AN INQUIRY INTO THE INDIANNESS OF INDIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE

About the Author:

Padmabhushan C. D. Narasimhaiah, eminent educationist and critic, was educated in the University of Mysore and Cambridge and was Professor of English at the University of Mysore from 1950 to 1979. Rockefeller Fellow at the University of Princeton (1949-50) and Fulbright Visiting Lecturer at Yale (1958-59), he was visiting Professor at several Universities including Leeds (U.K.), Texas (U.S.A.), Queensland and Flinders (Australia). He is currently Director, Literary Criterion Centre for English Studies and Indigenous arts, Dhvanyaloka, Mysore. Pioneer of American Literature Studies and later of Commonwealth Literature studies, professor Narasimhaiah has authored several book-length studies like The Swan and the Eagle, Jawaharlal Nehru, Writer's Gandhi, Moving Frontiers of English Studies in India, and Indian Critical Scene: Controversial Essays. He is a true synthesis of Eastern and Western scholarship, and one of the most distinguished, sensitive and outspoken scholar-critics in contemporary India.

About the Book

An Inquiry into the Indianness of Indian English Literature, the text of the talk delivered at the Sahitya Akademi in February 2003 in the Samvatsar Lecture Series, examines the works of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao and Toru Dutt in a passionate yet objective attempt to establish the Indian character of Indian writing in English. The author studies their attitudes to life and language, their deep commitment life in India and their philosophical proclivities closely to define the Indian ethos at work in their writing while quietly dismissing some of the celebration of the celebrities of recent times in his ironic vein.