Analysis, Characterization and Themes of Contemporary Indian Novels in English

 

Prof. V Srinivas^1*, Praveen Kumar Chinta²

 

ABSTRACT:

The paper focuses on the changing trends in Indian writing in English with special reference to modern writers. During the seventy years of its effective history Indian writing in English crossed many milestones and has come to be finally accepted as a major literature of the world. However, a study of the popular English fiction in India is a study of the expectations and trends of the masses at present which has again follow western and more specifically global issues relevant in personified drama. The local and international events leave a trace in an average Indian’s lifestyle which in turn will be reflected in his tastes. It is also an analysis of the trans-cultural standard of the society. The paper explores new identities that Indian English writers lost sometime and tries to bring the elegance and grandeur of Indian English.

 

 

INTRODUCTION:

Books come as life savers in every situation. A long journey, a sleepless night or a lazy day, a book can be your companion in every mood. Cicero said, “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” And we couldn’t agree more. There is nothing stronger than the power of words. According to H. M. Williams (1976: 109), “It is undoubtedly the most popular vehicle for the transmission of Indian ideas to the wider English speaking world.”

 

The Novel emerged as the most forceful and convincing of all the genres of literature in recent years. It has been widely accepted as the most appropriate form for the exploration of experiences and ideas in today’s world. Indian English fiction has acquired extensive commendation, distinction and prestigious position in recent times in the whole of the world. Indian English literature is emerging as New literature in English and as a national literature in an acquired language. The Indian English Novel has passed through several stages before reaching present position where it gained a standing on par with its counterparts in the West. Novel is a major form attempted in three phases. Novels are classified into the following groups:

i.       Traditional and Social Materials for Novel before Independence.

ii.      The Modern Novel of Experimentation after Independence.

iii.    A New Contemporary Novel since 1981.

 

The growth of Indian English Novel is remarkable. The number of new novelists, both men and women, has increased in an unprecedented scale.

 

The range of themes, forms and sub genres in Indian English Novel is very vast. As far as the genres within Novel is concerned there are political novel, Novel of Social Realism, Novel of Magic Realism, The Partition Novel, Novel of Diaspora, Historical Novel, Regional Novel, the Children‟s Fiction, the Campus Novel and others. Like many sub-genres of Novel, Campus Novel is originated from the west. The number of novels dealing with academic themes is adequate that they can form a corpus

 

The first Indian novel published in English was Rajmohan’s Wife in 1864 written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. In the beginning the novel established itself both in quality and quantity with a direct impact on the social and religious aspects of life. In the 19th century fiction writing was rather limited.

 

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:

The methodology adapted is of both of analytical and descriptive nature. There is also field work of going to place to place in search of secondary materials and books. Reviews, articles published in different journals.

 

Fiction in recent times has become introspective and individual quest for the meaning in life has become a major theme. New talented writers are like Salman Rushdie and Post-Rushdian novelists like Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Allan Sealy, Shashi Tharoor, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Rohinton Mistry, Amit Chaudhari, Anurag Mathur, Manil Suri, Ajay Sahgal, Farukh Dhondy, Pratap Sharma, Vikram Chandra, Makarand Paranjape, Kiran Nagarkar and Rajkamal Jha. Salman Rushdie’s The Midnight’s Children, Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence and Upayamanyu Chatterjee The Last Burden are popular novels.

 

Characterization:

Among the contemporary writers, Amitav Ghosh has shown his genius in the Indian English fiction. His two novels –The Circle of Reason (1986) and The Shadow Lines (1988) established Ghosh as “the finest writer who were born out of the post Midnight’s Children revolute ion in Indo-Anglian fiction. Vikram Seth attained a dizzy height of success with The Golden Gate(1986) and A Suitable Boy(1993). He stunned the literary world with his novel A Suitable Boy. In its forbidding size, the novel can be compared with Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace or Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Upamanyu Chatterjee, with his novel English August (1988), got great success. His tone was ironic and he hit all the foibles of the Indian bureaucracy. Chatterjee brilliantly uses Indianised English in the novel. His contemporary Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel (1989) is one of the greatest achievements of Indian English fiction. In the 1990s, Rohinton Mistry has emerged as a significant novelist. His Such a long Journey (1991) is his maiden attempt in the genre in which he deals with the predicament of modern life. Among women novelists Arundhati Roy, Meena Alexander, Suniti Namjoshi, Kiran Desai, Anita Rao Badami, Jhumpa Lahiri, Radhika Jha and Anita Nair are successful writers. Arundhati Roy’s A God of Small Things, Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, and Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake have appealed to readers of recent times. Novels of these women writers have dealt with thematic areas of global culture, multi-culturalism, nationalism, internationalism, interpretation of history and politics, religions, philosophy and existential angst.

 

Hypothesis:

The problem taken up for the present study of the fiction of modern trend in Indian writing. This is the marked feature of the research article whereas other have studied only the impact of fiction and even neglected to study his technical aspect of it. The study takes up the detailed and in depth study of the recent novels and also JM Coetzee Romantic Realism. It is thematic and technical aspects of the fiction. It is integrated kind of author study in which the scholar takes up the analysis of the novels and short stories as well.

 

Analysis:

Raja Rao, R. K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand tried their best to give new identity to Indian Writing in English. Actually speaking it is gratifying that the 'Big Three' have lost none of their authenticity and appeal in the eighties, although their distinctive earlier works appeared in the thirties. Moreover, a new group of writers have arrived on the Indian scenario, for example - Anita Desai, Chaman Nahal, Kamala Markandaya, Arun Joshi, Dina Mehta, Salman Rushdie, Shobha De and the Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy.

 

Raja Rao is another prominent Indian novelist writing in English. But he is not as prolific writer as Mulk Raj Anand and R. K.Narayan. His concern with philosophical and mythological aspects distinguishes him from Mulk Raj Anand and R. K. Narayan. His first novel Kanthapura, a masterpiece, describes the village life and peasant sensibility. It shows the influence of Gandhian ideology on an ordinary Indian.

For Mulk Raj Anand (2000: 65), the novel is “the creative weapon for attaining humanness – it is the weapon of humanism.” He writes basically about the lower class life. Widely read novelist Anand is influenced by Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells and Tolstoy in both form and characterization. He followed the ancient Indian tradition of story-telling, but his approach to themes and events, is of a social realist. Therefore, his novels are the novels of protest and social realism. Anand is influenced by the two ideologies – the Western Marxism and the Eastern Gandhism

 

Arundhati Roy: For all those who have read The God Of Small Things, Estha’s “silence” and Rahel’s “emptiness” (as described by the author), would have been fascinating. The fact that these twins lived separately their whole lives and yet managed to be close to each other is heart-warming. The themes of betrayal, love, social discrimination and Indian politics are very cleverly included in the plot. Being the only novel she has written so far, Arundhati Roy can be termed as the true Indian ‘Harper Lee’!

 

Many other writers have created ripples with their work. And they have all gained commercial and critical success. These writers may belong to different eras and may work on different genres. One might think it unfair to compare these writers with each other as each of them belongs to a different league of their own. However they have all equally impressed us with their works and in a way, helped in shaping the nation for what it is now. Books and novels would always play a vital role in a country like ours. And the work of these and many other writers need to be lauded and highly appreciated.

 

The need for expressing the values verities and heartbeats of one culture in the language of another poses its own problems and there is doubtless the inner urge to render in English the rhythms, idiosyncrasies, images, idioms and proverbs of the local speech." Thus one of the most outstanding characteristics of Indian writing in English is that the background is Indian and the language though foreign has adopted itself to the needs of the Indians. Today Indian English as well as Indian writing in English has got its own identity. Actually speaking the most interesting aspect of the fiction at the turn of the present century from the Indian point of view is the emergence of new talent. A number of recent Indian novelists have produced significant novels, making a mark in the literary world. However, on reading modern novels of India, one can get some idea about the following personalized trend such as emigration and domestic problems in Indian writing in English.

 

With reference to works of R.K Narayan whose stories are based in and around the fictional village of Malgudi, focuses on humanity and every day common lives which makes a clear point that maturity does not lie in speaking about big subject rather understanding small issues.

 

Midnight’s Children portrays the journey of India from British rule to independence and then partition. The book travels to various parts of the country including Kashmir, Agra and Mumbai and incorporates many actual historic events. The book was also included in the list of hundred novels all the time. Jhumpa Lahiri – The Interpreter of Maladies- This is a collection of nine stories by Lahiri. The stories are based on lives of Indians and Indian Americans who are lost between the two cultures.

 

Any literary work is examined in terms of its theme and style. The theme is the subject or the meaning of a work. It can also be explained in terms of its style. Broadly, 'style' is the writer’s manner of presenting his/her ideas to thoughts and feelings. It is also defined as the overall effect of a literary work. This effect is the result of the interplay of sentence structure, vocabulary, figures of speech, rhythm and many other stylistic features. A researcher has to identify the elements of style, to analyze them to show their structural significance and finally inter-relate them to suggest their total meaning.

 

CONCLUSION:

Broadly, novel falls into a category of ‘prose’ though it is essentially dramatic. It creates a world through action, dialogues and images. It is centered in a narrative. A novel is a work of imagination. It presents a fictional world in such a way as to make us feel that it is a real one. So novel is both, fantasy and truth. In it an artist forms, from the chaos of everyday life, a work that is ordered and aesthetically satisfying. In the process he distorts time and compresses or eliminates many details from commonplace experience. He selects events and people and organizes them to illustrate what he believes to be truth. As such, a novel comprises of setting, mood, story and characterization.

 

The Indian novelists before Independence were mainly interested in social, political and historical concerns. But later in 1950s a new kind of novel dealing with the contemporary issues appeared on the Indian literary scene. The psychological novel depicting the human personality and inner realities of life replaced the realistic novel. Makarand Paranjape says (1991: 25), “The novel interprets or creates reality.” But the novel cannot be realistic or completely devoid of social reality; therefore, there should be balance between the personal and the social. The novels written in the post-Independence period successfully render the Indian reality.

 

REFERENCES:

1.       Chinta Praveen Kumar, Guilty Pleasures. The Criterion-an International Journal in English (2014)

2.       Iyengar, K. R. S. (1985). Indian Writing in English, New Delhi : Sterling Publication.

3.       Mehrotra, A. K. ed. (2003). An Illustrated History of Indian English Literature. New Delhi: Permanent Black.

4.       Mehrotra, Arvind, Encyclopaedia of Indian Writing in English. New Delhi: India Ink, 1990

5.       Rushdie, Salman and Elizabeth West eds.(1997) The Vintage Book of Indian Writing in English.

 

Received on 25.07.2016

Modified on 25.08.2016

Accepted on 14.10.2016

© A&V Publication all right reserved

Research J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 7(4): October- December, 2016, 273-276.

DOI:  10.5958/2321-5828.2016.00043.7