Indian English Literature Essay

History of side language and literature in India starts with the advent of East India Company in India. It all started in the summers of 1608 when Emperor Jahangir, in the courts of Moguls, welcomed Captain William Hawkins, commanding officer of British Naval Expedition Hector. It was Indias first tryst with an faceman and English. Jahangir later allowed Britain to open a long-lasting port and factory on the special request of King James IV that was conveyed by his ambassador Sir Thomas Roe. English were here to stay.As East India Company spread its wing in gray peninsula, English language started to get newer pockets of influence. But it was still time for the first English book to capitalize. young 17th century saw the coming of printing press in India scarce the publication were more than often than not confined to either printing Bible or government decrees. Then came newspapers. It was in 1779 that the first English Newspaper named Hickeys Bengal Gazette was published in India. The breakthrough in Indian English literature came in 1793 A.D. when a person by the name of Sake Dean Mahomet published a book in London titled Travels of Dean Mahomet. This was basically Mahomets travel narrative that foundation be put somewhere between a Non-Fiction and a Travelogue.In its early stages, the Indian writings in English were heavily influenced by the Western art form of the novel. It was typical for the early Indian English language writers to use English unadulterated by Indian words to convey experiences that were principally Indian. The core reason behind this step was the fact that most of the readers were either British or British better Indians. In the coming century, the writings were largely confined to writing history chronicles and government gazettes.In the early 20th century, when the British conquest of India was achieved, a new breed of writers started to emerge on the block. These writers were essentially British who were born or brought up or both in India. Their writing consisted of Indian themes and sentiments besides the way of storytelling was primarily western. They had no reservation in using native words, though, to signify the context. This group consisted likes of Rudyard Kipling, Jim Corbett and George Orwell among others. Books such(prenominal) as Kim, The Jungle Book, 1984, Animal Farm and The man-eaters of Kumaon etc were likedand read all over the English-speaking world. In fact, some of the writings of that era are still considered to be the masterpieces of English Literature. In those periods, natives were represented by the likes of Rabindra Nath Tagore and Sarojini Naidu. In fact, Geetanjali helped Tagore win Nobel Prize for Literature in the year 1913.There was a lull for more than 3 decades when India was passing through the era of aspiration and reconstruction. Some sporadic works such as A Passage to India by E M Foster, The Wonder that was India by E L. Basham and Autobiography of an occul t Indian by Nirad C Chaudhuri though set the stage on fire but were down-and-out in catalyzing and explosion.It was in late seventies that a new breed of Convent, boarding school educated and elite class of novelists and writers started to come on block. The likes of Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Amitabh Ghosh and Dominique Lepierre set the literature world on fire. Rushdie s Midnight Children win Booker in 1981 and send the message loud and clear that Indians are here to stay. Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai repeated the elbow grease when they won Man Booker in the year 1997 and 2006 respectively. In the mean time, a new harvest-tide of authors such as Pankaj Misra, Chetan Bhagat, Jhumpa Lahiri, William Dalrymple, Hari Kunzuru have arrived on the international scene and their writings are being apprehended round the globe.India became independent from Britain in 1947, and the English language was supposed to be phased out by 1965. However, at present English and Hindi are the of ficial languages. Indian English is characterized by treating mass nouns as face nouns, frequent use of the isnt it? tag, use of more compounds, and a different use of prepositions. With its distinct flavor, Indian English writings are there to stay. With he surge of English speaking population, the future looks anything but bleak.