Indian writing in English

Abstract

“Indian Writing in English,” wrote  M.K.Naik, “began as an interesting by- product of an eventful encounter in the late eighteenth century between a vigorous and enterprising Britain and a stagnant and chaotic India.” (M.K.Naik,p.1). The important words here are vigorous and enterprising, which imply a sense of ordered action or progress, and stagnant and chaotic, which in turn imply disorder and inaction.  Postcolonial critics like Homi Bhabha and others have drawn attention to the colonizing strategy of dividing “colonial space” into binary opposites—that of nature and culture, chaos and civility etc.

The colonizing enterprise of the British subsumed the Indian subcontinent through its strategic deployment of such culture shocks. As we gather from Naik’s generalized statement, playing the Indian’s distorted psyche against its own self-styled superior order and culture, the British, unconsciously though at first, set in motion a new literature of the subject race.