Friday, 23 October 2015

Dominant Figures of Indian Writing in English




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 forSavitri, 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



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.

1 comment:

  1. Good assignment Ravi. It will surely help me as well as others in exams.

    ReplyDelete