Creation and criticism: Indo-English Theories of Fiction

The moment we speak of indo-English theories of Fiction, it is presumed, and it ought to be presumed, that the writing of Indian fiction in English has been and continues to be guided, conditioned, or moulded by a distinct and established set of concerned principles and theories. The unflattering truth is that there area no such viable exercise to fall back upon. The reasons for the absence of an articulate, systematic and integrated body of critical theories or principals relating to Indian fiction in English in particular are neither difficult nor for to seek. In the first place, the Indian creative writer, opting for English as the medium of their expression, as well as the concerned critics have received their formal education on the western model, and their critical orientation or re-orientation allows them no scope and perhaps leaves with no necessity either for the formulation of critical theories or principles. It is true that we have a few useful and well-documented books on the history of Indian literature in English, and there are so many books on individual writers too, but no book or books dealing with critical theories or principles in this regard are available. Secondly, nothing, almost nothing, worth the name has been done in the field of Indo-English theory of fiction for the reason that a number of creative writers themselves have written a good deal about their own views on the function or purpose of art or literature and the use of English in their works. And the critics of Indian fiction in English have only dutifully commented on them. This kind of critical exercise, creation and criticism going together, is in practice also in the west, but scene is different there for the western critics lean as much a plate, Anstotle, longings and Horace as a Dryden, Dr. Johnson, Colendge and Amold. Not unexpectedly, all that we can do in the present Indo-English literary Sunario is to record and analyse the views of concerned writers on (i) art or

literature, and (ii) the medium of their creative expression, in a clear, cogent and systematic manner. We propose to take up for consideration the views of Raja Rao, to be followed by those of other major writers of Indo-English fiction. In the foreword to his first published novel, Kanshapura, 1938, Raja Rao says that the telling of the story has not been easy1, because of the use of English as the medium of expression in this novel. He says; one has to convey in a language that is not ones own the spirit that is ones own. One has to convey the various shades and omissions of a certain thought movement that looks maltreated in an alien language. I used the word alien language to us. it is the language of our intellectual make-up-like Sanskrit or Persian was before-but not of our emotional make-up. We are all instinctively bilingual, many of us writing in our own language and in English. We cannot write like the English. We should not. We cannot write only as Indians. We have grown to look at the large world as part of us. Our method of expression therefore has to be a dialect which will someday from to be as distinctive and colourful as the Irish or the American. Time alone will justify its.2 Raja Rao argues to say that Indian writers have to adopt an Indian variety of English for the sake of credibility and authenticity, and time has justified this, if not fully, at least substantially. He goes on to say that in respect of style the tempo of Indian life must be infused into our English expression, even as the tempo of American or Irish life has gone into the making of theirs;3. In our epics and Puranas, as he puts it, episode follows episodes, and when our thoughts stop our breath stops, and we move on to another thought. This was and still is the ordinary style of story telling,4 an in Kanthapura he states: I have tried to follow it myself in this story,5. In one of his essay entitled The writer and the word, dealing with the problem of communication, Raja Rao says:

Triple are the constituents of a book-the word, the author, the reader. The word which says what the author has to indicate, and the reader has to apprehend, scens to be the one element we seem to neglect, as if it were something we know so well that we may not investigate its nature, its function, its end.6 According to him, unless word becomes mantra no writer is a writer, and no reader a reader7 and so for the right reader-to-be, the writer has to become on upasaka of the word8. In the course of an internet Raja Rao speaks of his peculiar style9, and answers questions put to him by Ranavir Rangra: Rangra : we after hear that one can express better in ones mother-tongue rather than in any other language. But you chose to adopt English as the medium of expression for your creative writing. What was it that led you to make this choice? Raja Rao : I would have liked to express myself in Sanskrit. It is the richest language in the world. It is a most sophisticated language. You can use it, play with it in the way you like. But I am afraid, my Sanskrit is not good enough. Though my mother-tongue was kannada, I was brought up in Hyderabad. So my kannada was not good either. I did not think it sufficient for my intellectual perversities. So I needed some language that I knew better than kannada and that was English. I have tried to reshape the English language for my own need. I refuse to write English like an

Englishman or an American. Therefore, my English is, as people have said, rather unusual10. In answer to another question Raja Rao says: I have no readers in view at all. I write for myself11. And he continues in the same vein when he says: I take writing as a sadhana, a spiritual sadhana. That is why, I write so little and take a long time to complete my text12. In answer to yet another question he states : I dont care a damn for the readers when I write. I try to say something for myself and if that is interesting to me, it would be interesting to the public. I dont think of the public as such. Many be that is why I write difficult books.13 Raja Rao further says: communication for me is that which gets communicated to me. Thats all14. The interviewer asks him a very significant question relating to a writers commitment. Rangra: There is another thing we hear there days. It is about authors commitment. It is after said that every author must be a committed writer. Do you also subscribe to this view? If so, whom do you think the writer should be committed to? Raja Rao : I cannot say about others. But I am committed to advait Vendanta. I am a Sadhaka.15 And on being asked if he at all wrote poetry at any point of time, he says that he did never write poetry and that people regard his prose as poetic16. According to Raja Rao, his prose style is rather peculiar; he does not write English either like an Englishman or like an American; he has tried to reshape the English language for his needs; he writes for himself; he looks upon writing as a kind of spiritual sadhana; he

condiders every word to be a mantra; he does not care for the readers, and he is committed to Advait Vedanta as a sadhaka. As a writer R.K. Narayan was always skeptical of the usefulness of literary enquiries and interviews; he shunned publicity, and yet, from time to time he gave interviews, and spoke and wrote about himself and his art, about the use of English in his books, and about other related issues. He says: They always try to read meaning into my books, trace a theme, related this character to that, make a connection between hero and hero. I wish they would leave me and my books alone17. Narayan wishes to be left alone along with his books, and yet in a brief note captioned The critical Faculty he speaks of an ego, operating behind every artistic effort, that does not and cannot accept any kind of adverse criticism,. He abserves: Any artistic effort has a lot of ego behind it and can never admit criticism. The only two categories that a writer or a musician recognizes those that admire and those that do not have the hits to understand. It takes several years of hardening experience for a writer to become really indifferent to what others say about his work, but at the beginning of his career every writer watches for reviews of his book with a palpitating heart18. And he goes on to observe: if the review is all praise, then the author feels that the reviewer is a clever follow full of subtle understanding, but if it is adverse he cries These fellows lack elementary intelligence and discrimination19. Much though Narayan

may say about his being left alone as a writer, no author can afford to be above praise or censure, for the relationship between creation and criticism is deep, vital and indissoluble. In the course of an interview R.K. Narayan spoke to Ved Mehta that to be a good writer anywhere one must have roots-both in religion and in family. I have there things20. Similarly, in an interview wish William Welsh BBC Third Programme, 22 February 1968 he says: My main concern is with human character a control character from whose point of view the world is seen, and who tries to get over a difficult situation, or succumbs to it, or fights it in his own setting21. Explaining his view of the comic as a gap between being and becoming, Narayan goes on to says: A man may think he is frivolous or dishonest, but without realizing it he achieves something serious. This always happens. A man thinks he wants to do something and it may turn out as something else22. it is his view that explains Narayans comic or ironic vision of life. Irony in his case, we find, is not just a verbal tool, but also an instrument of moral discovery23. In the course of yet another interview Narayan says: I value human relationship very much, very intensely. It makes ones existence worthwhile human relation ship in any and every form, whether at home or outside. I think I have expressed this philosophy in my work successfully24. However, he is not interested in social or political relationships, for he works mainly on individual characters, their oddities and eccentricities. R.K. Narayan has no taste for the tragic or the amorous. In this connection he observes: Particularly after D. H. Lawrence, no writer

can have anything original or fresh to say about lovers when a couple, even if they are characters in my own novel, want privacy, I leave the room25. Malgudi, the name of a place associated with Narayans novels, has evoked both curiosity and controversy, but whatever and wherever it is, the physical features and spirit of the place do have their own importance in relation to his fictional writings. Malgudi stayed on with all its changes, taking place from time to time, and is now inseparable from Narayans fictional works, whether novels or short stories. As for the use of English as the medium of expression in his own fiction and in that of other Indian writers, R. K. Narayan speaks clearly, and in a forthright manner. He says: Indian English is often mentioned with some amount of contempt and patronage, but is a legitimate development and needs no apology. We have fostered the language for over a century and we are entitled to bring it in line with our own habits of thought and idiom. Americans have adapted the English language to suit their native mood and speech without feeling apologetic, and have achieved directness and unambiguity in expressio26. Without being apologetic about the use of English as the medium of expression in Indian fiction, Narayan asserts that English is not at all an alien language. In Fifteen Years Narayan imagines a trial scene in which he makes English language defend itself against the charge

that since it is the language of colonial rulers, it must leave independent India and go back to its own country27. In To a Hindi Enthusiast Narayan declares : For me, at any rate, English is an absolutely Swedishi language. English of course, in a remote horoscopic sense, is a native of England, but it enjoys, by virtue of its uncanny adaptability, citizenship in every country of the world. It has sojourned in every country of the world. It is my hope that English will soon be classified as a non-regional Indian language28 In English in India: The process of transmutation, once again, Narayan speaks about the nativization or Indianization of English language29. In essay after essay, paper after paper, Narayan pleads for the Indianization of English language. He hopes that English would serve the purpose of Indian writers, as it has done in his own case, admirably well, for English is a flexible and adaptable language, a language which indeed has its own mobility. It is true, as V.A. Shahane says in his paper entitled Khushwant Singh: An Artist in Realism that in his triple role as short story writer, novelist and social and religious historian, Khushwant Singh has established himself as a distinguished Indian writer with an individual status in modern Indo-Anglian literature30 and that the fundamental quality of Khushwant Singhs creative faculty is the comic31. However, he does not say much about his own art of fiction. Since he was born and brought up as a child in one of the Punjab Villages of undivided India, his roots are in the dunghill of a tiny Indian village32, but because he received his school education in Lahore and Delhi, he grew up in the Indo-Anglican atmosphere of New Delhi33, later, he went to England for higher education there, and that is why he says: I am the product of both the east and the west, I am, if I may coin the word, an orio occidental34. Moreover, he observes: whatever its limitations, whatever its frustrations, love is the greatest the most exhilarating experience of life35, and perhaps it is love about which he writes mostly in his novels.

Khushwant Singh points out that at least in his own case, if not in the case of other, the decision to write comes at the same time as when one has found something compelling to write about36. He comes out only with a few generalizations about his own comparisons as a writer, and though he makes a regular use Indianisms in his creative writing, he does not tell us anything specific about the appropriateness of Indian or Indianized English. Manohar Malgonkar is yet another well-known Indo-English writer whose views on the nature and art of fiction have to be considered with due seriousness. We have to keep this in mind that Malgonkar is a very competent story-teller and that readability is the outstanding quality of his novels and short stories. He says: I do strive deliberately and hard to tell a story well, and I revel in incident, in improbabilities, in unexpected twists. I feel a special allegiance to the particular subeaste among those whose caste-mark I have affected, the entertainers, the tellers of stories. Novels that do not conform to this basic pattern, however well-written they may be, are to me like uneding cheesestraws, they may tickle the taste buds, but they cannot constitute a square meal at least not to one who is used to curries and chutneys37. Malgonkar is of the view that the narrative art should be a novelists first concern. He is opposed to the experimental novels of James

Joyce and Virginia woolf, and Claims that he belongs to the tradition of romantic novels. I after think myself as belonging to the advance guard in the swing back of the romantic novel. The peddlers of erotic and drug dreams may churn out best sellers, but there are not novels, and the interminable ramblings about the day in the life of someone or other are like counting the veins in every leaf of cabbage. All this was a phase, but you cannot play with a cabbage for long. The story will be back, story, plot and all; the signs are already there38. Malgonkar believes that in order to be authentic an Indian writer in English has to be true to the Indian ethos and milieu: I keep writing of Indian because I feel no author should write outside his own living circumstances. If he does, it is phoney. To write of our own society and to be accepted by the English and American reading public we must be better than average writers39. That is why, he pankly admits that because of his upbringing and social ambience he just cannot write about the poor or the downtrodden.

The social life of millions of Indians centers round the dustbins of great cities. Granted but mine doesnt, and for me to write about it would be as insincere as a white man writing about a Negro not40. Malgonkar claims that a writer has to be correct and accurate about the details: Though some would criticize my style, they dont criticize my historical veracity. I take great pains to be absolutely accurate. If I write that something happened on a Saturday night or on a moonless night, you can be sure it was on a Saturday or on a moonless night41. Malgonkar does write his novels and short stories in English, and yet he is acutely conscious of the incongruity of the whole situation: I have often wondered whether there is any Indian writer writing in English who does not at times feel a bit of a fake, as though going about with a false case-mark, for he writes in a language not his own42. Kamala Das is a distinguished Indo-English by Indian writers as the medium of their creative writing is indeed highly suggestive: Dont write in English, they said, English is not your mothertongue. Why not leave me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,

every one of you? Why not let me speak in any language I like? The language I speak become mine, its distortions, its queer-nesses, all mine, mine alone. It is half English, half Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest, it is as human as I am human, dont you see?43 this passage from her poem entitled Introduction sums up the nature of Indianized English, and in her view it is absolutely honest for an Indian writer to opt for English as the medium of his or her creative writing. Anita Desai is a writer of fiction whose novels and short stories, being psychological in nature, are different in spirit and form from the fiction of other Indian writers in English. Her protagonists are lonely and introspective individuals, and she employs flashbacks and interior monologues in her novels as Jams Joyce and Virginia Woolf use them in theirs. It is depth, says she, in her reply to a question, which is interesting, delving deeper and deeper in a character or scene, rather than going roundabout it44. In her reply to yet another question, she says, I dont think anybodys exile from society can solve any problem. I think basically the problem is how to exist in society and yet maintain ones individuality rather than suffering from a lack of society and a lack of belonging, that is why exile has never been my theme45. She stakes further : I think all human relationships are inadequate. I have never worked this out. Basically everyone is solitary. I think involvement in human relationships in this world invariably leads to disaster46 It is because of the treatment of a particular kind of theme that the structure of her novels is different from that of other Indian writers novels. As far the use of English as the medium of her creative

writing, Anita Desai observes: According to the rules laid down by critics, I ought to be writing half of my work in Bengali, the other half in German. As it happens I have never written a word in either language47. She knows German and Bengali, because while her mother was a German, her father was a Bengali. She further informs us: By the age of seven or eight I was certainly writing a great deal and determined to be a writer. I didnt pick English out, I dont think a child of seven or eight is capable of doing so. I must have simply picked the language which came most fluently and easily to me. Why it came so fluently to me, I should think because I did most of my reading in it. I still find, although I do read German, and Bengali and Hindi I do it with more effort, whereas English requires no effort whatsoever48. Anita Desai, we find, has been resolving her artistic problems in her own distinctive manner. Nayantar Sahgal is yet another distinguished Indo-English writer, who has to say something very useful about her own fictional art. In the course of Meet the Author programme, conducted by Sahitya Akademi, she says that amid counters interruptions and emotional upheavals who in her right mind how chose to be a writer? And the answer is the one doesnt choose it. It is not something as decides to do. It is an itch that has got to be scratched, and it grows the more you scratch it49. She further says that in her novels alongside the personal story there is a picture of political erosion,

degradation and decay50. As far her characters, she states characters cant be told what to do. Once they are on the page they how a life of their own. They speak and act as they want to the writer is literally a witness51. Paying tribute to her mothers brother, Jawaherlal Nehru, she observes: his passion for India I have tried to keep alive through my fiction and journalism, in the hope that justice and dignity will one day be realities for all our countrymen and women, and that every Indian will have the right to regard himself a member of the same privileged family52. With all her elitism and aristocratic upbringing, she has been witness to Indias freedom struggle and through her writing she expresses her desire to bring about an egalitarian society where there is a feeling of equality and oneness among the people of India. Although Kamala Markandaya has written a large number of novels, yet so far she has said precious little about her fiction. She was so much interested in writing that for its sake she did not pursue university education and could not obtain any degree from Madras university. Ruth Montgomery says: In 1940 (Miss Markandaya was born is 1924), Miss Markadanya attended Madras University, but was deterred from her intention to get a degree in history by an increasingly strong interest in writing53.

Later, she married an Englishman, and has been staying mostly in England or abroad. As an expatriate or even otherwise, she writes generally an Indians poverty or backwardness and the east west encounter as the themes of her novels. In her novel, Possession, she says: Undiluted east had always been too much for the west; and soulful east always came lap-dog fashion to the west, mutely asking to be not too little and not too much, but just right54. In this connection Jasbir Jain states. In the novels of Kamala Markandaya two ways of life, two sets of values exist side by side and are often locked in confrontation : a confrontation not necessarily resulting in destruction of the confronting forces but giving rise to a new relationship with reality and a new bond of sympathy and understanding traversing both the worlds, absorbing the human and the elemental in bot55. And in this regard, in his essay entisted East and West in the Novels of Kamala Markanadaya, K.R. Chandrasekharan says. The implied massage in Kamala Markendayas novels is that India should confidently pursue her own path holding fast to her traditional values and using methods appropriate to her

culture. It is true that while the novelist recognizes the evils and deficiencies in Indian life and society and works her countryman against a slavish imitation of the west, she does not offer any ready-made solution to the many problems facing the country56. The plot of each one of her novel points to the fact that her principal characters get trapped in delicate situations and struggle against the environment rather that against other character. And though Iyengas speaks of the sufficiency and suggestiveness of her rpose57 he has to say the following in his comments on her novel, Possession: the real theme of the novel is not economics, politics or even spirituality, but art what is the soul of art, what is the elan that makes art possible? Technique has its uses, but the essence of art is not a matter of technique58. Kamala Markandaya is a realist; she looks upon art and life as entities inseparable from each other, and there is nothing strikingly experimental about her novels.

References
1. 2. Raja Rao, Kanthapura (Delhi, 1964), P.5. Ibid; P.5-6.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

Ibid; P.6. Ibid; P.6. Ibid; P.6. M.K. Naik, S.K. Desai & G.S. Amur (ed.), critical essays on Indian writing in English (Dharwar, 1972), P.3. Ibid; P.5. Ibid; P.5. D.S. Rao (ed.), Indian literature, vol. xxxi, no.4 (JulyAug,1988) P.123. Ibid; P.113. Ibid; P.114. Ibid; P.114. Ibid; P.118. Ibid; P.118. Ibid; P.119. Ibid; P.121. Ved Mehta, John is easy to please (London, 1974) PP.150-51. R.K. Narayan, A Writers Nightmare : Selected Essays 19581988 (Penguin edition, 1990). P.88. Ibid; P.88. Ved Mehta, John is easy to please (London, 1974) P.148. Quoted in Lakshmi Holmstorm, The Novels of R.K. Narayan (Calcutta: writers workshop, 1973), P.124. Ibid; P.124. M.K. Naik, The Ironic Vision: A Study of the Fiction of R.K. Narayan (New Delhi, 1983). P.77. Interview with ILR, The Indian Literary Review, I, no.2 (June, 19789), P.6. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P. Ibid; P.