Dominant Figures of
Indian Writing in English
Name:
Rajyaguru Ravi
Semester : 01
Roll
No : 32
Paper
No : 4
Enrolment
No: PG15101032
Email
ID : rajyagururavi24@gmail.com
Year : 2015-17
Submitted
To: Department Of English
Maharaja
Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Introduction
Indian
English Literature is an honest enterprise to demonstrate ever the gems of
Indian writing in English. Indian writing in English has commended unstinted
admiration in both home and abroad. India’s substantial contribution to world
literature is largely due to the profusely creative literary works generated by
Indian Novelist in English.
The seed of Indian writing in English was sown
during the period of the British rule in India.now the seed has blossomed into
an ever green tree, fragrant flower and ripe fruits. The fruits are being
tasted not only by the native people but they are also being chewed and
digested by the foreigners. It happened only after the constant caring ,
pruning and feeding .Gardeners’ like R.k Narayan, Raja Rao, Tagore, Sri
Aurbindo , Mulkraj Anand etc.
AurobindoGhosh
He was a freedom fighter, poet, scholar, yogi and
philosopher. Worked towards the cause of India’s freedom, and for further
evolution of life on earth. AurobindoGhose was a multifaceted person. He
was a freedom fighter, poet, scholar, yogi and philosopher. He spent his life
working towards the cause of India’s freedom, and for further evolution of life
on earth. Sri AurobindoGhosh was born on August 15, 1872 at Calcutta. His
father was Krishnadhan and his mother was Swamalata. AurobindoGhose had an
impressive lineage.
His
object was not to develop any religion or establish a new faith or an order but
to attempt an inner self-development by which each human being can perceive the
oneness in all and procure an elevated consciousness that will externalize the
god-like attributes in man.
Aurobindo
left behind a substantial body of enlightening literature. His major works include “The
Life Divine”, “The Synthesis of Yoga”, Essays on the “Gita”,
“Commentaries on the Isha Upanishad”, Powers Within— all dealing
with the intense knowledge that he had gained in the practice of Yoga. Many
these appeared in his monthly philosophical publication, the “Arya”,
which appeared regularly for 6 years until 1921.
His
other books are “The Foundations of Indian Culture”,
“The
Ideal of Human Unity”, “The Future Poetry”, “The Secret of the Veda”, “The
Human Cycle”. Among students of English literature, Aurobindo is
mainly known for“Savitri”,
a great epical work of 23,837 lines directing man towards the Supreme Being.
Sarojini
Naidu
Sarojini
Naidu also known by the sobriquet The Nightingale of India, was a
child prodigy, Indian independence activist and poet. Naidu was the first
Indian woman to become the President of the Indian National Congress and the
first woman to become the Governor of Uttar Pradesh state.
Sarojini
Naidu was a brilliant student. She was proficient in Urdu, Telugu, English,
Bengali, and Persian. At the age of twelve, Sarojini Naidu attained national
fame when she topped the matriculation examination at Madras University. Her
father wanted her to become a mathematician or scientist but Sarojini Naidu was
interested in poetry.
Sarojini
Naidu as poet
The
Nightingale of India, Sarojini Naidu was a prolific writer and poet. The first
volume of her poetries The Golden Threshold was published
in 1905, after which two more collections The Bird of Time and The
Broken Wing arrived in 1912 and 1917 respectively. Meanwhile in 1916,
she authored and published a biography of Muhammad Ali Jinnah entitled as The
Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity. Other acclaimed poems that came following are
The
Wizard Mask and A Treasury of Poems. Other selected
works written by her include The Magic Tree and The
Gift of India. She was given the name Bharat Kokila on account of the
beautiful and rhythmic words of her poems that could be sung as well.
Henry
Derozio
Henry
Louis Vivian Derozio, born in April 18,
1809, Calcutta, Indiaad died Dec. 26,
1831, Calcutta, poet and assistant headmaster of Hindu College,
Calcutta, a radical thinker and one of the first Indian educators to
disseminate Western learning and science among the young men of Bengal.
The
son of an Indian father and an English mother, Derozio was influenced by the
English Romantic poets. He began publishing patriotic verses when he was 17,
which brought him to the attention of the intellectual elite of Calcutta. In
1826 he was appointed instructor at Hindu College, where his reportedly
brilliant teaching influenced his students and won him their loyalty.
As
a Poet
Derozio
idolized Byron, modeling many of his poems in the romantic vein. Much of his
poetry reflects native Indian stories, told in the Victorian style. The Fakeer
of Jungheera(1828) is a long lyrical poem, abundant in descriptions of
the region around Bhagalpur. The melancholy narrative involves a religious
mendicant, who saves his erstwhile lover from satihood, but comes to a romantic
end fighting her pursuers.
Among
his short poems, there are several ballads, such as The Song of theHindustanee
Minstrel:
"Dildar! There's
many a valued pearl
In richest Oman's sea;
But none, my fair
Cashmerian girl!
O! none can rival
thee."
His other works like The
Harp Of India, To My Native Land, A Walk By Moonlight, and Going
Into Darkness.
Rabindranath
Tagore was the MultiDimensional figure of the india He was a Poet, Dramatist,
actor, producer; he was a musician and a painter; he was an educationalist, a
practical idealistic who turned his dreams into reality at Shantiniketan he was
a performer, philosopher, Prophet; he was a novelist and short story writer,
and a Critic of life and literature.
Tagore
as the Playwright, A play needs a plot, even as a house needs a farm structure.
Tagore could start the play, strike the opening chords, name the character, and
memory and imagination would do the rest. Not logic of careful plotting but the
Music of ideas and symbols is the Soul of Drama. Tagore also wrote number of
plays and some of them are under…..
His
Plays
ü Sanyasi
or Ascetic
ü The
King and the Queen
ü Sacrifice
ü Malini
ü Chitra
ü Karan
and Kunti
ü Chandalika
ü MuktiDhara
ü NatirPuja
Rabindranarh
Tagore as a Poet
Worldwide,
‘Gitanjali
’ is Tagore’s best known selection of poetry . Tagore was granted the
Nobel Award in 1913 for his guide ‘Gitanjali’ .Tagore always tried to different
graceful design. Later with growth of new graceful concepts in Bengal many via
young romantics looking for a crack with Tagore’s design .
Tagore’s
poetry which varied in style from classical formalism to the comic, visionary
and ecstatic proceed out a lineage established By 15 16 century via poets.
Tagore was also influenced by the mysticism of the authors who including vaysa
wrote the Upanishads he BhktaSufi mystic Kabir and Ramprasad. Tagore’s poetry
became most innovative and nature after his exposure to rural Bengal’s folk
music which, included ballad s sung by folk singer.
List
of Tagore’s Poems
ü A
Moments Indulgence’
ü At
the Last Watch
ü Benediction
ü Brahma
Vishnu Shiva
ü Brink
of Eternity
ü Broken
Song
Raja
Rao
Raja Rao was a respected and honoured Indian writer of
English language novels and short stories. His works have always been deeply
rooted in Hinduism, mirrored all through by the man himself. Raja Rao's
semi-autobiographical novel, 'The Serpent and the Rope' (1960),
is a story of the seeking of spiritual consciousness in Europe and India. The
novel had established Raja Rao as one of thefinest Indian stylists.
Raja Rao bore Nov.
8, 1908, Karnataka, Indian writer of English-language novels and short
stories. Descended from a distinguished Brahman family in southern India, Rao
studied at Nizam College, Hyderabad, and then left India for France to
study literature and history at
the University of Montpellier and the Sorbonne. His first novel, Kanthapura (1938), dealt with the Indian
independence movement.
Rao’s
second novel, The Serpent and the Rope (1960),
considered his masterpiece, is a philosophical and somewhat abstract account of
a young intellectual Brahman and his wife seeking spiritual truth in India,
France, and England; it plays on the dialogue between Orient and Occident. His
other novels are the allegorical The Cat and Shakespeare: A Tale of
India (1965); Comrade Kirillov (1976), an
examination of communism; and The Chessmaster and His Moves (1988),
which is peopled by characters from various cultures seeking their identities.
Rao’s short stories were collected in The Cow of the Barricades and Other
Stories (1947) and The Policeman and the Rose (1978). He
also wrote The Great Indian Way: A Life of Mahatma Gandhi (1998).
Mulk
Raj Anand
Mulk
Raj Anand was born in 1905 in Peshawar in present-day Pakistan. A pioneer
of Indian writing in English, he gained an international following early in his
life.Mulk Raj Anand was an Indian novelist, short-story writer. He was among
the first writers to incorporate Punjabi and Hindustani idioms into English.
MulkRaj Anand's stories depicted a realistic and sympathetic portrait of the
poor in India.
Anand
first gained wide recognition for his novels Untouchable (1935)
and Coolie(1936), both of which examined
the problems of poverty in Indian society. In 1945 he returned to Bombay (now
Mumbai) to campaign for national reforms. Among his other major works
are The Village(1939), The Sword and the Sickle (1942), and The
Big Heart (1945; rev. ed. 1980). Anand wrote other novels and short-story
collections and also edited numerous magazines and journals, including MARG, an art quarterly that he founded in
1946. He also intermittently worked on a projected seven-volume
autobiographical novel entitled Seven Ages of Man,
completing four volumes: Seven Summers (1951),Morning Face (1968), Confession
of a Lover (1976), and The Bubble (1984).
R.K.
Narayan
Indian
author R.K. Narayan is widely considered to be one of India's greatest English
language novelists known for his simple and unpretentious writing style, often
compared to William Faulkner. Narayan has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in
Literature multiple times but has not yet won the honor.
“R. K. Narayan is one
of the best-known of the Indo-English writers. He created the imaginary town of
Malgudi, where realistic characters in a typically Indian setting lived amid
unpredictable events.”
Narayan
wrote his first novel, Swami and Friends, in 1935, after short,
uninspiring stints as a teacher, an editorial assistant, and a newspaperman. In
it, he invented the small south Indian city of Malgudi, a literary
microcosm that critics later compared to William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha
County. More than a dozen novels and many short stories that followed were set
in Malgudi.
Narayan's second
novel, Bachelor of Arts (1939), marked the beginning of his
reputation in England, where the novelist Graham Greene was largely responsible
for getting it published. Greene has called Narayan "the novelist I most admire
in the English language." His fourth novel, The
English Teacher, published in 1945, was partly autobiographical,
concerning a teacher's struggle to cope with the death of his wife. In 1953,
Michigan State University published it under the title Grateful to Life
and Death, along with his novel The Financial Expert; they were
Narayan's first books published in the United States.
Subsequent
publications of his novels, especially Mr. Sampath, Waiting for the Mahatma, The
Guide, The Man-eater of Malgudi, and The Vendor of Sweets, established
Narayan's reputation in the West. Many critics consider The
Guide (1958) to be Narayan's masterpiece.
Sum
up
Great
Figures of Indian Writing in English are mentioning above. All are the path
finder of Indian Literature . Because of their contribution today Indian
English Literature stand on the great height and we can also say that better
place in the world of Literature.
