FEATURE: Expat or home-grown: The two faces of Indian literature By Peter McCarthy

Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa
Published: Wednesday September 27, 2006

Hamburg- When Salman Rushdie, surely India's most famous writer, published an anthology of fifty years of Indian writing in 1997 he caused a storm of controversy in his homeland. This was because of the 32 writers featured in the anthology, only one did not write in English. India has 24 official and 120 regional languages, and English writing makes only for a third of the country's literature. Others include Bengali, Tamil, Hindu, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, which all have a rich literary tradition. The only writer to break the English monopoly in Rushdie's book was Manto, an Urdu author.

In his Vintage Book of Indian Writing Rushdie wrote that "the ironic proposition that India's best writing since independence may have been done in the language of the departed imperialists is simply too much for some folks to bear."

Amit Chaudhuri, an Indian novelist and short story writer who writes in English himself, disagreed with Rushdie's view.

"Can it be true that Indian writing, that endlessly rich, complex and problematic entity, is to be represented by a handful of writers who write in English, who live in England or America and whom one might have met at a party?" he questioned in the Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature.

Rushdie and Chaudhuri encapsulate opposites in a decades-long debate on which writers best represents India - expats, living in the West and earning good royalties, or their counterparts back home, who write in other Indian languages and find it hard to make a living from writing or attract an international publisher?

Indian writers have enjoyed many years of international success, yet often the big names no longer lived in their homeland, but in the US and Britain.

Rushdie, who shot to fame with the novel Midnight's Children in 1980, has lived abroad for decades while other bestselling authors such as Vikram Seth, Vikram Chandra or Amitav Ghosh frequently travel back and forth between India and the West.

Being part of the Indian diaspora has its advantages - expat writers can see the country from the outside as well as the inside, and can help interpret the vast and exotic nation for a Western readership without losing sight of their own national identity.

"In this profession we take our identity and national background with us. Therefore I am an Indian author who happens to live in New York," says Shashi Tharoor, who has spent 30 years as a diplomat in Switzerland, Singapore and the US and written novels such as The Great Indian Novel (1989).

Rushdie has been quoted as saying, a writer's home address has little to do with his or her ability to write.

With India's emerging economic and political power in recent years, a new generation of Indian authors, some of them still resident in India, are making an impact at home and abroad.

Among the themes they examine are the impact of globalization and capitalism on society, the changing status of women in India, religious conflicts, the clash between modernity and tradition, and India's caste system.

There is Arundhati Roy, whose novel The God of Small Things won the Booker Prize in 1997 and brought her worldwide fame. New Delhi- based Roy describes herself as a "home grown" writer and now writes essays critical of the impact of globalization on India's society and environment.

Chetan Bhagat examined India's IT boom and the world of the call centre in his 2005 novel, One Night at the Call Centre, while Altaf Tyrewala captured the tempo of life in his home city of Mumbai in No God in Sight (2005).

Women working in India's 14 regional languages and innumerable dialects, such as Maheshwata Devi, Maitreyi Pushpa and Indira Goswami, write of India's marginalized and oppressed.

In his novel Bhagat writes of young people who live in India by day but adopt a Western identity and accent at night to answer calls from the US and Britain. Westernizing influences are everywhere in India today, says novelist Anita Nair: "You can't escape it. Cable and satellite TV are everywhere, no matter how remote a village might be."

Publisher Urvashi Butalia says: "Within India people are now looking at these issues, both in fiction and non-fiction."

KD Singh, a New Delhi bookseller familiar with the growing middle class of young, educated Indians, says of the new generation of writers: "A lot of Indian oral history, a lot of their own experience create something new. They are not simply inspired by Western writing. When you read Indian books they are typically Indian."

Tyrewala, Maheshwata, Pushpa and Goswami will be among the Indian authors whose works are being showcased at the 2006 Frankfurt Book Fair where India is guest of honour. Of the 38 authors invited to the fair by India's National Book Trust, only 12 write in English.

India will be using the book fair as a platform to promote the translation of books in the country's official and regional languages.

It looks like the West's continuing love affair with the subcontinent will continue to offer opportunities to Indian writers, whether based at home or abroad. However, the chance to make a living from writing is still only open to a fortunate few.

"Among Indian writers the number of those who write full time must be very, very small," says Upamanyu Chatterjee who has written four novels and still holds down a day job in Mumbai.

© 2006 DPA - Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa