Hello readers! This blog is in response to a task assigned by Yesha Bhatt ma’am. This blog deals with a few important topics of Indian writing in English. Before writing this blog the blogger has referred to Three Prose Writers: Radhakrishnan, Raghunathan, Nirad Caudhari; The ‘New’ Poets; and Conclusion from K.R Srinivasa Iyenger’s Indian Writing in English. This blog tries to attempt a few questions assigned to the task.
Indian writing in English
Task 1: The Three prose Writers
Three prose writers on Indian writing in English, the three masters of prose, and very different from each other. Professor Radhakrishnan, the best known of the three, is a philosopher-statesman with an international reputation, a scholar with a phenomenal memory, a resourceful and eloquent and effective speaker, and a voluminous writer with an uncanny flair for lucidity and epigrammatic strength. Raghunathan, better known by his nom-de-plumVigneshwara, is a deep student of English and Sanskrit literature, and was for many years the leader writer of Hindu; but it was as the writer of the 'Sotto Voce' weekly causeries he made a significant impact on the readers of Swatantra and Swarajya. Nirad chaudari, an “unknown Indian” till 1951 when his Autobiography made him famous, is a master of prose style, an intellectual who has the courage to stand aside and be different from the crowd, a critic of Indian society with an almost Swiftian capacity for making surgical probes.
The contribution of S. Radhakrishnan in Indian Writing in English.
- A note on S. Radhakrishnan’s perspective on Hinduism.
- According to Radhakrishnan, what is the function of philosophy?
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (5 September 1888 – 17 April 1975), was an Indian philosopher and politician who served as the 2nd President of India from 1962 to 1967 and 1st Vice president of India from 1952 to 1962. He was also the 2nd Ambassador of India to the Soviet Union from 1949 to 1952 & 4th Vice Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University from 1939 to 1948.
Radhakrishnan was commissioned by J.H. Muirhead wrote a history of Indian Philosophy and the first volume of this formidable undertaking appeared in 1923 and the second four years later. The double merit of the work was that it was an interpretation of Indian Philosophy from within and it was also an exposition of Indian philosophical thought in an idiom at once intelligible and attractive to the west.
‘He was no mere historian of Indian Philosophy but also a thinker in his own right’
He was a Hindu for whom philosophy was not just a cloak but rather a way of like, a means of understanding life and force for changing was presently revealed in his upton lectures- The Hindu view of Life- 1927 and the wide-ranging Hibbert lectures and An Idealistic View of Life- 1923. The apologist of the Hindu view of life and ‘idealist’ view of life in terms mainly Advait vedanta- had to speak in an idiom that could define the uniqueness of The Hindu and Vedantic view of life, yet any insinuate its filiations with the Western Christian way of life.
He explain things with lucid clarity that seemed to be almost a deceptively simple:
Every sinner has a future even as every saint has had a past no one is so good or so bad as he imagines. Hinduism is a movement not a position, a process not a reason, a growing tradition not a fixed revelation.
Many Christians also said that if it was Hinduism they were Hindus too.
A.C. underwood in his Contemporary Indian Thought (1930) voice mild protest- The Hinduism of the of the Hindu view of Life is not Hinduism as it is or ever has been; but as professor Radhakrishnan would have it to be after he has removed it near to his Desire
Radhakrishna was bold enough to rethink the end and means of human life in the wider perspective of traditional Hinduism and modern thought. There are no questions in Philosophy; the old questions- what do I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope for?- are as valid today as ever, but one's answers need to be formulated in relation to the contemporaneous urgency. In every religion there is a mystical core, which age cannot weaken, nor modernity render superfluous. It was now Radhakrishnan’s turn, and circumstances and an extraordinary combination of qualities enabled him to appeal to a world audience, and to bring the west and the east to a closer understanding than ever before the nation.
Plato
What is the function of philosophy? Radhakrishnan says “to provide us with the spiritual rallying Center, synoptic vision, as plato loved to call it, a Samanvaya, as the Hindu thinkers put it… a spiritual concordat which will free the spirit of religion from the disintegration of doubt and make the Warfare of creeds and sects a thing of the past.”
Detractors have said that RadhakrishnanIs a historian of Indian philosophy, a scholastic, a theologian rather than a creative thinker in his own right; that he is at best, a philosopher in the Western rather than in the Indian tradition.
Task- 2: The New Poets
- “An Indo-Anglian poet strives for self-expression in English.” Explain.
Since the end of world war 2, there has been a visible stir everywhere- partly a rustle of new hope and partly the stutter of a new despair. a new generation comes up with striking individuality of its own, sharpness in its feature, an angularity in its gestures, a tone of defiance in its speech, a gleam of hope in its eyes- new order perhaps, and even new rhythms and the nuances and acerbities of speech. There is a ‘new’ poetry in England, in France, in the states- and not least in India and in ‘Indo-anglia’
‘New’ poetry of course has always been ‘modern’ poetry even ‘modernist’ or ‘modn’ poetry. no true poet can escape tradition, for all our yesterday are involved in the poet’s deeper consciousness; and no true poet can escape pressure of the present, for he is in it and of it, and the best he can do is to relate the immediate present of the living past.
The Indo Anglian poet is no doubt noted in his particular and particular perplexity and Indian tribes for self expression in English but he is for this reason alone no more a slave of oddity than a man trying to fly in an aeroplane of his country living or dying in a submarine Indo Anglian poetry is not quite so much of a rarity as it is too readily taken for granted in the anthology modern Indian poetry edited by A V rajeswara Rao out of the 70 poets included as many as 25 are either Indo Anglian poet or poets with an adequate enough knowledge of English to translate into English word their own original work in one of the regional language.
All modern Indian poetry is sustained by the living waters of our racial tradition and by the continuing Breeze from the west- which now means Europe as well as America. In the 19th century in India the first flush of romantic exuberance. In recent times, however, we have been witnessing realistic clinical exploration by the poet turned proletarian, psychologist, psychoanalyst, cybernetics, naxalite or adamite primitive. There is a return to romance too and, there are the sensualists and the symbolists, and there are also the lareautes of the spirit. but then the poetry of the spirit is as ancient as the Veda and as modern as the latest guided missile.
It would be prudent and wise not to attach too much importance to any rigid chronology. When does the era of ‘new poetry’ begin? In English literature Hopkins the Victorian- who could be published only in 1918- was hailed as one of the ‘modernists’, on a par with Eliot and Pound. the later Tagore, was as modern as the newest of the new poets. in India the political and economic uncertainty of the thirties lead to some re-thinking on the part of Writers who came to be known as the “progressive” and the “proletarians'' and a literature of the protest was the result.
- Write a critical note on the poems by Nissim Ezekiel.
Nissim Ezekiel- English is his mother tongue, has published five volumes of verse so far:
A time to change (1951),
Sixty poems (1953)
The Third (1959)
The Unfinished Man (1960) and
The Exact Name (1965)
He also edited for the for time Poetry India.
an artist who is willing to take pain, to cultivate reticence, to pursue the profession of poetry with a sense of commitment.
Ezekiel’s poems are as a rule lucid- a merit these days- and are splendidly evocative and satisfyingly sensual.
In his first two volumes, persons and places memories and situation literary equals and movements of vision, all inspired Ezekiel to poetic utterance. in his latter poetry there is revealed a more careful craftsmanship, a more mark restrained and a colder, a more conscious intellectuality, than in his first two volume.there is a gain in quality and integrity, and he is able to achieve conversational directness and ease without losing himself in discursiveness. obscurity And mere angularity are avoided and beauty and bareness of statement often go together. the discipline of rhyme and regular stanza form is not shirked, excet the special effects are intended
In some poems there is bold yet apt phrasing, a verbal sting, even a touch of a frivolous or ludicrous and a general competence of craftsmanship. Hints of sensuality in some of the poem, at least not served up as something nobly spiritual. There is a vague striving after wisdom- in the latest volume, there is even or pull towards philosophy- there is a feeble attempt at prayer and there are intermittent throbs of frustration.
Task 3: The Conclusion
- Write a note on the changing trends in Post-Independence Indian Writing in English.
English as a second language forms a really “dominant minority” in India. The books in English published in India account for 50% of the total for all languages, and the English newspapers and magazines command a more impressive and influential circulation than others. The problem before the Indians of a century ago was how to learn from the British and from the west generally, without at the same time feeling resentful and humiliated. Without denying the inherited tradition, the new writer has been able to grow a wing of Creative self expression and is boldly caring towards the future. but English literature has continued to provide an impetus and an inspiration to writers, whether they write in English or in one of the indigenous languages.
During the last 20 years, and more especially during the last 10 years, the outlook of Indo- Anglian literature has become brighter than before. There are journals in English- the workshop that- publish poetry and creative prose, and literary pages in the papers and weekly magazines besides serious critical journals.
Book reviewing is still very unsatisfactory. Indian writing in English has now also begun to receive scholarly and critical attention in Indian and foreign universities. It figures as a paper at the MA level in several universities in India and courses in Indo Anglian literature are given in many American and Commonwealth universities. Indian teachers of English literature have been publishing learned papers and Critical monographs, not only on English and American authors but even on Indo-Anglian writers . An increasing mass of critical inquiry has been accumulating of late in India, partly because of the requirements of the doctorate degree, partly stimulated by Smith-Mundt scholarship tenable in American Universities, and partly also on account of the newly awakened interest in Indian writing in English.
This video gives a basic background of Indian Writing in English
- “India is not a country”, says Raja Rao, “India is an idea, a metaphysic.” Explain with examples.
It is the unique role of Indo-Anglian literature both to derive from and to promote and all India consciousness. It is perhaps cynocal to talk of ‘national identity’ and of oneness with the mother at a time when the forces have been let loose and linguistic and communal patients are in all over the country.
As Sri Aurobindo pointed out in the article in the BandeMataram sixty years ago, “the sap that keeps it alive is the realization of the motherhood of God in our country, the vision of the mother, the perpetual contemplation, adoration and service of the mother”. Gandhiji too said at about the same time that the ancient Hindus saw that India was one undivided land so made by nature, that India was one nation, and to bring this home to the people they established holy places in different parts of India.
Our national epic, The Ramayana, is the epic of India; the Mahabharata is a veritable grammar of national literature, and even in Raja Ji’s abridged version in English, it has done a great deal to project a consciousness of ‘national identity.
Post-independence literature in India is rather full of muffled voices or historical cries, and the average writer’s world is filled too much with the irritations, excitements, and frustration of the movement. but there have been expectations too. Babhani Bhattacharya’s ‘A Goddess name Gold’ is a call of Fidelity and faith addressed to the new Indian nation. In the Mahabharata all roads lead to Kurukshetra; In The Serpent and the Rope, all Road likewise lead to Benares, the eternal city on the banks of a holy river, Ganga. and so Raja Rao says “India is not a country, India in an idea of a metaphysic.”
I hope this blog is useful. Thanks for visiting.
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