The vicious (?) circle of the scarcity of “Indian” Literature for children in English and the lack of “Indian” Literature in English.

“I remember reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart when I was nine. I didn’t realize at the time but I know now it made me understand that I didn’t have to write about white people”- Chimamanda Adichie, Nigerian novelist [1]

The excerpt is from an interview I read this August in The Hindu Magazine and it somehow stuck in my mind because it furthered some of the ideas I had regarding the impact of children’s literature in the English language, particularly in former British colonies, on the kind of literature the country produced.

Like most middle class children growing up in the 90’s in India I went to a school where the medium of instruction was English. Beginning with nursery rhymes and fairytales I moved on to Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl & Dr.Seuss followed in quick succession by Judy Blume, Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys. I remember R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps being quite the rage before J. K. Rowling finally made her entry. Looking back, Anita Desai’s, A Village by the Sea which we did in the 8th was probably our only encounter with Indian literature in English and one we actually enjoyed (even then it took us all of seven minutes to figure out that “crystallized chunks of marrow” was nothing other than “petha”). Somehow we all managed to elude any significant exposure to Indian literature for children.

Incidentally standard “Indian” literature for children including Panchatantra and the Jataka tales among others was featured in the “Amar Chitra Katha” which we avoided like the plague because our teachers vehemently disapproved of its shockingly awful English whereas Indian books in English like Malgudi schooldays, approved of by all involved, belonged to a rare category, so much for Indian literature for children in English. As for the non-English Indian literature, we found it boring because the textbooks in our mother tongue were outdated and no match for the kind of reading we were doing in English at the same level. Moreover nuclear families deprived us of grandma storytelling sessions and the rich oral tradition of Indian literature in vernacular.

The story of my generation and the successive ones is important because of the link between reading and writing. If you were to read a story written by the average Indian child there is an overwhelming possibility that the protagonist, the plot and the setting will have nothing to do with India. The fact was brought home at a Young Authors contest I participated in where a ruffled jury pointed out our unconscious exclusion of all things Indian. Of the sixteen national finalists only one had set her story in India, two had used Indian names and the rest of us had a rather eclectic choice of locale ranging from Africa to Mexico to Palestine and the list of names included Alice, Ryan, Mark and Iris to name a few.

While I don’t think there is anything wrong about writing about other places and people there is something troubling about the fact that we are unable to express what it means to live in India. We did try to consciously write about India or even use Indian names but there was an air of artificiality about the whole exercise and ultimately the writing seemed rather forced and trying too hard to be Indian, much like our English grammar textbooks which after decades of using names like Jane and John made the odd attempt to use Raj, Sita and Ahmed much to our amusement, being rather ridiculously in your face.

Moving on from author to audience one comes to the intriguing question of why we read. While the charm of reading largely lies in its ability to enable the reader to transcend his immediate surroundings, at some level the reader seeks comfort in identifying with what he reads. Incidentally it seems that young Indians as readers seek at some level in Indian literature in English the other with which whom they can identify. Having said this it is obvious that there is an immense void in Indian literature in English to which writers like Chetan Bhagat owe their success. That the quality of their work leaves much to be desired is itself further proof of the desperation of English speaking Indians.

Speaking of “Indian” literature in English I would like to define it by emphasizing literature that portrays the essence of being Indian or more appropriately literature that conveys the experience of living in India (as defining “being Indian” is in itself an endless debate). Coming to the existing corpus of “Indian” literature in English I must confess my ignorance about early Indian writers in English whose works I have hardly read such as Tagore. On the other hand, having read a lot of the work of “Indians writing in English” one realizes that most exclusively concern themselves with the immigrant experience and few, Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati Roy, Rohinton Mistry & Aravind Adiga for instance, actually write about living in India. While there is an ongoing debate about the label of “Indians” writing in English itself, which in no small part accrues to the fact that most writers tagged with the label don’t live in India at all, I would like to state that “Indian” literature in English has little to do with the “Indianness” of its author. In fact one of the few works that succeeds in its attempt to portray life in India is Englishman E.M. Forster’s brilliant novel, A Passage to India.

In conclusion I would like to go back to the title. Adding a question mark after the word vicious clarifies my opposition to the view that children’s literature in English westernizes and corrupts Indian culture and morality, whatever that is. I merely wish to draw attention to the fact that not having enough exposure to Indian writing as a child hampers one’s ability to effectively express as an adult what it means to live in India and in terms of identity and figuring out how one fits in, leaves one neither here nor there.


[1] Krithika, R. (2009, August 09). "I’m a happy feminist". The Hindu: Magazine, p. 2