CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

INDIAN NOVELS IN ENGLISH

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 Only in Novel are meaning and life.1

— Georg Lukács

Indeed, they are. ‘Novel’ as a literary phenomenon, as Iyengar calls it, transcends
‘home’ of narrowness and particularity. It bears the burden of carrying wider picture of
seeming insignificant moments of life. Its method of tackling issues by the medium of
universal voice translates the consciously or historically repressed voices. It’s ironic that
the other greater, as acclaimed, literary forms attempt to present entirety of life through
the unknown forces to human beings, a particular class or the time-space-bound stage as
‘epic’ and ‘drama’ claim. “The Epic claims to capture ‘universal voice’ of the entire
nation while ironically repressing the voices of the masses. The recent literary form
‘problem play’, a developed version of the drama, is worse than that, for a critic’s
question always lurks over it as how can life be resolved through ‘dialogue’? Philosophy
fails as it dissimulates “truths too dangerous for mass consumption―such as ‘history is
tragic’, the ‘human problem’ will never be solved, universal satisfaction is impossible.”
(Waugh, p. 388) But if one sees an equality between ‘novel’ and ‘history’, one needs to
let Tolstoy liberate from his compulsion to write an epilogue to his novel ‘War and
Peace’ in order to bring the fact to our understanding that ‘true history is yet to be
written’.” (Upadhyay, p. 150) Therefore, life lives ‘only’ in this ‘literary phenomenon’.

Indian ‘novel’ in English is “two and a half centuries old literary form in India.”
(Upadhyay, p. 151) Those novels that are written in Indian regional languages are
perhaps older than our first novel in English, the date of which is, before given, over
shrouded by the phrases such as ‘real beginning’ and by ‘now considered’. Amidst these
critical doubts, the date of our first novel in English is considered 1864. Thus, 1864 hence
this, as Iyengar calls it, ‘literary phenomenon’ develops thematically gradually while
holding the fragments of the first as the second half of the nineteenth century novels carry
the burden of class reformation whether it represents a ‘zamindar’ class or entire Hindu.
After a few novels representing the nineteenth century, there is a lapse till the second
decade of the twentieth century. Since 1920s see the ‘Pageant’ and ‘Non-cooperation’
Movements, the decade becomes important for the novelists to turn their themes from a

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class reformation to the Gandhian ideology. However, the novels were quantitatively
insignificant in order to represent entire India. As Iyengar says about this poultry work,

“There has been no dearth of talent: but it has been generally content to
throw up a stray novel or two ― as if they were no more than the
byproducts of an activity directed to quite other ends like law, teaching,
politics, civil service, journalism…” (Iyengar, p. 331)

There are two phases of the novels with Gandhian impact: ‘Gandhi as a governing
trope or motif’ and ‘Gandhi as a character in the narrative’ (Mehrotra, p. 169). After
‘Gandhian theme’, the Indian philosophy, especially the Gita, features prominently in the
novels. Though the novelists still preferred external forces in the background of their
work, they were shifting their observation from nationalism to individual consciousness.
And this began, if properly speaking, with ‘women novelists’ of the second half of the
twentieth century. Subsequently, the novels began to show the themes such as loneliness,
incompatibility, alienation, isolation, feminism and several others of this kind. But there
was a drastic change after 1980s both thematically and linguistically. The ‘Stephenians’
and others began to give a postmodern perspective to their novels. In the twenty first
century novels, the writers foreground the theme of ‘retreat’, retreat from countryside to
city. There is a preference for urbanity, industrialization and in wider sense modernity.
The major Indian novels in English, from the beginning to the present century, are in
some detail given below. The omission of some novels from the study does not belittle
their significance; instead, it is due to the constraints of time and space.

So the first novel in English is Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife, of

which the title unravels the entire novel. It describes the ‘Bengali life’, represents the
‘new’ woman who, though not breaking the cultural system, resisted the evils of familial
structure. It appeared in the journal ‘the Indian Field’ edited by Bankim’s friend
Kishorichand Mitra. About its appearance Meenakshi Mukherjee writes, “It appeared at a
time when romance was the acceptable narrative mode and there was no precedent as yet
of mimetic rendering of contemporary domestic life in fiction…” (Mehrotra, p. 99;
Upadhyay, p. 151)

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 Thus, the novel attracts ‘historical interest’. The tile is important because it represents
the condition of the nineteenth century trapped women in the Zamindar family who has to
lose her identity to be someone’s wife, i.e. someone’s property. As Prof. Prakash2 says
that title shows the eponymous woman as someone’s property; though she has her name
in the novel, she is called a person’s wife. According to him, ‘Matangini’ is
“linguistically possessed”. Therefore, the novel is a great exposure of ‘the nineteenth
century life in India’, especially of the haves. This novel must not be read ‘merely as a
story, as a narrative’ but as the writer intends. In fact, the novel is all about the chapter
titled ‘the History of the Rise and Progress of the Zamindar Family’. And the chapter
shows that the writer insists the readers that he be ‘critical of the Zamindar family’
(Prakash) as he assumes a personality of a critic who is ‘almost condemning the family’
(Ibid.). As it is the first Indian novel in English, it paves the way for women characters
standing against violence. The novel shows that if in nineteenth century live people, like
Rajmohan, who are driven by patriarchal mindset, there also live ‘well-educated, nice and
gentle-hearted’ people like Madhav. The language, structure, internal and external forces
all are a matter of concern. Meenakshi has written, “It’s a novel about criticsm.”

After writing Rajmohan’s Wife in English, Bankim chose his mother tongue as the
medium of expression in his writing. The fact that the novel is in English, presents the
writer’s intention behind writing it. He seems to have English reader in his mind rather
than Indian illiterate reader. The second reason appears that, by this novel, he wanted to
show his grasp on English language as the structure of the novel is in the style of the
British novels such as those of Samuel Richardson and Walter Scott. The forgotten
novel, The Hindu Wife, or the Enchanted Fruit (1876) by Raj Lakshmi Devi, sarcastically
exposes the vices inherent in Indian tradition. The other contemporary female novelist
“who wrote more than one novel in English in the nineteenth century India”, is Krupabai
Satthianadhan3. Her novels, Kamala: the Story of a Hindu Life and Saguna: the Story of
Native Christian Life, deal with the similar plight of the women in the environment of the
family where the father figure rules, for they have to follow his dictations and thus,
become ‘existentially dead. The examples are Bankim’s infused sense in the characters
Madav and Matangini, especially in the situation when both protagonists are compelled
by ‘life force’ to come together to express their sexual urge for each other. But the

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traditional and conventional norms for women proclaim its harsh reality to confront. ‘The
articulation of this desire’ is ‘compelled to be suppressed’ by women’s responsibility to
represent the whole society. A woman always has to carry the burden of presenting her
house, her village, her country. She is the representative of the ‘Bharat Mata’ (Mother
India). Therefore, when she happens to express her desire before Ramchander, she
admits, “My heart beats in response to yours.” But the meantime she has to admit her
other self that articulates her widowhood in the nineteenth century that she has no right to
love, no right to happiness. Her heart cannot bear the sexual gratification at the cost of
her duty. This is the reason her heart bursts to say, “I am ashamed of myself.” The duality
of kamala’s mind is the duality aroused of modernity and tradition. Krupabai’s novel is
slightly different from Bankim’s Rajmohan’s Wife as the novelist introduces in the
narrative the child-bride’s predicament. Kamala is a daughter of a Sanyasi. She is married
at the age of eight to Ganesh who is an English educated. The novel shows the mood of
harassment. The state of being married in the nineteenth century, for a girl, was
sacrificial. The Hindu marriage act was still a far cry. The certain kind of moral code is to
be carried by woman in order to maintain tradition. Through Krupbai’s female
protagonists, it becomes easier to understand the place, position and role of women in the
nineteenth century. The concerned century did not give even so little freedom that the
girls could choose their preferences, not to talk of life. Kamala likes books and her
“happiest moments are when her father-in-law allows her to handle his books…”
(Mehrotra, p.101) Though Saguna somehow manages to get out of the rigid atmosphere
of domesticity as she manages to get admission to a medical college, both Kamala and
Saguna do not like this air-tight atmosphere of domestic life. The close affinity of these
two novels is well articulated by Meenakshi Mukherjee as, “Despite the difference in
social milieu, the two novels deal with a similar theme; the predicament of women who
resist being cast in the standard mould of domesticity. Kamala and Saguna are both
attracted to books and face varying degrees of hostility for such an unnatural (my
emphasis) inclination.” (Mehrotra, p. 101)

Therefore, what was over shrouded in Bankim’ Rajmohan’s Wife got proper voice in
the Saguna: The life of Native Christian. Although feminism is one of the themes of
Bankim’s novel, it gets overloaded with other major theme of historical interest as while

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reading this narrative, the reader gets himself in the whirlpool of manners, behaviours,
and events of the nineteenth-century Zamindar family. But the novel Saguna articulates
the feministic elements. The protagonist, who is well-versed with English manners,
resists the assimilation of identity. She is against the imitation of the British style. She
“boldly reprimands a Westernised Indian youth who refers to England as ‘home’.”
(Mehrotra, p. 101) Thus, Krupbai Satthianadan’s novels are “of the earliest articulations
of feminist and cultural concerns in English by Indian Women.” With the theme of
isolation appears Toru Dutta’s Bianca (1878), of which the full title is ‘Bianca, or the
Young Spanish Maiden’. “There are certainly ‘autobiographical projections’.” (Iyengar,
p. 435, Upadhyay, p. 151) It expresses an “inner tragedy of sisterly love and
bereavement” amidst “romantic love motif”. (Iyengar, p. 436) The significance of Kali
Krishna Lahiri’s Roshinara’s is qualified by its subtitle as ‘A Historical Romance’ which
pronounces the clash of romantic perspective of its protagonist and the conservative
attitude of the people in the nineteenth century, for the thematic concerns of the novel
revolve around ‘sex and crime’ that are repeated throughout the text with equal vigour.
Though these two novels, Toru Dutt’s Bianca and Lahiri’s Roshinara are considered
“poor literary works,” (Indictment of Caste System through Indian Fiction), for they
repeat the theme of previous novelists, yet they are important from the historical
perspective.

The ‘River-Cult’

In Indian novels, the physical environment, especially rivers, has vital force to control
the characters’ life. They are characters, ‘a presence’ in the novels. Prof. Iyengar classifies
the novels, the background of which is set by a river, a “category by themselves”. Making
his classification of these novels more comprehensible, he further says,

“The river does evoke in the Indian an attachment almost personal.”

(Iyengar, p.322)

The novel ‘Murugun the Tiller’ (1927) penned down by an acclaimed Indian lawyer
and writer in English, K. S. Venkataramani, is an apt example of this kind, the ninth
chapter of which, which is titled ‘A River Scene at Alavanti’, gives a minute sketch of the

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happy moments in the life of people when they are in the of the river. In India, the river is
not the only fountain of happiness but also of blessings as it is held ‘sacred’. The people
when they are in the river romanticize the moments of their happiness as, “The water was
clear and cool and the utmost depth came only up to the navel. The women, especially the
younger, lingered longer in their bath and chatted merrily on everything under the
Alavanti sun, spicy, social, religious, topical.” (Venkataramani, text online & Upadhyay,
p. 152)

For example, women feel happier and more emancipated away from home and any kind
of social bondage. The river does not, thus, only provide the surrounding for the women
to gossip, to forget the troubles due to altercations in the family, and for merry-making
but, in fact, also the avatar of the life-giving Deity himself. The river, Alavanti, is sacred
and has a great influence on the people. It performs the role of purification of those who
go for bathing into it. But those women, who do not go for such a sacred bath in the river
or do not feel the necessity of such a bath, are “neecha stri” (corrupt women). Therefore,
Janaki (Ramu’s wife) a town-bred lady, does not believe in the need of such a bath. The
beliefs are not individual but collective as her act is taken as her defiance against the
social order. A middle-aged woman of the village becomes too concerned to accept
Janaki’s behavior when the former anticipates the future life of the village. So she says to
Sita who feels drawn towards Janaki and her ways, “I fear Ramu’s wife will spread this
evil among our innocent girls in the village.” (Venkataramani) This novel has another
facet that makes it valuable for the reader — the Gandhism. The sixteenth chapter in the
book, India’s Struggle for Independence, titled ‘Peasant Movements and Nationalism in
the 1920s’ make the novel more understandable. This novel is written in the years that
saw the nationalistic fervor. Gandhiji’s nationalistic movement had “a marked impact” on
K. S. Venkataramani’s novels: ‘Murugun the Tiller’ (1927) and ‘Kundun the Patriot’
(1934). These are the earliest novels with Gandhian ideology as the former deals with the
‘economic implications of Gandhism; the latter, with Gandhiji’s ‘Satyagraha movement’.
The focal point in the ‘Murugun, the Tiller’ is the village, not the city as such. The
influence of the movement is thoroughly made an object of research by Leela Gandhi as
she says that it “promotes the cause of Gandhian economics through its dramatization of
a heavily allegorical relationship between two friends the materialist Kedari and the

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public-spirited Ramu…” (Mehrotra, p.170) She further studies, “In the novel, the action
shifts from village to city and back again from city to village, encompassing the
significance and simplicity of village life and recapturing the fervor of freedom of
struggle.” (Ibid.) And this freedom struggle gets more articulations in ‘Kandan, the
Patriot’. Raghu who is so fascinated by Gandhiji’s nationalism that even in spite of his
mother’s disapproval, he leaves his ‘civil service job’ and gets into the movement. To be
a part of freedom movement was a matter of distinction in itself. To fight for one’s own
country was far better than being in a Government job. Gandhi appears as having a
personality, as a character, perhaps for the first time, in K. Nagarajan’s Chronicles of
Kedaran (1961), his second novel. Though published much later, the background of the
novel is set in the Gandhian era. Gandhi interferes and “posits as a settler of ‘religious
tension’” (Upadhyay, p. 152) in the narrative. Another novel that is based on the features
of ‘Mahatma Literature’ is R. K. Narayan’s Waiting for Mahatma (1955), it is , unlike
like ‘Chronicles of Kedaran’, written much after India’s Independence, and does not
make the movements such as freedom movement or partition movement dominate the
action of the novel as its key issue. The narrative has the presence of Gandhiji as
Mahatma who brings Bharti, an orphan, and through her he influences Sriram, a high
school graduate. Having joined the anti-British extremists, Sriram, like Kandan,
becomes a cause of trouble for his grandmother as the latter for his mother. Both are
highly educated. However, the difference between these two novels lies between Gandhi
as an ideology and Gandhi as ‘a presence’. For example, in ‘Kandan, the Patriot’, Gandhi
stands outside of the boundaries of the narrative while it is quite the opposite in ‘Waiting
for Mahatma’. The narrative, under discussion, sets in the ‘Quit India’ campaign
launched by Gandhiji. Mahatma is hailed pious in the narrative. He is considered in the
village as Maha Atma (great soul). As the narrative goes, Bharati says to Sriram,
Mahatmaji is “too pure to think anything wrong.” Gandhiji has instilled in the heart of the
characters always-truth-following concept whatever circumstances they are in. But
Sriram like people, who blindly develop the enthusiasm for nationalism, are susceptible
to deceit in the name of Gandhiji as Jagadish, a terrorist, easily coaxes Sriram when the
latter is in a dilemma, “It is our duty to propagate truth wherever it may be. Has not
Mahatmaji told us so?” The fifth part of this narrative shows Mahatmaji, Sriram, and

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Bharati talking to one another. He is reserved. He is noticed as a central-point of
conversation. About this novel, the final passage on its back cover reads thus,
“…Mahatma, a saint blessed with disconcerting common sense, a man
whose tragedy is that he is so much greater than his followers. Most of
them accept his ideas enthusiastically, and without realizing it, pervert
them to suit their own coarser personalities…” (Indian Thought
Publications)
In such a manner, Narayan presents pre-independent India, the time when the people, like
Sriram, did not even know what the true current of ideology was. This is the reason that
Sriram, in a real sense, does not join the extremists on his own choice, but to impress
Bharati whom he loves. Though the novel is much neglected, it has two-fold importance,
as the title reads, the Mahatma and the waiter, and the waiter is Sriram who is ‘waiting’
for the evolution within. The entire novel is about Sriram’s ‘reaction’ to Gandhi.
(Cynthia, R. k. Narayan’s Neglected Novel: Waiting for the Mahatma) Socio-economic
conditions of the novel imply another interest. The characters belong to the middle-class
society, but as the result of Gandhiji’s teaching, Sriram is more passionate for love than
material gain.
Bhabani Bhattacharya’s (1906-88) So Many Hungers is also in the sequence of the
type discussed. It sets in 1942-3 ‘Bengal famine and Quit India Movement’. (Mehrotra, p.
170) The characters, Kajoli, Rahoul, and Devata are central to Gandhism. The impact of
Gandhian ideology is traceable from the ‘reaction’ of these characters to the situation.
The novel is much more about the inner struggle than the struggle for freedom. The
character of Kajoli rejects the stereotyped traditional woman. She assumes her
personality as a ‘new woman’, albeit her circumstances do not allow her to act in
accordance. The novel shows various types of ‘hungers’. Kajoli’s hunger is for the
preservation of dignity. Despite disfavoured conditions, she rejects brothel for self-
respect. Devata (Devesh Babu) is a model of Gandhiji’s charater. He is a sanyasi and the
instructor of Gandhian ideology. He is the bringer of ‘Satyagrah’ to the village, Baruni.
Rahoul himself learns from him the ‘limits of intellectualism and westernization’.
(Mehrotra, p.170) He is a D. Sc. from Cambridge University. His overwhelming interest
in science obstructs his path to ‘joining the National Movement’. But once he comes in

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the contact of his grandfather, he ‘renounces both’. His thirst for science becomes hollow.
It no longer satiates him. The emptiness of knowledge throws him out of the path of
seeking it passionately.

Thus, the writers of the nineteen thirties and forties showed a transformational turn in
their works “from the historical novels and historical romances to the bildungsroman”
(Upadhyay, p. 153), which is consequence of two events: the passion for freedom and the
preparation for this freedom. Consequently, the passion for freedom evoked in the mind
of the mind of the individual that hollowed the thirst for intellect and ‘mimicking’ the
western ways. They acted as being capable of satiating ‘hunger’ for freedom. With this
theme of love for freedom that overshadowed the other social issues and if the other
social concerns strike the novelists, they were cast in the light of the passion for freedom.
However, the new writers who penned their work voicing the social reform within the
nation have to drift away from the parallel line of their predecessors as writing in these
decades is much concerned about the “Indian reader in their mind rather than the British”
(Upadhyay, p. 153). Leela Gandhi summarizes all the fictional world of these decades as,

“In most of these novels the impact of Gandhism is measured not only in
terms of its anti-imperial content but also ‒ and perhaps more significantly
‒ for its impetus to the programme of internal national reform.” (Mehrotra,
p. 170)

The span of the twenty years (between 1930s and 40s) is ‘momentous’ in the history
of this ‘literary phenomenon’, novel. The three ‘literary giants’ in these years, Mulk Raj
Anand, Raja Rao, R. K. Narayan, defamiliarized the old pattern of so-called social
activities with their only one determined intention of social reform. The importance of
their oeuvre in the history of Indian novel can be easily measured from the fact that some
great writers of ‘Indian literature in English’ have, taking into consideration the quantity
and quality of their works, given them separate sections in their books. For example,
Anand’s “work exemplifies the curious dialogue between nationalism and
cosmopolitanism, modernism and Marxism, and Gandhism and Nehruvian socialism.”
(Mehrotra, p. 175) In Anand’s novels, his first-hand experience with the lowest strata of
society becomes apparent. He details the oppression, violence, and inhumane behaviour

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against the ‘untouchable like Bhakha, slaves like Munoo, and peasants turned slave-
labourers like Gangu, albeit some optimistic note is seen in the characters like Lal Singh,
yet not for long. They become oppressed after a brief period of illusory happiness.
Anand’s empathetic attitude towards the lowest or the have-nots is the outcome of his
personal indulgence with such a community. Iyengar shares this autobiographical touch
as, “From his peasant mother he doubtless derived his commonsense, his sense of the
ache at the heart of Indian humanity, and his understanding compassion for the waifs, the
disinherited, the lowly, the lost…” (Iyengar, p. 332)

Anand begins his writing career with his first novel ‘Untouchable’ (1935). The novel
penetrates into ‘a single day’ in the life of its central character Bhakha. But in Anand’s
creative fictional world this ‘one day’ is enough to show the reader the glimpses of the
whole life of the zemadars, the untouchables and their suffering, in India. The sweeper-
class is considered the ‘waste of human beings’. Their duty is maintaining the cleanliness
of the upper caste. The Brahmins are ‘forbidden for clearing and touching human waste.’
Bhakha has to carry this job for his entire life. The hypocrite Brahmins, who pretend to
get impure by the mere touch of the sweeper class, actually do not hesitate to ‘grab’ the
daughter of zemadar as priest Kalidas does with Sohini, Bhakha’s sister, when she is
called to clean the lavatory. This assault on Sohini arouses her brother’s fury, but is
silenced in the clutches of the upper caste. The touch of the untouchable is believed to
impure everything. They are forbidden to touch the water from the well even in the dire
need. The chapter ‘Caste, Untouchability, Anti-caste, Politics and Strategies’ in the book
INDIA SINCE INDEPENDENCE co-authored by Bipan Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee,
Aditya Mukherjee throws insights into the predicaments of such a class that has suffered
‘exploitation’ for “about 2, 500 hundred years” as,

“The most obnoxious part of the caste system was that it designated
certain groups as untouchables and outcastes, and then used this to deny
them ownership of land, entry into the temples, access to common
resources such as water from the village tank or well. Non-untouchable
castes, including the lowest among them, were not to have any physical

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 contact with untouchables. They could not accept water or food from their
hands.” (Chandra et. al., Passage 2, p.631)

The other novels of Anand show him moving back and forth in his selection of the
theme. After two autobiographical novels, Seven Summers (1951) and The Private Life
of an Indian Prince (1953), he selects the ‘peasant theme’ properly in The Old Woman
and the Cow (1960). His other novels are The Road (1963), The Death of a Hero (1964),
Morning Face (1970) and Confessions of a Lover (1976).

This period is also remarkable for the intervention from the British. They involve
either in reviewing the Indian novel of the novelists of these decades (e.g. Elizabeth
Browen received ‘The English Teacher’) or in contributing a complete preface to them as
E. M. Forster wrote preface to Anand’s first novel ‘Untouchable’. Thus, the novels of
these decades with the social concerns attracted reader market across the oceans because
it is noteworthy where the novelists were suffering from the unavailability of the readers
in India in the terms of intellectual poverty, the British themselves came forward to give a
supporting and promoting hand to the Indian novelists. The majority of the Indians were
still illiterate. Therefore, the works of these novelists were meant for the British rather the
Indians. Iyengar writes that it was very difficult “to make a living in India as a man of
letters. People don’t buy books…” (p. 358)

R. K. Narayan’s oeuvre “always avoided political or social commentary…”

(Mehrotra, p. 196) In ‘Waiting for Mahatma’, though with nationalism as its background,
romance flourishes. The central point is romance not Gandhism. The themes of these
novels include ‘domestic disharmony’, ‘superstition’ and ‘superstitious prejudice’,
romance amidst Gandhian principles, ‘transformation’, modernity, indifference etc. There
are some borrowed English aspects that feature in these novels such as: Austenian
limitations, Dickensenian characters which strike the avid reader in the characters of
‘Swaminathan’ and ‘school headmaster’, the college life of ‘A Bachelor of Arts’ — Leela
& Krishna make the reader reminiscent of his own college days, Hardian ‘Casterbridge’
is replaceable with ‘Malgudi’, resignation of life with acceptance of loneliness with
positive attitude i.e. solitude, perceivable in the character, ‘Krishna’.

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 Gandhian ideology is a ready-made theme for the novelists of these decades,
however, Narayan, whose oeuvre is not so much pervaded with politics as social
reformation, gives hence, in the background, a romantic bloom. Iyengar, having studied
well ‘Mahatma Literature’, says, “In Waiting for the Mahatma, the theme is apparently
the Bharati-Sriram romance, which, however, gains a new dimension in the background
of their common allegiance to the Mahatma.” (p. 372)

Narayan is justified because of his impartial view in portraying his both heroes and
heroines with equality. If his pen sketches such male characters presenting with such
traits as Ramani the cynic, Raju the rogue, Margayya the ambitious, he showed his
capability in portraying the female art-lovers as Rosie the dancer, Daisy the intellectual.
These characters appear sharing our qualities, for they are so lifelike and realistic, and
‘convincing psychological consistency’. In Narayan’s novels, we meet common people
with the common situations. What Narayan himself says about the character-sketching is
noteworthy about his entire work, “My focus is all on character. If his personality comes
alive, the rest is easy for me.” So the thread is in the characters. But it does not mean that
he does not have the capacity to draw complex characters, for example, the philosophical
minded Krishnan is apt for the fact. His characters represent the middle-class South
Indians. Narayan’s novels do not expose Indian poverty; it comes naturally through his
characters. He is not a socialist like Mulk Raj Anand, nor a propagandist like George
Bernard Shaw. He does not interfuse any social critique in his novels. The Indian
economic conditions get themselves referred to. There is a blend of humour and pity in
his narratives though his vision is entirely comic. Through this comic vision, he presents
reality. But in the process his themes of comedies turn into tragic. He synthesizes
tradition and modernity and Gandhism and Nehruvian Marxism. If Jagan practices
ascetism, Mali is the person who brings modernity. Mali the story-writing Marxist might
change the attitude of the superstitious people. Some of Narayan’s novels are written in
the form of the first person narrative, in some of which he himself assumes the
personality. Sometimes he gives voice to the animals even as in the ‘The Tiger of
Malgudi’. In this novel the ‘talkative man’ is a journalist who prefers talking to people.
The gradual change is a marked difference in the narratives. In the face of this change,
both the society and individuals get changed because of the introduction of urbanization,
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modernization and westernization. There is a wonderful mixture of two cultures: old and
new. The old culture of Malgudi is represented through the symbols as river Saryu,
‘excessive credulity’, faith, temple, etc. while the new culture by sofa set, typewriter,
studio, and skepticism. Through the symbolism of old sets and subsets, India’s past
emerges. Another aspect of his novels is Indian philosophy. The verses of the Gita, in
Indian novels, are either directly quoted or given reference to them by translation.
Conclusively, Narayan leaves the novels with a didactic note.

Raja Rao’s novels paved the way for his successors. The path was prepared for
assimilating not only Gandhism with which the novels or in a wider sense the entire
fictional world was encrusted with, but Nehruvian Marxism also. Rao’s novels deal more
with Indian milieu, its local clour in its proper sense as the milieu is entirely Indian
location with its villages like Kanthapura and Hariharapura, with their river, Himavathy,
and deity Kenchhamma. The inclination of these writers is more towards assimilating
Indianness, the spirit of ‘Bharat Mata in the closest sense. Ramaswamy the protagonist of
the novel ‘The Serpent and the Rope’ undertakes a couple of travels to different parts of
the world, but finally, the place, which gives him solace, is India with its philosophy. He
is determined to come back to his roots. Rao synthesizes Indian legend with European
philosophy and Gandhism. Mahatma is an icon of Lord Ram in Kanthapura. The novel
“Kanthapura (1930) is best known for its classic forward…” (Mehrotra, p. 180) It is
narrated by a widow, who has been a part of the history of the village. The novel is in the
manner of Harikatha.
G. V. Desani’s All About H. Hatterr begins a new era in Indian writing in English. It
is linguistically a category in itself. The foundation of modernity in India is laid here in
this text as Somadutta Mandal throws light on this forgotten book as, “All About H.
Hatterr is a book more referred to as the first Indian English to play with the English
Language than actually read…” (Bhattacharya, p. 50) It defies summary. It is an ‘obscure
novel’, for the writer does not “want to explain words” in the text. But there emerges an
important question by reading this book as who wrote the book? Desani is the author?
And the answer is in the negative. Very significant are Desani’s words as he says, “Two
of us are writing this book.” Who is this partner? The fellow writer is the fictional ‘H.
Hatterr’. Thus, amusingly the author puts the blame of all grammatical errors ― which

14
are deliberate ― on the fictional character, deliberately escapes as Prakash says, “The
writer is very conscious about his language in the novel. He uses the words effectively
but grammatically unacceptably…he is using wrong usage or unusual usages in order to
create a sense of fun…” (Prakash) The novel begins with a ‘powerful preface’. The writer
criticizes our patterns of living and subsequently, all the bounds of society. He is writing
this book “…at the cost of social structures, strictures, status, religious instructions,
spiritualism, language.” (Prakash) The social structures are, according to Prakash, “the
way people live together, the rules under which they operate, the job they pursue, the
speech that they utter, the exchange of views they have with others; while the strictures
are judgments.” (Ibid.) Sudhin N. Goshe’s tetra logy ‘And Gazelles Leaping’ (1949),
‘Cradle of the Clouds’ (1951), ‘The Vermillion Boat’ (1953), and ‘The Flame of the
Forest’ (1955) is though obscure yet prominent. It interests the reader through the mental
workings of the characters. Such themes as alienation and isolation dominate the texts.
The issues due to the incompatibility of values of the individual and the conventions of
the society pervade the background of the novels. The tetra logy does not have a named
hero. Hence, it is about no one in particular but everyone in general in the contemporary
sense. The tetra logy is in the form of bildungsroman. The protagonist passes through
four stages: childhood, adolescence, university education, and confrontation with world.
There is a search for identity. But the closing chapter of the search is disenchanting. The
novels follow, “The young boy as he grows from a wide-eyed child into a disillusioned
adult.” (Amazon online) Ghoshe’s novels have it predecessors in Raja Rao’s novels and
Desani’s All About H. Hatterr, and ‘anticipates’ Salman Rushdie’s Characters. The
novels are interfused with certain elements that set a link of the past with contemporary
and future novels. They are encrusted with such traits as Rao’s ‘story telling’, Desani’s
‘episodic style’, and function as a precursor to Amitav’s ‘Bengali psyche’; his synthesis
of ‘fantasy and realism’, ‘anticipates’ Salman Rushdie. Another important, but forgotten,
writer of novels is Aubrey Menon whose novels ‘The Prevalence of Witches’ (1947) and
‘The Stumbling Stone’ (1949) deal with such themes as “cultural misunderstandings
between ‘civilized’ and ‘primitive people’…“false piety of London socialites”.
(Mehrotra, p. 191)

15
 With these major old generation male writers, some women novelists of the post-
Second World War seem to rub shoulder. The oeuvre of some of these female writers in
English includes, like their contemporary male writers, poetry and prose as well. What
captured their attention was individual consciousness rather than the external forces. The
major themes of their work are: the mismatch of the predilection of the individual and
social structure, lack of the spousal mutual understanding, reconciliations amidst
altercations, loneliness, a sense of belonginglessness, imposed and perceived isolation,
feminism, and etcetera. Kamala Markandaya is the first major woman novelist in the
history of Indian novel to give voice to the inner conflict of the individual. In
Markandaya’s novels, Paminder and Dr. Sheetal Bajaj in their paper highlight the theme
of isolation as her prime concern, “Kamla Markandaya has a rare gift to scrutinize human
crises of a fundamental strain and to track grippingly and realistically the psychological
stress and isolation is not better seen anywhere than her novels.” (Kaur and Bajaj, article
online)

Jhabvala’s Delhi, contrary to Ahmed Ali’s Delhi, though with the same time frame of
post-independent India, yet with its calm and slow environment attracts not only Indians
but the people from distant lands also. Her novels can apparently classified as domestic
comedies. Traditional way of ‘arranging marriages’ by ‘horoscope matching’, ‘stress on
wife-hunting’ and exhibiting ‘recipes’ are the major features that predominate her novels.
The Indian way of ‘horoscope matching’, before finalizing marriage of two souls, gives
the plot of her first novel ‘To Whom She Will’ (1955). It recalls, to some extent, Krishna
of the ‘Bachelor of Arts’. Here, marriages are not hurdled by such ‘illicit’ act as
fornication. The novel ‘The Nature of Passion’ (1956) shows the seeming compatibility
between India and the foreigner Esmond. Indian places, people and culture attract him. It
gives a kind of solace to him. But the latter part of the novel gives voice to Esmond’s
homesickness and consequently escaping from India. About his disenchantment, Dr. R.
Bakyuraj and T. Vidyullatha says, “His enthusiasm and love for India and its culture fail
to insure him against the simmering discontentment resulting from the growing
alienation.” Jhabvala’s novel ‘The Householder’ (1960) is, though with a repetition of
domesticity, of different thematic implication. The author leaves her usual theme of
marriage negotiations for ‘the trapping of the married couple’ in their conventional

16
behavior. Prem’s shyness detaches him from his wife. It discourages them to understand
each other as “he felt shy of doing so. He had never yet brought her a gift, and he did not
know in what way to offer it to her; nor did he know how she would accept it from him.”
(Jhabvala, p. 8) In the novel ‘A Backward Place’ (1965) the ‘scene’ of ‘Esmond in India’
(1958) reverses. The outsider is a girl, Judy who, unlike Esmond, despite domestic
circumstances, does not go back. Resignation is another theme of the novel. Women
characters resignedly accept their fate. The novel presents native and foreigner encounter.

Nayantara Sahgal’s novels foreground ‘early post-independence years’ with their

political ‘undertones’. For example, her ‘A Time to be Happy’ features issues such as
“the Congress activities and the events of 1942” (Mehrotra). Amidst these political
issues, a happy family of Sanad and Kusum makes the novel exceptional among the
Indian English women novelists who wrote about the psychological and feminine aspects
in their novels. She presents the highly sophisticated and wealthy class as Sanad, a son of
a Zamindar; Rakesh, a junior official in the External Affairs Ministry; Harpal Singh and
Gyan Singh, the chief ministers of ‘Hariana’ and Punjab respectively. The novels are a
critique of the remnants of the British Empire, colonial phase and the events in the “last
years of Nehru’s Prime Minister Ship”. Her other novels are ‘Storm in Chandigarh’
(1969), ‘The Day in Shadow’(1971), ‘This Time of Mourning’ , ‘A Situation in Delhi’
(1977), ’Rich Like Us (1985), the Sahitya Akedemi Award winner, ‘Plans for Departure’
(1986) and ‘Mistaken Identity’ (1988). Therefore, to understand briefly these novels the
various features they are constituents of are: élite class, political background, middle-
class conventions, Western outlook, male chauvinism, institutional challenge,
advancement of world view, communication gap, sophistication, love affairs, divorce,
identity crisis, independence and its aftermaths, violence of political parties, domestic
sphere, alienation, isolation, East-West encounter, the consequences of Bengal famine,
geography (environment ― Delhi, Chandigarh, etc.) humanity, feminism, and others.

Man and the environment are inseparable from each other; they are similar to the
sides of a coin of life. Since the ages there has been an ‘ineradicable kinship between
man and Nature.’ (Iyengar, p. 478) Man has ever looked to nature not only for his nurture
but also for seeking solutions of his daily troubles. Despite the fact that he has no

17
existence out of the environment, he has, by setting industries, exploited natural
surroundings, that is, he has created a vast gulf. The best example of this ‘kinship
between man and nature’ is set by Humayun Kabir’s ‘Men and Rivers’ (1945). The
importance of the novel lies in the writer’s depiction of Nature as ‘Janus-faced’ or Kali.
Nature does nourish but, once disturbed, can be destructive, can show Shiva’s tandav too.
The novel shows the river Padma having a symbolic effect on the ‘lives of the Nazu and
Asgar families.’ (Iyengar) Thus, the river appears to be ‘a presence’, a character in the
novel.

In the chapter ‘Other Novelists’ Iyengar has included Purushottamdas Tricamadas’

The Living Mask, which came out in the same year as Humayun Kabir’s Men and Rivers.
It is based on the theme of ‘transplantation’. The main sources of the novel are, as
Iyengar says, Indian mythology, and the contemporary prevalent discovery of heart-
transplantation. In the Hindu mythology, Shiva transposes head on Ganesh on Parvati’s
insistence. However, the novel is believed to be taken the theme from the novel
‘Transposed Heads’. With seemingly a simple plot, the novel is about attachment,
identity fluctuation and ‘psychological complications’. It shows how ephemeral one’s
identity is. Without the head of the person his identity dissolves.

Dilip Kumar Roy’s mystic novel ‘The Upward Spiral’ (1949), written in Aurobindo
Gosh’s Ashram (Pondicherry), features a journey of ‘spiritual intensities’. The routine,
the way of life, and conflicts and complexities of the Ashram are vividly described in the
novel. There are indirect references to Dilip’s own life as Master of the Ashram is the
author’s own Guru.

Venu Chitale, a Marathi novelist, assisted George Orwell in writing. (BBC online)
her first novel, ‘In Transit’ (1950) is about a Brahmin family from Pune. Mulk Raj Anand
wrote the preface to her novel. The subject of the novel is two decades from 1915 to 1935
and the three generations of this family with a vast gap in their beliefs. Her second novel
‘Incognita’ came out as a sequel to the ‘In Transit’, of which the protagonist Shesha
reappears. The writer published the novel under the pseudonym, Weeno. (BBC online)

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 Lambert Mascarenhas, a journalist by profession, wrote a novel ‘Sorrowing Lies My
Land’ (1955) to give voice to the plight of the Goans and their survival under ‘the
imperatives of Portuguese’ Empire. The poignant issues it brings to light are: i, Goan’s
sense of kinship to their father’s land during Portuguese colonialism as Tobias is quoted
to have spoken about the attachment between his father and himself, “This village, these
fields, this land of his forefathers, my father loved with a passion that was remarkable.
His world lay on the ground, on the grey soil that gave us our daily bread”
(Mascarenhas); ii, atrocious act of brutality such as Milena’s ‘rape by the troops’; iii,
son’s giving evidence ‘against his own father to the authorities’; and d. religious crisis.
The novel provides a detailed behavioural study of the Goans and about their attachment
to their land. Perhaps, as Iyengar says, it is the only novel that describes Goa so vividly
and ‘excruciatingly’.

Both Khushwant Singh and Khwaja Ahmed Abbas attempt to reconcile the Hindu-
Muslim cultures in their novels. But where the former’s novel shows the devastating
effects of such an attempt, the latter’s does not go to that extent. Khushwant’s novel ‘The
Train to Pakistan’ portrays a fictional isolated small village Mano Majra and its
inhabitants. The village encompasses the three different religious people ― the Sikhs, the
Muslims and the Hindus ― living in one community. The village is situated on the bank
of the river Sutlej which is both a link and divider. It is also destructor. The river links
Mano Majra and Pakistan. The only route for the train from Mano Majra to Pakistan is
the bridge over the river. Jugga tries to disrupt the connection at the cost of his life. The
novel is set in, as Iyengar says, “Pre-partition period, and concentrates on the inner
tensions and external movements of a well-to-do Sikh family in the Punjab.” (p. 502) The
peace of the village is suddenly disturbed by a ‘train’ ‘with a full load of corpses’ comes
from Pakistan. It causes commotion in the village as “a heavy brooding silence descended
on the village. People barricaded their doors and many stayed up all night talking in
whisper. Everyone felt his neighbour’s hand against him…” (Ibid.) Abba’s novel
‘Inqilab’ (1955), though with nationalistic zeal, is set in the time of Gandhi’s Pageant and
Non-cooperation Movement. The protagonist of the novel is Anwar who is a Hindu-born
and Muslim-bred. Thus, he becomes a zone, where two ‘streams of blood’ try to flow

19
smoothly. But as reconciliation is never without its complications, the novel attracts a
psychological study.

Book preserving in India is a borrowed tendency from the British. Since colonial
phase, it has been a predilection for either reading voraciously or if not this, at least
storing books in a great quantity. Since then it has become a sign of aristocracy. Anand
Lall, who is well known as Arthur Lall, introduces in his novels Pre-partition aristocracy
with its all ostentations. He shows aristocracy as an empty ‘show’. The terminology for
‘library’ preference used by Anand Lall in his novel ‘The House at Adampur’ (1956) is
remarkable. For example, Lall uses the word ‘fancied’ for the passion of a bibliographer.
‘Fancy’ denotes decoration or sophistication to impress. The following passage from the
novel satirizes Raja’s such an inclination, “Raja fancied himself as a lover and patron of
the arts…the library contained shows of leather-bound editions of Scott, Dickens, and
Balzac; a 1911 editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica; well-bound editions of the Indian
epics, the Arabian Nights; the Persian poets and some volumes of Tagore.” Lall’s another
novel is ‘The Seasons of Jupiter’ (1958) which, although does not Chronicle succession
for the ‘house’ like the first, is a picture of pre-marital love affair, which is sacrificed for
more permanent marriage of two souls. Gyan’s consulting his father’s library books,
especially erotic books for maintaining his marriage life makes library ‘a character, a
presence’ in Lall’s both novels. Returning of an Indian-born-foreign-educated character
is a repetitive theme in the Indian English novels. Most of them make an attempt to adapt
themselves to the Indian culture after returning. But where some fail, some succeed after
tackling the issues head-on. Rajan’s ‘Dark Dancer’ is centered on Krishnan’s such a
difficulty in adjusting himself to the Indian code of behavior after returning from
England. His second short novel ‘Too Long in the West’ is based on the husband-hunting
theme. The novel shows hostility towards Western ways of living.

About hundred years (1860-1950) of the development of the ‘novel’ in India see a
considerable thematic change. If the titles of our earliest novel and that of S. Y.
Krishnsawmy’s are put side by side, it comes to be known to what extent social
perspective has changed. For example, both novels ‘Rajmohan’s Wife’ (1864) and
‘Kalyani’s Husband’ (1957) exposes the three facts based on Prof. Prakash’s lecture: as

20
the former presents the condition of the nineteenth-century woman, the latter that of
twentieth-century man; like Matangini, Shekhar is also ‘linguistically possessed’;
Shekhar’s ‘returning home’ reflects behavioural reform in his fictional predecessor,
Rajmohan. Similar to Krishnswamy’s novel, M. V. Sharma’s ‘The Stream’ (1956)
presents the protagonist caught between duality and indecision. Sharma’s other novels
‘Look Homeward’ and ‘The Bliss of Life’ feature the philosophy of the Gita. Iyengar’s
observation makes a good exposure to the novel ‘Delinquent Chacha’ by Ved Mehta as
he says, “The good-for-nothing ‘uncle’ or chacha is a fairly typical figure in Indian
society.” (p. 515) The novel makes a ‘pure fun’. Throughout the novel the Chacha is seen
totally lost in his own ways. The bits of various experiences, which he has accumulated,
he calls his knowledge. His personality is such as he happens to be imitating the English;
he has become ‘more English than the Englishmen’. The Chacha is described as “a
rascally, improvident, unquenchable, and ultimately enchanting middle-aged Indian ―
Anglophile, card player, dreamer ― who spent his early years under the British Raj…”
(Amazon online) besides entertainment, the novel is a satire on the Indians who ‘madly’
imitated the British. It exposes the Indians in post-colonial era. Chacha’s imitation may
be a matter of ridicule but thanks to Homi K. Bhabha’s theory of mimicry that exposes
‘menace’ to the English culture by such an imitation. For, Chacha’s imitation is ‘self-
vindicating testimony of his true understanding of England and Englishness through
textual knowledge.’ Therefore, in the process of mimicking, the colonial codes begin to
lose their grip on the colonized. The performance shows ‘how hollow the codes really
are’. (Amerdeep Singh online)

Post-independence period may have a blind eye or give a sense of relief to those who
are fortunate enough not live the atrocities of the World Wars and the partition. However,
they cannot escape its aftermath effects. Nationalism, after the Second World War
though showed a sense of closure, did severe the emotional ties that embraces human
hearts. Therefore, it never happens without its tragic consequences as the novelists
writing in 1950s and after penned. Thus, Attia Hossain’s ‘Sunlight on a Broken Column’
(1961), of which the title comes from T. S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Hollow Men’, restates
articulates the aftermaths of fanatic nationalism. The novel, in facts, throws ‘light’ on the
‘broken’ section of history. It glimpses the consequences of the war that brings

21
disintegration to once compatible Hindu and Muslim families. It describes the three
stages of Laila’s life amidst the tragic events of the War. It also throws light on the
conventional purdah pratha (system of women’s covering of face). It maintained the
order of Muslim families as “it should be remembered that the practice of purdah was
instrumental in maintaining hierarchy both within the family as well as that of
patriarchy.” (Gyankosh online) The novel shows the whole picture of India getting
changed as from the Imperial India to the Independent India; feudalism of Baba Jan to
more individual and Western way of life as practiced by Laila and Saleem; and
traditionalism to secularism. For example, Laila emancipates herself from the strictly
traditionally forbidden system of Muslim families.

The major novelist, who shifted her observation from the external forces such as the
clash of cultural values due to East-West encounter, the conflict between Gandhism and
Nehruvian Marxism, and psychological adverse impacts of the aftermaths of war, is Anita
Desai. About her oeuvre, the fly leaf of her novel ‘Cry, the Peacock’ reads thus,

“She was especially noted for her sensitive portrayal of female

characters and the alienation of the middle class women in India.” (The
Statesman)

The hundred years (1860-1960) in the Indian novels in English hold the socio-
political or economic and historical background. Society has been ‘a presence’ in the
novels. But, in the sharp contrast, Anita Desai “has added a new dimension to the
achievement of Indian women writers in English fiction.” (Iyengar, p. 464) In her novels,
three facets are predominant: obsession to the extent of insanity, alienation, and
feminism. Her first novel ‘Cry, the Peacock’ (1963) is written in the manner of Virginia
Woolf’s stream of consciousness, which is used by William James in his book ‘Principles
of Psychology’ and later ‘developed’ by James Joyce who, in turn, found it from the
English novelist Samuel Richardson. She chose the style in order to give expression to
the incomprehensible mental procedure. Desai exposes “the inner climate, the climate of
sensibility. The protagonist of the novel is Maya. Her other novels with similar thematic
structure are: ‘Voices in the City’ (1965), which won the Sahitya AKademi Award, is set
in Culcutta, the city of the title. The narrative is centered on the three siblings, mother

22
and Dharma. Culcutta appears here as a ‘devil city’. About the similarity between these
two novels Iyengar writes, “The Maya-Gautama tragedy is reenacted in the Monisha-
Jiban marriage, for Monisha commits suicide unable to stand the strain of living in her
husband’s house.” (p. 469) Her ‘Bye-Bye, Blackbird’ (1971) shifts from India to Britain.
The theme of the novel is ‘racial prejudice against Indian migrants in Britain’ (Mehrotra,
p. 227). Besides these, her other novels are: ‘Where Shall We Go this Summer?’ (1975),
‘Fire on the Mountain’ (1977) with the theme of lack of mutual understanding between
mother, child and grandchild, ‘Clear Light of Day’ (1980), ‘In Custody’ (1984) and
‘Baumgartner’s Bombay’ (1988).

Chaman Nahal centers his novels on the human predicament in the post-Colonial era.
About the selection of themes in his novels, he himself says, “I have largely concerned
myself with two themes in my novels; the individuals vs. the joint family system in india,
and my historical identity as an individual, as an Indian.” (encyclopedia.com) In the first
half of the seventies, he published two novels, ‘My True Faces’ (1973) and ‘Azadi’
(1975). The former deals with the clash of two attitudes: orthodoxy as Kamal Kant wants
to penetrate deeper and Western ways as Malti practices. The latter encompasses the
partition in the background. ‘Sialkot’ recalls Khushwant Singh’s Mano Majra. The novel
shows all the partition horror: rapes, killing, abduction, suicide, forced conversion,
resigned acceptance, precipitated flight, etc. His third novel ‘Into Another Dawn’ makes
Ravi-Irene painful love story. The simple plot of an Indian’s falling in love with an
American married woman is, however, complicated not by the beloved’s married life as
she manages to take divorce from her husband but by the lover’s disease. Ravi later
comes to know that he is a patient of ‘monocytic leukemia’. He leaves America for India
without telling Irene about his disease. This painful love story makes a reference to the
Bollywood movie ‘Dard Ka Rista’ (came in 1980s) directed by Sunil Dutt. Nahal’s The
English Queen is a lacerating satire on those who ‘ape’ the British: their lifestyle,
pronunciation as rolling ‘r’ or pronouncing ‘help’ as hewp etc., clothing, and even way of
walking. His fifth novel ‘The Crown and the Loincloth’ (1981) takes us back ‘to the
freedom movement during 1915-22’. (shodganga.inflibnet, p. 159)

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 About Arun Joshi’s novels, an article by Aditya Sudarshan reads thus, “His themes
are the most vitally contemporary of all our early English novelists, his characters vividly
like us ― English-speaking, urban, wracked with confusions ― and the quality of his art
and thought are both first-rate and arguably far superior to (say) Rushdie (to whom Indian
English writing is said to owe a great debt.” (The Hindu online) He published five novels,
‘The Foreigner’ (1968), “a story of a young man who is detached, almost
alienated…propels him from one crisis to another, sucking in the wake several other
people…” (Back cover, Orient Paperbacks); ‘The Strange Case of Billy Biswas’ (1971),
about “a man…consumed by a restelessness which grows steadily” (Back Cover, Orient
Paperbacks) and who struggles to ‘be understood’ in the too civilized world; ‘The
Apprentice’ (1974), about guilty feelings driven from obsessions to be in the ‘common
run’; ‘The Last Labyrinth’ (1981), about “a millionaire-industrialist…yet relentlessly
driven by undefined hunger which he unsuccessfully seeks to satisfy by possession…:
(Back cover, Orient Paperbacks); and his last ‘The City and the River’ (1990), based on
the “kinship” between men and the environment and “its appeal lies in its skillful
handling of the course plotted by intrigue and corruption in high places”. The major
aspects and themes of Joshi’s novels are minutely described by the writers such as
“‘aloneness and rootlessness’ (Birendra Pandey), ‘detachment’ (Jaydip Singh Dodiya),
‘existential angst’ (S. K. Mishra), ‘socio-cultural milieu’ (V. V. N. Rajendra Prasad),
‘Non-dualist metaphysics’‒ Tat Tvam Asi (T. S. Abraham), ‘clash of cultures’ (Lokesh
Kumar), ‘hollowness of civilized society and longing for primitive values’ (Arvind M.
Nawale), and ‘isolation’ (M. K. Bhatnagar).” (Upadhyay, p. 156) However, Bhatnagar’s
study of the theme of isolation is confined to only two novels, ‘The Foreigner’ and ‘The
Last Labyrinth’, this present study will comparatively carry the same theme in all five
novels.

Salman Rushdie is an epoch making writer. His oeuvre is so vast that some books on
Indian literature in English have encompassed him in a separate chapter. Magic realism
predominates in his novels. About the number of his novels, the fly leaf of the novel
‘Midnight’s Children’ reads “Salman Rushdie is the author of ten novels…” He became
controversial after ‘Satanic Verses’. His first novel ‘Grimus’ (1975) narrates the story of
‘an American Indian’ Flapping Eagle who is unable to bear the burden of immortality. He

24
comes across the people like him living on the Calf Island, the place he reaches in search
of his immortal sister. The immortality, which is the result of his drinking a fluid, turns to
be a curse for his thorough life. His ‘Midnight’s Children’ features three phases: ‘pre-
colonial, colonial, bust mostly post-independence India.’ About the novel, Salman
Rushdie says how the idea popped, “…on that journey of fifteen-hour bus rides and
humble hostelries Midnight’s Children was born.” (Introduction, p. ix) Saleem Sinai, the
protagonist of the novel, whose birth is at the ‘precise moment of India’s independence’,
stands for India’s past, present, and future. Saleem later develops ‘telepathic power’ that
joins him with other children born ‘in the initial hour of India’s independence’. Rushdie,
in the chapter ‘My Tenth Birthday’, writes about the gift of telepathy bestowed on
Saleem as in Saleem’s own words, “At first, after the bicycle accident…I contented
myself with discovering, one by one, the secrets of the fabulous beings who had suddenly
arrived in my mental field of vision, collecting them ravenously…” (Rushdie, p. 274)
‘The Satanic Verses’ is Rushdie’s most controversial work. It was banned in several
countries. The first country to ban was India. The novel has two main characters, Gibreel
Farista and Salamadin Chamcha. The chapter two makes it controversial as it touches the
life of the Prophet Muhammad in the fictional character Mahound. The chapter mentions
that the satanic verses were told to Mahound and claims as well that they were later
‘expunged’ from the original Quran. So how the novel turns out to be controversial,
Anuradha Dingwaney’s study provides insights into this sensitive issue, “The ‘satanic
verses’ of the title refer to an incident in the life of the Prophet, recorded by early Arab
historians, when he accepted that the worship of the three female deities, Al-Lat, Al-
Uzza, Al-Manat, was permissible within the bounds of Islamic doctrine; he later
repudiated this as an act inspired by the devil.” (Mehrotra, p. 315) But what was the
author’s real intention behind it? Does he really want to make a blasphemous comment
on the Quran? The answer is in the negative. Dingwaney firther says, “Through this
account Rushdie is interested in interrogating the status of religious belief versus modern
skepticism, the status of religious revelation versus human agency.” (Mehrotra, p. 315)
The chapter ‘Ayesha’ is also important for understanding Rushdie’s attempt to introduce
the place of women in Islamic world. There are four Ayeshas in the chapter, empress, the
prophet, Mahound’s wife, and the prostitute; this is the second one who “persuaded a

25
village to make a pilgrimage to the sacred site of Karbala…” (Mehrotra, p. 315) ‘Shame’
(1983) is a continuation of the theme of Rushdie earlier novels. Politics, in the
background, includes ‘history, myth, art, language and religion’. The novel is a
‘phantasmagoric epic’. The scientific tool such as ‘telescope’, in order to ‘survey the
outside world’, reappears. The novel ‘The Moor’s Last Sigh’ (1995) focuses on the da
Gama Zogoiby dynasty. The novel is a closing chapter in the ‘cycle’ that tells the story of
Rushdie’s life. It was written while Rushdie was living in exile because of the “infamous
fatwa issued by the Iranian Government in 1989”. Norman Ruth’s study of the novel
throws more light as he writes, “the grand deception in this book is to conceal a bitter
cautionary talk within bright, carnivalesque wrappings.” (Norman Rush online) In
Rushdie’s more recent novel ‘Fury’ (2001), isolation, escape, and detachment are the
central themes. Professor Malik Solanka has a fury within him. He wishes to be engulfed
in Bombay. This is his fury within that does not let him come close to his loved ones.
How the theme of escape from life predominates is shown by the following extract from
the novel, he projects himself in the doll making, but before feeding his imagination with
the stuff it requires from him, he “envisioned wall paper, and soft furnishings, dreamed
bed sheets, designed bathroom fixtures.” (Rushdie, p. 15) Postmodern man is a bundle of
varies life-pieces. Solanka, too, is a man of different shreds.

Postmodern hyphen similar to ‘postcolonial hyphen’ is ‘impossible’, especially in

order to infuse ‘chronological significance’ into it, for, as the postmodern theory shows, it
hints both, a ‘progressive development’ and a ‘dramatic break from modernism and
continuation of it’. The ‘postmodern perspective’ is defined as,

“Postmodern is loose, flexible, and contingent…A useful start

ing-point in any discussion of postermidernism, therefore, is to examine

how a term used to describe an aesthetic transition has evolved into a
wholesale scepticism about truth, ethics, values, and responsibility.”
(Waugh, p. 405)

In India, it started with the ‘dialogue’ between kshetriya bhashas (regional

languages) and English language, between man and history. The earliest examples of this

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kind are Salman Rushdie’s two novels: ‘Midnight’s Children’ and ‘Haroun and the Sea
Stories’. The features of subsequent novels began to show,

“…the appearance of a certain post-modern playfulness, the turn to

history, a new exuberance of language, the reinvention of allegory, the
sexual frankness, even the prominent references to Bollywood…”
(Mehrotra, p. 318)

The much recent example can be taken from Anuradha Roy’s An Atlas of Impossible
Longing in which the collapse of boundaries between genre is as clear as crystal(the
reference is to Gulzar’s song from the Bollywood movie Gharaonda (1977) “ek akela is
sahar me, raat me aur dopahar me, aabodana dhundata hai, aashiyana dhundata hai” and
many situational scenic similarities to give a situational effect). Thus, the novelists
projected English language ‘in the polyphony of Indian regional languages’. (Ibid.)
Incorporating languages instead of a particular language in the novel means incorporating
cultures. However, the blend of cultures through the different languages into one
‘decenters’, ‘dislocates’ the individual self. The writers tried to represent to some extent
truthfully in their works the development of Independent India by mimicking the
fragmentariness of the character. Therefore, the background of their works shifted from

“The village centrism of Gandhian era to the city-centrism of the post-

Nehru period”, for “India’s writers in English have taken advantage of this
trend to retreat into a metropolitan or cosmopolitan elitism…” (Mehrotra,
p. 320)

The writers of the 80s and 90s were more concerned not with the villages but with the
‘metropolises’. There can be no readymade ‘metonymy’ or even metonymic poles to
represent the entire class. The thematic concerns of these novels include digressions,
repressions, fantastic events, repetitions, and etcetera. The writers choosing the historical
novel as the medium of their conveyance of observation, ideas, and message, in the last
two decades of the twentieth century, chose to ‘translate’ ‘repressed histories’ in their
works. The postmodern novelists such as the ‘Stephanians’ 4 and others with their works

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are as listed below (Only naming them or giving a passing reference to any of their work
is not to undervalue the writers’ position; instead, it is due to time and space constraints):

I. Allan Sealy’s Trotter-Nama (1988), though written earlier but published later than
Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children have the similar story of ‘the fate of the narrator still
mirrors the fate of the nation’; Rukun Advani’s Beethoven Among the Cows (1994) in
which the death of Nehru is seen as ‘the loss of innocence both for the narrator…and for
the nation’; Futehally’s Tara Lane, the importance of which lies in the situational
contradistinction with ‘Nehru’s inclusive rhetoric’ which functions as ‘a mask for an
exclusive reality’ and which is shown in the text as ‘haunted by bad faith from the
moment it is made’; Amit Chaudhary’s A Strange and Sublime Address (1991) and
Afternoon Raag (1993), the focal point of both is ‘the loss of self’; Amitav Gosh’s The
Circle of Reason (1986); ‘the first novel in his Ibis trilogy, Sea of Poppies was shortlisted
for the Man Booker Prize’; In an Antique Land ((1992); The Calcutta Chromosome
(1996); The Hungry Tide; The Shadow Lines, ‘In this vivid, funny and moving classic of
Indian literature, Amitav Ghosh depicts the absurd manner in which your home can
suddenly become your enemy’ (Back cover); Mukul Kesavan’s Looking through Glass
(1995) with ‘less heroic perspective on the closing years of the struggle for
independence’ and ‘in a way implies that the historian can provide not a clear window
onto the real, but only a lens which frames and refracts what it sees’ (Mehrotra, p. 329);
Khushwant Singh’s Delhi is now hailed as ‘mock-epic’, for ‘the body plays an important
role as an image for the unruliness of the history not only of Delhi but also of the
country’; Vikram Chandra’s Read Earth and Pouring Rain (1995) with epic digressions;
Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate, written in verse with settings ‘in the 1980s in the
affluence and sunshine of California’s Silicon Valley’ (Back cover) and A Suitable Boy,
much advanced novel with the idea that adjustment with ‘secularism’ is a necessary step
for the constricted conservative mind; Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel; Sashi
Despande’s The Dark Holds No Terror (1980), Roots and Shadows (1983) dealing ‘in a
direct way with the sitaion of women in urban, middle-class life’; her other novels That
Long Silence (1988), The Binding Vine (1992), Small Remedies (2000); Gita
Hariharan’s A Thousand Faces of Nights (1992), The Ghosts of Vasu Master (1994)
appreciated for ‘the realist mode’; Arundati Roy’s The God of Small Things (winner of

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the 1997 Booker prize) is ‘for practical purposes, in a hopelessly practical world…’ (Roy,
p. 34); Heart of Darkness; and The Sound of Music.

Anuradha Roy, the DSC prize winner for South Asian Literature, is an Indian
novelist, journalist and editor. She is married to Rukun Advani, the editor of the
Permanent Black (Independent Press). She also works as a designer at Permanent Black.
She has published four novels. Her novels can be categorized as the “novel of character
or psychological novel”. The brief introduction to the novels is as follows:

Her debut novel ‘An Atlas of Impossible Longing’ (2008) is based on the emotional
ties of three generation stretched to the edge of severing. The patriarchal head’s ‘yearning
for isolation’ over shrouds the family attachment. The novel proves to divide the line
between imposed isolation and voluntary isolation, for “the silence that Amulya meant
repletion locked Kananbala within a bell jar she could not prise open for air.” But it does
not lock Kanan only but Manjula, Bakul, Mukunda and others. The main characters of
the novel are Amulya Babu, his wife Kananbala, Mukund, Bakul, Bikas Babu, Nirmal,
and others. There is a ‘house’ in Songarh, “for years the little town — they call it town”.
The house is ‘a presence, a character’. Tabish Khair has reviewed her second novel ‘The
Folded Earth’ (2011). The novel features the traumatic childhood experiences making
louder echoes in youth of the individual. The clash between tradition and modernity
predominates in the foreground, along with “the novel’s stylistic duality addresses by
juxtaposing idyllic scenes of stunning imagery with visceral action that has devastating
repercussions.” (Leigh Horne, 2016 online) Maya’s modern perspective is reminiscent of
Laila, the protagonist of Attia Hossain’s Sunlight on a Broken Column and her isolation
from the family environment articulates the break of the true self from the compliant self
in order not to be ‘existentially dead’. This novel also gives the impression of, like
Humayun Kabir’s Men and Rivers, “a feeling of close ineradicable kinship between man
and Nature…” (Iyengar, p. 478) The mountains of Ranikhet are shown as Kali or Janus-
faced i.e. both constructive and destructive. It devours Michael. Some like Diwan Sahib
have the eyes to see the beauty of Ranikhet; while the others business-minded people like
the hotel manager are blind to the bliss of physical environment. The third novel
‘Sleeping on Jupiter’ (2015) sometimes confuses with Arthur Lall’s Seasons of Jupiter. It

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defamiliarizes the Indian conventions, blind-beliefs, and blind devotion to Gurujis
(spiritual guides), who are supposed to be a ladder to God. The novel, thus, vehemently
satirizes rigidity of such beliefs that bind one to one’s blindness. The thematic concerns
of the novel make an exposition of intertwined story of war, violence, and child
molestation. Through the mouthpiece of the main character Nomi (Nomita), the theme of
rootlessness, belonginglessness, and dislocation comes to light. Series of flashbacks make
an exposé to Nomi’s past. Her fourth novel ‘All the Lives We Never Lived’ (2018) “is set
against the tumultuous history of the 20th century”. The text makes a number of allusions
to historical events such as the Imperialist India, the assassination of the Mahatma
Gandhi, Sydney-Percy Lancaster (“the Anglo-Indian horticulturist who is charged with
providing enough flowers for planes to strew petals along five miles of funeral route”),
Rabindranath Tagore, the German painter, and curator Walter Spies and the dancer Beryl
de Zoete. The protagonist Gayatri is one of those women who want to express themselves
through art. She is seen in the novel to be struggling for giving voice to her passions
against the conservative mind-set of people. Her isolation anticipates a ‘macho woman’
of new India.

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Notes

1. Refers to the bibliography section (book Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader
edited by David Lodge and Nigel Wood)
2. A retired professor of Delhi University. The thesis includes two lectures, part of
CEC (Consortium for Educational Communication, New Delhi, India.), by Prof.
Anand Prakash: on Bankim Chandra Chaterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife and G. V.
Desani’s All About H. Hatterr.
3. I found these old novelists in the history books of Indian literature in English.
4. The writers of 1980s and 1990s from Delhi’s élite St. Stephen’s College.

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