The novel in India came at a much later stage. In fact, it emerged only after the introduction of English in the Indian educational pattern. Inspired by the English novel, Indians too, experimented with this genre in the regional languages. Some of these Indian novels were translated into English but later some authors took to writing originally in English.The first among them was Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Raj Mohan’s Wife that appeared in 1864. His other works were originally written in Bengali and translated by the author himself.
The Novel in the 20th Century
In the early decades of the 20th
century, the number of those writing in English increased rapidly. In 1919
Rabindranath Tagore’s The Home and the World were published, followed by The
Wreck in 1921 and Gora in 1923. These were written originally in Bengali and
translated into English. Slowly, the Indian English novel started taking roots.
It was only after the emergence of the Big Three that the Indian novel drew the
attention of critics and scholars. The big three were – Mulk Raj
, Raja
Rao and R.K. Narayan.
Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable published in 1935 and Coolie,
(1936) were acclaimed for portraying the searing reality of the life of the
downtrodden and the deprived sections of society. Anand came to be known as a
committed writer. Raja Rao’s inclination was towards Indian metaphysics and the
philosophical strain in his works became the hallmark of his novels. R.K.
Narayan created his now-famous Malgudi as a setting to his novels, which he
gave us consistently from Swami and Friends, (1935) to The World of Nagaraj
(1990). He was loved for his ironic vision of life. It is, indeed, not possible
to think of the Indian English novel without these three novelists who can be
called the principal “trail blazing Indian novelists in English”.
The development of the Indian novelin
English was initially weak and hesitant. It was not technically strong, nor was
it innovative. According to Meenakshi Mukherjee “Traces of both, the prescribed
novels and the Victorian pulp can be found in a curious amalgam in the early
novels in the Indian languages.” H.M. Williams, another critic felt that the
history of the Indian English novel was a “development from poetry to prose and
from romantic idealization to various kinds of realism and symbolism.” In the
1920s through 1940s India was passing through a turbulent period in her
history. The novelists found different themes for their stories like the
freedom struggle, Gandhian ideology and its impact on society, need for social
reforms, eradication of social evils, India’s modern destiny, the partition,
the emergence of the new urban India, the problems of rural India and so on. When
we look at the novel from this angle, we find rich material having
socio-cultural relevance.
By the late 1950’s and early 1960’s the second-generation writers came up. Writers like Nayantara Sahgal, Manohar Malgonkar and Bhabani Bhattacharya gave new directions to fiction. They started dealing with new subject matter. Nayantara Sahgal took up political themes, while Malgonkar gave historical perspectives in his novels. Arun Joshi and Anita Desai ushered in the era of psychological fiction.
By the 1980s the novel
had matured sufficiently in themes, use of language and style and technique.
Now we have writers like Salman Rushidie, Rohinton Mistry, Khushwant Singh,
Shobha De, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, Shashi Deshpande and many others who
have earned name and fame and have further enhanced the image of the novel in
English.
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