Postcolonial Indian Literature in English: Narayan, Jhabvala, Rushdie :: Essays Papers

Postcolonial Indian Literature in English Narayan, Jhabvala, RushdieIndian literature in English which is accessible to us in the West, gloss over has its roots in colonial literature and the tensions between East and West. A European naturalism is often present a concern to posit India as an arena within which Western readers can identify realities is inherent within much of this writing. The following are three examples of the progression of post-Independence literature.Twenty years posterior Independence, R.K.Narayan was still tackling issues of colonialism. The Vendor of Sweets (1967) takes us through the tensions integral to a family in which two generations belong to two different cultures. Ascetic Jagan belongs to an old India of family and history his give-and-take to an India increasingly subject to the foregrounding of the commodity and a dramatic industrialisation. Narayan explores the inevitable clash of what is, in many ways, both(prenominal) a colonial and a post-c olonial gamble Jagan, a follower of Gandhi and a veteran of the wars against British Imperialism, must attempt a negotiation of an ethos invasive to his own definitions of nationality Mali, without this structure, must reconcile an American capitalist economy with Indias own sense of what constitutes a modern nation.This theme is continued in Ruth Prawer Jhabvalas Heat and Dust (1975). Again two generations, this time British, must pick out to terms with an alien culture. Whilst Olivias adventures are romanticised, Jhabvala attempts to explore in a more sophisticated manner the social outlay of Anglo-Indian relations with the higher Islamic classes and Olivias step-grand-daughter is confronted with an India that remains hidden in the works of Kipling, Forster or Narayan. Leelavati the beggar-womans life, if not her behaviour, demonstrates an unusual social awareness of the lowest castes. It is to be noted that the East-West dichotomy within the later generation has become less st rained modern Britain is expected now to accept India on its own terms.Salman Rushdie, whose work has been produced in the eighties and nineties, has removed himself from the sites of both nationality and naturalism but remains in an engagement with economic colonialism and its consequences.