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CHAPTER- I
INDIAN ENGLISH FICTION AFTER 1980
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Introduction
“No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His
significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the
dead poets and artists; you cannot value him alone; you must set him for
contrast and comparison, among the dead” (Eliot 294). This statement
underscores the importance of Time: past, present and future, their inter
connectedness, and acquainting with the past. The above statement
reiterates the fact that the seeds of the present and future are sown in the
past. Therefore for better understanding of any Indian author, a survey of
Indian English fiction is a pre-requisite. This serves mainly two purposes;
firstly, it serves as an introduction, background and reference to the
exploration of “Thematic Concerns and Narrative Strategies in the Novels
of Amitav Ghosh”. Secondly, it helps in placing Amitav Ghosh. Keeping
in view the developments and shifts in themes and techniques, the Indian
English fiction may be broadly studied under three phases. The first one
is Indian English Fiction from the beginning to 1930, the second one is
from 1930 to 1980 and the third one is after 1980. A brief survey of these
phases with more focus on the last phase is as follows.
Indian English Fiction from the Beginning to 1930
One of the most notable gifts of English education to India is prose
fiction, though India was probably the fountain head of storytelling, the
novel as we know the form today was an importation from the West. The
earliest specimens of Indian English fiction were tales rather than novels
proper, but their use of fantasy (though on a limited scale) shows their
links with the ancient Indian tradition, in spite of the fact their subject-
matter is contemporary. The Indian English novels from the beginning to
the 1930 depict the greatness of India’s past, superiority of Indian
civilization in relation to Europe, ambivalence about western civilization
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on the one hand as a liberating and on the other as threat to Hindu

Identity.
Bankimchandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife (1864) is considered
as the first Indian English novel proper and it is also viewed as the first
birth of the Indian English fiction. This novel shows the awareness of the
contemporary social scene. Its overt didacticism also has its roots in the
Sanskrit tradition of the didactic tale or Dharma Katha, though this was
religious and social in orientation. The urge for social reform was of
course, a significant aspect of the Indian renaissance of the ninetieth
century; it therefore naturally became an important theme in some early
Indian English Fiction. The questions that engaged the minds of some of
these novelists were the position of women, the plight of peasants and the
decay of old aristocracy. Shevantibai M Nikambe’s Ratanbai : A sketch
of a Bombay High Caste Hindu Young Wiife (1895), R C Dutt’s The Lake
of Palms: A story of Indian Domestic Life (1902), Lal Bahari Day’s
Govinda Somanta or The History of a Bengal Raiyat or Bengal Peasant
life (1908) Sirdar Jogendra Singh’s Nasrin, An Indian Medley (1911) are
some of the novels which depict such themes.
One distinguished name to be mentioned here is that of
Rabindranath Tagore, a prolific writer with at least two hundred songs,
several plays and numerous novels to his credit. Tagore, who hailed from
an aristocratic and affluent Bengali family, wrote most of his works
originally in Bengali, but some of his novels have since been rendered
into English – The Home and the World (1919), The Wreck (1921) and
Gora (1923), all of which are socially relevant and thought provoking.
Through these novels, Tagore has conjured up the vision of a modern
India. The second novel is a social story highlighting in unequivocal
terms the vexed problem of marriage.
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The political theme is hardly to the fore in the fiction of this phase.
Nevertheless – Sarat Kumar Ghose’s The Prince of Destiny: The New
Krishna (1909) is an interesting early attempt to deal with it. The novel
propounds for the union of the best of the West and the East. The novel
ends with a fervent hope for a strong bond between Britain and India.
Tagore’s The Home and the world (1919) depicts the story of Nikhil, his
wife Bimala and his close friend Sandip, having the undercurrents of
psychological portrayal and political consciousness. Gora (1923) is a
patriotic novel, a political novel articulating vigorously the hopes and
aspirations of the resurgent India. Gora is definitely one of the most-
liked, finished products of Tagore and adds to his literary immortality like
his celebrated Gitanjali (1913).
The religious life forms the chief motif in two prominent novels.
B.R.Rajan Iyer’s unfinished novel, True Greatness or Vasudeva Sastri
offers an idealized portrait of a hero who has attained the stature of the
Sthita Prajna of the Gita. Madhavaiah’s Thillai Govindan (1916) is an
absorbing account probably autobiographical, of the mental development
of a contemporary south Indian Brahmin youth, who loses his faith
temporarily under the impact of Western education but regains peace
after his rediscovery of the Gita
Historical romance made a fairly early appearance in this phase of
Indian Fiction in English. Prominent examples are; Mirza Moorad Alee
Beg’s Lalun the Beragun, or The Battle of Panipat (1884),T
Ramakrishna’s Padmini (1903) and A Dive for Death (1911), Jogendra
Singh’s Nur Jahani: The Romance of an Indian Queen (1909) and Svarna
Kumari Ghosal’s The Fatal Garland (1915). The historical periods
covered vary from Tamil times to Maratha history. While the locale
ranges from the south to the north to fifteenth century Bengal.
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Autobiographical fiction made its appearance palpable in this

phase. Some of the early novels are true to the saying that there is
material for at least one novel in the life of every person. As already
mentioned, in both Madhavaiah’s Thillai Govindan and Nikambe’s
Ratnabai, the autobiographical element is extremely thinly disguised.
Krupabai Satthianadhan’s Kamala: A Story of Hindu Life (1895) and
Suguna: A Story of Native Christian life (1895) are frankly
autobiographies in fiction form.
Regarding the narrative technique the early Indian writers in
English took care to align with the best in various ingenious ways.
Epigraphs from Byron, Scott, Copper, Shakespeare, and Coleridge were
common practice and quotations and references were generously woven
into the narrative, whether the context called for them or not. Echoes of
canonical English novels are often perceptible in the texts.
Regarding the originality of narrative techniques K.S.Ramamurthi
observes that the early Indian English novelists “were by no means
imitators but conscious experimenters who adopted an alien form and
medium to socio-cultural situation and sensibility which were specifically
Indian” (Naik 12). But Dr. M. K. Naik does not agree with this and
remarks that “the strong element of fantasy in some of this fiction
establishes its links with the ancient Sanskrit fictional tradition, but there
are clear indications of its debts to Scott, Bulwar-Lytton and also G.W.M
Reynolds”. He further remarks: “the sentimental romances of Henry
Wood and of such other writers have influenced early Indian English
social novelists” (12).
The poor technical values indicate lack of conscious creative
experimentation. The only possible evidence of experimentation in this
early fiction is to be found in Rajmohan’s Wife which uses Indian words
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liberally in the descriptive passages. But it is pertinent to note that

Chatteriee’s use of Indianism is generally limited to the employment of
Indian words denoting objects (eg: ‘Sari’. Dhoti’, ‘Pan’, ‘Mahal’,
‘Supari’, ‘Kacheri’ ) alone and unlike, Mulk Raj Anand later, he makes
no concerted effort to import a specifically Indian colouring to his style
by literally translating into English colorful expletives, proverbs and
expressions etc from an Indian language.
Indian English Fiction from 1930 to 1980
The period spanning the 1930 and 1980 was momentous both in
the history of Indian nationalism and the Indian novel in English. Until
this period Indian English fiction had not produced a single novelist with
substantial output. During this phase there is a sudden flowering of Indian
English fiction. So, this period is considered as the ‘second coming’ for
the Indian English fiction. So, it demands discussion of sources or bases
that led to the flowering the Indian English fiction.
The first important event is the national movement for freedom
struggle and entry of great personalities like Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru.
Mahatma Gandhi took the leadership of the national movement and gave
call for the non-cooperation with the British Government. As he was the
embodiment of self sacrifice and preached what he practiced attracted the
mass across the country. Forgetting their religious, caste, regional,
cultural diversities people followed Mahatma Gandhiji and involved in
the national movement not only for gaining freedom to the county but
also for the amelioration of the village economy, backward class people ,
untouchables, and women.
Mahatma Gandhi propagated and communicated his ideas and
vision through his writings. So, his works influenced many writers.
Anand showed the script of his Untouchable to Mahatma and it reflects
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his influence. Rao’s writing implicitly reflects the influence of Gandhi’s

autobiography. Several of his contemporaries directly acknowledged their
debt to this text. For instance, Bhabani Bhattacharya’s Gandhi the Writer
(1919) celebrates. “My Experiments with Truth as an indispensable model
for the novel forms and praises Gandhi as a ‘writer of writers’ and claims
that the best writing in the subcontinent bears his counter
signature”(quoted in Mehrotra 172).
In a sense the 1930s and 1940s were also Nehru’s decades. During
this period Nehru entered into the most radical and Marxist phase of his
political career, as early as 1933, he articulated “that the true civic idea is
the socialist ideal”. Nehru characterized himself as “a queer-mixture of
the East and West, out of place everywhere at home nowhere” (quoted in
Mehrotra 171). Thus, there was a consequent rift between Nehru and
Gandhi ideals and it had provided the source for contemporary fiction.
In Europe things were not so good. Inflected by the events of two
World Wars, these decades sounded, the pessimistic note of civilization
crisis and intellectual cosmopolitanism. So, many European intellectuals
and writers being dissatisfied with the main stream Europe and its
cultural baggage began to seek their creative resources both within
popular culture as also in the wider non-western world. Native and
foreign influences achieved a productive synthesis. For instance, Yeats
and Eliot under took the study of Upanishads and Forster unearthed an
enormous narrative resource in India. In this milieu, the expatriate Indian
novelists were guided by the prevailing European fashion to ‘return to
Indian culture and scriptures’. At this juncture, modernism reached the
peak point. It proved to be an ambiguous inheritance. It was increasingly
under attack for its elitism and self serving engagement with other
cultures. Several Marxist critics and writers raised cry against the
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abstruse verbosity and solipsism of modern writing and began a campaign

for a more simple and accessible prose style. Faced with this new and
curious bridge between East and West several expatriate Indian writers
submitted to a gradual process of disengagement with the modernist
creed. As a result of this, Anand rejected the intellectualism of
Bloomsbury writers and Aubrey Menen likewise, found the beautiful
people of Bloomsbury sadly lacking in human kindness.
A society compelled into self awareness like this provided a fertile
soil for fiction and the time was ripe for the emergence of a few talented
writers who could lift the Indo-English fiction form to an international
status and universal recognition. The three name usually mentioned in
literary circles in this context are Mulk Raj Anand, Narayan and Raja
Rao. They are known as ‘The Big Three’ an epithet coined by the noted
English critic William Walsh. These three have laid the strong foundation
for Indian Fiction in English. Against this background these writers have
responded differently to the above mentioned situations. There is also a
galaxy of writers like Bhahani Bhattacharya, Kamala Markandaya,
Kushwant Singh, G.V. Desani, Nayantara Sahgal, Anita Desai, Arun
Joshi, Chaman Nahal and others who nurtured the Indian English fiction.
As literature reflects the life of its time many of the writers wrote
about nation. The theme of Mahatma got its birth, got deep-rooted, and
became pervasive and strongly impacting. Gandhian economy – self
reliant village based economy, giving up prestigious positions to devote
to the greater cause of nationalism, amplifying the creed of Ahimsa,
denunciation of modern and western civilization, preferring spiritual
growth, anti colonial matters, programmes of national reform like
amelioration of women, workers, untouchable, and peasants became the
major themes of the fiction of this phase. “Nation and national identity
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has characterized both the period of anti colonial struggle and of post-
independent India” (Riemenchneider 3).
The writers of this period depicted the society realistically. A group of
writers depicted the social, economic and political oppression of
individuals. Anand’s Untouchable depicts the plight of the untouchables,
Coolie, depicts the exploitation of landless peasant; Two Leaves and a
Bud depicts the exploitation of the teagarden workers; The Big Heart
deals with industrial labour problems. K.S.Venkataraman’s Murugan the
Tiller depicts how an ideal rural colony is founded on Gandhian
principles. And Baladitya throws light on the evils of the caste system
pseudo religiosity etc. Most of the novels of Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao’s
Kanthapura, and Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve and A Handful
of Rice, Bhabani Bhattacharya’s So Many Hungers, and Manohar
Malgonkar’s The Prince belong to this category.
There is another group of works which concentrates on an
individual’s search for identity. This is to be seen in Anand’s Lalu
Trilogy, Markandays’s Some Inner Furry, B. Rajan’s The Dark Dancer
and Too Long in the West and most of the novels by Anita Desai and
Arun Joshi. In G.V. Desani’s All About H Hatterr, Markandaya’s
Possession, Raja Rao’s The Serpent and the Rope, and Khushawant
Singh’s Train to Pakistan, a slight variation of this theme is discovered.
Another group of writers deal with the theme of East-West and
attempt to bridge the gulf between India and the West. They have
attempted to present the manifold difficulties of cross-cultural
understanding and to explore the possibilities of mutual tolerance. K.
Nagarjan’s Chronicles of Kedaram and Bhattacharya’s Shadow from
Ladakh and Markandaya’s The Coffer Dams and Pleasure City deal with
this East-West theme.
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Apart from these categories of novels, there is altogether a separate

category of works which subtly portray human nature in a psychological
fashion. In this category, the protagonist is a victim of his own inner
tensions and struggles; such are The Dark Dancer by B Rajan, A Silence
of Desire by Markandaya, the novels of Anita Desai and Arun Joshi.
‘Indianness’ formed part of major thematic concern of the novels
of this period and they served the purpose of social as well as political
reform. Strong didactic tone is characteristic of much of Indian fiction,
influenced on the one hand by Victorian moralistic works and on the
other by the authors’ critical assessment of Indian customs and traditions.
It is a combination of a nationalistic view point and an acute awareness of
Western social ideals and customs. The novels of this period display an
emerging national consciousness in India and at the same time a
manifestation of the hybrid consciousness of the intellectual elite of the
country. Hence, these authors are certainly not typical of the Indian
population but represent a particular social segment. Therefore, Harrex
feels that Indian fiction in English “manifests the mixed sensibility”(
quoted Riemenscneider 15). Regarding the growth and authenticity of
Indian English fiction Mukherjee says: “Novels must be rooted in the
concept of history…few novels which have succeeded are usually the
ones firmly rooted in time and place. Yet, most of Indo-Anglian novelists
are constantly aiming at an Indianness bereft of temporal and spatial
values” (213).
Regarding this, V.K.Gokak remarks “Indo-Anglian writers come
from a microscopic minority group and have merely succeeded in
creating a hothouse plant rather than one that has sprung from the soil and
sprouted and burgeoned in the open air” ( quoted in Riemenscneider 9).
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A critical assessment of any work of art requires a study of its

‘matter’ and ‘manner’, or of its ‘what’ and ‘how’ both. The discussion of
the major thematic concerns would be incomplete without exploring the
major technical devices used by the novelists to project their vision. By
narrative technique we mean the pattern, coherence, and sense of
perspective imposed by the novelist’s selection and explanation. It is a
means of expression of their total understanding of man, of Nature, of
God. Such understanding and totality of the vision is communicated to us
through appropriate means- language, form and technique.
Novel as a literary genre was new to India. So, the concern with the
technique has been slow to evolve in the Indian English fiction. T.D.
Brunton remarks Indian novel is “embedded in the tradition of
‘Indianness’ rather than that of the genre” (11). Regarding this Spencer
holds that “Indianness appears to have prevented the development of the
novel before the arrival of the British” (9). As the Indian English fiction
attained maturity in the thirties the writers began to make new
experiments in the technique of novel by assimilating the innovations of
modern European novelists and adapting them to suit the treatment of
Indian traditions and ethos. The novelists writing after independence
appear to be attracted to new techniques in plotting, narration and
characterization. The modern “stream of consciousness” method of
narration is tried by a few of them like Raja Rao, G.V. Desani, and Anita
Desai. However, most significant experiments were made in the sphere of
technique.
Plot Construction and Art of Narration
Plot is a story, a selection of events, arranged in time, its beginning
leads through a middle to an end. A plot contains motives, consequences
and relationship. All plots have some relationship to time because cause
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and effect take place in time. The writer’s ideology affects his choice of
plot. The Indian English novelists of the period from 1930 to 1980 have
revealed their excellent mastery in narration and dexterity in the
development of plot. The novels of R.K.Narayan, Raja Rao, Sudhin
Ghose and G V Desani are perfect manifestation of their narrative genius.
R K Narayan’s craftsmanship in plot-construction does not reveal a
consistent quality. Narayan’s art, however, reached its maturity after
independence. The Guide is the finest specimen of Narayan’s artistic
genius, where in he handles with the skill the modern fictional techniques
such as flashbacks, flashforward, interior monologue and stream of
consciousness. The narrative in this novel alternates between the past and
the present. The blend of the omniscient and the autobiographical method
of narration endow the story with a double perspective. His narration is
marked by the quality of naturalness. He entertains but not at a brisk,
rollicking pace. He evokes a gentle and simple laughter. Narayan has
been recognized as “a born story teller” (Henry Miller), “a first-rate story
teller (Anthony West) and “the story teller par excellence” (Christian
Science Monitor, quoted by Shiv K. Gilra 104).
Raja Rao steps ahead Narayan in the art of plot construction.
Though deeply rooted in vedantic philosophy and ancient lore – he is
open to most modern stylistic experimentations and other technical
innovations. For Narayan, the story is everything for Raj Rao it is a little
more than a convenience. In Kanthapura the story is told from the
witness-narrator point of view. The Serpent and the Rope because of its
philosophical subject-matter requires a sophisticated and intellectual
narrator. As the theme is the knowledge of the self and the action takes
place in the thought process and psyche of the hero, the narrative
perspective is focused on him. The story of the novel, therefore, is
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unfolded from the protagonist narrator point of view. In order to

communicate his meditations and thoughts of the inmost recesses of
mind, the hero-narrator uses the devices of introspective diary entries,
self-revealing letters, and jottings of recapitulated poetry quotations from
the Vedas, the Upanishads, Indian lore, and French poetry. In his
narrative perspective he moves to and fro in space and time. Many critics
consider The Serpent and the Rope as essentially a spiritual
autobiography. While being interviewed by Annie Brierre, Raja Rao
pointed out “Everything one writes is autobiographical. But it is a
metaphysical novel” (26). In The Cat and Shakespeare, the author goes a
step ahead and describes the state of spiritual serenity which descends in
the life of a man who leads the life of detachment and resignation.
The novels of Sudhindra Nath Ghose are an exciting experiment in
the expression of the Indian ethos in a form firmly grounded in the
ancient native tradition of story-telling. His narrative technique shows his
rejection of Aristotelian concept of plot and use of the ancient Sanskrit
device of the framing story interpolated with tales told by different
characters from different sources such as the ancient epics and the
puranas, legends and folk-lore and even history. Following the practice of
the Sanskrit Champu Kavya, Ghose mixes prose and verse and introduces
into the narrative songs in Bengali with musical rotations.
G V Desani’s All About H Hatterr is one of the most daringly
experimental novels in Indian English literature. It is a novel extremely
complex both in theme and technique. The novel may be said to be story
of the hero’s spiritual quest for understanding the meaning of life; a social
chronicle revealing aspects of white, European and Indian character, an
uproariously funny comedy, full of various kinds of humor ranging from
sheer farce to subtle wit. Further, it is a triumphant experiment in
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blending western and Indian narrative forms. The plot of the novel seems
incoherent and scattered. But a close analysis reveals its comprehensive
form, perfect design and architectural symmetry.
Manohar Malgoanakar in contrast to Desani is deft story teller,
who knows how to function with verve and animation, with wit and
detachment. Above all, the charm of his story never wears down, as it
possesses the ‘tang’, ‘feel’ or colour of life. As a narrator, he is smooth
and straight forward, the narratives run spontaneously, not obscured by
redundant situations or long incidental comments. Told in the omniscient
style, there is very little scope for loitering here and there. The story is
allowed to tell itself, and generally there is little that comes between the
reader and the tale. Everything is in organic relation. A good plot
presupposes some special tactics-the capacity for vivid portraiture,
careful carpentry, subtle motivations, dramatic display, humour, wit,
irony, intellectual interpretation and shrewd observations. Malgonkar’s
novels have such plots, undoubtedly. He has a lively talent and his novels
are carefully contrived, neatly presented. Distinct Drum is a fine example
of the old fictional technique which involves the use of memory as a
narrative medium and helps the author to move back and forth in time
and achieve a wide coverage. A Bend in the Ganges is a novel in which
plot has primacy over character. Epical in scale, it is intended to offer a
panoramic view of the pre-independence period in Indian History. The
book The Combat of Shadow is a skillful product of careful workmanship
and its style never cramps. Malgaonkar revolts against the psychological
novel of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, which he considers a
temporary aberration in the tradition of the novel. His favorite novelists
are Kipling, Conrad, Maugham and Forster. What he finds common to the
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novels of these writers are well constructed plots, dramatic events and
entertainment.
In general the novelists of this period formed perfectly designed,
skillfully rounded and well constructed plots, epical in scale and episodic
in nature, after the early Victorian concept of plot-construction.
Art of Characterization
Aristotle laid utmost emphasis on the plot in a story, later on, this
emphasis shifted to character. Character is less important in allegorical,
satirical, stream of consciousness, technique novel or highly experimental
novels. A great novel enables us to identify ourselves with hero or
heroine and enjoy characters. The most enjoyable fictional characters
seem to be very life-like. The pre-independence novelists showed marked
tendency to construct symmetrical plot, so as to convey their messages to
the readers more effectively. But with the popularity of psychological
novels, the emphasis is being laid more on characters.
R K Narayan excels as an artful delineator of character. He says his
focus is all on character. If his personality comes alive, the rest is easy.
His novels have gifted us a richly varied portrait-gallery of students,
teachers, parents, grand-parents, half hearted dreamers, journalists, artists,
financiers, cranks, movie-stars, sanyasis and women-pious and suffering,
coquettish and seductive. It is a veritable world of men and women, both
real and exotic, brought to life with uncommon dexterity.
Mulk Raj Anand portrays different types of characters. His fiction
is a huge country fair where all kinds of people rub shoulders. He covers
practically the entire gamut of society, from Maharaja to the mendicant,
from the Anglo-Indian, to the untouchable. His understanding of child
psychology is also par excellence. The most memorable of his characters
are those who have either stirred his humanitarian compassion deeply or
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have evoked his admiration. Hence, Bakha and Anantha among his men
and Gauri and Parvati (in the short story, Birth) among his women are
perhaps his most outstanding creations.
Raja Rao’s skill in portraying living characters is amply displayed
in Kanthapura. The Serpent and the Rope reveals a further advance in his
technique of characterization. He is no more concerned with delineating
characters in their private aspects. He portrays them in relation to the
broader and more impersonal objects that occupy mankind, their relation
to public affairs, philosophy, art and religion. He also portrays a large
variety of characters, drawn from different races and nationalities and
they are all real and life-like. If little mother represents the Indian Women
of the older generation, Saroja does those of younger generation, Savithri
is one of the emancipated girls. Even the minor characters emerge fully
alive, breathing with life by a few strokes of his pen.
Kamala Markandaya reveals an excellent sense of mansion
workman and resorts to mosaics in the delineation of her characters. A
one-line comment here, a passing observation there, a casual description
elsewhere and thus a fine picture emerges.
G.V.Desani follows the latest surrealistic technique of
characterization. In All About it Hatterr, all the seven sages ultimately
resolve themselves into the pseudo-sage, and their various disciples into
Hatter himself, of whom Bannerjee is in a sense the ‘alter ego. Humor of
character is a part of the intricate comic design of the novel. The name
‘Hatterr’ suggests a ‘Sahib’. He is a tragic-comic character a lifelong prey
to a nagging sense of insecurity.
Thus, we see that the novelists of the period imprint a marvelous
skill in characterization. These novels mark a transition from stereotyped
characters to a new and rich variety of them, from the depiction of their
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outwardly idiosyncrasies, manners and charms to the deep and sharp

penetration into their psyche and inner recesses of their mind.
Other Narrative Devices
Among Indian English writers there seems to be an increasing
awareness that English is a pliant language which each writer has to
fashion it as the occasion demands. During the last forty years, there has
been a great deal of experimentation in the use of the English language in
Indian English Fiction. A few writers who wrote novels in English in the
early part of 20th century used the language carefully, with stiff
correctness, always conscious that it was a foreign tongue. In the thirties
one notices a sudden development of Indian English Fiction, in quantity
as well as quality and this is because of their confidence in the use of
English language as one of India’s many other languages. Out of this
confidence arises their will to bend the language according to the
situation, Mulk Raj Anand is the first conscious experimenter, followed
closely by Raja Rao, and in the next decade by Bhabani Bhattacharya and
others.
The Indian English novelist’s writing displays the imprint of the
region from which he/she hails. For example, Mulk Raj Anand, manages
to convey a Punjabi flavor through his English. R.K Narayan’s novels
breathe south Indian air. Raja Rao deals with Kannada-speaking
characters and nuances of their language and Bhabani Bhattacharya’s
English succeeds in recreating a Bengali rhythm. Kamala Markandaya
and Manohar Malgonakar do not associate themselves with the region
they represent and their English does not betray their own region. They
are as much at home in Standard English as any educated, cultured native
speaker.
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The major stylistic and linguistic experiments have been made in

the Indian English novels of this period can be noticed in diction or literal
translation of idioms, in syntax or in the structure of sentences. Further in
the use of dialogue, employment of rich images, presentation of more
modern and western devices as symbolism and irony, these novelists real
a distinctive character and different colouring.
We see a marked change in the technique of the novels written in
this period. The novelists writing before 1930 looked for their traditional
western models and were largely influenced by their British counter parts
in their concepts of plot, characterization, and other stylistic devices. But
the writers from 1930 to 1980 feel more attracted towards the latest
experiments in the field of the style and language. They have been
working hard to evolve more flexible English that would convey the
nuances of Indian life. The Indian English novelists, by using various
linguistic and stylistic devices, have succeeded in infusing the rhythm of
Indian languages into English and in conveying the Indian sensibility.
Their language items form Indian thought and imagery and acquire a
distinctive identity and suppleness. In the words of Prof. Gokak, Indian
English represents the evolution of a distinct standard, the body of which
is English but whose soul is Indian in colour, thought and imagery.
There are different opinions regarding this experimentation in the
style. Meenakshi Mukherjee states that the style is not integral to the
author’s point of view but something added to the material like “icing on
the cake or embroidery on a sari”. Further she writes: “No amount of
experimentation with style, no amount of conscious innovations will
succeed in fiction unless it has inevitability in the context of the particular
theme the novel deals with” (201).
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However, some of the writers like Raj Rao and Narayan have
succeeded in experimenting western form to convey the Indian essence or
Indian sensibility while confirming to the correctness of English usage.
One critic remarks that the English of the early writers was that of babus,
where as the English of later writers is that of Sahibs. An American writer
Allan Wendt points out that “the new Sahibs have produced writing that
can be judged by the best western standards”(quoted in
Riemenscheneider 10).Thus, it can be emphatically stated that Indian
English novelists of this period have enriched the English language
considerably by annexing to it new forms of expression, idioms, phrases,
imagery and symbols. The developments in theme and narrative
technique in this period forecast the future developments.
Indian English Fiction after 1980
Indian Writing in English witnessed a renaissance in 1980s. The
two cultural and literary events that led to the attempts of departing from
the preceding period way of writing are: The first one, Edward Said’s
theoretical deliberations in Orientalism was instrumental to the
emergence of the postcolonial discourse and the second one is the
publication of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children with departure
from the predominant realist mode of the Indian English novel practised
since the 1930s. Midnight’s Children is perhaps the most outstanding and
‘ground breaking’ novel of this period. It is a multifaceted narrative; it is
at once an autobiographical bildungsroman, a picaresque comedy, a
surrealist fantasy, a political and existential allegory, a political satire and
a stylistic experiment. Described by the author as a ‘sort of modern fairy
tale’, the narrative is an exciting blend of the natural and the supernatural,
political allegory and ethical implications.
   20

Such an epoch making work heralded the advent of a new

generation with remarkable fresh insights and abundant fecundity and
appearance of a certain post modern playfulness, the turn to history, an
exuberance of language, the reinvention of allegory, the sexual frankness,
even the prominent references to Bollywood, all seem to owe something
to Rushdie’s novel. As a result of this and a considerable degree of
orientation in the Indian world view there is a paradigm shift in Indian
English fiction’s theme and narrative strategies employed to objectify the
intended vision of life and world. The influence of Rushdie’s work is
acknowledged by critics and novelists alike. Shyam Asnani observes that
Midnight’s Children led to “the birth of a new kind of Indian English
novel moving from the portrayal of the contemporary socio-political
themes to the imaginative treatment of individual fantasies in the
mythic/archetypal, fabulist and satiric modes” (26).Paranjape has
remarked that it has really jolted the very foundation of the Indian
English novel. Anita Desai points out “Indian writing in the past was
characterized by recurring portrayals of stock-scenes, themes and
characters and a turn away from the circular to the linear narrative
structure under the influence of Western literature” yet recently in
“Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie wound the straight line of
narrative into a circle” while in Shame he “Mythologized still-living
people and turned events in living memory into fantastic legends” (26).
Besides, several other happenings in the literary circle around the world,
Midnight’s Children has changed the way of thinking of the Indian
English novelists. A flood of young writers delighted to return to the old
style of storytelling that was strangely the latest and ‘newest’ style.
Similarly the use of English by this new generation is a break away from
a literary language, towards the spoken language of the streets. Once
   21

again Anita Desai points out that Rushdie is leading the way followed by
“a long trial of imitators” (26). She is certain that their writing points to a
new beginning.
Thus, the work of Rushdie and other novelists writing away from
India could not easily be accommodated within the prevalent, nationalist
discourse. So, the idea of the ‘New’ Indian novel in English began to
make its gradual appearance in the late 1980s. Regarding this change
from ‘old’ novel to ‘new’ novel, Viney Kirpal remarks:
Here (New novel) there is a lack of the staidness, solemnity, and
self consciousness that once characterized the Indian novel. They
are uninhibited and cosmopolitan in their reach. Unlike the earlier
novels, they are neither idealistic nor are they sentimental. There is
a great determination to experiment with new forms and themes.
Politics- national and international- is their most important theme
and the displaced, marginal modern man is their favorite
protagonist. The writing is brisk, vigorous, racy, and irrepressible.
The novels express the deep urge of the protagonist to speak out
unfettered by restraints who virtually screams to be heard (quoted
in Riemenchnieider 27)
Nonetheless, the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ are not totally severed, since
the novelists of this period continue to employ techniques of traditional
Indian narrative: “episodicity; plotlessness; the story-within a story”, the
new novelists’ manner suggests “anarchy, disarray, dizzy dislocation”.
The examination of the opinions of many writers and critics reveals that
these radical changes are embedded in the economic, political and social
upheavals of the 1970’s. The new novel reflects “a recognizable change
in the national sensibility, expression and literary form”. Further, Viney
Kirpal points out: “The 1980s novel reflects as never before, the theme of
   22

the mixed Indian tradition. The controlling temper of the period is

synthesis, polymorphism where all religions, all communal groups
including the minorities have an important place” (27).
The study of the Indian English fiction after 1980 unfolds the
following changes in theme and narrative strategies. The first important
theme is these novelists go back to history. Even the early novelists also
went to history but objective of them was to portray the greatness and the
glory of our civilization. They are the revisionist historiographers. Due to
the impact of many literary social and political developments or changes
these new novelists feel ‘the reality is the matter of perspective’. In other
words they are skeptical about the recorded materials. They depict how
the historical events affected the lives of the individuals. They bring to
light the untold stories and subjects. They strongly believe that since the
history of postcolonial territories was, until recently, largely a narrative
constructed by the colonizers, its fictions and languages in which they are
written operate as a means of cultural control. Moreover, they read the
present through the present. They resort to history with the purpose of
finding its relevance to contemporaneity, to caricature the present
personalities, to allegorize, to record the unrecorded, to give voice to the
subaltern, to subvert it, to question the hegemony, to unfold the
constructedness of many ideas, concepts and truths, to interrogate the
concept of nation and finally to present their point of view through it.
Salman Rushdies Midnigh’s Children Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian
Novel. Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosomes are good examples
for this. “These post modern and post colonial writers seek to recast
history as a redefinable present rather than an irrevocably interpreted
past” (Helen Tiffin 170-176).
   23

The important thematic concern of these novelists is that from the

outset they have been attempting to establish or rehabilitate self against
either European appropriation or rejection. This establishing or
rehabilitation of an independent identity involves the radical interrogation
and fracturing of these imposed European perspectives and their
systematic replacement by an alternative vision or the attack on or
erosion of the very notion of system and hegemonic control itself. This
also involves the dismantling, demystification and unmasking of
European authority.
The writers of this period question the nature of unity. The issues
of imagining the nation and the fate of children of Midnight’s Children
have become pressing one. The present world is plagued by neo-colonial
catastrophe like economic disorder, social malaise, governmental
corruption state repression, the tension of conflicting philosophies and
incongruous forms of social behavior. All these crises are highlighted by
these novelists.
Due to poststructuralist influence novelists of this period bring
together the past, the present and the future to solve many tensions
prevailing in the present world. Also it is done to explore the residual
effects of foreign domination in the field of political, social and
economical spheres. These writers mix the imperial and colonial cultures.
This is done to convey the idea that this is the order of the day in the
globalized situation and to show the resistance to the idea of unity of
place. So, the actions in the novels of many novelists take place in
different places of the world. For instance Vikram Seth sets the scene of
his The Golden Gate in the U.S.A. and An Equal music in European
countries. In Amitav Ghosh’s The Circle of Reasons and The Glass
Palace, the actions take place in India, the U. S.A., Burma and Egypt.
   24

The fiction of this period reflects the cultural translations, cultural

dislocations, cultural crises and cultural degeneration. Hybridity,
heterogeneity and pluralism prevail everywhere. In Vikram Seth’s The
Golden Gate the characters are American, in An Equal Music, the
characters are British and in Jayadeep Roy Bhattacharya’s The Gabriel
club, the characters are mid European. Thus, the characters also have
become globalized.
Some of the major narrative devices the writers of this period
employ are non-linear plots, multiple narration, flash back and flash
forward, anti-heroes and heroines, more about common men, magic
realism, intertetxuality, mixed genres, story within story, chutnification
and so on. The discussion of some of these is as follows. These novelists
have widely traveled, acquainted with many Western theories and got
exposed to the consequences of modernism with more emphasis on
science and reason. In order to show their displeasure and to write back
resorted to “magic realism”, the style of combining ordinary events with
dream like events. These writers resorted to magic realism to tell their
own stories to the world, to decentre the centre, to bring the peripheries to
the centre and to reject the concepts of unity of time place and action. In
order to achieve this task they resorted to Indian traditions, beliefs,
legends, mythologies and folklore. Thus, this Indian mine is being
unearthed, familiarized to the West, written back and written home also.
The novelists of this period employ the device of intertextuality.
They believe that all texts are free to swim with their linguistic or literary
or generic companions, in a sea of intertextuality in which previously
accepted distinctions between them hardly mattered. Meaning of a work
is perceived better when it is red in relation to other texts. Through this
technique these writers dismantle the binaries, hierarchy of disciplines.
   25

The novelists of this period mainly depict metropolises, their

inhabitants, their problems, plights, culture and their way of life. The
reason for this is that “the nation itself has moved from the village
centrism of the Gandhian era to the city centrism of the post-Nehru
period” (Mee 320). Some critics, however, believe that Indian writers in
English have taken advantage of this trend to retreat into metropolitan or
cosmopolitan elitism which produces literature intended only for the
English-reading privileged classes within India or the international public
outside.
The very striking aspect of the Indian English fiction after 1980 is
the playfulness in the use of language. The novelists before 1930s were
very much meticulous and conscious in using English. Because firstly
most of them were writing after mastering that language, secondly they
were writing to English readers. The novelists of the period from 1930s to
1980 started experimenting with use of English and many of these writers
stayed abroad for at least some period got mastery over it and it became
possible to experiment. The writers of this period used Indian words,
phrases, idioms, proverbs and sometimes translated words from the
regional language into English. All this was done by these writers to
establish Indian identity, to convey the Indian sensibility through it and to
give the Indian ‘tang’ and ‘colour’ to the language.
The novelists after 1980 have also experimented with the use of
English. But here the objective is entirely different. Fist of all, the
experimentation with use of English is not at all a problem for these
writers because many of them have learnt it from the birth and now it has
become one of Indian languages. The writer of this period uses the
regional language words neither to establish the regional identity nor to
privilege one language over the other. The novelists of this period feel
   26

that “The Indian ‘tang’ is not a pure essence but the masala mix of culture
that has always been able to appropriate influences from outside. Indian
identity lies in the chutnification not in the distinct language” (Mee 321).
Again this experimentation with the English language strategy is used to
decolonize, to dismantle the hegemonic structures to show the distrust
and finally to convey the idea of cultural translation, cultural dislocation,
cultural weightlessness, cultural crisis, hybridity, identity crisis and
multiple identities.
Indian Women Writers in English
The first major women writer is Kamala Markandaya who is an
immigrant writer, her ten novels present remarkable range of characters
from poor peasant women in Nectar in Sieve, through the urban poor of A
Handful of Rice to the higher class in The Golden honey comb. The
conflict between tradition and modernity, East and West runs through all
of her novels. She also throws light on how the development is
amounting to a kind of neo-colonialism and racial prejudice, of which she
has first-hand experience, against, Indian emigrants in Britain.
The next major woman writer is Nayantara Sahagal. Her novels
reveal a close acquaintance with the political elite, major political and
national events which form the background to each her eight novels. Her
novels present the life of the richest sections of Indian society, their
hypocrisy and shallow values. At the same time she is concerned with the
Indian heritage and its value for the educated Indian. A Time to Happy
articulates the problem of identity faced by the English-educated elite and
exploration of the fate of women within domestic sphere. Her later novels
Rich Like us, Plans for Departure, and Mistaken Identity depict the slow
erosion of values among both civil servants and people at large.
   27

Another important woman novelist is Anita Desai, if Shahagal

depicts political circumstance, Kamala Markandaya social circumstance,
Anita Desai concentrates on the psychology of her women characters.
She believes writing is a process of discovering truth, the truth is nine-
tenth of the ice-berg that lies submerged beneath the one tenth visible
portion we call reality. She says her novels are no reflection of Indian
Society, politics or characters. Anita Desai depicts very confidently the
plight of educated upper-middle class women. Desai’s westernized,
educated women protagonists seem to have the luxury of freedom of
choice but deeper analysis reveals them to be frustrated and emotionally
dependent. Her characters range from daughter, young wife, middle aged
wife, mother, to grandmother. All these women tend to be fragile
introverts. Most of her novels reveal the breakdown of relationships
material or familial. In later novels In Custody and Baumgartner’s
Bombay, Anita Desai has switched over to male centered plots. Anita
Desai’s novels are experimentations in the latest narrative techniques. Her
novels are marvelous presentation of the fever and fretfulness of the
stream of consciousness of her principal characters. Anita Desai has
found it necessary to explore the inner as well as the out climate and to
disperse the narration in the flow of several sensibilities. The Cry the
Peacock consists almost entirely of Maya’s interior monologue. It is a
brilliant impressionistic novel. For the stream of consciousness technique
Anita Desai indebted to the pioneering attempts of Proust, Virginia Woolf
and James Joyce.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is another woman writer whether she is an
Indian writer or not is an interesting problem. But in an interview she
herself has said that she should not be considered as Indian writer, but
one of the European writers who have written about India. She has
   28

written many short stories and about twelve novels. The important theme
of her work is reactions of the westernized protagonist and their
conventional Indian families to the subject of arranged marriage and
romantic love.
The major women writers who have started writing after 1980s are
Shashi Depshapande, Gita Hiraharan, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai.
When their counterpart novelists after 1980s assert that they have a right
to rewrite national history, these women writers also claim that they have
their own say about what constitutes the nation. Shashi Deshapande is a
leading writer dealing with situation of women in urban, middle class in
her The Dark Holds No Terror, Roots and Shadow, That Long Silence
and Small Remedies. The Binding Vine depicts fears, hopes and
uncertainties of an urban middle class consciousness. Here she has
recorded the unrecorded and translation acts as a metaphor to signify the
gaps. She employs a kind of stream of consciousness technique. Her
characters and situation are presented in a realistic mode.
Gita Hariharan is another important woman writer who does show
interest in experimentation, her A Thousand Faces of Nights and The
Ghosts of Vasu Master are concerned with rewriting folktales and
children stories. She insists the necessity of reconstruction from the
dismantled parts of various ideas, beliefs and models because those are
our inheritance. Traditions, beliefs and folklore should not be considered
as mean, irrelevant, outdated and closed. But indeed they are tested
truths, relevant, useful, vibrant and open source for writing about present
needs.
Arundathi Roy is another important woman writer, who employs
post modern and post colonial devices like magic realism, allegory and
goes back to history, myths and traditions. She focuses on the identity
   29

crisis and records the unrecorded. In her Man Booker Prize winning novel
The God of small Things, places her heroine, in the context of traditional
Hindu narratives. Her divorcee heroine struggles hard against the fate laid
out by convention. This novel provides a powerful imaginative statement
of the way people can find themselves ‘trapped outside’ their own
history. She also records the dislocations between the ‘Small God’ of
individual lives and the ‘Big God’ of the nation.
Some of the common themes run through most the novels of these
women writers are the discrimination against the daughter, the silence of
women, no recognition of their talent, conflict between modernity and
tradition, East and West and the lack of communication between the
sexes.
A number of women novelists have made their debut in the
nineties. Their first novels are quite effective in revealing the true state of
Indian society when it comes to the treatment of women. All these writers
were born after independence and English does not have any colonial
associations for them. Their work is marked by an impressive feel for the
language and authentic presentation of contemporary India, with all its
regional variations. Generally they write about the urban middle class the
stratum of society they belong and know best.
The Emigrant/ Diaspora Writers
English language writers from the erstwhile British and French
Colonies in the last thirty years (1980 onwards) have become migratory
birds flying away from their home land to U.K. or USA for occupation,
international recognition and fame. For one reason or the other they
choose not to return home. As a result they face the problem of identity
both for themselves and their writings. How are they to be labeled as
writers? – Indian, African, Caribbean etc. Again what should be the
   30

nomenclature of their writing? Indian English literature, African

literature, Sri Lankan literature and so on. As a result of this question
these writers are addressed differently in postcolonial terms- expatriate,
immigrant, exile, immigrant, diaspora, these terms are often overlapping
and confusing.
Expatriate writer is one who voluntarily leaves the country to promote
his/her career and keeps the option open to return home. A K Ramanujan,
Raja Rao, Meena Alexander, Kiran Desai belong to this category.
Emigrant or immigrant writer is one who leaves the country and
settles abroad permanently. Bharati Mukherjee, Rohintan Mistry, Salman
Rushdie belong to the category.
The diasporic writers are those whose ancestors have left for another
country V.S.Naipal belongs to this category. V.S.Naipal is for us a
diasporic writer but for Caribbean’s an emigrant writer. Salman Rushdie
can also be treated as a writer in exile for almost a decade. Moreover,
there are some writers who divide their time between UK, USA and their
home land. To this category belong many African, Caribbean and Indian
Writers. Names of Anita Desai, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram
Chandra, can be cited in the context
The question what are the themes these writers work on is curious
one, in spite of living in a different country. Firstly, it is about their
former home lands and its culture. It is argued most expatriate writers
have a weak grasp of actual conditions of contemporary India. And tend
to recreate it through the lens of nostalgia, writing about “imaginary
homelands” (to use Rushdie’s Phrase). Ramanujan wrote more about
India remaining in the USA. Kiran Desai writes about Darjeeling in her
Man Booker Prize Award winning novel, The Inheritance of Loss.
   31

These Emigrant or diasporic writers are always conscious of their

identity. What Chinua Achebe said in an interview with Kwame Anthony
Appiah in 1982 seems to be valid for all categories of English language
writers (exiles, emigrants, expatriates, and diasporas). “I am an Ibo writer
because this is my basic culture; Nigerian, African and a writer….. no,
black first, then a writer. Each of these identities does call for certain kind
of commitment on my part. I must see what is to be black- and this means
being sufficiently intelligent to know how the world is moving and how
the black people fare in this world. This is what it means to be black or an
African, what does it mean to a white man” (Innes 208). This signifies
the necessity of being conscious about one’s self, culture and country.
V S Naipaul in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech declared that this
prize was tribute to the country of his living (UK) and the country of my
ancestors (India); this is a clear example of a writer seeking a double
audience. They deliberately keep the term ‘post-colonial’ to describe their
writings, so that they can appeal to the readers of both the worlds.
Most postcolonial writers are under the spell of migration. They
feel that one has to be away from one’s own country to understand it
better from outside and at the same time, to understand other territories a
new.
There are some critics who comment that the writing of these
writers is not authentic and not rooted in the soil, time and space. But the
writer like Ramanujan denied this; he says “I have done a lot of work on
India since coming to this country (USA). I have done it more
comfortably here than I could have done it in India” (52).In the same
interview Ramanujan opines that “if colonization affected our own
indigenous language, culture and literature, English has helped us fight
against the colonizers. English has been the ‘other’ through which we
   32

have returned to ourselves, it has taught us to be self critical and made us

critical of English” (79). Thus, it is clear that these writers write back to
the homeland and to the centre (former colonizer). There is a good deal of
debates over the status of the emigrant writings. It is not like the mythical
Shakuntala disowned by both the parents. On the contrary, the emigrants
have endeared themselves both to the natives of their former home land
and the country of their new home. But it is viewed these writers have
rewritten particular works from the English canon.
Apart from these themes the emigrant writers have brought a sea
change in the use of English language in their texts. They have made the
use of English language flexible in their fiction one instance from
Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children will suffice. The novel begins with the
first person narrative. “I was born in the city of Bombay…… on the
stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms in
respectful greeting as I come. Oh, spell it out; spell it out, at the precise
instant of India’s arrival at independence. I tumbled forth into the
world…. And there are so many stories to tell, too-many, such an excess
of intertwined lives events miracles places rumors, so dense a
commingling of the improbable and the mundane” (9). The diasporic
literature represents displacement and its consequences like
unhomeliness, identity crisis, hybridity and ambivalence and their
contributions to their home countries. Thus the emigrant or diasporic
writing has also contributed to the renaissance of Indian English fiction
during this period.
Amitav Ghosh and his Achievements
Amitav Ghosh is one of the prominent, popular Indian novelists in
English in the contemporary context. He is a prolific writer so far he has
written eight novels, three non-fiction works and several scholarly
   33

articles. Most of his novels have won national and international literary
awards. His works have gained critical acclaim across the world. Ghosh
has acquired a unique place among the Indian English novelists. When
we examine the great works of great writers like Raja Rao’s The Serpent
and the Rope, G V Desani’s All About H Hatter, Salman Rushdie’s
Midnight’s Children, and Aurundati Roy’s The God of small Things the
fact what Raj Rao said in an interview, “Everything one writes is
autobiographical” (Brierre 26) is true. It underpins the necessity of
knowing the life, achievements and background of an author. Hence a
brief account of Amitav Ghosh’s life, his contributions, major concerns
and position among the Indian English novelists is provided below.
Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta on 11 July 1956. Asked about
the personal experiences that had been most influential on his writing,
Ghosh has spoken of the city as “A kind of constant that runs through all
my books the centre of my imaginative world” (Pier Paolo Piciucco 253).
His father was a Lieutenant Colonel in the army and his assignments
meant that during his youth Ghosh spent time in Sri Lanka, Iran and East
Pakistan (later Bangladesh), while being based at boarding school in
India. Much of his writing focuses on families and one branch of his own
family lived in Burma (Myanmar), a connection which he has traced, in
fictional form, in The Glass Palace, particularly drawing on the
experience of his uncle, the timber-merchant Jagat Chandra Dutta.
Ghosh attended Doon school in Dehra Dun and one of New Delhi’s
most illustrious educational institutions, St.Stephen’s College during a
period when, India was in the high noon of nationalist self confidence of
a kind that was to vanish just a few years later. Several of his fellow-
students later achieved prominence as novelists or as figures in Subaltern
Studies movement. After leaving St.Stephen’s with a B.A. in History in
   34

1976, he obtained an M.A. in Sociology from the University of Delhi in

1978.
He received a diploma in Arabic from the Institute Bourguiba des
Langues Vivantes, in Tunis, Tunisia, 1979. He went to St.Edmund’s Hall,
Oxford University to do post graduate work. As a part of that course, in
1980 he went to Egypt to do the field work for his doctoral research under
the auspices of the Faculty of Arts, University of Alexandria. He was
awarded his D.Phil in social Anthropology for his thesis on “Kinship in
Relation to Economic and social organization of an Egyptian Village
Community” in 1982. In his later ethnographical work In an Antique
Land, the central figure is a researcher who has obvious affinities with
Ghosh can be read as a companion –piece to the thesis. He worked for a
while as a journalist for the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi.
Since then he has been a visiting Fellow at The centre for social sciences,
at Trivandrum, Kerala (1982-83). A visiting professor of Anthropology at
the university of Virginia (1988), the University of Pennsylvania (1989),
the American university of Cairo (1994), and Columbia University (1994-
97) and Distinguished Professor of Comparative literature at Queens
College of the City University of New York (1999-2003). In the spring of
2004, he was Visiting Professor in the department of English at Harvard
University. He spends part of each year in Kolkata, but lives in New York
with his wife, Deborah Baker, an editor at Little Brown and Company
and their children, Leela and Nayan.
He has to his credit the following works, The Circle of Reason
(1986) received Prix Medici’s Estranger Award, The Shadow Lines
(1988) awarded with the Sahitya Academy Award. In an Antique Land:
History in the Guise of a Traveler’s Tale (1994), a blend of several
genres. The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium, and
   35

Discovery (1995) awarded with the Arthur C Clarke prize for Science
Fiction. Dancing in Cambodia At Large in Burma (1998) and Countdown
(1999) consist of scholarly articles on present world scenario. The Glass
Palace (2002) awarded with the Grand Prize for Fiction at the Frankfurt
E- Book Award. In fact for this work Ghosh was awarded with the best
work award for the Eurasian region of the Commonwealth Writers Prize
but he declined it objecting the classification of commonwealth literature.
The Hungry Tide (2004) bagged the Hutch crossword book award 2004.
The Sea of Poppies (2008) was short listed for the Man Booker Prize-
2008. His recent novel is The River of Smoke (2011). Besides, these
Ghosh has written many scholarly articles.
Since he is a studious student of history his novels reflect historic
sensibility. As John Thieme points out he is a revisionist historiographer.
For him past is not something dead or remote but it is still present. He
attempts to read and understand present through past and visa versa. So,
he takes up a historical event, dwells upon it from different perspective to
throw light on the impact of that on the individuals’ lives, families and
nation. His opinion exemplifies this. He says, “My essential interest is in
people and their lives, histories and predicaments” (Hawley 7).
The important theme that unfolds through Ghosh’s novels is
blurring of divisions. He criticizes the dubious nature of borders, between
nations and peoples and between literary genres. The boundaries have led
to communal, cultural, linguistic and racial clashes and bloodshed. These
affect not only individuals but affect nations also. So, it is the need of the
hour to think about boundaries that divide people. Ghosh expresses his
opinion regarding boundaries in these words: “what interested me first
about borders was their arbitrariness, their constructedness. I think these
lines are drawn in order to manipulate our ways of thought that is why
   36

they must be disregarded” (Hawley 9). Like Edward Said, Ghosh draws
attention to the artificiality of the East-West binaries of Orientalism.
Boundaries are to be interrogated in order to dismantle the hierarchy of
classes, castes, cultures, religions and nations.
Ghosh provides space for the subalterns. So in most of his novels
the protagonists are often orphans or from down trodden castes and
classes. Otherwise those voices would have gone unheard. His works
display an abiding concern for what Gayathri Spivak and other have
discussed as the voice of the “subaltern”. In an interview Ghosh says “I
Think I share some of the concerns of the Subaltern Studies group
because I am from the some milieu as many of the group members” (12).
So, Ghosh endeavors to recuperate the silenced voices of those occluded
from the historical record. In most of his novels this is revealed. Alu in
The Circle of Reason, Mangala and Lakkhan in The Calcutta
Chromosome, Bomma in In an Antique Land, Rajkumar and Dolly in The
Glass Palace, Fokir and Moyna in The Hungry Tide are the marginalized
characters. Ghosh portrays the potential in these characters and the need
to provide opportunities to these people. He does not indulge in bashing
India. Rather he exposes lapses of both the orient and the occident. His
works unearth local values, cultures, stories, and legends which remained
earthed and unheard till these days. So reading of his novels reminds us
of Keats’s words unheard melodies are sweeter than heard melodies. His
novels evoke a sense of pride and pleasure among the readers in generals
and Indians in particular. While depicting the subaltern characters; he
empathizes with his characters, so they move us along with their
movements. Moreover he has a humanist concern to transcend culturally
constructed differences.
   37

The other postcolonial theme that underpins so many of others is

that Ghosh brings to light how harmonious living existed in the past
between colonized countries. In an Antique Land depicts the cultural and
commercial exchange between South Asian and Middle East countries.
Indian relationship with Egypt is depicted in The Circle of Reason and
The Calcutta Chromosome. John Skinner writes Ghosh’s concern is “not
only with colonizers and colonized, but with both historical and
contemporary relations between different colonized groups. Not so, much
‘The empire Writes back’ then as ‘the empire writes home” (17). In the
context when the communal riots are common in South Asia, these
relationships are of great significance.
Ghosh’s novels offer a wide range of knowledge. Using the device
of intertextuality Ghosh provides knowledge of various subjects. The
Circle of Reason provides the knowledge of phrenology and weaving.
The Calcutta Chromosome provides information about malarial history.
The Glass Palace supplies information about how teak wood is cut and
transported along the river currents first and then with elephants. The
Hungry Tide presents the vivid picture of Sundarban. In the interview he
says “I am deeply interested in the methods of knowledge and in our own
ways of knowing. This is, as you rightly point out, one of the central
themes of in my work” (Hawley 14). So in most of his novels several
local myths are interwoven which acquaint the readers with traditional
cultures and practices.
Ghosh’s novels reflect his engagement with various, political,
social, and cultural issues that most of colonized countries face in the
present context. His novels display the postcolonial themes like colonial
encounter, its impact on social, economic, political and cultural life of the
colonized countries, exploitation by the colonizers, construction of the
   38

Other, construction of binaries to further their interests, placing of Others’

values, cultures, systems in the lower order of hierarchy, imposition of
the Western thoughts and theories on the colonies and projection of the
West as best in all respects. They also deal with resistance to Eurocentric
ideologies, re-reading or re-visiting of colonial discourses, replacing these
with indigenous values, and cultures, subversion of the grand narratives,
and decentering the centre. He brings together past, present and future to
address many of the central concerns that are troubling contemporary
consciences. Among them, the construction of cultural difference, the
interaction of traditional and modern, technologies and discourses, the
tension between the Eastern and the Western value system and the merits
and demerits of globalization. The globalization has led to displacement,
hybridity, ambivalence, diaspora, unhousedness, and plurality of
identities. As literature is the mirror of the society postcolonial writers
deal with these themes.
Being a social anthropologist Ghosh employs family as a form in
his novels. As family is the pivotal unit of the society major events in
most of his novels interwoven around the families.
Each one of his novels is different from the other. His novels do
not present a world of fantasy; instead they present a world of complex
reality. Before writing any novel he undertakes lot of research then he
writes, so his works are conscious creations. Ghosh has spoken of the
pleasure he derives from dealing with documents. In author’s note to The
Glass Palace he says that he has done five year preparation in collecting
the materials, meeting people and visiting the places. The research which
he under took to write In an Antique Land has not only supplied material
to this novel it has helped Egypt to revisit and recover its history.
   39

When the survey of Indian Fiction in English is done, it is found

that most of the writers’ themes and techniques employed in their novels
are stereotype. Based on this they can be branded as realist,
postmodernist, postcolonialist, feminst and so on. But Amitav Ghosh is
not like that his every novel is different from the earlier one. The Circle
of Reason is a postmodernist novel, proves him to be the first child of
Midnight’s Children. The Shadow Lines is entirely different focusing on
the impact of an historical event on individual’s life; it is narrated in a
nostalgic manner. In an Antique Land is a blend of autobiography,
travellogue, history, and anthropology. It is a reading of the present
through past. The Calcutta Chromosome is a science fiction. The Glass
Palace depicts the impact of colonial rule on a royal family,
displacement, cultural translations, identity crisis and it is a chronicle of
life. The Hungry Tide depicts the life of subaltern and the impact of
imposing western ideology. Thus every novel is different and he can not
be narrowed down to any group that he does not like also. Therefore he is
considered a canonical writer and themes and techniques of his novels
have become literary touchstones. Thus, he is different from his
contemporaries, though shares some aspects. Therefore, Ghosh has a
unique place in the Indian Writings in English.
This uniqueness of Ghosh and of his works prompted me to take
interest in Ghosh works. Though some work has been done on Ghosh’s
novels from broad perspectives like postcolonial and postmodern
perspectives taking individual novels, but the detailed work by selecting
all novels and by narrowing down the perspective to one particular aspect
of postcolonialism has not been found. Hence, I have taken up the
detailed study of six novels of Amiatav Ghosh under the title of
   40

“Thematic Concerns and Narrative Strategies in the Novels of Amitav

Ghosh”.
Only the following novels of Amitav Ghosh are taken up for
analysis in the present study: The Circle of Reason (1986), The Shadow
Lines (1988), In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler’s
Tale (1994), The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium,
and Discovery (1995), The Glass Palace (2002), and The Hungry Tide
(2004). The other two recently published novels Sea of Poppies (2008)
and The River of Smoke (2011) are not included in the study scheme
because they are published after the registration for PhD and were not
included in the original research proposal. But a brief note on them is
included here to have a comprehensive understanding of his novels. This
is followed by division of the thesis.
Sea of Poppies (2008)
Amitav Ghosh has established himself as a writer of uncommon
talent who combines literary flair with a rare seriousness of purpose. The
publication of Sea of Poppies marked both a departure and an arrival. The
novel was his first to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Sea of
Poppies (2008) is the first volume in a projected trilogy. It is set in north
India and the Bay of Bengal in 1838 on the eve of the British attack on
the Chinese ports known as the first opium war. In this novel Ghosh
assembles from different corners of the world sailors, marines and
passengers for the Ibis, a slaving schooner now converted to the transport
of coolies and opium. In bringing his troupe of characters to Calcutta and
into the open water, Ghosh provides the reader with all manner of stories.
The readers are introduced to Deeti, soon to be widowed; her addicted
husband, who works at the British opium factory at Ghazipur; and Kaua,
a low-caste carter of colossal strength and resource. Moving down
   41

stream, we meet a bankrupt landowner, Raja Neel Rattan; an American

sailor, Zachary; Paulette, a young Frenchwoman, and Bengali foster-
brother Jodu; Benjamin Burnham, an unscrupulous British merchant, and
his Bengali agent, Baboo Nob Kissin; and every style of nautch girl,
sepoy and lascar.On their way to “the black sea”, these characters are
exposed to a suttee or widow burning, a shipboard mutiny, a court case,
jails, kidnappings, rapes, floggings, a dinner party and every refinement
of sex. Sea of Poppies ended amidst a raging storm, rocking the triple-
masted schooner, the Ibis, and its colourful array of seamen, convicts and
labourers sailing forth in the course of transforming their lives.
Ghosh has interwoven two great economic themes of the 19th
century: the cultivation of opium as cash crop in Bengal and Bihar for the
Chinese market, and the transport of Indian indentured workers to cut
sugar canes for the British on such islands as Mauritius, Fiji and Trinidad.
Like his other novels, this novel also unfolds several postcolonial
dimensions. Ghosh provides space for the subaltern, depicts colonizer’s
exploitation of human and natural resources, migration, displacement and
as New Statesman remarks: “Sea of Poppies is bathed in rich vernacular”.
River of Smoke (2011)
River of Smoke is the second volume of a proposed trilogy. The
first Sea of Poppies takes us along the Ganges and to Calcutta, where the
poppies are grown and the opium processed. River of Smoke follows the
story through to Canton in China, where the opium is sold. The Chinese
authorities are trying to prevent illegal imports of the drug which has
inflicted a plague of addiction on the Chinese population while making
fortunes for the irrepressibly shameless trades, mostly British. We now
learn that two other vessels have also been caught up in a similar (or
perhaps the same?) storm: the Anahita, a sumptuously-built cargo vessel
   42

owned by the Bombay Parsi merchant Bahram Modi and carrying his
biggest shipment of raw opium for sale in Canton, and the Redruth, a
Cornish vessel with a cargo of unusual flora on which sails a Cornish
botanist looking for rare plants, especially the mythical golden camellia,
in China. A handful of characters from the previous volume re-emerge
from the Ibis, notably the Bengal-raised orphan Paulette, who
accompanies the botanist Penrose, and the dispossessed raja, Neel, who
signs on as Modi’s munshi.
At the end of Sea of Poppies, the clouds of war were looming, as
British opium interests in India pressed for the use of force to compel the
Chinese mandarins to keep open their ports, in the name of free trade.
River of Smoke develops this theme. Bahram Modi is importing a huge
consignment of Indian opium that he hopes will make his family’s
fortune once and for all, and liberates him from the status of poor son-in-
law of a rich family. But he is also exploring an alternative life in Canton,
free from the rigid strictures of Bombay’s social hierarchies. Here he is
the successful entrepreneur, the only Indian member of the Committee of
the Western-led Chamber of Commerce in Canton and the lover of a
Chinese boatwoman, Chi-Mei, through whom he has fathered a son he
cannot acknowledge.
The author’s sympathies are largely with the Chinese, though it is
impossible for the Indian reader to escape identifying with Bahram, a
man of great but flawed humanity who inspires profound loyalty from his
staff. The British traders’ hypocritical and self-justifying espousal of the
doctrine of free trade in high-minded rhetoric is something else. “It is not
my hand”, pronounces the British opium trader Burnham, “that passes
sentence upon those who choose the indulgence of opium. It is the work
   43

of another invisible, omnipotent; it is the hand of freedom; of the market,

of the spirit of liberty itself, which is none other than the breath of God”.
Ghosh’s purpose is clearly both literary and political. His narrative
represents a prodigious feat of research; the readers are struck by the
wealth of period detail the author commands. Yet there is nothing
artificial about this historical novel; he immerses readers in its period till
it seems real enough to be contemporary. Many writers have placed the
white man at the centre of their narratives; Ghosh relegates his colonists
to the margins of his story, giving pride place to the neglected subjects-
impoverished and usually non-white victims. Ghosh portrays his
characters with integrity and dignity. He is particularly good at
representing the distinctive voices of his characters; what sometimes
seemed forced in the earlier book is natural and convincing in this one,
exquisitely reproducing the new hybrid language resulting from the
mongrel mating of tongues. Despite the varied nationalities of his
characters, the Indian reader can be left in little doubt about the author’s
basic allegiance. This is an Indian novel, but one written by a 21st-
century Indian, one who is both cosmopolitan and conscious of his
heritage.
Fungtai Hong, where Indians are based, vividly evokes the other
world into which they have been transposed: “a world in itself, with its
own foods and words, rituals and routines”, where Indians of motley
origins, hailing from different regions, speaking different languages and
ruled by different political dispensations, come together into a
consciousness of their Indianness. “At home, it would not have occurred
to them to imagine that they might have much in common — but here,
whether they liked it or not, there was no escaping those commonalities.”
With this trilogy, Ghosh has come a long way from the magic realism of
   44

his first novel. River of Smoke is written in an almost old-fashioned style,

its prose straightforward and unadorned, its emotions deeply affecting.
His trilogy is emerging, two-thirds of the way through, as a monumental
tribute to the pain and glory of an earlier era of globalisation — an era
when people came into contact and collision, intermixing costumes,
customs, convictions, consonants, couplings and cash.
Ghosh’s both these novels serve a larger cause, the reclaiming of a
story appropriated for too long by its villains — those who, centuries ago,
conquered (or imposed their will on) foreign lands, subjugated and
displaced their peoples, replaced their agriculture with cash-crops that
caused addiction and death, thrust addictive poisons on them for profit
and enforced all this with the power of the gun masked by a rhetoric of
civilization and divine purpose.
The division of the thesis is as follows:
Chapter I- “Indian English Fiction after 1980” deals with a brief
note on Indian English fiction with more focus on Indian English fiction
after 1980, an introduction to Amitav Ghosh, his works, achievements,
his career, major themes of his works and objectives of the thesis.
Chapter II, “The Concept of Narrative Technique” deals with the
concept of narrative, importance of narrative technique, major narrative
devices and their trajectory and their role in realizing the objectives.
Chapter III- “Postcolonialism and Amitav Ghosh”, deals with
definition of postcolonialism, origin, nature, scope and development of
postcolonialism, major contributors to postcolonialism, different
dimensions and limitations of postcolonialism, and Amitav Ghosh as a
postcolonialist.
Chapter IV- “Interrogation of Science in The Circle of Reason and
The Calcutta Chromosome”. In The Circle of Reason Ghosh interrogates
   45

the civilizing and ameliorating objectives Western science, imposing of

othering ideologies; he deconstructs the grand narrative; he depicts the
relativeness, destructive and dichotomizing nature of Western science,
and unifying and relative value of Eastern sciences. The Calcutta
Chromosome interrogates the authenticity of Ronald Ross’s discovery of
malaria parasite and constructed dichotomies. It provides agency to
colonial subaltern.
Chapter V- “Blurring of Boundaries in The Shadow Lines and In an
Antique Land”. The Shadow Lines blurs the constructed physical,
religious, racial, linguistic and cultural boundaries which divide people
and their implications. In an Antique Land highlights the absence of these
boundaries and harmonious living in the twelfth century and relative
value of the past in relation to the present. It is a reading of the past
through present and visa versa.
Chapter VI- “The Theme of Dislocation in The Glass Palace and
The Hungry Tide”. The Glass Palace displays political, economic,
religious, cultural, linguistic, and physical dislocations brought about by
colonial occupation. The Hungry Tide deals with the dislocation of
refugees by the colonial minded governments and the dislocation of
inhabitants of tide country by the hungry tides.
The “Conclusion” sums up the major theme in each chapter and its
relevance in the contemporary context. It also provides a brief note on
other themes found in the selected novels of Ghosh and possibilities of
further research.
   46

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