2. “It is literature which for me opened the
mysterious and decisive doors of imagination
and understanding. To see the way others
see. To think the way others think. And
above all, to feel.”
-Salman Rushdie
3. The ‘dawn’ of Indian English writing arrived with Sake Dean Mahomet
(1759-1851). He was a traveller, surgeon and entrepreneur who introduced
the Indian curry house restaurant in Britain, and was the first Indian to have
written a book in English.
His fame chiefly lies with his work, The Travels of Dean Mahomet: An
Eighteenth Century Journey through India.
Sake Dean Mahomet
4. Indian English literature refers to the body of work by
writers in India who write in the English language and whose
native or co-native language could be one of the numerous
languages of India. It is also associated with the works of
members of the Indian diaspora, such as V. S. Naipaul, Kiran
Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri, Agha Shahid Ali, Rohinton Mistry
and Salman Rushdie, who are of Indian descent.
5. Writers like Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, and Bankim Chandra
Chattopadhyay inspired the millions of Indians to strive for freedom. In later ages the
influences of British English built the track for Indian English writing.
Tagore’s translation of Gitanjali which earned him a Nobel Prize for Literature set the
flicker for English writing which in turn burst into flames.
19. Through this journey of ours we got to know a lot about our
fellow Indian writers in English language. Their never-
ending zeal has and is still inspiring a lot of Indians to
take up English as their field of creativity and to aspire in
their life! We are all grateful to them and shall always be
thankful for what they have done to make English both a
spoken and a written language in India. Not only we fellow
Indians are enriched by their deeds but also the English
literature as a whole which “Mads’t it pregnant” as John
Milton puts it.