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 Jagruti rameshbhai vasani

Semester:- 1

Roll no :- 54

Paper 4 :- Indian English literature – pre

                   Independence

Topic :- Major novelist of pre independence era

               R.K. NARAYAN, RAJA RAO,MULKRAJ ANAND

Submitted :- Smt. Gardi English department

 

Introduction:-

               The Indian English fiction has had a meteoritic growth during the dawn of the millennium year and the writing in all genres of literature has gained momentum, particularly the Indian novel, the doyens of the Indian writing like R.K.Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, and their ilk promoted the conventional mode of writing. The crusaders of the contemporary and modern era include Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth and many more. They elucidate and substantiate strength of the emerging modern voice of India, which has the vibrancy and energy of a gushing artesian along with an unmatched resolve to experiment and explore new avenues of writing novels. A host of contemporary post - colonial writers like Rushdie, Arundati Roy, Meena Alexander, Anita Nair and Jhumpa Lahiri have initiated the process of decolonizing the 'Colonial English' and using it as a medium to express Indian thoughts and sensibilities with a distinctive Indian style.

The freedom movement spearheaded by Gandhi inspired a flurry of activity in the literary world. The need for an autonomous, independent country lead to an explosion of creativity, which sought to appeal to the masses to take up the cudgels and oust the Britishers from the Indian soil. Therefore, there was a flourish of novels in both regional and as well as in the national stream. This burst of energy in regional literature, laid the ground work of fine - tuning and enhancing the vibrancy and the scope of the Indian English Fiction.

The dual combination of independent movement and nationalist consciousness gave much impetus and spur to the outflow of novels in which affection for motherland was the crux and this served to invoke the patriotic sentiments of the masses. Raja Rao's Kanthapura(1938), K.S.Venkataramani's Kandan, The Patriot (1934 ) and Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable(1935), Coolie (1936), The Sword and the Sickle(1942 ), revolved around the varying themes of the independence struggle. Post - Independent India also produced number of novels involving the causes and aftermaths of the freedom movement. The novels that belong to this category include Nayantara Saghal's A Time to be Happy(1952), Khwaja Ahmed Abbas' Inquilab(1955), R.K.Narayan's Waiting for the Mahatma(1955) etc.

 The triumvirs Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and R.K.Narayan were the novelists who stabilized and fortified the Indian English Fiction with their ample works and unique literary style. Thus, it was aptly noted by William Walsh regarding the afore mentioned writers:

 Distinguished not only for their own work but as the inaugurators of the form itself since it was they who defined the area in which the Indian novel in English was to operate, drew the first models of its characters and themes and elaborated its particular logic. Each used its own version of an English freed from the foggy taste of Britain. (walsh, 62)

 The majority of Mulk Raj Anand's (1905 - 2004) novels brings to the limelight the inequalities of society and trials and tribulations of the less fortunate. Untouchable(1935), Coolie(1936 ), The Village(1939 ), and The Private Life of an Indian Prince(1953) addresses the evils existing in the society in the Marxist terms. His novels also give a graphic description of the daily existence of his characters, their tale of woe, sweat and misery. Untouchable(1935) targets the evil of casteism and brings to the surface the issue of segregation of people on the basis of their profession. In Coolie(1936 ), he presents a poverty-stricken protagonist, Munoo who portrays the hollowness of the society and the curse faced by the proletariat. He was instrumental in bringing about an awareness of the inequality that existed in India. He also advocated solutions for the issues. Both novels are: "a plea for downtrodden, the poor and the outcast, who face economic hardship and emotional humiliation in a rigid social structure".

 R.K.Narayan (1906-2001) is another celebrity author who enjoys a unique position in the crowded literary scene of Indian Fiction. He is undoubtedly the master of portraying the socio-comic aspects of the ordinary Indian's family and idiosyncrasies of human which form the crux of his novels. The greatest merit of his language and style lives in its simplicity. His subtle use of ironic humor explores the oddities of human nature and juxtaposing it with a dose of harmless humor. His fiction revolves around the imaginary sleepy South Indian town of Malgudi but expresses an outlook which has universal appeal. His famous novels are The Bachelor of Arts and The Painter of signs (1933). Swami and Friends (1935), The English Teacher (1945), Waiting for Mahatma (1955), The Guide (1958), The Sweet Vendor (1967. The vividness in character portrayal is balanced by ironic humor, which is his characteristic style. His writing has stretched across seven decades and occupies a remarkable position in the history of Indian English Fiction. Narayan has gained mastery of the art of portraying characters and nuances of the English language.

Raja Rao's (1908-2006) reputation as a novelist of metaphysics and philosophy is amply justified by his substantial contribution in upholding these themes in his novels. Women in Raja Rao's novels suffer from domestic injustice and tyrannical tradition, but the writer suggests no way out of their dilemma. His women characters, who are a little ambitious, end up playing the devoted role of a wife like Savitri in The Serpent and the Rope(1960). Indian culture being rooted into his consciousness fails him to offer any concrete solution to the besetting women's issue. He analysis modern India from a different perspective and elevates Hindu orthodoxy to a grand metaphysic. His work The Serpent and the Rope(1960) abounds with various themes. It is the story of an intellectual Rama who is in quest of personal enlightment and seeks inspiration and revelation from eastern and western metaphysics. He has a French wife and his association with Savithri brings to the forefront the contemplation of the Feminine Principle and endeavors to correlate the eastern and western views. The later works by Raja Rao includes The Cat and The Shakespeare (1956) and Comrade Kirillov (1976). Kanthapura (1938) by Raja Rao emphasizes the influence of the Gandhian movement by highlighting the 1920's and the Gandhi - Irwin Pact of 1931. He focuses a small village through which he explores the impact of the freedom movement on the villagers and also captures their roles in the struggle for Independence. Rao uses his novels to spread the Gandhian message and as propaganda against social evils.

 Mulk Raj Anand (1905-), R.K.Narayan (1906-2000) and Raja Rao (1909-) became the trinity of Indian writing in English. Speaking of The Big Three, Walsh said:

 "It is these three writers who defined the area in which the Indian novel was to operate. They established its assumptions; they sketched its main themes, freed the first models of its characters and elaborated its particular logic. Each of them used an easy, natural idiom which was unaffected by the opacity of a British inheritance. Their language has been freed of the foggy taste of Britain and transferred to a wholly new setting of brutal heat and brilliant light.

" The sudden spirit of creative writing in the eighties reflects the sense of awareness of the plurality of the nation. It transcends the east - west conflict and portrays the new Post Colonial India with its evolving outlook, which is essentially a blend of tradition and modernism. It reveals the cosmopolitan outlook of the new generation who strives to strike a balance between the inherited traditional values and imbibed foreign culture. The treatment and technique of the novel is Trans-national and Trans - continental. Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh and Upamanya chatterjee are the writers who reigned supreme with their momentous work. Their works delve into the hurdles faced by newly independence nation, which at times a harsh depiction of reality. These writers have made bold attempts to recapture the altered perceptions of Post - colonial India and the use of revolutionary narrative technique has elevated their position among the writers of Indian Fiction in English.

 Salman Rushdie (1947) was born and brought up in Bombay and later went to England for higher education. Thus, his roots and early education in India combined with the exposure to higher education in a foreign country, has played a stupendous role in shaping the mind of this writer. His novels abounds with myths, symbols and motifs. The arrival of his best novel Midnight Children(1981) shook the very foundation of the complacency of the Indian English Fiction. The language, style theme and narrative technique employed by Rushdie is entirely novel and highly innovative. He initiated a trend which cared very less about the continental method of writing novels. Incredible imagination, amazing comic sense and absolute word - play are the hallmarks of Rushdie's works. Midnight's Children(1981), the novel has three parts and based on the crucial role by history in the narrative, it can be categorized as the growth of the characters during pre - Independence, partition and post - Independence. His works abounds with the lavish use of symbols and fantasy. Rushdie will always be remembered for his dare devil techniques, narrative spanning generations, depiction of characters with eccentricities, experimentation with style, abundant usage of allegory, symbols and thinly veiled disguise of real life people and political overtones.  

Some of the best studies of social life are, naturally enough, in the regional languages; and it is not easy to translate the racy idioms of every day speech into English. This is particularly true of life in the country side, the seaside, the hillside where life has, perhaps, changed very little indeed during the last two thousand years. Urban life in India attracts the novelists by its excitement, perversions, sophistications and violent alternations between affluence and poverty, splendor and squalor; but the interior, the areas of obscurity and inaccessibility have their attractions too, and sometimes bring out the best in the creative novelist.(165)

 Women novelists have played a crucial and momentous role in enhancing the quality and quantity of the Indian English Fiction. They have further added the woman's perspective and feministic dimensions to the novels. These rich contributions have widened the spectrum of issues deliberated in the novel. In the past, the work by the Indian women authors has always been undervalued because of some patriarchal assumptions. Indian societies gave priorities to the work of male experiences. In those days, women used to write about a women's perception and experiences within the enclosed domestic arena. On the other hand, male authors used to deal with heavy themes. Thus, it was assumed that their work would get more priority and acceptance in the society. During the eighteenth century, these factors led towards the decline of Indian women writing. And with all these factors, production of women's literature declined further. In the nineteenth century, more and more women actively participated in India's reformist movement against the British rule. It again led to the women's literature. At that time, their write - ups mainly concentrated on the country's freedom struggle. Over the years, the world of feminist ideologies began to influence the English literature of India.

 The contributions by women writers cannot go unnoticed. In fact the works by women writers constitute a major segment of the contemporary Indian writing in English. Today women are seen establishing their identity in almost all walks of life and they have heralded a new consciousness in the realm of literature too. Anees Jung in her book Unveiling India states her ideology in the following words:

 In the complex pantheon of diversities, the Indian woman remains the point of unity unveiling through each single experience a collective unconscious prized by a society that is looked in mortal combat with the power and weakness of age and time. She remains the still centre, like the centre the potter's wheel, circling to create new forms, unfolding the continuity of a racial life, which in turn has encircled and helped her acquire a quality of concentration. (48)

 Among the women writers Sarojini Naidu, the great poetess charmed the readers with her writings. Feminism themes have also been used by authors like Nayantara Sahgal and Rama Mehta. Regional fiction theme has been aptly used by Kamala Das, Anita Nair and Susan Viswanathan. Novelists like Kamala Markandaya and Anita Desai captured the spirit of Indian cultures and its traditional values. During 1990's India became a popular literary nation as a number of women authors made their debut in this era. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Suniti Namjoshi and Anuradha Marwah Roy used realism as main theme of their novels. The novels of authors like Namita Gokhale or Shobha De are really out - spoken. Most of these female novelists are known for their bold views that are reflected in their novels. Basically, these are the novels of protest and an outburst of reservations and contaminations. Unlike the past, where the works of women novelists were given less priority and were actually undervalued, classification of feministic or male writings hardly makes any sense today.

 In the twentieth century, women's writing was considered as a powerful medium of modernism and feminist statements. The last two decades have witnessed phenomenal success in feminist writings of Indian English literature. Today is the generation of those women writers who have money and are mostly western education. Their novels consist of the latest burning issues related with women as well as those issues that exist in the society since long. The publishers feel that the literature actually survives because of these types of bold topics and commercials used by the women novelists. They describe the whole world of women with simply stunning frankness. Their write - ups give a glimpse of the unexplored female psyche, which has no accessibility. The majority of these novels depict the psychological suffering of the frustrated housewife. At this pint of time, it is essential to quote Virginia Woolf,

 It is probable, however, that both in life and in art, the values of women are not the values of man. Thus, when a woman comes to write a novel, she will find that she is perpetually wishing to alter the established values - to make serious what appears insignificant to a man, and trivial what is to him important. (75-81)

 Kamala Das (1934)

 Kamala das  is a major Indian English poet and a leading Malayalam author from Kerala state, South India. Her popularity in Kerala is based chiefly on her short stories and autobiography, while her oeuvre in English, written under the name Kamala Das, is noted for the fiery poems and explicit autobiography. Her open and honest treatment of female sexuality, free from any sense of guilt, infused her writing with power, but also marked her as an iconoclast in her generation. Das' first book of poetry, "Summer In Calcutta" was a breath of fresh air in Indian English poetry. Some of her works in English include the novels Alphabet of Lust (1977), Palayan (1990), Neypayasam (1991), and Dayarikkurippukal (1992). She is currently the author of a syndicated column in India. She wrote chiefly of love, its betrayal, and the consequent anguish. She abandoned the certainties offered by an archaic, and somewhat sterile, aestheticism for an independence of mind and body at a time when Indian poets were still governed by "nineteenth -century diction, sentiment and romanticized love."

Anita Desai (1937) is another remarkable novelist who has experimented with diverse themes, which eventually emphasize the plight of the Indian women in Post - Colonial India. She graphically presented the turbulent psyche of the modern Indian women. Her protagonists are intelligent, sensible and sensitive, but in an attempt to manage home and children and attain emotional fulfillment, they reach on the verge of mental crisis. Unable to cope with their crisis, they resort to drastic steps. Her early novels focus on the lives of woman plagued with troubles in male dominated society. Cry, The peacock (1963) depicts the travails and suppressed emotions of a neglected wife. Voices in the city (1965) depict the feeling of rootlessness and undue stress faced by a group of women in the busy city of Calcutta. Meanwhile, Bye - Bye Black Bird (1971) discusses on the disgusting issue of Indian Immigration in England and Clear Light of the Day (1980), is a novel in which Desai presents childhood innocence, affection and guilt in an engrossing and realistic manner. Desai has been labeled as a great feminist writer of international acclaim for having presented the predicament of sensitive women characters trapped between tradition and modernity.

 Bharati Mukherjee (1940), the expatriate of the Indian origin in the U.S.A, is one of the remarkable women writers to have contributed an explicit fiction to the much debated vein of post - modernist literature. Bharati Mukherjee has established herself as a powerful member of the American literary scene with her novels like The Tiger's Daughter (1972), Jasmine (1989), Wife (1975) and anthologies of short stories such as Middleman and Other Stories (1988) and Darkness (1985). The Holder of the World (1993) and Leave It to Me (1997) are two other novels by Bharati Mukherji. The writer of a posterior vision and dehumanizing trend of negative capability has made the case of untraditional experience dominating issue over a detached kind of living in future. The methods adopted by Bharathi to portray her sense of the life are not the sensibilities, incorporating the elements of the disassociating and alienated self. Notwithstanding the tenderness and a slow pace in her expression of very bold and pornographic themes, she has presented a picturesque and visionly view of the human fate in the chaotic atmosphere of the modernity.

 Shasi Deshpande, Geetha Hariharan and Anita Nair have focused on the domestic aspects which eventually steers the novel away from historical events. They uphold the female centric themes and delineate the various issues faced by the women characters in a domestic spear. Shasi Deshpande's pellucid style and language is devoid of complex pyrotechnics. Her portrayal of women is based on traditional Indian families settled in the south. She is the only Indian author to have made bold attempts at giving a voice to the disappointments and frustrations of women despite her vehement denial of being a feminist. The sensibilities of the middle classes and the issues they grapple with, forms the crux of a novel. The Dark Holds No Terror (1980) brings out the theme of gender inequality in a typical Hindu household. In Roots and Shadows (1983), the protagonist Indu rebels against an authoritarian family and eschews the rigid principles. That Long Silence (1988) won the Sahitya Akademi Award. It exposes the imposed silence and ennui of an upper middle class house wife Jaya. Her novels are in the Binding Vine (1993), A Matter of Time (1966) and Small Remedies (2000). It is evident that Deshpande is concerned with dealing the crises in women's life. She does not propagate her doctrines but portrays a realistic and truthful picture of women in modern India. As the writers like Shasi Deshpande aimed at communicating their experiences as women and their views on social reforms of women in modern India. As the writers like Shasi Deshpande aimed at communicating their experiences as women and their views on social reforms.  

Conclusion 

         His four novels in this volume form the first phase of narayan’s carrer as a novelist . in them we see the authors working through a number of concerns which , as a yong man were very much on his mind . these include boyhood , education and the finding of a role in life ( the bachelor of arts ) and  marriage ( the dark room and the English teacher ) . in these early novels , we also see the development of both are the major novelst as the pre independence era in English literature.