Indian sub-continental writers of English fiction have always been confronted
with onerous choices. Inheritors of literary tradition riddled with regional and
linguistic finitude, the mere choice of a proper name hopelessly parochialize
their stories. Many critics wonder why such writers did not write in their
regional languages , the answer to which is that that would invite self-exile
from the common market of world literature. Translations, even the best of
them, remain surrogate.It is, therefore, all the more satisfying that during
the recent decades, writers born on the subcontinent like Salman Rushdie,
Hanif Kureishi, Vikram Seth,Amitav Ghosh and others have leaped into
mainstream English fiction and elicited critical acclaim. Indian writers in
English, despite being largely confined to a small, typical Indian backwater
~perhaps because of it ~ have attracted a good deal of attention here and
abroad. They have brought to Indian literature a style and feel, a conviction
and maturity all its own. We have started feeling like heading for a modern
reconstituted Indian sensibility. But , after a long gap of Rabindranath
Tagore's success, we may ask ourselves as to why Indians cannot write great
literature. Perhaps, Matthew Arnold's phrase " lack of epochal significance "
applies to the literary works emerging from our soil. Can we claim honestly
that we have produced a single author who could match the great masters
of Western literature? A Flaubert? A Faulkner? Joyce? A Tolstoy?
