It is a long established custom of mine to browse through the Best Sellers listing in the Weekend newspaper or any journal for that matter.Seldom do I find Indian books(or authors)in the list...which is rather sad!
Ofcourse I do agree to the fact that Indian English Literature has relatively recent history.It is just a little over two centuries old,the first ever Indian book in English being published in 1793 by Sake Dean Mahomet,titled 'Travels of Dean Mahomet'.
The Earliest Indian Literature was available only in Sanskrit and Tamil.Either due to the predominance of these languages or the pietistic movements which sought to reach the people in their spoken languages,the advent of English literature was rather late.
But Indians do have wonderful literature in English but have we given the due recognition?Do we identify the Gems among us?
Swami Vivekananda,Jawaharlal Nehru,Rabindranath Tagore,Mahatma Gandhi,Sarojini Naidu....remained as names in history...how many of us have read their works?Dhan Gopal Mukerji,Mulk Raj Anand,Nissim Ezekiel, A.K.Ramanujan,Kamala Das,Satyajit ray,R.Parthasarathy,R.K.Narayan....do we even recognise these names?
Most of us remember reading Fairy Tales..Snow white,Little Red Riding Hood,Sleeping Beauty,Cindrella,The ugly Duckling...the list goes on..do we stop here? NO.Our choice was Tintin over Tinkle,Archies over Amar Chitra Katha,Enid Blyton over Panchatantra....
When asked for a favorite author in English ...it is always, Sidney Sheldon or John Grisham or Stephen King or Nora Roberts or Danielle Steel( to name a few..)How many of us say Anita Desai or Salman Rushdie or Amitav Ghosh or Vikram Seth or Rohinton Mistry or Jhumpa Lahiri?(again to name a few...)It really makes me wonder or rather ponder as to why this state?
Furthermore the recent literature works in English are more from the people of Indian Diaspora(N.R.I)rather than people of the subcontinent.
Here, I think the situation is more like a vicious circle....since the majority of us fail to appreciate the available Indian English literature,the writers are not encouraged or there aren't many Indian English writers so we opt for Foreign English writers.....either way we are losing...I am NOT against reading Foreign literature but as Indians what do we have for our future generation that is exclusively from the current generation's English literary work?
As of now and near future,English is no doubt the most powerful medium of communication in the world.We have to break free from the thought that english emphasizes the legacy of British imperialism.Indian writers of the subcontinent should be willing to work in English(write or translate)which in turn will definitely make Indian literature more powerful than when being written only in vernacular languages.Not only is English more accessible to various other language people within India but it also establishes a relationship between East and West.One important dimension of literature is that it is a means of holding a conversation within the world.These writers will ensuring that India or rather,Indian voices will henceforth be indispensable participants in that literary conversation.
So,while we are Thinking of literary Global conversation,lets make Local contributions.....Appreciate the Good work of Local Authors.
4 weeks ago
Hi Savi, I think people quote foreign authors more often than Indian authors because of the lack of easy access to books by Indian authors. I could easily get a Sidney Sheldon in a library there but the same library did not have many books by Indian authors.
ReplyDeleteIt is slowly changing though. Last month I was able to get The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga in a library here. I am yet to see a copy of The Immortals by Amit Chaudhuri.
Hi Purni,thanks for taking the time to read my blog.But talking abt the availability of books,I think it's based on the fundamental concept of Demand and Supply.Readers create the demand.And in your case,White Tiger(published in 2008)was available last month...The Immortals which was published only in 2009 shd be available soon :)
ReplyDeletenice article savi..
ReplyDeletei am very much new to reading. the only book i ve read is 'Three mistakes of my life' by Chetan Bhagath. Ur article is waking me up.
soon i will read all the books u ve quoted.
its like comparison between indain movies n d hollywood. both are good. but we can see ourselves in d indian movies. wherein hollywood would b a dream land
Nice blog sis., so what is going to be your next
ReplyDeletearticle?
www.deepak1.110mb.com
www.deepakooty.wordpress.com
Savi,
ReplyDeletevery nice article..was rather touched.
Even I had the same feeling whenever I try to search books to read. Every time, its Shidney Sheldon or John Grisham. I was very happy when I got hold of this book "Three Points Someone" by Chetan Bhagat (though an NRI), Indian Author. The book was amazing and I told all my friends, rather lent my book for them to read it. But his second book "One Night at the Call Center" was very disappointing and failed to show the talent of this Indian writer. It is very sad.
The same set of friends who read the first book and appreciated, gave comments after reading the second "Indian authors are like this only." May be it is the consistency of job that matters and may be this is the reason why Indian readers do not encourage the Indian authors ( this is my view but I am not sure if I am right. Any correction on this is welcome).