Diversification of Indian English Literature
Anglo-Indian
Literature refers to the writing of English-men
who are inspired by Indian motifs and by Indian spirit. It also refers to the race, a microscopic
minority in India, the result of cross-fertilization of the two fruitful
cultures. The Anglo Indian Literature is
said to be born in 1783, the year of arrival in India of Sir William Jones,
the great Orientalist, who became the first Anglo-Indian poet. There is a large body of writing on Indian
life and society, history etc by Englishmen including bureaucrats and
missionaries. All these Anglo-Indian
writers were critical, in most cases of India and Indians. In those times, it was from these works
that the legislators and the narrow section of the British people made up
public opinion and acquired their image of India. They preferred the evidence for India’s
depravity and backwardness.
The
prejudiced views of these Anglo-Indian writers helped to create a climate in
Britain favorable to the consolidation and advance of western ideas of
government and economics in India. When
we come to its writers then E.M. Forster, the author of ‘A
Passage to India’ holds the high position. Though, hailed by Indian for its attack on
Anglo-Indian society and its prejudices, is just as offensive in its drawing of
Indian characters as its predecessors.
Forster
succeeds in capturing the tensions, ambivalences and contradictions of colonial
rule in our country as well as the doubts and frustration and ignorance of a
number of English officials and their family in remote Indian town. Another, most important writer in
Anglo-Indian fiction is Rudyard Kipling. He explored the shallow lives of the British
in India and reflected them in his works.
The few Indians who appear in such work are either servants or
‘incompetent’ educated Bengalis. It was
only after leaving India; Kipling was able to write ‘Kim’ which
undoubtedly became the best work of fiction about India by an Englishman. Several works of Kipling are still quite
popular, especially ‘The Jungle Book’.
H.L.V. Derozio, the son of an
Indo-Portuguese father and an English mother was wholly Indian in spirit. E.F. Oaten assessed Derozio as,“ The
National bard of Modern India” (4)
His
famous work was the narrative poem “The Fakir of Jungheera : A Metrical Tale
and Other Poems”. A noteworthy feature of his work is its
burning nationalistic zeal towards India while others were trying to identify
themselves with the white men. Poems,
like ‘To India-My Native Land’ and ‘The Harp of India’
have an unmistakable authenticity of patriotic utterance which stamps Derozio
as an Anglo-Indian poet.
Another
pioneer Michael Madhusudan Dutt takes a high rank. An Indian Christian belonging primarily to
Bengali Literature wrote the famous, “The Captive Lady” a narrative
poem in English, retelling vividly the story of Prithvi Raj and Rani
Samyukta. In ‘Visions of the Past’,
a poem in Miltonic blank verse, complete with weighty, abstract diction and
Latin inversions, Dutt handles the Christian theme of the temptation and folk
and redemption of Man. He was commended
for his exceptionally rich vocabulary and also for his style which sparkled out
with brilliant flashes of wit.
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