Makers of Indian English Literature

This comprehensive study of the ‘makers’ of Indian English Literature ranges from the sporadic but landmark Voices of the nineteenth century to the spurting creativity in the post-Rushdie, contemporary scenario. The contributors, unswayed by the increasing threat of publisher-media offensive to appropriate the critical function, firmly adhere to the time-tested tradition of explorations, discriminations, empathy and evaluation. They interrogate inflated reputations, underscore unnoticed achievements, and probe the much contested inadequacy of Indian English Poetry and the paucity of Indian English Drama. The literary discourse is largely focussed on tradition and avant-garde, indigenous Roots and Western influences, colonial and post-colonial perspectives, and self-identity and heterogeneity (even hybridity) in Indian English Writing.

The volume also investigates the problematic of using the English language to filter an Indian experience, especially in terms of departures from Standard English constructions, semantic neologisms, nativization of the language, and cross-cultural significations. It scrutinizes the three alternatives of transcreation, etymological use and transliteration for moulding the English language into an Indian cast. Despite an increasing number of ‘unmakers’ of Indian English in Indian Society (as argued in the last essay), the Book paradoxically posits how the Indian English Writing has come alive as a vibrant, autonomous constituent of contemporary international English.