Remembering the Founding Fathers of Indian English Fiction 910 Journal of Literature, Culture and Media Studies

8 Journal of Literature, Culture and Media Studies Remembering the Founding Narayan and Rao and appreciated them. ‘If Anand is the novelist as reformer, Raja Rao is the novelist as metaphysical poet, Narayan Fathers of Indian English Fiction is simply the novelist as novelist’, says William Walsh (Narayan 6). And later on Walsh calls R.K.Narayan, ‘the novelist as moral analyst’ BIJAY KUMAR DAS* (1990 : 96). C.D.Narasimhaiah says, “Where distinctions are made they fall into neat categories of Anand the Marxist, progressive or committed writer; Narayan the comic genius or writer pure and Though historically Indian English fiction owes its origin to Bankim simple; and Raja Rao the religious or philosophical novelist (148). Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife (1864), its foundation was laid These three novelists have broken new grounds in Indian English by Mulk Raj Anand when he published his Untouchable in 1935. fiction in terms of making innovations in themes and techniques. R.K.Narayan and Raja Rao joined him in giving, as it were, ‘a local They have re-created their characters in their own situations-social, habitation and a name’ to Indian English fiction in nineteen thirties. as well as psychological. If Anand is known for humanism, Anand’s Untouchable and Coolie, Narayan’s Swami and Friends and The Narayan is known for social and psychological realism and Rao Bachelor of Arts, Raja Rao’s Kanthapura mark the beginning of Indian for metaphysical ideas. It is interesting to know that our pioneering English fiction. And these three novelists continued to write till the novelists, Anand and Narayan published their first novels with the end of the twentieth century. help of British novelists, E.M.Forster and Graham Greene respectively Now we live in the age of fiction when poetry and drama have and Rao published his first novel sitting in Paris. Having said taken a back seat. Thanks to the prizes given exclusively to fiction so, let me discuss their works. (such as The Man Booker prize) and several other prizes, researchers Right from his childhood, Anand was a rebel. He was against and critics turn to fiction and espouse its cause at the cost of other the injustice done to the inferior and socially low placed people. In genres of literature. If poetry had its heyday in nineteen seventies and course of an article he wrote : early eighties, when R. Parthasarathy as the Editor of Oxford University Press, issued a series called “New Poetry from India” with poets like Sensing the contempt of the superior whites for the inferior Nissim Ezekiel, Jayanta Mahapatra, Shiv K. Kumar A.K.Ramanujan, browns, hearing the big officers abuse the recruits, the R. Parthasarathy, Keki N. Daruwalla publishing their collections of literates ignoring the illiterates, my learned father turning poems, in the late eighties and thereafter, till date fiction has taken the away from the villager brothers of my mother and from the soiled clothes copper-smiths of our home town Amritsar, I center stage. Novelists like Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Shashi became a rebel against the heavy voices, the heavy hands Tharoor, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Shashi Deshpande, Arundhati Roy, and the cocked head, (JLA 8). Vikram Chandra, Manju Kapur and a host of others came to lime light in the last twenty five years following Salman Rushdie’s instant In the same article recalling how he published his first novel success with his Midnight’s Children winning the Booker Prize in Untouchable with E.M. Forster’s help, Anand wrote : 1981. Researchers and critics became so enamoured of the new authors that they have completely ignored the contribution of Anand, He (Forster) wrote a preface. A small publisher issued the Narayan and Raja Rao. The purpose of the paper is to highlight and novel. It was warmly received. All my novels, then, have come from self-actualising in the confessional, which is the emphasize the real merit of these three novelists and their contribution source of my protests against religion reduced to ritual, to Indian English fiction. against lakir ki fakhir to or customs, against the impositions Critics like William Walsh, Alstair Niven, K.R.S. lyengar, of the Superiors or Inferiors, as against cruelties to the new C.D.Narasimhaiah and M.K.Naik have evaluated the works of Anand, young, against all bondage and for the many freedoms implicit in political freedom, (JLA (10). * Professor, Dept. of English, Bardwan University, Bardwan (W.B). Anand’s “Cultural discovery of India and Asia through the Vol.-I Number 2 ❑ Winter ❑ July-December 2009 Vol.-I Number 2 ❑ Winter ❑ July-December 2009 7 Remembering the Founding Fathers of Indian English Fiction 910 Journal of Literature, Culture and Media Studies 136-volumes of Marg that he founded in 1948 and edited till the early Under the last category fall the social workers, the labour eighties is by itself an achievement that will immortalize him ..,” leaders, all those who believe in progress and can see how (Kohli 32-33). No wonder that he was elected Fellow of Sahitya modern science can improve the lot of sufferers and help Akademi, Lalit Kala Akademi and Sangeet Natak Akademi, a rare bring out the quality of all men,” (qtd in Walsh 64). distinction yet to be surpassed by any one in our country. R.K.Narayan published his first novel, Swami and Friends in Anand was always for highlighting indigenous culture, art and 1935, the same year Anand published his Untouchable. Thereafter, creating literature out of our own environment. In course of a meeting Narayan published a number of novels such as The Bachelor of Arts with the present author during All India English Teachers’ Confer- (1937), The English Teacher (1945), Mr Sampath (1949), The Financial ence in 1996 he told: “You, Oriyas you never write on Konarka and Expert (1952), Waiting for Mahatma (1955), The Guide (1958), The Man your own culture”. (He was referring to contemporary writings in Eater of Malgudi (1962), The Vender of Sweets (1967), The Painter of Signs English from Orissa). Anand’s important novels include Untouchable (1977), The Tiger of Malgudi (1983), Talkative Man (1983), The World (1935), Coolie (1936), Two Leaves and a Bud (1937), The Village (1939), of Nagaraj (1990) and Grandmother’s Tale (1992). Across the Blackwaters (1941), The Big Heart (1945), Seven Summers (1951), The Private Life of an Indian Prince (1953), Gauri (1960), Morning Narayan created history by creating an imaginary town, Face (1968), Confessions of a Lover (1976), The Bubble (1984), Little Plays Malgudi (somewhere near the boundary of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka) of Mahatma Gandhi (1991) and Nine Moods of Bharata: Novel of a the locale of his fictional world. If Anand concentrates on contem- Pilgrimage (1998). porary Indian reality, Narayan dives deep into Indian tradition and his characters are rooted in that tradition. William Walsh makes a Social realism is the major concern in his works. He has pertinent comment on this aspect : brought innovations in fiction by making an touchable the hero or anti-hero of his first novel, Untouchable, As Marlene Fisher rightly puts Again, one must say that there is deeply in Narayan the it : profound Hindu conviction, or instinct for, the fundamental oneness of existence... The tension between the one and the The heart of Untouchable, however, is not in its manifest social many, a sustaining theme of Hinduism, operates quietly and plea for the abolition of untouchability. It lies, rather, in the unpretentiously throughout Narayan’s fiction, (R.K.Narayan kind of person Bakha is. It lies in his trustingness, in his 167). naivete, and in his still unquenchable wonder at life, (29). In Narayan’s fiction we come across the comic relief sprinkled Anand takes characters from contemporary life who have been with humour. The art of story telling is superb. For the art of deprived of their rights by the oppressors. His Marxist leanings are narration and evocation of Indian myths, Narayan’s fiction assumes unmistakable. A person who lived more than twenty years abroad a special significance for Indian readers. Take the character of Raju, during his youth, unlike the contemporary diasporic writers was the protagonist in The Guide, who wins the trust of people in spite never in search of ‘home’. ‘Home’ was uppermost in his mind and of himself. That is where we find by the manipulation of the gods, deeply engraved in his heart. Hence, he never lost touch with Indian Raju transforms his character and makes himself acceptable to the reality and social conditions. His characters are life like and they credulous Indians. remind us of our own social environment which victimizes them. Of Anand’s fiction, Anna Rutherford writes : Raja Rao, the youngest of the trio dives deep into Indian metaphysics and gets at the roots of Indian tradition. He tells his stories by referring to the great epics like The Ramayan and The “Anand’s characters invariably fall into three classes: the Mahabharata. H.M.Williams makes a pertinent observation in this victims who are usually the protagonists; the oppressors, those who oppose change and progress, and the goodmen. regard : Vol.-I Number 2 ❑ Winter ❑ July-December 2009 Vol.-I Number 2 ❑ Winter ❑ July-December 2009 Remembering the Founding Fathers of Indian English Fiction 11 12 Journal of Literature, Culture and Media Studies By choosing to develop the character of an Indian village Chessmaster and His Moves (1988). In Kanthapura, Rao has been able Raja Rao moves from realism to symbolism. Helped by the to create a living Gandhi myth through the struggle for independence. parataxis of the sentence structure and the flow of the The Kenchamma myth has been dovetailed into the structure of the Indian narrator’s stream of consciousness, the novel con- novel to show the belief of the villagers in rituals.

Load more