Laura Restrepo. Hot Sur

Studies in Media and Communication

IntroductionIndian Literature with its multiplicity of languages and the plurality of cultures dates back to 3000 years ago, comprising Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas and Epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata. India has a strong literary tradition in various Indian regional languages like Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Oriya, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and so on. Indian writers share oral tradition, indigenous experiences and reflect on the history, culture and society in regional languages as well as in English. The first Indian novel in English is Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife (1864). Indian Writing in English can be viewed in three phases - Imitative, First and Second poets’ phases. The 20th century marks the matrix of indigenous novels. The novels such as Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable (1935), Anita Nair’s Ladies Coupé (2001), and Khuswant Singh’s Memories of Madness: Stories of 1947 (2002) depict social issues, vices and crises (discrimination, i...

Asiatic, 2016

2005

Literature views reality critically. Literature presents the essence of reality linking things together. As art is the negative knowledge of the actual world, it exists in the real world and has a function in it. Yet, it offers a knowledge that negates a false condition.

International Journal of Research, 2017

Indian Literature in English might as yet appear as a conundrum. India is of course, India, and English the language of England. English in India still reflects the stereotypical colonial hangover. But without resorting to such platitudes like English being an international language, and writing in English in India being one major way of getting noticed overseas etc, I might state that there is as yet little need for pleading the case for the existence and flourishing of Indian writings in English. But in festivals like this one where we are celebrating poetry from India under several sections like women’s writing and Dalit Writing and writing in the regional languages, how do we envisage the situation of the writer in English? A fish out of water? Or a sore thumb? Barring the specific curio aspect of the language the experience of the Indian writer can unarguably be evidenced through this chunk of the Indian literary spectrum—this usually gets noticed in the west but sometimes for ...

International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies

The Indian literary scenario, after 1980, is typically postmodern in all walks of life as it has been with the rest of the world. There are a number of rationales that have gone into the making of it. And its outcome has also been multi-directional. In India, more than post world war circumstances, postcolonial pressures have played a crucial and unique role. It is a fact that a genre called Indian Writing in English is unlimitedly and enormously flourished and continues to do so only during this period i.e. after 1980 to 2010. Under this background, this paper documents Postmodern Indian English Novel highlighting its past, and other aspects like Translated (regional vernacular) Novels into English, and the contemporary books on criticism.

2022

MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for South Asian Studies; ACLA Rene Wellek Prize Honorable Mention for Best Overall Book in Comparative Literature; MSA First Book Prize Shortlist; AIIS Prize in Humanities for First Book Shortlist Indian literature is not a corpus of texts or literary concepts from India, argues Preetha Mani, but a provocation that seeks to resolve the relationship between language and literature, written in as well as against English. Examining canonical Hindi and Tamil short stories from the crucial decades surrounding decolonization, Mani contends that Indian literature must be understood as indeterminate, propositional, and reflective of changing dynamics between local, regional, national, and global readerships. In The Idea of Indian Literature, she explores the paradox that a single canon could be written in multiple languages, each with their own evolving relationships to one another and to English. Hindi, representing national aspirations, and Tamil, epitomizing the secessionist propensities of the region, are conventionally viewed as poles of the multilingual continuum within Indian literature. Mani shows, however, that during the twentieth century, these literatures were coconstitutive of one another and of the idea of Indian literature itself. The writers discussed here—from short-story forefathers Premchand and Pudumaippittan to women trailblazers Mannu Bhandari and R. Chudamani —imagined a pan-Indian literature based on literary, rather than linguistic, norms, even as their aims were profoundly shaped by discussions of belonging unique to regional identity. Tracing representations of gender and the uses of genre in the shifting thematic and aesthetic practices of short vernacular prose writing, the book offers a view of the Indian literary landscape as itself a field for comparative literature.

isara solutions, 2022

Every literature is a reflection of its own period. The twentieth century in India is remarked to be the era which changed the face of India forever. The pre-independence struggle along with the changing political and social atmosphere set the tone for the early 1900s, while the crux of these uprisings led to the ultimate freedom for India from the British colonial rule in mid-1940s. The years that followed were of disarranged and distorted constructions of a new India. From going through the brutal and horrifying partition, to conquering problems internally, India was losing many battles after winning the war. It is at this time, when literature of partition, of history turned into words, came to form a huge canon of its own. The themes changed, from one kind of struggle to another, from past glories to present victories and hopeful futures. On the other hand, India had also to come around the newly acquired language which it couldn't shake off its tongue-English. English kept on cumulating new meanings for Indians by becoming a language they had learned under compulsion and slowly being accepted as a language they felt is now their own. To say that India only went through major political changes in the twentieth century is a huge understatement; as cultural, social, economic, lingual, and psychological changes were equal contributors to twentieth century Indian literature, arisen out of this modern history. This paper attempts to journey across these changing themes and language(s) from the early twentieth century to the dawn of twenty-first, when Indian fiction in English explored, expanded, and underwent many impactful currents of change, only today, to be widely accepted in the West as refined and worthy.

Proceedings of the 32nd International Academic Conference, Geneva

India is a land of contradictions because the coexistence of multiplicities has been the norm here. This is not to say that there is consonance in the many differences that persist but that at some level or the other, there is acceptance and nothing can be completely shunned. To put it in a magic realistic understanding of Marquez and apt words by Arundhati Roy for India, "India lives in several centuries at the same time. Somehow we manage to progress and regress simultaneously." In that spirit, this paper intends to chart through some specific examples of the literary texts from India, the path of to and fro between which India will look like an enchanting exploration but in actuality show narratives steeped in its politics, law and culture. Namely they will include, 'Cilappatikaram' by Adigal which is an epic with a female protagonist, 'Raag Darbari' by Srilal Shukla which is a satirical rendering of a post independence Indian village, a comparative effort between India's foremost epic 'Mahabharata' and its modern day telling by Dr. Shashi Tharoor called 'The Great Indian Novel', 'A Fine Balance' by Rohinton Mistry which entails the threatening politics within a democratic nation and finally 'Ghachar Ghochar', originally written in Kannada by Vivek Shanbhag and recently translated into English, a masterpiece touching to the realistic core, the effects money and success can have on different people while hearkening to 'Financial Expert' written by R.K. Narayan. These examples in their content and context coming from different states of India, written in several genres and languages and various time periods in the last hundred years or so is illustrative of the melting pot that India has been. Why is the level of tolerance in this country debatable but never dismissed? The idea of this paper presentation is to depict India's cosmopolitan literature and that despite the bans of many books in India, the country does not altogether support the muffling of voices, evident in its culture of writing over the years and also in recent Supreme Court judgments'.

Indian English poetry started with the poems of Henry Derozio, Kashiprasad Ghose, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Manmohan Ghose. These poets were influenced by their English contemporaries of romanticism viz. Byron, Shelley, Keats, Scott and Moore. Toru Dutt was one among these romantic poets who emphasized on India and her heritage by incorporating a large number of Indian legends in her verse. The romantic Toru Dutt is also a predecessor in respect to the use of the tree in verse as demonstrated by “Our Casuarina Tree”, a predecessor in respect of childhood memories recalled with nostalgia or regret.The poets of the second phase, still romantic in spirit were Sarojini Naidu, Rabindranath Tagore, Aurobindo Ghose and Harindranth Chattopadhyaya. The poetic output of these poets was prolific. Romanticism of these Indian poets was fraught with nationalism, spirituality and mysticism. It was therefore different from English romanticism. Indian romanticism widened the poet’s vision. While Aurbindo’s was the search for the Divine in Man and Tagore’s was the quest for the beautiful in Man and Nature. Both were philosopher poets. Sarojini Naidu’s romantic muse underscored the charm and splendor of traditional Indian life and Indian scene. She had a fine ear for verbal melody as she was influenced not only by English poetry but also by the Persian and Urdu ongoing process of openness in form, reliable and unreliable narration with multiple points of view, and shifting focalisation. In this section of the anthology i.e. “Indian English Short Story” there are five well researched papers. The first paper titled “The women as bonded labourers: A study of Mahasweta Devi’s “Dhouli”, “Shanichari” and “The fairytale of Rajbasa” the author of this paper explores the stories of women who dare to transcend the confines of patriarchy, thereby redefining the ambit of the feminine space. The next paper “Women on the Threshold of Change in Shashi Deshpande’s Shorter Fiction” deals with the changing role of women with the changing time. The paper titled “Mother as a symbol of Compliance in Shashi Deshpande’s The Legacy and Other Stories” tries to portray the stains of agonized motherhood, which seem to come out of the pages, are a blot on a man’s face, who has for centuries, remained insensitive to her prayers, pleas and entreaties, what-so-ever. The paper “Myths Restructured in Shashi Deshpande’s Stone Women” puts forth the seemingly high-pedestalled goddesses in true colours, thus bringing home the crude fact that woman may try to change her form, appearance, position, attire and what not, but can never succeed in altering the male psyche, that has been moulded, dried and conditioned in the furnace of male dominance and superiority. The author of the paper titled “Empowered Women of Shashi Deshpande” tries to highlight how the protagonists of Deshpande now wish to have a whiff of free and fresh air for themselves.