize. MaCaulay was not fully aware of the solidarity and authenticity of Indian
culture. He ignored the fact that India had an ancient culture and her own heritage
besides having her own languages with their literatures.
But MaCaulay‟s Minute on education enabled India to have common language
in which her educated classes could freely exchange their ideas and views and which
in subsequent years proved highly valuable as a medium of expression at Various
conferences, helped, to bring about a socio-religious revolution leading to the
modernization of life in India and a certain measure of unity among the different
linguistic regions of modern India. K. M,Panikkar remarks that, “if the new education
had been through Indian languages, India instead of being united would have split into
as many different units as there were languages in India, and would have repeated the

16
pattern of Europe with its conglomeration of mutually hostile units within the same
Christian Community.” (13)
Far more important consequence, of the use of English language was that it
stimulated a new consciousness among the people of political and cultural nationalism
and encouraged the quest for the true meaning of the Indian experience of history in
relation to the West. Equally important was the fusion of Western thought and
European liberalism which attracted the great minds of theNineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries in India, The encounter between Eastern and Western thought left a
permanent impress on India‟s cultural history. There were a good number of Indians
who‟ had acquired western knowledge and had developed an enthusiasm for it. The
scientific truths which they had learnt, impelled some of the more enlightened among
them to strive hard to modify the structure of traditional knowledge, beliefs and social
customs ; for the cultural and social life in India at the time of the western‟ impact on
her was at a very low ebb‟ and was fast deteriorating. Hinduism, which was speaking
the religion of India had been a bundle of contradictory faiths‟ and beliefs and had
permitted a number of socially harmful customs. But due to the emergence of English
a great awakening now came over India. English Education was not merely a catalyst
but was mainly instrumental in bringing about this renaissance. Indian renaissance
had, therefore been described by Sir Jadunath Sarkar as The greatest gift of the
English.
The renaissance in modern Indian literature begins with Raja Rammohan Roy
Born in a village (Radhanagore) in Bengal on 22 May 1772, he died at Bristol on 27
September 1833 a singular concatenation, a preordained sequence of events in the life
of a man who was destined to act as a bridge between India and England. Rammohan
Roy mastered while still young many languages, Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic. and
Hindustani besides Bengali. After journeying within and outside India and some
business ventures at Calcutta, he served in the districts under two British officials—
Woodforde and Digby—and the association was more than merely official. It was
when working with Digby that Rammohan completed his mastery of the English
language which he had started learning much earlier. Leaving Company service at
last, Rammohan returned to Calcutta in 1814, started the Atmiya Sabha, and so
launched himself on the consciousness of Calcutta society. The next few years were a
period of hectic activity, tireless endeavour, and often acrimonious controversy with
Christians and Hindus alike. plight of the widows, the darkness of superstition, the
17
miasma of ignorance, the general backwardness of the country, all stirred him to
action. While being attracted by Christianity, Rarmmohan realized with sorrow that
the bigoted Christian was as conceited as the bigoted Hindu, and was hence equally
impervious to rational argument. With the starting in 1821 of Sambad Kaumudi, a
weekly paper, Rammohan was able to make a bolder and more sustained onslaught on
the forces of prejudice and reaction. By 1823 he had fully matured, sharpened his
dialectical instruments, tested his friends, and re-thought his ends and means. If he
had experienced disillusion, it had only added, in the words of his biographer Iqbal
Singh, “an adult dimension of chastened judgment to his experience and a surer
quality of wisdom to his intelligence”.
During the remaining 10 years of his life, 1823-1833, he crammed, in
Brajendranath Seal‟s words, “the work of half a dozen giants”. He was, in the first
place, an intensely religious man, a Hindu and a Brahmin, who felt that quintessential
Hinduism was of a piece with quintessential Christianity and Islam. He looked under
the bewildering edifices of dogma, ritual, philosophical dialectics, and sought the
foundations of the great faiths, which seemed to him identical, and on these he wished
to raise his Brahmo Samaj, rather as Akbar had done in his day in his own way.
Rammohan thus came, not to destroy but to fulfil, not to divide, but to unite. The
Brahmo Samaj wasn‟t meant to be something altogether new; as Ranade pointed out
in a speech made in 1896, Rammohan Roy “aspired only to establish Harmony
between men‟s accepted faith and their practical observances by a strict monolatrous
worship of the One Supreme Soul, a worship of the heart and not of the hands, a
sacrifice of self and not of the possessions of the self ”. In the second place, he was a
great humanitarian and social reformer. Humanity was no mass that he viewed in the
abstract, but a collection of individuals, each of whom mattered as a unique piece of
trembling reality. Hence the battle he waged against the monstrous custom of sati, and
when it was abolished by Lord William Bentinck, he was profoundly moved and he
raised his voice to offer thanks to Heaven, Whose protecting arm has rescued our
weaker sex from cruel murder under the cloak of religion, and our character as a
people from the contempt and pity with which it has been regarded, on account of this
custom, by all civilized nations on the surface of the globe. He also drafted the
address presented to Lord William Bentinck on 16 January 1830.
Rammohan Roy‟s interests and inquiries ranged from the rights of women and
the freedom of the press to English education, the revenue and judicial systems in
18
India, religious toleration and the plight of the Indian peasantry. He wanted India to
become a new and modern country and the Indians to become a virile new people—
not, of course, by cutting off our moorings from the past, but by achieving a new
integration of our traditional strength with the new scientific disciplines from the
West. He was a master of controversy, though never for its own sake, and he met ably
both his Indian and foreign critics. He begged, pleaded, argued or exhorted as
occasion demanded; fearlessness and an eye for actuality were the sources of his
strength; and the main aim of his dedicated endeavours was the total regeneration of
India, comprising economic progress, political education, cultural renaissance, and
spiritual awakening: „Indeed he even seems to have thought of the possible emergence
of a League of Nations and processes of arbitration to settle national disputes. In the
course of a letter that he addressed to a French Minister for Foreign Affairs,
Rammohan Roy wrote: “The numerous nations and tribes existing are only various
branches. Hence enlightened men in all countries must feel a wish to encourage and
facilitate human intercourse in every manner, by removing as far as possible all
impediments to it, in order to promote the reciprocal advantage and enjoyment of the
whole human race.”
By precept and example he advanced the causes he held dear all along the
front, and truly therefore could he be called the first of the great builders of modern
India, in whom the seer. the idealist, the reformer, and the shrewd man of affairs were
fused in admirable proportion and made him a veritable Titan among men, a fighter
and a builder.
Rammohan, although he could be named as the first of the Indian masters of
English prose, was great in so many fields that he belongs to Indian history more than
to mere Indo-Anglian literary history. His mission in England during the last two
years (1831-33) of his life augured well for India, and he seems to have made a
notable impression on leaders of opinion in England. He even wrote a brief
autobiographical sketch on request (which appeared in the Athenaeum and the
Literary Gazette) and concluded by saying disarmingly: “I hope you will excuse the
brevity of this sketch, as I have no leisure at present to enter into particulars”. He thus
started the tradition of Indian leaders writing autobiographies, and modern
autobiographers like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Suendranath Banerjee,
Rajendra Prasad and M. R. Jayakar may‟ proudly trace their lineage to him! An Indian
scholar, Mr. P. R. Krishnaswami, put forward in the course of an article in the
19
Cornhill about 40 years ago the interesting hypothesis that Rummon Loll in
Thackeray‟s The Newcomes was really a malicious caricature, based on a study of
Rammohan Roy‟s sojourn in England, and even advanced the opinion that this was
the result of family prejudice. Be that as it may, it is a further indication of the great
space Rammohan Roy filled in the minds of his admirers and detractors.
Rammohan Roy mastered the English language, and wrote and spoke forceful
English years before Macaulay wrote his minute. Likewise the first Indo-Anglian
writers of verse and prose-the cavally Brothers, Derozio, Kashiprasad Ghose, Hasan
Ali, [Link], Mohan Lal-belonged, so far as their English education was
concerned to the pre-Macaulay period. Michael Madhusudan Dutt came immediately
afterwards.
Raja Rammohan Roy had been attracted to the West, he too has been repelled
by Hindu practices and beliefs. But he was cast in a different mould, and he was
always able to look beneath the appearance and see into the truth of things. He saw
that in the West, too, Christian profession and practice could be widely divergent. As
for Hinduism, he went to the Vedas and the Upanishads. Many gods were no doubt
mentioned, but transcending them all was Brahman. „All is Brahman‟; „I am
Brahman‟; That thou Art‟. These basic affirmations of the Hindu faith had nothing to
do with idolatry, caste, sati, and the many other foolish, futile, or criminal practices
and beliefs in the Hindu fold. Back, then, to the fount of Hinduism; the deep well of
its living waters would be seen to mix and merge with the springs of other religions
also. In his time Rammohan stood almost alone, while the storms of detraction blew
around him. With a few select friends he held counsel from time to time on the
perennial truths of all religions, and so the Brahma Sabha or Brahmo Samaj was
founded in 1828. His work was continued by Prince Dwaraknath Tagore, an intrepid
figure who also paid a visit to England, and his son Maharshi Debendranath Tagore.
In its great days, members of the Brahmo Samaj were required to take these seven
vows—
“1. By loving God and performing the works which He loves. I will worship God,
the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer, the Giver of Salvation, the
Omniscient, the Omnipresent, the Blissful, the Good, the Formless, the One
only without a Second.
2. I will worship no created object as the Creator.

20
3. Except the day of sickness or tribulation, every day, the mind being
undisturbed, I will engage in love and veneration of God.
4. I will exert myself to perform righteous deeds.
5. I will be careful to keep myself from vicious deeds.
6. If, through the influence of passion, I have committed any vice, I will, wishing
redemption from it, be careful not to do it again.
7. Every year, and on the occasion of every happy domestic event, I will bestow
gifts upon the Brahmo Samaj. Grant me, 0 God!, power to observe the duties
of this great faith:”(14)
A great event in the history of the Brahmo Samaj was the meeting of
Debendranath and Keshub Chunder Sen in 1857. For the next ten years the two
worked together, and the Brahmo Samaj was a power in Bengal, the meeting point of
both the religious and the cultural renaissance But Keshub was more and more
attracted to Christ and his Gospel, though he always gave it a Hindu twist, and this in
time brought about a split in the Brahmo Samaj. Keshub organized his own Church in
1866 with the help of his cousin Protap Chandra Mazoomdar, while the parent body
continued, first as Adi Brahmo Samaj, and later as Sadharana Brahmo Samaj, on
conservative lines with Debendranath, Ananda Mohan Bose (a Cambridge Wrangler),
and the journalist Akshaya Kumar Datta as its leading spirits. In still later times, the
poet Tagore himself tried to close the ranks between the different wings of the Samaj,
but without any material success. Judged by mere numbers, neither the original
Brahmo Samaj nor any of its sub-sects had what may be called an impressive
following either in Bengal or in the rest of India, but many of the leaders of the
community were Samajists of one or another hue, and thus the Samaj may be truly
said to have played a vital role in Bengal‟s (and India‟s) cultural history during the
19th century.
Raja Rammohan Roy had started on several fronts the great task of national
reconstruction,‟ and different men were destined to follow his lead in the different
directions. Thus Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar became the most determined social
reformer after Rammohan, a scholar and a controversialist of eminence, “an
intellectual gladiator whom no adversary could overawe or overcome in argument”.
Likewise, the task of religious regeneration was taken up by Kesub Chunder Sen
(1838-1884). Though misunderstood in his time, he too came to fulfil and not to
destroy. He sincerely felt that Christianity was not incompatible with the spirit of
21
Hinduism, and he felt also that a close understanding between India and England was
possible.) He was an impassioned speaker, and his oratory made a profound effect on
his hearers in India as well as in England. After Keshub‟s visit to England in 1870,
Max Muller thought that Keshub was a sort of Martin Luther for our times and was
struck by the fact that “his (Keshub‟s) name had become almost a household word in
England.
This is no doubt the style of an earlier day, but in his time Keshub seems to
have created a great impression on his hearers. He was boldly classed with Gladstone
and Gambetta, and the Rev. Joseph Cook declared: “He is an orator born, not made.
He has a splendid physique, excellent quality of organization, capacity of sudden heat
and of tremendous impetuosity, and lightning-like swiftness of thought and
expression, combined with a most iron self-control”.
Such was Keshub Chunder Sen, one of the most remarkable men produced
during the ferment of the 19th century. A not less important figure was the Hindu
leader from the Punjab, Dayanand Saraswati (1824-1883), the founder of the Arya
Samaj. The leaders of the Brahmo Samaj had, in their different ways, tried to effect a
marriage of India and the West, to build a bridge between Hindu spirituality and
Christian thought, to gain in short the best of both worlds. Dayanand Saraswati, how
ever wanted only a return to Hinduism in its pristine Vedic simplicity, clarity and
spirituality, and asked for a determined elimination of the accumulated accretions of
the ages. Describe in Dayanand in memorable terms, Sri Aurobindo says— “It is as if
one were to walk for a long time amid a range of hills rising to a greater or lesser
altitude, but all with sweeping con tours green-clad, flattering the eye even in their
most bold and striking elevation. But amidst them all, one hill stands apart, piled up in
sheer strength, a mass of bare and puissant granite, with verdure on its summit, a
solitary pine jutting out into the blue, a great cascade of pure, vigorous and fertilizing
water gushing out from its strength as a very fountain of life and health to the valley.”
To purify and to preserve Hinduism were Dayanand‟s cardinal objectives, and
to achieve these ends he organized the Arya Samaj in 1875. Stuti (praise), prarthana
(prayer) and upasana (community) were to be the means of realization, while even the
non-Hindu was to be proselytized, if he desired, by means of suddhi (purification),
sangathan (union) and vidya (national education). Dayanand‟s work was continued by
Lala Hansraj, Swami Sraddhanand and Lala Lajpat Rai, and the Arya Samaj retrains a
power even today, now as always playing the part of the Church Militant (somewhat
22
like the Society of Jesus in Europe after the Reformation) in Hindu society, being
rather more intimately associated with the deeper springs of Hindu tradition than the
Brahmo Samaj.
In Bombay, however, the movement for religious reform or regeneration took
the form of Prarthana Samaj, less eclectic than the Brahmo Samaj and less militant
than the Arya Samaj. Poona and Bombay were important intellectual centres during
the second half of the 19th century, and there was besides a cosmopolitan atmosphere
in Bombay that made it unique among the cities of India. Many of the young men that
passed out of the colleges were possessed of an idealism and a capacity for
intellectual discipline that were rather exceptional. In the following passage of
sustained eloquence, Sir Narayan Chandavarkar describes vividly the times in which
men like Telang and Ranade underwent the baptism of their leadership.
It was an age of splendour when humanity seemed to stand at the start of a
quickened life, with the promise of a bright future for modern civilization, In politics,
it was the age of the Reform Bill, of Free Trade, of the Abolition of Slavery, of
statesmen of towering personalities like Palmerston, Peel, Gladstone, Disraeli,
Cobden, Bright, Clarkson and Wilberforce. In social reform it was the age of the
Emancipation of Women, of Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale. In literature,
which for the period reflects its currents and character and the ideals of its people, it
was the age of Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning, reflecting through them „the
mighty hopes that make us men‟. The spirit was of humanity, of good things, of great
joy for all, breathed by the times in nearly all departments of life and human activity..
The Professors of English, Scotch or Irish, who came to teach in our colleges and
share in the work of our universities, were men, who more or less breathed this spirit
of the times and sought to impart it to the young men brought within the sphere of
their influence. These young men caught the ardour, the sentiment of humanity and of
the brotherhood of the human race, man‟s growing power as Nature‟s conqueror and
interpreter, and placed as they were—on account of the superstition of ages—where
all seemed dark, they felt that a light appeared to them in the very midst of the
surrounding darkness... They lived in an environment of hope realized, of help and
encouragement given all round. But their aim -was life of fullness. . The first two or
three generations of our men of higher education were men of liberal thought, a wide
outlook on life and humane sentiment.

23
 These were not like the „Derozio men‟, but men seized with purpose, men who
took themselves seriously, and thought and counselled and acted as responsible and
mature leaders of a people just awakening from the stupor of the ages. Social reform,
educational reform, and religious reform had to go together; these would lead to
economic progress; and this in turn would pave the way for political emancipation in
the fullness of time.
Such was the intellectual and moral climate which brought into existence
institutions like the Paramahamsa Sabha (1849) and the Prarthana Samaj (1867),
which evidently grew out of the former and laid the main emphasis on the pure
worship of God. The Prarthana Samaj did not dissociate itself from the parent Hindu
community—didn‟t flirt with Christianity—didn‟t establish a separate Church as
Keshub tried to. do—didn‟t attempt proselytization—but was content to continue the
tradition of the prophets and saints of Maharashtra like Jnanadev, Eknath, Namadev,
Tukaram and Ramdas. Of the leaders of the movement only two need be mentioned
here, Kashinath Trimbak Telang (1850-1893) and Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842-
1901).
Kashinth Telang was a remarkable lad. It is said he read almost every new
book he could lay his hands on, and that he read Browning‟s The Ring and the Book
three times through to take in its full meaning; besides, he read and re-read John
Stuart Mill till he became a part of Telang himself. He was deeply read in English and
Sanskrit, and he translated the Bhagavad Gita for the Sacred Books of the East Series.
He was an able lawyer, and was duly elevated to the High Court Bench, and served
for a time as Vice-Chancellor of the Bombay University. His speeches and writings
on legal, literary, educational, social, religious and political problems were marked by
simplicity and lucidity, a flair for cogent reasoning, and the absence of mere rhetoric
or bombast—for not in vain and he made Mill the exemplar of English prose.
Ranade and Telang were choice spirits, and Bombay and all India benefited
greatly from their educative work. Of the two, Telang was more intellectual, Ranade
more intuitive; Telang was a thinker, an advocate, a wise counsellor, but Ranade was
not only these but also a sage who knew all, and suffered all, and was ready with
consolation at the right time. In Justice Candy‟s words, Ranade had indeed “the
patience of the saints, he was entirely free from guile or hypocrisy, and everyone was
spontaneously drawn to him”.

24
 Like Ranade and Telang, Sir Narayan Chandavarkar, also was journalist,
judge, orator, politician, Prarthana Samajist, all rolled into one. His speeches and
writings—whatever their subject, social reform, education or literature—drew upon
his vast reservoir of knowledge and experience. Dadabhai Naoroji (1825- 1917) was
at the Elphinstone College, entered the British Parliament in 1892, published his
Poverty and Un-British Rule in India in 1902, and twice presided over the Indian
National Congress. Another stalwart from Bombay, Phirozeshah Mehta (1845-1915),
was an imprcssive and many- sided personality who gave his best to his city, Province
and all India.
Bengal, the Punjab, Bombay—and now, Madras. The new education gave
Madras a succession of able lawyers, jurists, teachers, journalists and administrators.
There was Sir T. Muthuswami Ayyar, a great judge, who urged that India should
assimilate Western culture, science and institutions; and that people educated in
English should try to modernise the vernaculars into efficient instruments of
expression. There was Sir V. Bhashyam Aiyengar, one of the subtlest and ablest
masters of advocacy; there was C. Rangacharlu, who was a great success as Dewan of
Mysore; and there were journalists like G. Subramania Ayyar and scholars like V.
Kanakasabhai. But, strangely enough, the real ferment in Madras came from an
initially foreign movement, the Theosophical Society. If the Brahmo Samaj was an
Indian attempt to link the indigenous and Western springs of spirituality, the
Theosophical Society was a Western attempt to fuse with the springs of Indian
spirituality. Founded at New York in 1875 by Madame Blavatsky, Col. Olcott and
William. Judge, the Society shifted to Adyar near Madras in 1878, and has since
functioned from there. Annie Besant, as President of the Society, gathered many
prominent Indians round her, and the Society opened branches in many cities all over
India. She was again not a little responsible for the starting of the Central Hindu
College at Banaras and other educational institutions, and her many-sided ministry is
a notable chapter of recent Indian history.
But none of these movements—neither the Brahmo Samaj nor the
Theosophical Society, neither the Arya Samaj nor the Prarthana Samaj—was a really
effective or final answer to the „challenge‟ from the West, which, paradoxically
enough, had a Janus-face: the face of English education and its sense of power, and
the face of Jesus Christ, and its transcendent light of holiness. If the doubting Hindu
was to be made to believe, a new living manifestation of Indian spirituality was called
25
for. The old „avatars‟ and Messiahs—Rania and Krishna, Mahavira and Buddha,
Sankara and Ramanuja, the mystic singers and saints—- were dimmed by distance,
while Rammohan Roy, Keshub Sen, Dayanand, and Ranade were but superlatively
gifted men, not „avatars‟ or Messiahs. And Ramakrishna Paramahamsa occurred at
the nick of time, occurred in Bengal, and modern India had the Messiah she needed to
salvage and save Indian culture and set it on new foundations. Romain Rolland rightly
saw in Ramakrishna “the consummation of two thousand years of the spiritual life of
three hundred million people”; and though no more present in the flesh, “his soul
animates modern India”.
Ramkrishna was born on 17 February 1836 within a stone‟s throw as it were
of Calcutta became a preist of the Kali Temple at Dakshineshwar, married Sarada
Devi, and passed away in 1866. He was not only ignorant of English, he was actually
an illiterate man. He was subject to trances. He was, in Sri Aurobindo‟s words, “a
self-illumined ecstatic and mystic without a single trace or touch of the alien thought
or education upon him”. Yet the flower of the intellectual aristocracy of the time
crowded round him, hung upon lips, and found in him an answer to its obstreperous
doubts and questionings. Others spoke about truth and discussed it or tried to argue
you into it; but Ramakrishna was the Truth. People who went to see him felt that he
was the Truth, as Christ told Pilate, “I am the Truth”. Parables tumbled from his lips.
His mysticism was like the ether and embraced the West and the East, all religions, all
paths and all forms of realization.
He was the living embodiment of human unity through God-realization. The
appeal he made was to the lotus of the human heart which at once opened out, petal
by petal, and in its full splendour dedicated its beauty and joy to the Supreme. In
baby-cat fashion, the frail and the erring were lifted up by his winged love and taken
to the haven of redemption. Love, after all, is the final law of life. Without love there
can be no true giving or taking; and love—love emancipated and purified—is the
pathway to felicity here and hereafter.
However, the occurrence of Ramakrishna meant no turning back on the West;
only, he made it possible for the Indian intellectual to take the best that the West had
to give him, yet not give up the spiritual heritage of his forefathers. When
Ramakrishna passed away, his chief disciple, Swami Vivekananda, established the
Ramakrishna Mission, a spiritual and humanitarian movement that has been doing
notable work. Vivekananda‟s own writings and speeches are spread over many
26
volumes. He spoke with knowledge as well as conviction and a sense of urgency, and
he was a very effective speaker, bold, audacious, fluent, and essentially educative.
Occasionally he essayed English verse, too, and a piece like „Kali the Mother‟ is
almost an apocalyptic vision of the breaking of the worlds and the Dance of Doom—

“The stars are blotted out.

The clouds are covering clouds,
It is darkness vibrant, sonant.
In the roaring, whirling wind
Are the souls of a million lunatics,—
Just loose from the prison house,—
Wrenching trees by the roots,
Sweeping all from the path.
The sea has joined the fray,
And swirls up mountain-waves,
To reach the pitchy sky.
The flash of lurid light
Reveals on every side
A thousand, thousand shades
Of Death begrimed and black—
Scattering plagues and sorrows,
Dancing mad with joy.
For Terror is Thy name,
Death is in Thy breath,
And every shaking step
Destroys a world for e‟er.
Thou „Time‟, the All-Destroyer!
Come, 0 Mother, come!
Who dares misery love,
And hug the form of Death,
Dance in Destruction‟s dance,
To him the Mother comes.”(15)
The Indian Renaissance came to its own through three stages,

27
 The first stage was the reception of the European influence after critical
evaluation. Some principles of the old culture were denied.
The second step was a denial of the many steps, even essential ones, of the
new influence, and assertion of the many important elements in the old culture.
In this way was born the Indian Renaissance, a complex process of the
accepting of the new and modifying it with old cultural influences. It was both
indigenous and foreign. Such complexity was possible only in a country like India.
India could not accept the new culture as easily as Japan and other countries
did. She modified the new and asserted the old. So the Indian Renaissance assumed an
entirely new character, indigenous and radically different from the new influences that
formed and shaped it. The process still continues. Thus the Indian Renaissance is not
mere Asiatic modification of Western modernism but some great. new and original
thing of the first importance to the future of human civilization.
The first generation of intellectuals was fascinated by western influences.
They rejected all that was medieval, and they could not fully understand the
spirituality of ancient Indian culture. Therefore, they sought for a bare, simplified and
rationalized religion, created a literature which imported very eagerly the forms, ideas
and whole spirit of their English models—put their political faith and hope in a
wholesale assimilation or rather an exact imitation of the middle-class pseudo-
democracy of nineteenth-century. England would have revolutionized Indian society
by introducing into it all the social ideas and main features of the European form.
Whatever value for the future there may be in the things they grasped at with this
eager conviction, their method was a false method—an anglicised India is a thing we
can no longer view as either possible or desirable—and it could only, if pursued to the
end, have made us painful copyists, clumsy followers, always stumbling in the wake
of European evolution and always fifty years behind it.
In the first stage there was a very crude form of acceptance of the new. Still
there were three indispensable elements in it (a) It awakened a free activity which
resulted in a better understanding of India‟s past. It lead to a fresh look at all aspects
of life and discovery of new meanings in what was old (b) It gave us an India which
made it possible for us to understand our cultural heritage and suitably modify it.
These new ideas are still at work. (c) It forced us to consider many aspects of our old
culture. Reconsideration led to acceptance with understanding. In this way there was a
synthesis of the old and the new, That in this first period we misunderstood our
28
ancient culture, does not matter; the enforcement of a reconsideration, which even
orthodox thought has been obliged to accept, is the fact of capital importance.
In the second period the synthesising impulse. was very soon met by the old
national spirit and was modified by it. A large number of intellectuals were impressed
by this fusion and henceforth became its staunch advocates and supporters.
Anglicising suffered a marked setback. The thought and spirit, the turn and the tinge,
became more and more Indian.
In the third stage there was a vindication and re-acceptance of everything
Indian and simply because it was Indian. This reaction was a new kind of fusion and
assimilation which makes new creation possible. There was a synthesis of the old and
the new, the old was critically examined and if found suitable was assimilated to the
new, and in this way a new culture was born. Of this free dealing with past and
present, this preservation by reconstruction, Vivekananda was in his life-time the
leading example and the most powerful exponent.
Thus new creation took place which is best exemplified by Indian and, Of
such vital and original creation we may cite the new Indian art as a striking example.
The beginning of this process of original creation in every sphere of her national
activity will be the sign of the integral self-finding of her Renaissance.
There are three steps which have made Indian Renaissance possible. The
Renaissance itself may yet he far off, but the process has started and should come to
full flowering in course of time.
The first step in this process was the reception of the European influence. The
prominent element of the old Indian culture were reconsidered and there was some
existence of its basic principle. This first step was followed by a second one. It was
the reaction of the Indian spirit to the West Sometimes what the West offered was
totally undesired and the national past was stressed. There was a movement for
assimilation of the West but it was not yet very clear and was generally not clear to
the people.
The third phase which is just beginning or recently begun is rather process of
new creation in which the spiritual power of the. Indian mind remains supreme,
recovers its truths, accepts whatever it-finds sound or true, useful or invetible of the
modern idea and form, but so transmutes and Indianises it, so absorbs and so
transforms it entirely into itself that its foreign character disappears and it becomes
another harmonious element in the mastering and taking possession of the modern
29
influence no longer possessed or overcome by it. This transition from the old to the
new was a complex process. It was predestined and inevitable. It was impossible that
India should be influenced by what was foreign and forget the basic principles of her
own culture.
A swift transformation as in Japan was impossible for India, for she was too
proud and conscious of her glorious past. India is basically spiritual and hence not so
adaptive to the material West. She is constantly remoulding her outward culture by
her spirituality which controls all her doings and which was still working there during
the process of transition. India could never forget her spiritual past and hence her
tardy response to western influence. It is not a process of rejection, but of
modification. Till such modification becomes a reality she cannot move forward
rapidly. Hence there a number of complex movements and much confusion. There are
currents and cross-currents of opinion and easy, clear and smooth forward movement
becomes difficult. Therefore even when India moves forward, she has no clear idea of
her future direction. But since this inner direction has been found there will be no
mere Asiatic modification of Western modernism, but some great, new and original
thing of the first importance to the future of human civilization.
Western education in India created a ferment and there were a large number of
talented intellectuals, with originality and vigour. They thought that in India too there
would be such rapid transformation as there was in Japan. But they were entirely
wrong. Though such people were intensely patriotic, they were yet denationalized in
these mental attitudes. They admitted practically, if riot in set opinion, the western
view of our past culture as only a half-civilization and their governing ideals were
borrowed from the West or at least centrally inspired by the purely western spirit and
type of their education. From medieval India they drew away in revolt and inclined to
discredit and destroy whatever it had created; if they took anything from it, it was as
poetic symbols to which they gave a superficial and modern significance. They
looked to ancient India with pride but they could not understand her spirituality they
tried to throw out all that did not meet their requirements or which could not be
harmonized with the western view of life. They sought for a bare, simplified and
rationalized religion, created a literature which imported very eagerly the forms, ideas
and whole spirit of their English models-—put their political faith and hope in a
wholesale assimilation or rather an exact imitation of the middleclass pseudo-

30
democracy of nineteenth-century. England would have revolutionized Indian society
by introducing into it all the social ideas and main features of the European form.
But even their crude reception of western influences has left its results of great
value to the approaching Indian Renaissance. These results are of crucial importance
for the Indian Renaissance. First, it re-awakened a free activity of the intellect which,
though at first confined within very narrow bounds and derivative in its ideas, is now
spreading to all subjects of human and national interest and is applying itself with an
increasing curiosity and a growing originality - to every field it seizes. This is
bringing back to the Indian mind its old unresting thirst for all kinds of knowledge
and must restore to it. before long the width of its range and the depth and flexible
power of its action; and it has opened to it the full scope of the critical faculty of the
human mind, its passion for exhaustive observation and emancipated judgment which,
in older times exercised only by a few and within limits, has now become an essential
equipment of the intellect. These things the imitative period did not itself carry very
far, but it cast the gem which we now see are beginning to fructify more richly.
Second, it created a ferment of modem ideas which could not, but modify the old
culture. It had a powerful impact, woke India from her stupor, so that she could break
free from her customary ways, anti think along new lines. Thirdly, we could now look
on our ancient culture with new eagerness and new understanding. The result has been
that the old is now view-ed in a new light and the old truths now seem to acquire a
fresh aspect. That in this first period we misunderstood our ancient culture, does not
matter; the enforcement of a reconsideration which even orthodox thought has been
obliged to accept, is the fact of capital importance.
This period of transition led to a recovery of national poise and we could
direct the old into sounder and much more fruitful lines of action. For the anglicising
impulse was very scion met by the old national spirit and began to he heavily suffused
by its influence. It is now a very small and always dwindling number of our [Link]
day intellectuals who still remain obstinately westernised in their outlook; and even
these have given up the attitude of blatant and uncompromising depreciation of the
past which was at one time a common way. A larger number have proceeded by a
constantly increasing suffusion of their modernism with much of ancient motive and
sentiment a better insight into the meaning of Indian things and their characteristics a
free acceptance more of their spirit than of their forms and an attempt at new
interpretation. At first the central idea still remained very plainly of the modern type
31
and betrayed everywhere the western inspiration but it drew to itself willingly the
ancient ideas and it coloured itself more and more with their essential spirit; and
latterly this suffering element has overflooded, has tended more and more to take up
and subdue the original motives until the thought and spirit, turn and tinge are now
characteristically Indian. The works of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Tagore. the
two minds of the most distinctive and original genius in our recent literature, illustrate
the stage of this transition.
But there was in opposite reaction also. There was a vindication and
acceptance of everything Indian. Much of its influence continues even now. This
reaction has not yet exhausted itself. This re-action in reality marks the beginning of
the process of a fusion and assimilation. In vindicating the old, it has followed such
ways as are likely to satisfy‟ both the old and the new, lost both the fanatic Indians
and the fanatic modems. This spirit has gradually changed itself and has taken a more
synthetical approach. And the ripper form of the return has taken as its principle a
synthetical restatement it has sought to arrive to the spirit of ancient culture and, while
respecting forms and often preserving them to revivify has yet not hesitated also to
remould, to reject the outworn and to admit. whatever new motive seemed assimiable
to the old spirituality apt to widen the channel of its larger evolutions.
The result has been a new creation. But India must get back to her own
spontaneously otherwise the result would be as ridiculous as the wearing of a dress
half European half Indian. India must integrate and harmonise with her own past
culture and spirit and assimilate what suits her in the new culture Of such vital and
original creation we may cite the new Indian art as a striking example. The beginning
of this process of original creation in every sphere of her national activity will be the
sign of the integral self- finding of her renaissance.
The Indian Renaissance differs from that of Europe in various ways.
There was no dark, eclipsing period in India, as in Europe. No doubt, in the
18th and 19th centuries there was the dark eclipsing, influence of the British but even
during this period India never forgot her spirituality. The word Renaissance carries
the mind back to the turning point of European culture to which it was first applied;
that was not so much a re-awakening as an overturn and reversal, “a seizure of
Christianised, Teutonised, feudalized Europe by the old Greeco-Latin spirit and form
with all the complex and momentous results which came from it. That is certainly not
a type of renaissance that is at all possible in India.
32
 As a matter of fact Indian Renaissance has a clear resemblance to the recent
Celtic movement in Ireland, the attempt of a re-awakened national spirit to find a new
impulse of self-expression which shall give the spiritual force or a great reshaping aid
rebuilding in Ireland „as discovered by a return to the Celtic spirit and culture after a
long period of eclipsing English influences, and in India something of the same kind
of movement is appearing and has especially taken a pronounced turn since the
political outburst of 1905.
The outburst of Indian Renaissance gave birth to much chaotic conditions. A
number of conflicting influences came to the surface. But they did not have any
strong-hold on the minds of the people in general. These influences merely signified,
“the torch light of the pioneers”. There were social reformers and they became more
active, while the general people remained entangled in petty matters. “India was and
still is like a giant Shakti, who awakening into a new world, a new and alien
environment, finds herself shackled in all her limbs by a multitude of gross or minute
bonds, bonds self-woven by her past, bonds recently imposed from outside and is
struggling to be free from them, to arise and proclaim herself, to cast abroad her spirit
and set her seal on the world”. We hear on every side a sound of the slow fraying of
bonds, here and there a sharp tearing and snapping, but freedom of movement has not
yet been attained.
The Indian Renaissance has not yet reached its peak. When it attains fullness,
it would be of far reaching importance both for herself and for the world. It would be
of immense importance because Indian Renaissance does not mean any revival but
merely stressing of that spirituality which had never been forgotten. Indian
Renaissance has merely accentuated and made it a powerful force not only for herself
but for the world at large. It would change the future of the entire human race.
Mr Cousins puts the question in his book whether the word „renaissance‟ at all
applies since India has always been awake and stood in no need of re-awakening.
“There is a certain truth behind that and to one coming in with a fresh mind from
outside and struck by the living continuity of past and present India, it may be
especially apparent; but that is not quite how we can see it who are her children and
are still suffering from the bitter effects of the great decline which came to a head in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Undoubtedly there was a period, a brief one,
but very disastrous period of the dwindling of the great fire of life. Even a moment of
incipient disintegration, marked politically by the anarchy which gave European
33
adventure its chance, inwardly by an increasing torpor of the creative spirit in religion
and art—science and philosophy and intellectual knowledge had long been dead or
petrified into a mere scholastic Punditism.—all pointing to a nadir of setting energy,
the evening-time from which, according to the Indian idea of the cycles, a new age
has to start. It was that moment and the pressure of a super-imposed European culture
which followed it that made the re-awakening necessary.”(16)
In comparison with such literatures of India as Bengali, Punjabi and Telugu
which have existed for many centuries, or with Tamil which counts for thousand
years, Indian-English literature is very young. Nevertheless, it already its own history.
In the eighteenth century the East India Company took advantage of the fact
that England and France were at a state of war, which went down in history under the
title of Seven-Year War (1756-1763). England declared war against Bengal, which
had friendly relations with France. The battle at Plassey in 1757, which the English
people under the command of Robert Clive won and thus became the absolute rulers
of Bengal, proved to be an important turning point in the history of India. “The events
of the Seven Years War‟‟, K. Marx wrote, - transformed the East India Company
from a commercial into a military and territorial power. It was then that the oundation
was laid of the present British Empire in the East‟‟ Embodying the political and
economic power of the British Empire, the East India Company had to widen its
machinery. It needed office workers, knowing Indian languages, culture of the
country, history of Hinduism and Islam local regulations and customs. Great zeal in
the study of not only Indian law, but also of Indian culture was displayed by a ember
of the English Supreme Court, Sir William Jones (1746—1794) who founded in the
year 1784 in Bengal “The Royal Society of Asian Studies‟‟ or “Asiatic Society‟‟.
William Jones and his colleagues, T. Cole- brook and Ch. Willkins, were the first
Englishmen who had seriously started the study of ancient Indian culture and also
carried out translations of Hitopadesha and Shakuntala from Sanskrit.
It was with the sole aim of imparting elementary knowledge about India, and
first of all, of languages of Hindi, Urdu and Bengali to the officials of East India
Company that William Fort College was established in Calcutta in the spring of 1800.
The Englishmen. who would study at Fort William, were offered high posts in the
governmental machinery, but the number of similar vacancies was limited and the
Colonial administration perhaps still felt the demand for employees in the middle and
lower posts. Here the English authorities preferred to employ local inhabitants.
34
Though they were paid meagre salary (the rate of payment of an English Judge, for
example, exceeded 25 times the pay of an Indian Judge), yet it was precisely with
their help that contacts with the local population were maintained.
As the local languages did not contain essential processional and scientific
terminology, the English people came to the conclusion that knowledge of English
was essential for die Indian employees for work in the government machinery.
The time was ripe for radical reforms. Colleges for Indians of noble birth were
set up one after another, mainly for those who came of well-to-do Brahmin families.
In 1817 Hindu College, in 1818 Serampore College, in 1820 Bishops‟ College, and in
1828 Elphinston College started functioning. Since 1835 English, declared as the state
language of India, was introduced not only as a subject of study in the urban schools,
colleges and other educational institutions, but also as a compulsory language through
which it was imperative to teach all the disciplines. In his “Minute on Indian
Education,‟‟ TB, Macaulay, a Member of Governor Generals‟ Council distinctly
defined the aims of the new system of education.
It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body
of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters
between us and the millions whom we govern, a class of persons, Indian in blood and
colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.
During the course of many decades the colonizes persistently propagated
English in schools and colleges in order to prepare for themselves dependable
assistants from local population, relying on whom they could consolidate their
domination in India. Striving for promoting the language barrier between the
intelligentsia and the people, the English rulers caused damage to national literatures
and doomed to death the distinctive culture of the country. They offered their own
language as the only possible means of Sociopolitical and cultural activities. By
means of this, they also desired to facilitate for themselves the task of their control
over the Indians, first of all in the sphere of ideology.
However, a change came about in Indian culture completely unforeseen by the
English. The conquerors achieved ultimately unforeseen paradoxical effect:
Introduction of English by force opened to the Indians an access to the abundant
veritable riches of world culture, from which they derived a deep urge for freedom,
and a profound love for humanitarian ideas which inspired them to wage a struggle
for liberation of their motherland from the English yoke.
35
 It is not that there were no attraction for Indians to write in English. The
contrary was the case.
The desire to impress the British Public was a strong impulse which actuated many an
Indian to express himself in English. Babu Sambhunath Mukherjee in a letter written
to Meredith Townshend remarks, “We might have created one of the finest literatures
in the world without making any impression in the camp of our British rulers and, of
course, without advancing our political or even social status. Hence we are compelled
to journalism and authorship in a foreign tongue, to make English a kind of second
vernacular to us, if possible, you have no idea of the enormous personal sacrifice
involved in this---but, we who write in English, have to make this sacrifice for the
fatherland.”(17) This desire to create an impression in British circles for ends political
or social or even personal, was the factor that weighted in favour of writing of
English.
Wider international Reading Public : Literature written in English could of course, be
read by the British officials and might result in official recognition by the British
public. There was the desire to be appreciated by the British public and to stand as
their equal even in the literacy field. They wanted to take their place along with the
standard English writers.
All-India Reading Public : As English language was the official language of India,
the upper classes all over Indian prided themselves on their knowledge of English.
The well-to-do people sent their young sons to England for education in English. It
thus transpired that slowly but steadily English became the lingua franca of the
intelligentsia all over India. A doctor in Bengal may not know Tamil or Gujarati, but
English was the language in which he could talk to and be at home with Indians in
any part. Important public meetings were conducted in English and if any appeal had
to be made to the whole of India, it had to be made in English. India, with fourteen
major languages and literatures, found one language, English, which her intellectual
class could understand well all over the country. And so, Indian authors, who wanted
recognition and fame wrote in English. It thus happened that authors like, Michael
Madhusudan Dutt, Romesh Chandra Dutt and many others wrote in English as well as
in their mother tongue.
Inspiration of the examples of English writers in India :Then there were English
officers, who were not only administrative officers, but also men of letters. India with
her hoary past, and with her great Sanskrit classics and her cultural traditions had cast
36
a spell upon English men like Sir William Jones, John Lcyden, David Lester
Richardson, Meredith Parker and of course Sir Edwin Arnold, Meadows Taylor, and
others, who tried to articulate “the glory that was India” in English literature. The
writings of these men brought home to the Indians the importance of their own
cultural inheritance and a crowded series of intellectual and emotional impacts
deepened the sensibility of Indian writers.
Distrust of tile Vernaculars : It is also possible that some Indians used English for
their literary attempts because, like Bacon and Milton, they must have felt that the
provincial languages, with their limited potentialities would “at one time or other play
the bankrupt with books.” They must have had faith in English as “the universal
language”, in which their works would “last as long as books last”. So inspite of their
natural leanings for the mother tongue some writers did write in English.
Growing Nationalism: The growing nationalism stirred the spirit of India. Indians
wanted the world to see that India was not merely a country of turbaned bejeweled
Rajahs, fakirs, jugglers and court-intrigues but it was a country of educated men and
women, who yearned to catch up with the progressive world by hard work and who
lived, felt and thought as Western nations did. They wanted to interpret India, her
culture, her hopes and her ambitions to the West. They wanted to present the real
India to tire West and become literary ambassadors of die renascent India. Swami
Vivekanand revealed to the West the riches contained in Indian religion and
philosophy. Shri Aurobindo‟s mysticism brought home to the Western world the
spiritual heritage of India and the poetry of Toru Dutt and Rabindranath Tagore
impressed the West by lyricism and poetic quality.
Western Models : Lastly the educated Indian with literary bent of mind was eager to
bring the Western model to his own country. He was eager to put before countrymen
the wealth of English literature with its new technique, new forms, and new outlook
on life and thus he wanted to enrich the vernacular literatures. He wanted to trains
plant the literary models of England to the Indian soil. There so grew up a generation
of Indian writers, who could add to the wealth of the literatures in their own
languages. “Western education, which was imparted to Indians through English in
institutes and college founded all over the country, had also a far reaching influence
these developments. If the progressive steps taken by missionaries and officials
resulted in an overhaul of antiquated educational methods, materials and tools,
western education turned minds of Indians inside out, removed many mental cobwebs
37
and promoted in them a new and integral outlook. The transmission of mod scientific
and sociological ideas made Indians aware of the blessing materialism and social
organization, of the infinite value of democracy as a way of life and of reason as an
instrument of analysis critical inquiry and as the champion of free and independent
thinking. It was not merely a new planet but a number of constellations- the physical
and social sciences that swam into ken of fascinated Indians. “In these dark nights”,
said Ghalib in of his Persian poems. “they gave me the good news of the date. They
extinguished the candle and they pointed out to me the sun.” They snatched the pearl
away from the crown and they attached to knowledge”. The caste-ridden society in
India was shaken to very foundations were subjected to the relentless gaze of reason. I
withering away was only a question of time.” All the Western art forms like the novel,
biography, tragedy, comedy, the essay and the lyric with their sub-divisions were the
moulds into which spirit of awakened India poured itself. “Rather, they (i.e. I Anglian
writers) may be valued as interpreters and pioneers brought the techniques of
European literature into our country whilst contributing Indian idiom and metaphor to
English literature.”(18)
The Indian renaissance was caused by the impact of the West and the works in
India were greatly coloured by this English influence.
Many of the earlier works of the Indo-Anglians were directly inspired by
corresponding English counterparts ; for example, “One Thousand and one nights by
S. K. Ghosh owed inspiration to the well known Arabian Nights, available then in
English ; Indian Detective Stories, by S. B. Bannerjee tries to recreate an Indian copy
of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‟s well known detective Sherlock Holmes. These are one or
two more significant examples of this kind.
In fact, the prose as also the poetry, even in the modern Indian languages was
written a highly anglicized style in the beginning and it took some time before the
English garb of these languages could be properly assimilated to their own innate
genius. Memorable work has been done in Indo-English literature, particularly in
poetry, fiction, philosophy and criticism. “But English as an Indian literary medium
wore an artificial look, especially when it was realised that the mother tongue satisfied
the inner urges for expression better than any other medium, it will have to play an
important and vital role as the medium for interpreting our culture and philosophy and
for presenting creative renderings of our ancient and modern classics to the world.”

38
 These then were the attractions, which led many educated Indians to write in
English. The result they produced was not always attractive. Cheap imitations and
works of insignificant worth were too frequent. Sri B. J. Wadia in his foreword to the
book Indian Contribution to English Literature, says, “Moreover, all that is written by
Indians in English literature can not be called literature. A great portion of such
writings can at best belong to the sphere of well cultivated mediocrity.”(19)
As John Wain has put it, „„Indians writing in English had an insecure grip on
idiom, while the traditionalist‟s argument is that by virtue of his medium, the Indo-
Anglian writer is estranged from Indian society.”(20)
Krishna Baldev Vaid has aptly pointed out, So far, at least, judged purely by
literary standards, without making the usual condescending concession that English is
after all a foreign medium, Indian creative output in English has been at best second-
rate and derivative …….!
“-------I maintain that the best of our language literature is better than the best
of what Indians have produced in English. Most Indian writers in English have found
the temptation to pad their books —this refers specifically to fiction—with dead
details of tourist interest almost irresistible.‟‟
M. Chalpathi Rao‟s article „The Indo-Anglians” in „The Illustrated Weekly‟ of
March 26, 1963 points out, “Indian writing in English is at its best, composition, and
the best of it is translation ...We have no prose, ; we have strings of words, gawkishly
arranged like heads. There is no rhythm there is at best a street-walker‟s gait.” As
against this opinion, we have, “Expression in English can bring a sense or release to
the Indian intellectual as he endeavours to express the deepest turns and twists of his
own mind. Whatever its future form, it seems certain that the Indian novel in English
will surpass its counter-part in the regional languages.”(21)
Uma Parmeswaran holds a different view of the achievements of Indo-Anglian
novelists, “A study of these and more recent novels shows that because of the rapid
adaptation of literary experiments conducted in Western literatures and because of
their contact with the essential Indian life, the contemporary and future vernacular
novel is likely to be more prolific and popular than the Indo-English novel and at least
as good.”(22)
Should we, therefore, say that the labours of the Indians who write in English
have been in vain ? Certainly not. “In one sense anything written in English by an
Indian must to some extent be artificial, as artificial as it is for a Westerner writing in
39
his own language about an Indian subject to give adequate expression to the real
glamour of the East. But it is not possible for an Indian writer to largely conquer the
difficulties of writing in an alien tongue. In Shakespeare‟s time the English language
was spoken by about four millions in the world. To-day it is spoken by two hundred
millions, nearly twice the number of those, who use its nearest competitor among
other western languages. An Indian, therefore, writing in English, certainly opens the
doors of cultural contact between his own country and those two hundred
millions.”(23)
Whether Indians can produce any significant creative work in English still
remains a hotly devoted controversy. For example Professor Ayyub wrote editorially
in the Quest‟. “Fiction and poetry written in English by Indians cannot but be
regarded as freakish or at best as highly exceptional.” Is it simply because English is
not the mother tongue of Indian creative writers „? Can we forget the achievements of
a Conrad or a Naipaul ? Or can we say that R. K. Narayan or Manohar Malgonkar as
novelists, pale into insignificance when weighed against similar English authors ?
As the creative works of Indo-Anglian fiction find it difficult to gain
acceptance, it is equally true that quite a few writers with a proper backing or a well-
known western sponsor, get overpraised.
Two clearly distinct groups arc found on the Indian literary scene—those who
always try to run down the achievements of Indian creative writers (and this group is
becoming smaller every year) and those who are the champions of Indo Anglian
works and who are always ready to praise such works. Many Indo-Anglian poets of
today, who would never find their way beyond the school or college magazine, are
given places of honour in anthologies of poems. Such faulty judgments are the curse
every new or growing literature. A brilliant, coterie of writers headed by Prof. P. Lal
of Writers Workshop have done excellent field work for Indo-Anglian creative
writings.
And if Indian literature in English has not yet product its Melville, Henry
James, George Eliot, Joyce or Lawrence, the same is equally true of modern Indian
literature as a whole. Khushwant Singh has Written „The works of our great novelist
Bankim, Sarat. Chandra and Prem Chand, make indifferent reading in English and do
not measure up to the Russian masters like Tolstoy, Dostoevesky and Gorki.‟ Let us
now examine the thought-currents which were found in the literature of the Indo-
Anglian writers.
40
Religious and Social Reform : The impact of Western culture on India complete
revolutionized the entire outlook of the Indian intellectual Western education brought
new Scientific and social ideas. The Indian mind, so much engrossed in spiritual
things, for the first time, became aware of the blessings of materialism and
democracy.
The absurdity and horrid nature of the caste system, untouchability,
superstitions were also brought home to us. People like Ram Mohan Roy. Keshub
Chandra Sen and others took up the torch of religious reforms. They saw the good
points of Christianity and tried to reassess Hinduism by incorporating in to it best
features of Christianity as well. Ram Mohan was a sincere soul ; social injustice
angered him to the pitch of frenzy ; however his denunciations of Hinduism may
appear exaggerates to us of later generation, it is out of question that he was largely
responsible for the re-awakening in the Hindu fold which the Country has witnessed
during the past two or three generations. The awakening has borne fruit, negatively in
reforms like the abolition of Sati, widow remarriage, the Sarda Act, and the gradual
remove; of the disabilities of the Harijans as also positively in the emergence of
Hindu leaders like Ramakrishna and Vivekananda Dayanand Saraswati and Sri
Aurobindo, Mahatma Gandhi and Radhakrishnan. These men started an era social
criticism and reform. They pleaded for the abolition of Sati, remarriage of the widow,
loosening of caste bonds and removal of untouchability. These socia1 reforms formed
the basis of novels and stories like The Lake of Palms, Tales of Bengal, and many
others.
Indian Culture : Western culture also revealed to the Indians the glory of Indian
culture. If the culture of India cast a spell on men like Sir William Jones, Goethe and
Max Muller, Indians felt that it was something to be proud of. They also began to
appreciate their Indian heritage and many a writer tried to interpret the art and culture
of India with a sense of self-respect. Ancient Indian classics were translated into
English by Indian writers. For example, Romesh Chandra Dutt translated the
Ramayana and the Mahabharata in rhymed English verse.
Nationalism : Western education brought about national awareness which in course of
time became the militant nationalism of the novelists of the thirties and the forties of
our century. Nationalism gave rise to the literature of struggle, the literature of the
Gandhian era. Western models and Western education brought a clear cut
revolutionary trend in Indo-Anglian as also in vernacular literature. It brought about ;
41
“(i) The development of prose and, with it of the novel and the short story, (ii) the
introduction of social and psychological issues as literary themes, (iii) the resort to
individualistic expression, suggestive imagery and personal symbols in poetry, (iv)
the emergence of realism as an accepted technique in all literary forms. These four
salient features can be perceived in all modern Indian literatures.”(24)
India is now following the path paved by the great Bengali writers of the
modern age (19th and 20th centuries) like Ram Mohan Roy. Ishwar Chandra
Vidyasagar (1820—1891) Bankim Chandra Chatterji (1838—1894), Michael
Madhusudan Dutta (1824-1873), Swami Vivekanand, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-
1941), Sarat Chandra Chatterjee (l876— l938) who have established themselves as
writers of all India importance. The literatures in the other modern Indian languages,
like Urdu, Telugu. Hindi, Kannada,Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Oriya, Gujarati,
Assamese, Malayalam and Kashmiri, “have also acquired the modern attitude of
enquiry, criticism and realizing and are becoming worthy of Indians as a modern
nation.”
Inspite of seemingly divergent tendencies, Indo-Anglian literature emphasizes
its harmony. There is unity in multiplicity. The fundamental urges and impulses that
have inspired the writers all over the country are the same, „Literary genius was free
to turn from the court to the courtyard.,.the transmission of modern scientific deals
from the West led to a whole gamut of powerful sensations and reactions among
Indians during two centuries—a sense of wonderment followed by that of curiosity.
Then came the zest for the modern way of life accompanied by zeal for reformism.
Close on its heels came distrust and anger against alien rule. And, finally, the West
gave us the intellectual instruments of analysis and of an immense awareness of social
and economic forces, of psycho-analyse and marxism. Perhaps never before in Indian
history were we subjected to such a crowded series of intellectual and emotional
impacts in such a short period.”
India is a vast country with 14 major languages. India writers, who have
expressed their hopes and dreams in English did not come from any one part of India
though. for nearly half a century, Bengal supplied the great bulk of Indo-Anglian
writers, It must also be remembered that all these writers were influenced not only by
English literature, but also by their own vernacular literatures. Most of the languages
of India did not develop on the same lines. Bengali literature developed much faster
than Hindi literature or Gujarati literature. These literatures were at various stages of
42
development. Accordingly, the writers from these areas who wrote in English
reflected to some extent that particular stage of development of their own literature. It
is, therefore, natural that works of fairly good merit jostle with very poor works. This
gives the readers an impression of uneven achievement. Generally speaking same is
the case with the Indo-Anglian novel. But Indo-Anglian writers drew their inspiration
from Indian culture and Indian people; they learnt or tried to learn the craft of fiction
not from Indian masters but from the best English and European masters of fiction.
They learnt their technique from the western models. “The richness and variety of this
writing alone ensures it‟s a permanent, I am convinced that whatever is available of
the work of the younger writers can complete in quality of attainment with any of the
other literature of the period before the Second World War. One may not fully
subscribe to this patriotic statement of Anand; yet it is evident now that the best Indo-
Anglian fiction of today can compare favorably with its counterpart in the West. Indo-
Anglian writers put Indian themes in Western models. They have succeeded in
importing in India the progressive advance of artistic technique in this literary form.
„The impact of Renaissance in the Realm of Indian Literatures & The Birth of Indo-
English Prose Fiction:English education thus affected the Indian cultural, religious
and literary traditions in such a way that there was a great awakening transforming
Indian ways and tradition. This awakening yielded beneficial results in the realm of
literature; for there was a rejuvenation of Indian literatures through the adoption of
new literary forms and genres from the West. Apart from this rejuvenation there was
also the beginning of Indian creative effort in English. The evolution of a prose style
and its development encouraged the Indian writers to adopt modern forms of literature
such as the novel, drama and short story.
The novel is the genre of imaginative literature. It is the dominant literary
form. The novel at its best has provided a matchless illusion of reality, a sense both of
the moment and of time passing, and a compelling vividness as of‟ shared experience.
It is the art of everyday life. The novel gives artistic form to the relationship of man
and society. In our country it was conspicuously absent until the Nineteen - Twenties.
When the novel first reached India in the late Eighteenth Century and the Nineteenth
Century with the British it was new in every Indian literature, it seemed quite strange
even to those few educated Indians who could read English. But did not long remain
an alien form. During the late Nineteenth Century it was absorbed into the Bengal
literary tradition, while this century has witnessed a continuous output of novels in
43
English. The strength and maturity of much Indian writing in English as recorded in
the Indo Anglian novels are beyond dispute.
The delay in the development of prose fiction (K S. Venkataramani‟s‟
„Murugan The Tiller‟ was the first good Indo-Anglian novel published in 1927) in
Indian literature has often been related to the late emergence of the historical sense
among Indians. The novel as it developed in the Western world is particularly
concerned with time and space and their effects on in man. The novelist has been
increasingly less concerned with the unchanging moral varieties and their presentation
in a timeless setting and more with the precise location of historical man in the flux
and flow of society. The modern novelist views time not only as a dimension of the
physical world but also as a shaping force of man‟s individual and collective history.
Place has assumed an equal importance, because every human experience is rooted to
its particular point in space. The modern novel is the organic product of a particular
environment in a particular society in a given time. It is thus impossible to write a
good novel today that remains suspended out of time and space; it must have a
definite location in temporal and spatial reality.
Therefore, it assumed that a novel in English by an Indian author can only be
justified if it is Indian in some peculiar and essential fashion. Thus novels come to be
valued not so much upon their power as fiction, as upon their content of this national
quintessence. The emergence of a genuine Indo-Anglian novel pre-supposes historical
and geographical awareness of the Indian situation. This awareness is that of
„Indianness‟. Since the novelists subject is man—in—society, his subject-matter must
also be the texture of manners and conventions by which social man defines his own
identity. Indo—Anglian literature may have begun as a colonial venture vaguely
aspiring to continue the great English tradition. The poetical works of Toru Dutta and
Manmohan Ghosh, the prominent Nineteenth Century Indo-Anglian poets could be
read as the works of English poets and their writings were regarded by English critics
like George Sampson as parts of British rather than of Indian literature.
But where the Indo-Anglian novel was concerned, more was needed than great
models. Whatever be the language in which it is written, a novel by an Indo-Anglian
novelist demands direct involvement in values and experiences which are valid in the
Indian context. If the Indo-Anglian fiction is firmly rooted in the social and cultural
ethos of India, then Indo-Anglian fiction has claims to be considered as a branch of
Indian fiction rather than of English fiction.
44
 But inspite of the common social and cultural background the problems of the
Indo-Anglian novelist are not always the same as those of the novelists writing in the
regional languages. The Indo-Anglian novelist faces a great handicap in his aspiration
to write an English novel. The problem concerns the suitability and adaptability of
English as a medium of expression for the Indian novelist. The only comparable case
would be that of the American language and literature. There was a time when
American critics had to argue for the existence of American fiction as a separate
entity from English fiction. They based their argument mainly on the ground that
American fiction portrayed the American experience which is so different from the
European experience. An American critic Maridus Bewley remarks :“The American
novel had to find a new experience and discover how to put that experience into art,
And the process by which it has been done was one of progressive self-discovery for
the Nation.” (25)
This discovery of a distinctly national experience and its expression in art is
what distinguishes the literature of one country from that of another. The problem of
language is a nominal factor here. We notice today the emergence of a Canadian
literature, and Australian literature— all written in English but all different from each
other as American literature is from British. „The same argument will justify treating
Indo-Anglian literature as a separate entity within the Indian context rather than
relating it to British literature.
There is of course one point to be analyzed. Australian literature or American
literature is the natural expression of the English- speaking people. But in India the
case is different. Here much of Indo-Anglian fiction is written in a language which is
not the first language of the writer nor is it the language of every day life of the Indian
people about whom the novels are written This complication makes Indo-Anglian
literature a phenomenon of world literature without a parallel in the world.
There are many Indians who believe that the writer in India should not write in
English because it is a foreign language which is acquired rather than spoken from
birth and to write in English is a kind of disservice to the nation and is quite
incompatible with our national pride. Others hold that only through an Indian
language can an Indian Consciousness be expressed and that the attempt of the Indian
novelist to portray in English the life of those whose emotional and intellectual life is
fashioned by a different language is characterized by a total absence of the mutual
nourishment between the writer and his society. They also say that since the Indian
45
novelist writes mainly for a Western audience he will invariably fail to present a true
image of India.
The question of language in one involving the fundamental right of the
creative artist to express himself through whatever language he likes. To be Indian in
thought and feeling and emotion and experience, yet also to court the graces and
submit to the discipline of English for expression is a novel experiment in creative
mutation. There are successes as well as failures, and the failures are perhaps more
numerous than the successes. All the same there are men and women who have
bravely run the race and reached the goal. And they deserve due recognition.
Here, then, is a body of writing, the creation of the Indian race in the Indian
climate responding fruitfully to the Western impact during the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries the creation of certain gifted individuals from Rammohan Roy to
Dom Moraes who have been able to triumph over many limitations and achieve
impressive results in English. There is a continuous Western critical tradition from
Aristotle to T.S, Eliot, and particularly an English critical tradition from Sydney and
Ben Jonson and Dryden to the mentors of Our own day—Eliot, Richards and Leavis.
Similarly there is an Indian critical tradition with the emphasis on „rasa‟ and „dhwani‟,
the „bhavas‟ and the „alankaras‟ carried by modern thinkers like Tagore and Sri
Aurobindo. Not only Indian thought from Vedic to modern times has found its way to
the West, but eminent Indian thinkers of yesterday and today have made themselves
heard in the West, a cultural offensive rendered easier by their mastery of the English
language. But Indian English has not yet acquired an arresting distinctiveness like the
American English. It is rapidly gaining ground to find its feet and stand it ground
boldly.
There are peculiarities of Indian life and experience and speech that does not
easily admit of translation into English terms. If the translation is not attempted one
Fails in one‟s duty as an Indian writer and if the attempt does not succeed, if the result
is an absurdity one fails as a writer in English. What is written has to be clearly Indian
to the Indian reader and clearly English to the English reader, Indian English is
greatly conditioned by Indian geography and the grammar and speech habits in
different linguistic area, but it cannot go very far from the standard English as it
prevails in England.
English is a language which has struck deep roots in India. All these years we
have had a large number of creative writers in English. The earliest Indian novelist
46
who consciously tried to adapt English to suit his purpose was Mulk Raj Anand. His
English is distinguished and conditioned by the speech habits of a particular linguistic
area. One of the striking features of his style is that he translates into English such
Panjabi swear words and Phrases such as „eaters of monsters‟, „where have you died‟
the illegally begotten‟ etc. that form part of the conversation of the illiterate rural
people. These words and expressions are not in themselves conducive to the realistic
effect the novelist aim at. But a much more effective device he employs is seen in his
translation if Indian proverbs and similes like
„Your own calf‟s teeth seem golden.‟
Or
„a goat in hand is better than a buffalo in the distance.”
Or
„The camels are being swept away, the ant say they float.”
Proverbs play an important part not only in Punjabi speech, but in Indian
speech in general, and the tendency to render Indian proverbs in English is a common
trait most Indo-Anglian writers.
But where Anand fails to evolve an Indian English or to attain an Indian
atmosphere is in his vulgarization of English words like „engine‟ into „injan‟, „fashion
into „fashun‟, „hospital‟ into „haspatal‟ general‟ into „jarnel‟ etc. One can perhaps
understand this as a striving for realism. It may however, be conceded that the
villager‟s use of words like „injan‟ and „fashun‟ helps the novelist in a limited way to
reflect an aspect of the conversational practice of the illiterate villager since certain
English words have become part of Indian languages and are pronounced by he
uneducated not as they ought to be pronounced in English. The most significant
challenge before the Indo-Anglian novelist is the task of using the English language in
a way that will be distinctively Indian and still remain English
The question whether or not English would serve his purpose as a medium of
creative effort was upper most in the mind of Raja Rao. In his forward to
„Kanthapura‟ he discusses the question why English is his chosen medium. He says,
English— is the language of our intellectual make-up but not of our emotional make-
up. We cannot write like the English. We should not. We cannot write only as
Indians. We have grown to look at the large world as part of us. Our method of
expression therefore has to be a dialect which will someday prove to be as distinctive
and colourful as the Irish or the American the tempo of Indian life must be infused
47
into our English expression even as the tempo of American or Irish life has gone into
the making of theirs‟.
Anand‟s conscious experiment of making an Indian style of writing English
was closely followed by Raja Rao. Rao successfully renders Indian modes of thought
and feeling into English in „Kanthapura‟, „The Serpent And The Rope‟ and The Cat
And Shakespeare‟. This he achieves without violating the syntax and grammar of the
English language or without lapsing into baboo English. Raja Rao‟s style is an
attempt to enrich the novels giving a new range and potential to the familiar English
language. It seems there will be a continuous experimenting in giving English a
peculiarly Indian tone and colour by drawing on the resources of the Indian languages
and infusing their essence into normal literary English. It is an attempt to find an
individual style and a successful experimenter also finds a style that could be called
Indian in that it is different from British or American English. It should be
emphasized, however, that creating an „Indian English‟ is the major duty of an Indo-
Anglian writer. His success or failure will be judged by the amount of Indian imagery
he has used in his novels and by his capacity to capture the rhythm of the vernacular
in English. These images, rhythms and idioms become important because they serve
some purpose in the context and become integral with the total pattern.
Raja Rao attempts to carry over and transmute into English the idiom, the
rhythm, the imagery and the tone of the natural speech of his characters. He achieves
here a kind of Indian idiom with its distinct echo of regional speech and reflection of
local colour without slipping into unintentional „Indianisms‟. His achievement is
better and more satisfying than Anand‟s. The following passage which expresses the
simplicity and faith of the grand-mother illustrate this :
He will bring us Swaraj, the Mahatma. And we shall be all happy. And Rama
will come back home from exile and Sita will be with him, for Ravana will be slain
and Sita freed, and he will come back with Sita on his right in a Chariot of the air and
brother Bharata will go to meet them with the worshipped sandal of the master on his
head. And as they enter Ayodhya, there will be a rain of flowers.
Raja Rao‟s English is free from the pitfalls we have noted earlier in Anand‟s
yet it does not suffer from any lack of realism. In its economy of effect it is the
carefully allusive English which reflects the inwardness of its Indianness fully and in
that sense it is more natural than Anand‟s style. Both Anand and Raja Rao took
liberties in their own way with the accepted diction and syntax of the language which
48
had been so carefully taught to them from childhood. Rao delineates people whose
actions, behaviour and responses are shaped by a language different from English, not
only different from English, but also markedly different from Punjabi which is the
language of Anand‟s most successful fictitious characters. What Anand does very
clearly he does it in a more conspicuous way. Particularing of characters is an
indication of a novelist‟s skill and part of the means of doing it is through subtle
nuances of language. Raja Rao does it so effectively in „Kanthapura‟ and „The
Serpent And The Rope‟ that even those who are not closely acquainted with the rigid
social structure of a South Indian village will notice how a man‟s caste can be
ascertained from his mode of speech. Bhabani Bhattacharya‟s English ,succeeds in
recreating a Bengali rhythm, as does occasionally Sudhin Ghosh‟s though Ghosh‟s
fictitional world is less rooted in regional reality. Other Indo-Anglian novelists
whether living in England or America in the direct milieu of the language in which
they write or living in close contact with Indian conditions anti life find English
adequate enough for the purpose of depicting the emotional and intellectual life of
Indians. We can refer to the remarkable verbal dexterity we find in the novels of
Sudhin Ghosh and C. V. Desani‟s „All About H. Hatterr‟. Perhaps, in some cases, the
success is only partial owing to a stiff, selfconscious style which though providing
passages of brilliant satire and genuine humour yet suffers from a tendency to
verbosity & heavcness, and lacks naturalness in dialogue as in Balachandra Rajan‟s
two novels „The Dark Dancer‟ and „Too Long In The [Link] speech of Satyamurthi
is consistentally marked by an absence of the definite article, Thus, —
„What is justification for unseemly disturbance‟?
Or
I am a man without possessions or testimonials. Yet owner of house has given
me hospitality, ,
Or
Kindly cease anaemic blathering about blood.
World knows you are unable to wring neck even of chicken.
Similarly in Santha Rama Rau‟s „Remember The House‟ the Malayalee
headmaster of a village school is created entirely n terms of the strange rhythm of his
English speech. You have inherited your esteemed mother‟s great talents ? You sing
no doubt also ?
Or
49
 A chair, Mr. Krishnan, and a cup of coffee isn‟t it? No trouble. We can get
with ice, at once In one minute the peon will bring,
In these examples, two quite different issues are also involved first. rendering
the English of an Indian speaker; second rendering an Indian‟s speech in an Indian
language into English. The first is easy when the intention is to provoke laughter, as
in G.B. Desani‟s All About [Link]‟, Sadhu‟s disciple reports-
I am finding him soundly a sleeping.
I am waking him up
The second is a far more subtle and different task. Most of the time the Indo-
Anglians are tackling this second task because the English-speaking occasions of an-
Indian‟s life are limited in number.
However, as an Indian novelist writing in English R. K. Narayan like Raja Rao
may be said to have achieved greater success Narayan never deliberately attempt to be
Indian, but because he deals with convincing human beings in authentic situations,
and records their responses honestly, and because these human beings happen to be
Indians, he succeeds in achieving that difficult task Writing in a genuinely Indian way
without being self-conscious about it. Narayan has said English has proved that if a
language has flexibility, any experience may he communicated through it, even if it
has to be paraphrased sometimes rather than conveyed, and even if the factual detail is
partially understood All that I am able to confirm after mearly thirty years of witing,
is that it has served my purpose admirably, of conveying unambiguously the thoughts
and acts of a set of personalities, who flourish in a small town located in a corner of
South India.
Narayan‟s style is direct and characterized by an economy of expression and
vocabulary adequate to deal with the range of subject matter and Indian sensibilities.
This could be seen from Narayan‟s treatment of romantic love. Take for example the
first encounter between Sriram and Bharati in „Waiting For The Mahatma‟
As he approached the market fountain a pretty girl came up and stopped him.
„Your Contribution‟ she asked, shaking a sealed tin collection box. Sriram‟s throat
went dry and no sound came. He had never been spoken to by any girl before she was
slender and young, with eyes that sparkled with happiness. He wanted to ask „How
old are you ? What caste are you ? Where are your horoscopes ? are you free to
marry me?

50
 Narayan avoids unique or obscure phrasing, and a too constant use of
compound sentences. Syntax come closer to the pattern of the normal conversation of
an educated Indian. It is these things. as also the lucidity, extreme purity, simplicity,
colour and Straight forwardness that account for the leisurely decorum of his novels ,
The intimate liaison of his language with the senses and its fidelity to the idiom of
speech enable him to achieve realism. The age of experiment in English prose style in
India begins around l930 when the authors attempted to forge a new style for their
own needs. M. R. Anand tiies to equate the Hindi or Punjabi expression as closely as
possible in English words. Raja Rao aims to create a style which will reflect the
rhythms and sensibilities of the Indian psyche, and since it is in Sanskrit that the
Indian mind has found it most consumate linguistic expression, he has tried to adapt
his English style to the movement of a Sanskrit sentence as in „The Serpent And The
Rope‟ and in „Kanthapura‟. It is new English medium different from that of both
Anand and Narayan. R.K. Narayans style is conspicuous by its similarity to Tamil.
It is true that many Indian novelists in English punctuate their writings with
sentences that are heavy, complex and laden with excessive imagery and alliteration
and thus want to show off their mastery of the alien tongue ; but the „Indian English‟
should not be equated with baboo English and thus to be condemned. „Indian‟ English
is not baboo English. It is true that MaCaulay‟s high ideals had miscarried, that most
of the Universities had become mere examining bodies and that a student was often
looking for a means to employment rather than education Official Jargon was widely
used. But the creative writer has all along been concerned with „synthesizing Indian
and European values in contemporary India‟. When we contrast the wordy ornate
style of some Indo-Anglian writers with the mild, unpretentious manner of Narayan‟s
writing we begin to realize the authenticity and strength of Narayan‟s English. Raja
Rao‟s English is a different kind of sentence structure, a different kind of imagery and
most important of all, a different kind of „thought movement‟ —-a unified Indian
language. The forward of „Kanthapura‟ ends.
The tempo- of Indian life must be used into our English expressing even as the
tempo of American or Irish life has gone into the making of theirs.
No amount of experimentation with style, no amount of conscious innovation
will succeed in fiction unless it has an inevitability in the context of the particular
theme the novel deals with. In Raja Rao‟s novels, the important thing is not that he
uses Indian imagery but that these images are part of his natural mode of perception.
51
A writer‟s first obligation is to himself, and in whatever language he writes, he has to
make it, remake it for his own particular purpose. An Indian novelist in English
should employ his skill in contriving a dialogue that is at once natural and lively,
supple and functional. He may even catch the speech rhythms and the turns of phrases
used by all kinds of people in the village and translate some of the abuses, curses,
imprecations and proverbs to advantage. As Charles Morgan points out „Dialogue if
employed at all has to be infused with the author‟s style‟ ; for the purpose of dialogue
is „not to report: a conversation but to communicate its essence and „dia1ogue is not a
report but a distillation, a formal means of penetrating to the essence of things‟
Moreover, in our discussion we have pointed out that Indian English
establishes an Indian idiom of English as opposed to English idiom of British English,
the American idiom of American English, the African idiom of African English. In
other words, the Indian social, cultural and linguistic set-up has affected the features
of the English language as used by the Indian creative Writers in English---specially
the novelists. „Indian English‟ is variety of English—a new voice whose
characteristics spring from the life and culture of the people of India. The Indianness
of it consists in its cultural overtones and understones.

52
References
1) [Link], A.N. : (2008)„Comparative Indian English Literature‟,
(Kanpur: Bhaskar Publication) P. 73.
2) Iyengar, K.R. Srinivasa : (1985)„Indian Writing in English‟,
(New Delhi : Sterling Publishers.) P.28.
3) Parmeshwaran Uma : (1976)„A Study of Representative Indo-English
Novelists‟, (New Delhi:Vikas Publishing House), P.4
4) P.P. Mehta :( 1979) „Indo-Anglian Fiction An
Assessment‟ (Bareilly : PBD), P.3
5) Iyengar K.R.S. : (1983) „Literature and Authorship in India‟
(New Delhi: Sterling Publisher), P.20
6) The Cambridge History of English Literature, [Link],P.334.
Quoted by [Link] : [Link], P.5
7) Iyengar K.R.S. : [Link], P.22
8) Verghese Paul : (1971)„Problems of the Indian Creative Writer in English‟,
(Bombay : Somaya Publications,) P.99
9) Mukherjee Meenakshi: (1971) „The Twice-born Fiction‟,
(New Delhi : Arnold Heinemann), P.24.
10) Gokak V.K. : (1957)„Introduction to Literature in Modern Indian
Language‟, (New Delhi : Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting,) P.29.
11) Anand Mulk Raj : (1948)„The King Emperor‟s English‟,
(Bombay : Hind Kitabs), P.19
12) [Link] Raghukul : (2004)„Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India
A Critical Study‟, (New Delhi : Karol Bagh), P.55
13) [Link] Samares: (1984) „Indianness in major Indo-English Novels‟
(Bareilly : PBD), P.1
14) Iyengar K.R.S. : (1985)„Indian Writing in English‟,
(New Delhi : Sterling Publishers), P.43.
15) Ibid, P.53
16) [Link] Raghukul : [Link], P.117.
53
17) Kelkar N.C. : „The Maratha‟, (Feb.1901), Quoted by [Link] : [Link], P.9
18) Anad Mulk Raj : [Link], P.18

19) Wadia, B.J. : „Forward to Indian Contribution to English Literature‟

By [Link] Iyengar, Quoted by P.P. Mehta : [Link], P.12.
20) „Indian Writing in English, A Symposium‟, (Calcutta: Writers workshop) P.7
Quoted by [Link] [Link], P.13
21) Derrit, M.E. : (1962)„Why write in English?‟ Times Literary Supplement,
(August 10,), P.584-585.
22) Parmeshwaran Uma : „A Study of Representative Indo-English Novelist‟,
[Link], P.12
23) Wadi B.J. : [Link], P.14
24) Mathur J.C. : „Literature in Modern Indian Languages‟, P.187
Quoted by [Link] [Link], P.16
25) Samares [Link] : [Link] P.4

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