In a paper at Regional Conference of
the Association of Commonwealth Literature
and Language Studies Held at India International
Centre ,New Delhi on February23-6,1975,R.Parthasarathy
, while exposing the position of Indian
writers in English reffered to the comments
of American poets Allen Ginsberg ,Gary
Snycler and Peter Onlovsky: "If we were
gangster poets we would shoot you"(1),
his threat was direct against the Indian
writers’ failure to take risk with
the English language.
To explain the reason behind this R.Parthasarathy
says that there at least two problems
which prevent Indian writers to take the
risk.First is related to the kind of experience
he would like to express in English .
Indian who use the Emglish language gets
in some extent alienated . This development
is superficial and this is why many blame
‘Indian Writers in English’(IWE)
as writers who present India in a foreign
view-point .There work doesn’t contain
a deep analysis of the Indian realities
and Indian characters .
Many regional writers (many of who are
even Jnapitha Awardees) say writing in
English in India is a severe handicap
as it tends to make their writing export
oriented .Hindi writer Rajendra Yadav
puts it as : "The IWE take a tourist look
at India , like Pankaj Mishra’s
The Romantics , where he is simply a tourist
who does not know the inner psyche of
people or a more clever device Vikram
Seth uses in A S uitable Boy ,the pretext
of looking for a bride-groom ,which takes
him to different locales and professions
. It is a creatively written travelers’
guide .They travel into our culture ,
describe a bit of our geography ; their
total approach is a westerner’s
:a third rate ‘serpant-rope trick’"
Many believe that IWE is circumscribed
by what only westerner can appreciate
:either exotica or erotica .Both these
elements are visible in Ruth Prawar Jhabavala’s
Heat and Dust .There is description of
shrines , Sadhus ,Nawabs ,Princes and
their castles along with sex and gay-parties
and Hijraas .Jhabvala’s picture
of princely India is extremely un realistic
,quixotic and pseudo-romantic .Similar
is the case of Arundhati Roy’s The
God of Small Things . B.Jaya Mohan in
a recent interview to Out Look magazine
(February 25 , 2002) said :"Writers like
Roy are superficial and exotic .When Roy
uses English to express a Malayalam idiom
, it might be exotic for westerner , but
for Indians it is not very exciting ."
Still there are writers in English for
whom a little praise is made ,but that
even by another English writer.In an obituary
to R.K.Narayan in Time magazine ,V.S.Naipul
writes :"His people can eat off leaves
on a floor in a slum tenement ,hang their
upper clothes on a coat stand ,do all
that in correct English ,and there is
no strangeness ,no false comedy ,no distance"
But still regional writers believe ; "
…but any Tamil writer would have
put more life into his novels than R.K.
did".
The battle of the first kind of problem
guides us into the second and this is
‘ the quality of idiom the writer
uses’ .R .Parthasarathy says that
" there is obviously a time lag between
the living , creative idiom and the English
used in India .And this time lag is not
likely to diminish".
It is because the historical situation
is to blame .Besides there is no special
English idiom ,either .English in India
rarely approaches the liveliness and idiosyncrasy
of usage one finds in African or West
Indian writing , perhaps because of the
long tradition of literature in Indian
languages .
This is explained by Kannada d Oyen "
writers in Indian language have a rich
back-ground -- centuries old literary
traditions,flok tales and life all round
them -- the IWE only have frontyard".That’s
why Rushdie draws fom the ethos and Hindi
of Mumbai,while writers like Narayan draws
from Tamil and Raja Rao from Kannada .But
still the idiom they use lacks in liveliness,
because "it’s impossible to transfer
into English the cultural traditions and
the associations of language".This is
why it is not surprising that writers
in English tend to over emphasize their
Indianness . This also explains why Michael
Madhusudan Dutt after publishing thesis
first book The Captive Lady(1849) in English
turned to Bengali to become the first
modern Indian poet .
While a regional writer can directly
concentrate mode of writing the IWE has
to face a complex problem---‘he
has to go through the tedious explanations
of the idioms he uses in his book ,leaving
little space for creative writing’.
Perhaps Narayan was the only writer who
never cared for such explanations .Naipul
writes (Time,June 4 ,2001) :
"There is or used to be a kind of Indian
writer who used many italics and for the
excitement ,had a glossary of perfectly
simple local words at the back of his
book .Narayan never did that .He explains
little or nothing;he talks everything
about his people and his little town for
granted".
But this is not possible for every IWE
writer who wants to perform an experiment
in creative English writing .R.Parthasarathy
explains in the context of his own position
as an English poet with Tamil as his mother
tongue . "English is a part of my intellectual,
rational make-up Tamil my emotional ,psychic
make-up"Hence it is he believes that every
IWE feels that he has an unnecessary burden
to do the explanation of the idioms he
uses ,and My Tongue in English Chain is
a theoretical statement of this problem.
Russian scholar E.J.Kalinikova in Problems
of Modern Indian Literature (1975) also
refers to this problem in G.Byol’s
words :
"National colouring is like naivete’
,if you realize you have it ,then you
have already lost it […] Conception
of the Indian through Indian eyes is natural,and
this only determine the scope of literary
subject", where as an English writer ofIndia
tries to give .The elements in a foreign
language for which the whole experience
of that element is strange and in the
end what is produced is in Kamala Das’s
words:
"It is halfEnglish,half Indian
Funny perhaps, but it is honest" [An
Introduction]
To provide a compromise M.R.Anand writes
in his essay Pigeon—Indian:Some
Notes on Indian English Writing : "The
real tests are different The first test
is in the sincerity of the writer in any
language .The second test may be in the
degree of sensitiveness or individual
talent".
And in what this talent lie ?Anita Desai
has the answer :
"I think I have learnt how to live with
English language,how to deal with the
problems it creats –mainly by ignoring
them"
This view is supported by Henery James
–"One’s own language is one’s
mother ,but the language one adopts as
a career, as a study ,is one’s wife[…]
she will expect you to commit infidelities
.On those terms she will keep your house
well"
Perhaps that’s why IWE like Raja
Rao have justified their own stand as
:
"We can write only as Indians[…]
Time will alone justify it"
[Introduction to Kantapura]
Every writer (especially poet) ,as many
believe ,sooner or later suffers from
‘Aphasia’ or ‘loss of
poetic speech’ .His poetry ought
to ,from the beginning aspire to the condition
of silence.This is similar to Rene’
Wellek’s notion on Endgame of Samuel
Beckett :
"Samuel Beckett in Endgame has been looking
for the voice of his silence"
But Wellek’s view is applicable
to the living force that still move the
Indian English writers’ pen on paper
.
"The artist,s dissatisfaction with language
can only be expressed by language .Pause
may be a device to express the un expressible
,but the pause can not be prolonged indefinitely".
So, in spite of the problems related
to language and diction in use , the writers
must keep on trying their best in carving
out on them ,their creativeness on experimental
basis ,because that may one day lead us
to where we are now caving to reach.
This article was posted on January
04, 2005
