CHAPTER III

THE QUESTION OF LANGUAGE

"Don't write in English, they said, English is not your mother tongue."

(Kamala Das, "An Introduction")

From the very beginning, the language itself has formed part both

of the context and the subject of Indian English poetry. Writing in English

has always been a matter of choice for Indian poets, or at least for most

of them. 1 Having chosen to write in English they have to locate

themselves securely in their various Indian contexts. They have to show

that their choice of English does not limit their poetic expression of and

interaction with their cultural environment, that, on the other hand, it may

even have a liberating effect enabling a far greater degree of freedom.

Their choice of language has to be shown to be enabling rather than

disabling. They also then have to lay claim to the language itself, asserting

their right to play around with it, to change, to mould it to suit their

purposes, to use it as they would their own. They have to show that

English is their own as well as India's own. In other words they have to

show that English is at home in India and India at home in it, that their

poetry is Indian English and perhaps that their poetry is in Indian English.

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The epigraph to this chapter is from a well-known poem by Kamala

Das. Her poem illustrates that the problem for the Indian English

poet/writer is not simply one of self-definition, not just one of self-doubt

and resolution, but also one of self-defence. It is not so much that the

writers question their own ability or right to write in English as that others

view all their efforts with suspicion and hostility. This debate from the

outside seems a perennial one, and will be so because there isn't and will

never be a true democracy of languages~ and because of English's political

position it will always be viewed with suspicion by writers in other

languages. The other side of the coin is that there will be suspicion,

rejection, as well as condescension and patronage from the native

speakers of English who at best propelled by commercial needs and

academic publication imperatives will see non-native English writers as

serviceable, or quaint and exotic and entertaining. The more earnest

among them will, as they always have urge Indians to write in Indian

languages.

As we have seen, Buddhadeva Bose in his famous attack on post­

independence Indian English poetry states emphatically that there is no

place for English writing in India after lndependence.2 He starts off by

expressing surprise "that Indians who have always had a firm poetic

tradition in their own languages, should ever have tried to write verse in

English"3. He attributes this to "anglomania which seized some upper

class Indians in the early years of British rule".4 He rues the fact that the

"spectacular success of the Bengali writings of Rabindranath Tagore" and

the example of Michael Mad.husudan Dutt "have not deterred some

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Indians in each succeeding generation from trying their hand at English". 5

He is astounded by the fact that in early twentieth century "English verse

broke out in the nationalist camp itself'.6 But what breaks his heart is that

"There are still a few Indians( both parents natives) who claim English to

be their "best language". 7 Bose wonders what "led to this inconceivable

loss of a mother tongue, or whether they abjured it voluntarily ..... x What

irks Bose the most here is that contemporary poets "differ in one

important respect from the nineteenth century pioneers~ the latter's

ambition was to become Hnglish poets in every sense of the tenn ... and

the foimer insist they are Indians writing in English".9 He finds this

incredible because English is not an Indian language and Indian poets "do

not have a real public in India". 10

Bose goes on to claim that "the best of Indian English verse

belongs to the nineteenth century, when Indians came nearest to

'speaking, thinking and dreaming in English' ". 11 He feels that this is no

longer the case and that English is now a language "learnt from books"

and not spoken in the streets or in houses. Having taken this for granted

he goes on to deny Indian English poetry what he sees as a basic right

:"the right to change and recreate language, and this no foreigner can ever

acquire". 12 This leads to his clinching final judgement that Indian English

"poetry is a blind alley, lined with curio shops, leading nowhere". 13

Buddhadeva Bose is not the only one to question the need to write

in English or the value of the written work. David McCutchion warns that

"the fascination of Indian writing in English lies more in the phenomenon

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itself (of a literary creativity in a language other than the surrounding

mother tongue) .... " 14 McCutchion is "inclined to agree with those who

affirm that English as a medium of expression works as a barrier against

real insights into the Indian mind and circumstances." 15 McCutchion goes

on to argue that Indian English writers tend to patronize other Indians in

their writing. He then wonders if "it not be the very fact of writing in an

alien language, never to be read by the subjects themselves, nor

embodying the structure of their feelings, which precipitates the impulse

to caricature". 16 McCutchion claims that " a Raja Rao can never be as

genuineiy Indian as a Rabindranath Tagore ... "17 But McCutchion unlike

Bose grants the Indian English writers the right to exist with this proviso

that what the Indian English "poet or novelist may authentically present of

course is his own experience as a man educated to think and feel in

Western categories confronting the radically different culture all around

him (or for that matter confronting himself or any experience so far as he

himself responds to it) ... " 18 But what else does a writer so but write about

his/her responses to various kinds of experiences and problems? Bose too

grants that contemporary Indian English poets are "earnest and not

without talent" but feels that they are writing for a western audience

which · would stunt their growth as poets (this is of course a curious

sentiment when you take into account his praise for earlier poets who

tried to become "English").McCutchion echoes Bose when he lays down

the law that "A poet may choose any language which suits his mind,but let

him not choose it to suit his audience ". 19 It is not clear why this law

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should have been formulated by McCutchion for it is not clear as to whom

he is accusing of doing the latter.

But such accusations have always been common so far as Indian

English writing and especially poetry, is concerned. Curiously, as

McCutchion himself notes, the attack on the Indian English writer comes

from the antagonism of the regional writer as well as that of the English

literary establishment. Michael Madhusudan Dutt was an early poet who

was advised to quit writing in English, as has been mentioned already,

and advjsed so not by an Indian! In the nineteen sixties Allen Ginsberg

and Peter Orlorsky and others earnestly advised the Indian English poets

they had heard that day - among whom were Ezekiel, Parthasarathy, and

Adil Jussawalla to quit writing in English. "If we were gangster poets

we'd shoot you", Peter Orlorsky is supposed to have exclaimed.20 Allen

Ginsberg felt that Indian English poetry was often imitative, derivative,

and literary. Its idiom was "too polite and genteel". 21 Examining Indian

English poetry was like looking at the wrong side of a carpet, they felt.

Ginsberg said that English in India was impossible as a vehicle for

creative expression for there never could be an Indian English like Afro­

American English. One of the editors of the encyclopaedia that carried

Buddhadeva Bose's entry is Stephen Spender who like Yeats before has

repeatedly warned Indians against the use of English.22 Raja Rao's fond

hope that we would evolve "a dialect which would one day prove to be as

distinctive and colourful as the Irish or the American "23 does not seem to

have been fulfilled and hence Ginsberg and company can reiterate that

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Indians have no right to write m English because there IS no Indiar

English.

This question of English in India is further complicated by the;

apprehension of the English language's position of power and it~

continued hegemony in the world. Colonialism has only given way to neo­

colonialism in this view and so long as we give so much importance to

English, even create works in English, our minds remain colonised. Aviji1

Pathak expresses this view brilliantly in an article published after the

marketi~g hype that surrounded the release of Vikram Seth's A Suitable

Boy. Pathak perceives in this media blitzkrieg that "on<: is told and told so

forcefully that in India there is only one language that matters and that is

English". 24 Pathak feels that "this colonisation ... [has ]seductive power". 25

He states that language is not just a "mode of communication" but also

"an expression of power and domination". 26 According to Pathak, "the

fact is that what separates English from the other Indian languages is the

symbol of power that it carries with it. English is not just read, written or

spoken. English erects a wall -a wall that separates the powerful(English

is indeed one's cultural capital) from the powerless".27 Pathak argues that

as the language of the colonisers English "oppressed and alienated

people". This "politics of language ... attached a superior status to English

and, as a result, original Indian languages were looked down upon as

merely 'native languages'.28 Pathak opines that "the binary oppositions"

created by colonialism "remain unaltered even after... successful 'anti­

colonial' struggle"·29 He states that in independent India the "practice of

English is the practice of power". 30 It is because of this affinity between

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English and power that Indian English literature stands for "all that

English symbolises - elitism, domination, power and privilege". 31

A vijit Pathak then argues that literature should be written

only in one's mother tongue because "art is deeply intimate, personal and

subjective". 32 He says that literature "is closely related to the creator's

relationship with the culture, the community and the landscape". :n Pathak

is of the opinion that creative writing is imbued with "the smell of rivers,

the birds and the mountains the creator sees and experiences in his/her

culturaJ. milieu". 34 This clinchingly proves to Pathak that "good literature

is generally the product of the creator's own language- the language that

mediates between his/her experience and that of his/her social world". 35

This is because speaking "one's own language is not to speak words. It is

to speak one's own life, poetry and struggle". 36 Pathak too concedes that

"there are some for whom English has undoubtedly become their first

language and that great moments of revelation can be communicated only

in English".37 But "this kind of literature because of its very definition is

exclusivist';. 38 Being 'exclusivist' it can not hope to "win the hearts of the

'natives"'. 39 Pathak concludes that this literature has no heart and that

"without heart literature is no literature".40 He says finally though "English

is not aJtogether inadequate for this 'methodologicaJ'/'anaJyticaJ' prose .. .it

would never help me to write what I adore most -my poetry, my epic, my

dreams" .41

Analysing the position of English in India, Pathak thus goes on to

deny Indian English literature any "heart" and though he claims that he

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"does not suggest that in India no great literature is possible in English, he

explodes the notion of any such possibility likening this literature without

heart to "drawing room decorum: India Today or Onida TV!"42 To enter

more private and meaningful realms you would have to use an Indian

language. In this view, where the left hand takes away what the right hand

gives, no Indian writer can claim to either greatness or ever a literary

status, claim any creativity, if he cannot address fellow Indians in any

Indian language. English "cannot win the heart of the 'natives'". Even in

independent India ,'natives 'are those who only know' Indian' languages.

He precludes completely the possibility of English-knowing Indians -in

any case they wouldn't be 'natives'! Pathak's assumption throughout is

that English cannot be the Indian English writer's "own language"-almost

all his critical statements stem from this position. This is what leads him

to ask questions like whether it is "possible to imagine Sarat Chandra

Chatterjee narrating the experiences of Bengali women in any language

except Bengali?"43 He privileges the position of other Indian languages

over English in their ability to convey Indian experiences, to express the

feelings of Indians. But the crux of the problem, the raison d'etre of the

article, is the publicity surrounding Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy,

especially reports of the money paid for its publication. This is an article

on the commodification of literature,. the era of postmodernism and the

domination of media images where "Kapil Dev, Vikram Seth, Sri Devi­

everyone is a hot media event!"44 In this protest against consumerism and

commodification, English becomes a villain and Indian languages are seen

as free from such stains, such strains and pressures because 'native'.

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Hence Pathak can declare that he has not read Vikram Seth and yet

complain that "we talk about Vikram Seth for wrong reasons-not for his

creativity, but for his success, for his celebrity status." He can quite

sanctimoniously feel how "ironic it is for a poet or a novelist to be meas­

ured solely in terms of money!"45 And since this can happen only to an

Indian writer in India, no Indian should write in English!

Vijay Nambisan feels that perhaps it is such a sentiment that is

behind the anti-English writing stance of even such a celebrated writer

and int~llectual as U.R.Ananthamuthy.He reports that the President of the

Sahitya Akademi during "an extraordinary attack on Indians who attempt

to write creatively in English ... alleged that they do so in order to make

money; that that culture to which they owe allegiance is that of Europe;

and that their writing in English- the same language World Bank memos

are written in - is proof that they favour a consumerist , market

economy". 46 N ambisan wonders "why Indians who write in languages

other than English-and who are very often perfectly bi-lingual, writing

English not only with ease but with distinction-should be so dismissive, so

critical, so venomous at times about those who are after all their fellow­

sufferers in the literary desert" .47 The immediate cause for this attitude

that springs to Nambisan's mind is envy "particularly since the advance

payment Vikram Seth is supposed to have received".48 Ironically most

Indian writers in English are equally envious of Seth says Nambisan. He

then feel that this could be due to the "good deal of cultural resentment...

over the colonial experience" .49 Nambisan feels that the reality of the

colonial experience cannot be wished away and asks rhetorically "How

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far shaH we go back in history to escape the conqueror?"50 Nambisan

then takes the point many Indians make that Indians "choose to

commllllicate among themselves" in English and no one objects to that

(Avijit Pathak too, in his article discussed earlier, accepts English as a

legitimate medium for communication and theoretical analyses). He then

states that "creative writing is also for the purpose of communication: else

it has no purpose at all. "51 He finds curious that others should find "it all

right to distinguish between forms and circumstances of communication

when it comes to the language of choice".52 Because he writes in English

Nambisan says he is accused of betraying his nation and his people"by

writing in an alien tongue". He then considers the sentiment expressed by

many (see Buddhadeva Bose for instance )that though "Indian writing in

English can be of good quality, and even of significance, it is highly

unlikely that anything like greatness can be achieved through this

medium".53 Nambisan counters this by asking "What other !anguage has

this century produced a writer of unquestionable greatness?"54

In a different context Harish Trivedi, looking at post-colonial

theory and new literatures in English contends that "Indian writing in

English is to Indian literature rather like the creamy layer on top of a large

jug of milk ... or like a crust of thin ice on the surface on a long and deep

lake ... "55 Trivedi states that if he were "asked to name the three or four

major works which most acutely and trenchantly represent the post­

colonial condition of India ... [he] would probably name the two classic

Hindi novels, Maila Anchal ( 1954) by Phanishwamath Renu and Raag

Darbari by Shrilal Shukla", the sketches of Harshankar Parsai, and the

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poetry of Raghuvir Sahay. 56 He then says that others will have similar lists

from their own languages but no bilingual Indian reader will have an

English book heading his/her list. 57 But U.R.Ananthmuthy is gleefully

quoted by Nambisan as having said "None of the books that I have ·read

are, however, like those of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, either in scale or in

depth". 58 In other words the "long and deep lake" of Trivedi's doesn't

seem to hold much water in Ananthmurthy's view.Nambisan holds on to

this statement of Ananthmurthy's and declares polemically that "no Indian

literature is likely to[ produce great writers] if its wise men continue to

narrow their minds and pride themselves on their limits. 59 "Polemics leads

to his claim that "If India provides the world with a writer of greatness in

the next quarter -century, he or she will in all probability be a writer in

English" !60 He questions how his roots in India can be denied and how it

can be said that his heart is in Europe likening it to similar sentiments

about Muslims and writers in Urdu. Nambisan ends with a plea:

Whatever language we dream i~ let not the language we tell our dreams in be imposed upon us. Let us be judged for the content of the dream, for its purity and truth ... 61

This plea of this contemporary Indian-English poet drew less

attention than the polemics of his article in the ensuing debate but it is this

plea that lies at the heart of all defences or attacks that Indian English

poets indulge in when faced with hostility to their choice of language.

Kamala Das has such a reply in her poem "An Introduction" when

she introduces herself as Indian, very brown, born in Malabar. She

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immediately refers to the vexed issue of languages and the objections to

the language she chooses to write in :

I speak three languages, write in Two, dream in one. Don't write in English, they said, English is not your mother tongue. She too pleads Why not leave Me alone, critics,friends, visiting cousins. Everyone ofyou? Why not let me speak in Any language I like?

Then she makes her claim to English, the language that through

appropriation has not only become Indian, but hers personally:

The language I speak Becomes mine, its distortions, its queemesses All mine, mine alone. It is half English, half Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest, It is as human as I am human, don't You see? It voices my joys, my longings, my Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing Is to crows or roaring to lions

She writes in English, in Indian English, in her Indian English. She feels

she ·has every right to the language, a position that Bose does not find

tenable, denying the right to re-create it to foreigners. She may not claim

"the right to change and recreate the language" or not in so many words

but Nambisan takes it as his given task "to purify the dialect of a

European tribe and adapt it to his ~se".62 Nambisan wouldn't see the point

of Bose's argument at all.

Time after time poets and other writers have assumed that the

question of the legitimacy of writing in English is a dead horse only to

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have it flogged in their face again. Nambisan too starts by saying that

questions like "whether Indians should write creative works in English,

whether they can, and whether they become less Indian by doing so

,constitute a dead and much belaboured horse"63, only to be spurred to his

polemical and spirited reply. Vilas Sarang also in the introduction to his

anthology written years earlier than Nambisan's article, affinns that once

even if not so long ago "questions as to whether Indians should or could

write in English used to be discussed endlessly. Today, such questions

have become largely irrelevant and superfluous". He feels that since we

have "now a large body of good poems in English written by Indians, and

it simply can't be wished away",65 such questions can be relegated to

history. He declares that "the literary critic has no business to dictate what

language a poet should write in, or who should write in a particular

language; the critic's job is to examine the available writing, and to

pronounce it good or bad". 66 After such an admirable sentiment Sarang

concedes that "when they write in English -whether by choice or because

they have no other alternative- Indians face certain disadvantages".67 This

bilingual poet "harbours certain reservations about the use of English by

Indians". He asks whether English penetrates "to the unconscious of the .

Indian poet" and answers in the negative as evinced in the case of the

bilingual poets (Chitre, and Kolatkar) that he discusses.69 He quotes

Kamala Das's lines from "An Introduction" and takes it that the language

she dreams in is Malayalam. He then asks whether "Malayalam

[isn't]closer to the resources of her unconscious mind?"70 Sarang gives up

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the whole question as "complex" and states that it "needs to be examined

and debated further. ''71 The dead horse hasn't stopped trotting.

Even when the Sahitya Akademi was set up, both Jawaharlal Nehru

and Abu'l Kalam Azad pointed to the fact that though English wasn't

included in the languages of India listed in the Constitution, it was still

one of the many languages of India, Nehru even referring to it in the same

breath as other Indian languages which found no place m the

Constitutional list. 72 But its position as a language imposed by the

coloniaUsts, and as a language of education, and hence of a minority elite

has always left it open to suspicion and hostility. Even Humayun Kabir

who wrote English poetry himself, feels that education in English has

resulted in the weaning away of the educated people from the culture of

our country". 73 He thinks that the English speaking minority is adrift

dangerously-"cut off from their moorings, this minority is unstable, loud,

and factional. He equates this intelligentsia to "flotsam ... [which ]floats on

the surface of Indian life but has no roots in the life of people". 74 This

after he concedes that India responded well and critically to the

imposition of English.

It is this ambiguity of even practitioners and defenders of English

that will always keep the question of language alive, and it is healthy in

itself because it shows that the writers and critics are aware of the

problems posed by the hegemony of certain languages in a multi­

cultural/linguistic nation as well as an increasingly smaller world. In 1945,

N .K.Sidhanta answers the same questions and prefaces his paper with the

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remark "I feel that I have to be on my defence, as there are charges

constantly being brought forward against creative artists who have chosen

English as their medium of expression". 75 The charges he lists are that

English is an alien tongue, and that inspiration for Indian English is from

the west, and that the Indian English writer because of being one has a

limited vision of Indian society, and that the audience is small and un­

Indian. Bhabani Bhattacharya, the novelist, refers to this paper when he

claims as a "fundamental right of a creative artist to express himself in

whatever manner he likes, so long as he is not anti-social". 76 He stresses

that Indian English literature "is simply an area within the broad expanse

of our literatures. And answers the charge that English cannot express

non-English speaking reality by saying that for all writers in all languages

the chaJJenge is to create the semblance of life, the illusion of truth.

Bhattacharya argues that all literary devices, words and gestures, the

delving into minds serve but "one inward purpose".77 The Indian writer in

any language, as every writer in the world, has to achieve this purpose.

One poet after another affirms similar sentiments in answer to

P.Lal's questionnaire which was in turn occasioned by Buddhadeva Bose's

article. Many· of the poets in pl.'s voluminous anthology are well­

established now and it is interesting to note their replies. Kamala Das's

poem "An Introduction" is included in this anthology and can be seen as

one of a kind of reply. But she has replied in prose as well. She has very

succinct answers to the various questions. Das writes poetry in English

because she finds "writing in English a little less difficult than writing in

Malayalam".78 The reason is education outside the home state. She then

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declares that "The language one employs is not important. What is

important is the thought contained by the words".79 To the question "Why

in English" she has a single repartee-it "is a silly question. She then adds

that "English being the most familiar [language], we use it. That is all."80

The question of limited audience brings forth the response that poetry in

any language has a small audience, anyway-"only other poets read it with

interest". 81 Regarding the right to change and recreate language she feels

that a "good writer is a sculptor with words ... (and ]has the right to do

what he thinks best with his material. This right he acquires gradually

with experience". 82 She concludes that a language "seves anybody who

chooses to serve it" .83 As pointed out earlier, Kamala Das equates this

imposition of language with the imposition of various other constricting

frames, especially gender roles. In the already quoted "An Introduction

she goes on to talk of her growing up to womanliness. Then

I wore a shirt and my Brother's trousers, cut my hair short and ignored My womanliness.

The same "they" who ask her not to write in English admonish her again:

Dress in saris, be girl, Be wife, they said, Be embroiderer, be cook, Be a quarreller with servants. Fit in Oh. Belong, cried the categorizers

They ask her to "be Kamala. Or, better/Still, be Madhavi-Kutty". In

assigning her Keralite, Malay ali identity, they express their need to

control her, to keep her within bounds. English is thus an enabling choice

of medium, one that takes her away from the "categorizers". Hence there

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may be more to the choice of English than her channing statement that

"English being the most familiar ,we use it. That is all." That may not be

all!

Nissim Ezekiel, in his answers to the same set of questions, firmly

denies any evidence of anglomania even in nineteenth century Indian

English poets. Contemporary Indian English poets, he says, "write in

English when they have gone through English-medium schools. "84 He of

course, "cannot write in any Indian language".85 Again he says that no

Indian. English poet would want to be known as an English poet rather

than an Indian one-this never has been the case. As regards the right tore­

create language, Ezekiel grants this "right to change and recreate

language" to a poet only when she arrives "at the limits of existing

possibilities" and, he adds in parenthesis, that "very few poets arrive at

these limits".86 Nissim Ezekiel appends a note on the tone and matter of

Bose's article which he finds "distasteful".87 He begins by castigating

Bose's "pretending to be surprised that 'Indians should ever have tried to

write verse in English' ". 88 This surprise reveals a lack of sense of

history". "Historical situations create historical consequences ", Ezekiel

declares. He also seizes on the fact that Bose claims Madhusudan Dutt to

be the "founder of Indian poetry" -an extremely curious statement from

someone championing Indian languages (though Bose speaks only of

Bengali). 89 What is inexcusable about Bose's article is the ignorance of

"the cultural history of modem India".90 Ezekiel too has a plea: "To write

poetry in English because one cannot write in any other language is surely

not a despicable decision. "1)1 Curiously, Nambisan writing nearly three

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decades later, echoes an irritation that Ezekiel expresses here that Indian

English poets are attacked by "these linguistic patriots in India who write

so fluently in English", by people who" conduct virtually their entire

social and personal lives in English, while quite rightly championing the

mother-tongue". 92 Ezekiel's pen drips with gracious irony as he absolves

them of any blame for this situation -"There are good historical reasons

for it" .93

A.K.Ramanujan thinks that the real question is not whether Indians

should. write poetry in English or not :"the real question is whether they

can" .94 People who can write in English will do so. About why he writes

in English he says with the same simplicity that Das and Ezekiel show :"1

just happen to write in English ; it is for the others to say whether it is

good or not" .95 Ramanujan goes on to express his sentiments that people

who write have no choice in the matter of which language they write in.

He is willing to concede "an Indian writing in English condemns himself

to writing minor marginal verse".96 But he doesn't see how "anybody can

choose either in Bengali or in English to write major verse or any verse at

all worth the name".97 Ramanujan dismisses Bose's statement that English

is not an Indian language with a pithy "How do you tell?"98 He feels that

Bose's views on the right to recreate language makes no sense to him as

"someone professionally concerned with language" .99 It should be noted

that these are answers given not just by a linguist, not just by one of the

most respected Indian English poets, but also by a bilingual writer who is

quite often credited with ushering in modernism in Kannada poetry.

Parthasarathy may have a point when he says that Ramanujan exploits the

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"foreignness" of English in his poetry- "the words are not burdened with

irrelevant associations for the poet. They are invariably ordinary and

inconspicuous~ ·rarely, if ever, reverberant. And herein lies their

strength. "100 This strength he attributes to Ramanujan's "clinical" use of

language to generate "a cold, glass-like quality' ". 101 Ramanujan,

Parthasarathy avers, attempts "to turn language into an artifact". 102 But as

Ramanujan says in reply to the question as to why he chooses to write

some thing in English he has "only complicated answers". 103 The reason

for choice of language can never be simple and is always integral to the

poetry written.

R.Parthasarathy gives no answers in Lal's anthology but his career

as a poet and editor gives answers enough. Of the contemporary Indian

English poets he is the one who is the most acutely aware of the alienness

of the tongue he chooses to write in. This is the reason he holds up

Michael Madhusudan Dutt as "the paradigm of the Indian poet writing in

English. "104 Madhusudan "exemplifies the uneasy tensions that arose in

using a language he wasn't born into" .105 Parthasarathy's poetry reflects

this concern with using an alien language:

language is a tree, loses colour under another sky.

(Rough Passage 1 ,2)

Parthasarathy feels that this alien language is an alienating language ,one

which forces people to spend their lives "whoring/after English gods." He

feels that there "are at least two problems" that an Indian writer in English

has to face. 106 The first problem "is the quality of experience he would

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like to express in English". 107 This is a problem because the Indian writer

in English has to feel , "to some extent, alienated". 108 The other problem

"is the quality of idiom he uses." 109 Parthasarathy thinks of English as a

language spoken there in England and to be written as it is spoken there­

he speaks of the trauma he felt when he realised in England that his

English was different from theirs. This problem is acute because there is

"a time lag between the living, creative idiom of English -speaking people

and the English spoken in India". 110 This is compounded for Parthasarathy

by the fact that "there is no special Indian-English idiom, either". 111

Parthasarathy feels that thus the Indian English poet's basic problem "has

been to find an adequate .. .language" .112 His judgement is that Indian

English poets "have not been able to extend the resources of the English

language or even to Indianize it". 113 Curiously Parthasarathy's poetic

career is founded on this alienating principle of language -he has not

switched to writing in Tamil, a language he finds "tired" and debased -

"hooked on celluloid". He too would give historical circumstances as

reason and carry on writing in English because it came most easily to him.

K.N.Daruwalla says he "took naturally to" writing in English. 114 He

says that though he can "speak Hindustani very fluently and to a lesser

extent, both Punjabi and Gujarati .. .I could never write in them." 115 Being

asked to write in another language than English he says is "like somebody

watching me play cricket and saying , 'Daruwalla, why don't you put your

talents to use in Kabaddi?' "116 Though English is not an Indian language

"we can touch it with colours typically Indian". 1 17 Daruwalla opines that

the right to recreate language is acquired "through the strength of

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passion ... emotional immediacy." 118 He doesn't "see why this can't be

done in a 'foreign' language if you have adopted it as your own and it has

become your main vehicle of expression" .119 In a poem directly on the use

of English, titled "The Mistress", Daruwalla speaks of "Indian English,

the language that I use". He admits that his mistress is not pure-bred, is

indeed a half-caste of low and ccomplex origins:

perched On the genealogical tree somewhere

· is a Muslim midwife and a Goan cook

That is not all of course: Down the genetic lane, babus and professors of English have also made their one night contributions

(The Mistress)

But her latest slang is available in "classical dictionaries" even though her

"consonants bludgeon you". She has no reputation on the streets where

people "hiss when she passes". She is a curious mixture of the Indian and

the western and "wears heels even though her feet/are smeared up to the

ankles with henna". In spite of everything or because of it, the poet's "love

for her survives". If writing in English drives Parthasarathy to moan his

fate, Daruwalla positively revels in the camavalesque opportunity that his

English affords-belonging nowhere and obeying no rules.

While almost every respondent to P.Lal's questionnaire makes valid

points about Bose's article, and while quite a few hand out history lessons

to Buddhadeva Bose and us (Adil Jussawalla e.g. gives us the history of

the Parsis as an explanation for his "inconceivable" loss of mother

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tongue!)120, it is of interest to note that there is no consensus on whether

English is an Indian language. This is but natural. Poets as diverse as

Suniti Namjoshi, Ptitish Nandy, Arvind Krishna, Gieve Patel and Saleem

Peeradina as many others state that they have or can write in no other

language and ask us why they shouldn't be allowed to practise their craft

even if like Anna Modayil (Sujatha Mathai) and Raghavendra Rao they

feel a sense of immense loss at not being able to read and/or write in an

Indian language. But what about the bi-lingual poets? We have already

seen the way A.K.Ramanujan dismisses Bose's formulations as too

simplistic. S.Mokashi-Punekar says that he writes some poems in English

"because I must express some things only in English" .121 He continues to

write in Kannada. Stating that the market has nothing to do with his

choice he asks why he shouldn't "write in Hindi,Marathi, etc. "Why can't

he write in any language and in any form, "why not an Urdu ghazal?"122

Vilas Sarang declares that he thinks and feels "in English as often as in

Marathi, at the most ordinary moments in life as at moments of crisis"123.

He finds it "natural" to write in English as well as in Marathi~ and as he

says, since "I live my life with two languages, .. .I express myself in

both". 124 What becomes clear from both these responses is that the writers

do not think there are exterior market/audience considerations in their

choice of language, and that they cannot be blamed for historical

circumstances which allow them the choice ( and in many cases the

Hobson's choice) of English. Whatever be the tone of their replies (see

Arvind Kumar Mehrotra's anger125 for example as opposed to Jussawala's

reasoning, and Nandy;s passionate defence of his love for English)126,

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they all plead to be left alone to write their poetry, and be judged on merit

with no bias for or against them. It just happens that their poetry is in

English.

As early as 1938, Raja Rao had set out an agenda for himself and

other writers whose language of literary expression just happens to be

English. Admitting that English is essentially a foreign language, Rao

states that the problem for the Indian English writer is that "one has to

convey in a language not one's own the spirit that is one's own." 127 He

then cautions that" we cannot write like the English. We should not." 128

He is well aware of the power position of English but compares it to the

positions held by Sanskrit and Persian. So to choose to write in English is

to make an infonned decision, well aware of the differences and

difficulties. As Raja Rao puts it, "We in India think quickly, we talk

quickly, and when we move, we move quickly. "129 This, he says, is

reflected in our prepositionless languages and in our story-telling. He is of

the opinion that the Indian writer has to catch this tempo in English. This

infusing of an alien language with a different tempo of life, in itself,

involves creative effort in evolving a different language. Efforts of this

nature he hopes will help in the evolution of a distinctive dialect. This

perhaps has remained a fond hope but his proposition that the English

language has to be Indianized to serve the literary purpose of the Indian

writer is widely accepted now. But there is a crucial corollary to his

cautionary statement that Indian writers "cannot write only as

Indians.( emphasis added) He may have thought of the universal nature of

literature but more probably Raja Rao is making an important statement

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about language choice. There should be a sound reason for one to choose

to write in a non-native language -be it Sanskrit, or Persian, or English. If

you were to write in any other language what you could write in your own

(in case you have more than one language to write in) your choice should

be made rationally. You should use a non-local language to occupy an

insider- outsider position vis-a-vis your own culture. The choice of this

language should allow you what you cannot do in your local language.

Indian English writing has to be Indian (in effect Kannada or Malayalam

or Bengali or Hindi ... ) and not Indian, English and not English. This is the

agenda he sets out for fellow Indian English writers.

In tenns of language this is no sooner said as done. Braj Kachru,

analysing a passage from Raja Rao's Kanthapura, points out that "it is not

so much that the underlying narrative technique is different as collocation

relationships are different, but the historical and cultural presuppositions

are different than what has been traditionally the 'expected' historical and

cultural milieu for English literature. "130 To put it differently Indian

writing in English Indianize the language almost automatically, by the

very fact that they are Indians writing in English, and writing about India.

This is immediately visible to any reader of Anglo Indian writing. Even

Englishmen residing in India had to change the English language to reflect

the Indian reality. Whole dictionaries (take e.g. Hobson-Jobson) exist and

existed of typically Indian words used in English in India. English

changed in India-perhaps Parthasarathy is not fully right when he says

"language is a tree, loses colour/under another sky" ("Rough Passage"),

but language definitely changes colour under another sky. So as much as

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English changed India, it changed in India. This process is exaggerated in

creative literature when a writer has an agenda like Rao's.

More recently, such as agenda has been exposed by Agha Shahid

Ali wh<l' too sees this as a heaven-sent opportunity to be able to transform

the English language, to be able to Indianize it. In a letter to Arvind

Kumar Mehrotra Agha Shahid Ali says:

I think we in the subcontinent have been granted a rather unique opportunity :to contribute to the English language in ways that the British, the Americans, and the Australians ,also the Canadians, cannot .We can do things with syntax that wiiJ bring the language alive in rich and strange ways, and though poetry should have led the way, it is a novelist, Salman Rushdie, who has shown poets ~ way: he has, to quote an essay I read somewhere, chutnified English. 131

Curiously, or not so curiously given the typical lack of knowledge of early

Indian English writers among many post-Independence writers (see the

many answers in P .Lal's anthology where poets state their ignorance of

earlier writers), Agha Shahid Ali avers that "the confidence to do this

could only have come in the post-Independence generation". 132 He feels

that earlier generations followed the rules so strictly that it is almost

embarrassing". Ali then adds:

I think we can do a lot more. What I am looking forward to -to borrow another metaphor from food -is the biryanization (I'm chutnif:Ying) ofEnglish. 133

He goes on to hope that behind his work "readers can sometimes hear the

music of Urdu". 134 Again curiously Ali thinks that he is one of "the very

few of the Indians writing in English" to identify himself in terms of

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Indian culture~ 135 Ali thus places himself in every way in the tradition of

Indian English poetry.

Even when writers did not attempt "chutnification" or

"biryanification", the fare they served was distinctly Indian much like the

Chinese food available in India now! Ingredients, cooking styles, and

already developed tastes all contribute to this change in an unfamiliar

. cuisine. If you add to this a need to be seen as distinctly un-English, you

have a deliberately changed language. Even the very title of Derozio's The

Fakeer of Jungheera immediately points to a different context in which

English is being used. In the "Chorus of Brahmins" in The Fakeer,

Derozio refers to the sun as Surya in order to reinforce Surya's status as

deity. In his "Song of the Hindustanee Minstrel" he begins with this stanza

With surmah thing the black eyes's fringe, Twill sparkle like a star~ With roses dress each raven tress, My only loved Dildar!

Other than "sunnah" and "Dildar" the poem also refers to the

"sitar". The very first Indian English poet has to resort to loan words to be

able to write in English. What one must also be alive to is that this change

in language estranges it from the native English reader even as it connects

to the Indian context while the very fact that it is in English distances the

writing from the Indian context. This allows the writer to occupy a space

between colonial English and the native Indian languages.This may have

been a "natural" position for Derozio,being a Eurasian,but this is available

to all Indian English writers as Raja Rao states.

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Kashiprasad Ghose's Shair again turns Indian in title if not in

deed,but the cultural and political shift in use of language has been made

and is irreversible.It is but to be expected that an Indian poet jotinatra

Mohun Tagore (1831-1908),would tum to list all the Indian flowers he

knows, talk of the nature that his spirit inhabits:

Bring Champa from the bower, Fresh blown and of a golden dye;its weave Gay Aprajita of the richest blue, That rivals Beauty's eyes when lit by Love First dawning Belh too, sweet Bela cull, That blooms in virgin loveliness serene, And with it twine ambrosial Janti fair Whose fragrance well may vie with Parijat Of Indira's bower. Forget not Nageshur, The Love-God's fav'rite; for with that he tips His flowery shaft; ... With these in clusters bright Asoka braid

Tagore adds "Gundharaj", "Saphalika", and "Rajni-Gandha" to the wreath

"Fit to adorn the forehead of the fair". This is not a mere list of flowers, a

litany of Indian names, it is an expression of cultural rootedness. Right in

the middle of the poem are "Parijat/ Of Indira's bower" and "Nageshur,/

The Love-God's fav'rite". This is not an Englishman's rendering of India

but an Indian's expression in . English, an English which has changed,

expanded to include his yearning for expression.

This Indianization becomes imperative to the mystical and religious

poets as they borrow words from their Indian languages including

Sanskrit to give expression to their spirit and spiritual quest. Ram Sharma

(Nobbo Kissen Ghose) who can consign Ramakrishna and Vivekananda

to Elysium also has a poem on the "Music and Vision of the Anahat

175

Chakram" where he sings of the "Onkar, Shrinkar of lute" when he tries to

share with us the "sweet music of the heart--/ Beyond the reach of human

art". He goes on to describe the soul entranced

With flowings of the bansari; As in Brindavan's Kadarnb grove

No mystical or religious poet can find equivalent terms in English for

Hindu concepts or names of deities nor would want to. Sri Ananda

Acharya for example has many such references in his poetry -- conceptual

terms that are almost impossible to translate or explain, let alone find

equivalent terms for:

All former kanna was at end. I attained naihkarmyasiddhi, I attained svarajyasiddhi

(Arctic Swallows, poem 372)

I heard the song ofVak-lswari, and I felt that sunya had become ruu:.DA- zero was completed, perfected, by the truth of nirvan

(Arctic Swallows poem 375)

I heard the song ofVmaveda and I knew that I am ~ the souls of eternity, I am suddha. the soul of purity, I am buddha, the soul of wisdom, I am mukta. emancipation. I dwell in the Universe ofNlTVan

(Arctic Swallows poem 379)

Or take Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) who ends each stanza of his

most well known poem " The Song of the Sannyasin" with the refrain

"Om Tat Sat Om ".Or, to shift the focus from Hindu poets take the

example of Feroze P.Meherjee (1875-1925) whose prose-poem "In Fair

Iran has "his muse make a "shakar-labund speech" ,and introduce him to

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Iran "thy lalazar,thy gulistan" ready "to hymn the Nawruj". Incidentally

this poem also inccludes "the voice of Ancient India and its

commemorative prayer ... -'Tat savitur warenyam bhar.go devsya

dhima~i1Dhiyo yo nah prachodayat'."

Sarojini Naidu trying to sing the Deccan has to but move away

from Royal English to the refrain "Ram re Ram " in the "Village Song" .By

this time she can have "koels" and "gulmohurs" and "neem" ("Summer

Woods") without feeling she is doing anything new, just as she can title a

poem "The Pardah Nashin" and give no explanation.Her poem "The Flute­

Player of Brindaban" if it reveals anything of India to a Britisher would

reveal the Britisher to be a knowledgeable one indeed -so culturally

rooted is it as it refers to the "Kadamba tree", "lndra's golden-flowering

groves", and "sad Varna's silent Courts". By Naidu's time the italicisation

of Indian words is a disappearing practice even if not, many poets use

Indian words with the elan and ease and amusement of Joseph Furtado:

Sly rogue,the old Irani! Has made a lakh,they say­A lakh in land and money. By mixing milk with pani.

Beware now,Abdul Gani, Beware of Kala Pani

And meddle not with money! She thinks I be some rajah­

Some rajah in disguise-nd sure to taste like honey;

Wouldn't mind a little majah? ( " The Old Irani")

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While Vinayak Krishna Gokak almost venerates the English

language in his poem "English Words"-he is aware that this language is a

Speech that carne like leech-craft And killed us almost,bleeding us white'

But this English transforms India as it is willingly transfmmed in India:

You were the dawn, and sunJight filled the spaces where owls were hovering.

you came Pining for a new agony,a new birth. You blossomed into a nascent loveliness

This English is a settler.

with Indo-Aryan blood Tingling in your veins.

and allows for free expression of the spirit .Just how free this expression

can be is best illustrated by another poem by Joseph Furtado:

Goan Fiddler: 0 meri rani,hamko do toda pani. Lakshmu: I speaking English,sab, Goan Fiddler :Very well,my English speaking daughter, give me then a little water. Lakshmi : Why little?Drink plenty much.All peoples liking water of this well. Goan Fiddler : And nice English too you speak, my daughter. Lakshmi :I going to English school in Poona. 'Smart thing that goldsmith's daughter's, teacher always saying. I no girl, sab, I marry.

("Lakshmi")

In Furtado's "Lakshmi" we no longer have a single case of

borrowing terms or phrases or expressions from Indian languages.He may

be using a "pidgin-English" for humorous purposes but he is also using an

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Indian English with confidence.This use of an Indian English for

humorous purpose recurs in Nissim Ezekiel's poems. This English ts

characterised by changes in syntax (where the sentence structure ts

influenced by the mother tongue of the speaker ) as well as other kinds of

linguistic transfers ,unusual collocations (like "salt-giver"),extended

analogies ("black money"), or even new culture-bound meanings for

"proper" English words (e.g. the use of the word "government" by the

novelist Khushwant Singh to mean "sirkar", a form of address).This is

discussed in detail by Braj Kachru who points to the various kinds of

translations that Indians have to effect to convey peculiarly Indian

expressions and experiences.Nissim Ezekiel explores and uses these

various devices in his Indian English poems "A Very Indian Poem in

Indian English","Goodbye Party for Pushpa T.S.", "The Professor", "The

Railway Clerk","The Patriot"," Soap", and "Irani Restaurant Instructions".

Pushpinder Syal takes for discussion the "The Railway Clerk" 136 :-

It isn't my fault,I do what I'm told but still I am blamed. This year,my leave application was twice refused. Every day there is so much work and I don't get overtime. My wife is always asking for more money. Money,money,where to get money? My job is such,no one is giving bribe, while other clerks are in fortunate position, and no promotion even because I am not gradu ate.

I wish I was bird.

I am never neglecting my responsibility, I am discharging it properly, I am doing my duty.

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but who is appreciating? Nobody,I am telling you.

My desk is too small, The fan is not repaired for two months, three months. I am living far off in Borivili, my children are neglecting studies, how long this can go on?

Once a week, I see film, and then I am happy,but not otherwise. Also,l have good friends, That is only consolation. Sometimes we are meeting here or there and having long chat. We are discussing country's problems. Some are thinking of foreign But due to circumstances, I cannot think. And I can only support.

Curiously Syal omits the last stanza of the poem and says that "The

twelve sentences that constitute the text of the poem [actually eighteen

constitute the text] present a socilinguistic profile of a speaker of Indian

English". 137 Analysing the language of the poem she states that the

linguistic "features show that maximum deviation occurs at the syntactic

level, a deviation reflective of usage in the world outside the poem". In

other words, unlike Raja Rao in KanthapYrn, Nissim Ezekiel is not

inventing an English of his own but using a "syntax [which] brings the

social context into the poem" .139 She avers that "since the entire

monologue is in the grammar of Indian English",that is the language of the

speaker is not "set off against another kind of grammar", the thrust in not

on the language the speaker is using "but what he is saying". 140

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In Syal's reading this dramatic monologue,where Ezekiel's attempt

is "to follow as closely as possible the rhythm of actual speech ... the up­

and-down intonation of Indian English", language is successful in giving

"voice to the dissatisfactions of the middle class in India". 141 She finds

that it presents" a very depressing picture".The clerk "is a semi-educated

person and vocal enough to be aware of the circumscribed existence he is

leading,but not educated,vocal,clever or rich enough to change things". 142

Syal says that this awareness is articulated along with the " inability to do

or act out this awareness". 143 The language used voices this articula­

tion. Thus the lndianness of the poem is " a way of making -English a

means,for self-definition and self-articulation for the character in the

poemjust as it is for millions of educated middle-class Indians". 144 But

Syal is aware that many readers,Indian readers,think this is a humorous

poem that derides and ridicules the clerk's speech.In other words the

intention of the poet as well as the impact of the poem on the reader could

be to laugh "at the obvious incongruities "of language and this" reaction

could include sneering at the person who utters them". 145 Even if the

intention of the poet is not considered, it is important to note that many

. readers have dismissed Ezekiel's Indian English poems as mere

caricatures.Parthasarathy who thinks that Ezekiel is serious in his

consideraton of "the use of pidgin English" ,even pointing out that some of

the "poems imitate the ideolectal features of English used by Gujarati

speakers",still dismisses the poems as never rising "above caricature". 146

Vilas Sarang feels that in these poems "Indian English is used only for

humour and satire,and not as a legitimate vehicle for poetry" .147 This

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seems a trifle harsh especially in the light of Syal's discussion of "The

Railway Clerk" but perhaps there exists a certain ambivalence,an

ambiguity of purpose. But surely the class attitude of the poet is one thing

and the attitude of readers is another.Syal's reading of the poem is not

undermined by other possible reader.positions and reactions. Humour too

serves a serious purpose (and here Furtado's poems also deserve a re

evaluation) and if irony can be privileged satire should be seen as the

other side of the coin.

Bruce King,writing about Ezekiel's poetry written m this

period,says that Ezekiel "becomes poet of the discontent of Bombay" and

that he "records its broken English, poverty ,confusion, crude

innocence,confused minds,hopelessness,people caught between

conflicting values" 148· King feels that while Ezekiel laughs at hte Railway

clerk he is also sympathetic to him.He sees the same comedy which

arises from "lack of ability and purpose, a similar self-satisfied confusion

and lack ofwill,an ability to master the modem world" 149 at work in other

Indian English poems like "Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T.S." with its

"speaker's drifting logic and poor English and unconscious meanings" .150

In his "Very Indian Poem in Indian English" the language may evoke

laughter but ultimately not the sentiment expressed. What it leaves the

reader with is the impression of the speaker's careless inability to express

himself in English as well as the inability of English to express or repress

his temperament! The speaker may be opiniated,self-satisfied, confused,

even be unable to master the modem world (to echo King) but the

"Indianness " of the English points to the confusions caused by the

182

colonial encounter,the rupture in cultural continuities caused by the

language the speaker is using.One leaves the poem with the impression

caused by the last eight lines or so:

you tolerate me, I tolerate you, One day Ram Rajya is surely coming.

You are going? But you will visit again Any time,any day, I am not believing in ceremony, Always I am enjoying your company.

Most Indian readers will recognise the sentiments expressed here.Just as

most Indians will also confirm "that they have aiJ come across such

characters at one time or another", as Syal points out. 151 What she also

points out is that most Indian readers will appreciate these poems with a •

shock of recognition - they wou1d have heard these speech patterns and

rhythms and some of them " might themselves speak in a similar way" .152

But unfortunately,Indian poets don't speak like this and hence this

language is useful only in dramatic monologues.Further many readers tend

to dismiss this use of language questioning the poet's motives.Perhaps this

is the reason Ezekiel has never written Indian English poems again even

though they are still hugely successful.

While A.K.Ramanujan may use the very foreignness of English for

his studied poetic effects, it is without doubt that his attempt in English

poetry was to approximate the "conventions of classical Tamil", as King

points out. 153 King also notes that Ramanujun uses "devices of

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indentation and spacing 'in order to mimic closely the sytactic suspenses'

of Tamil classical poetry". 154 He points to the "starting in the midst of a

statement, puns, the careful use of line breaks, the economy and flat

statements, also an unusual use of rhyme and sound pattems,especially

assonance (also important to classical Tamil). '" 55 His use of compound

words like "shop-window" is also an Indianization of English. In a now

oft - quoted instance,S.Nagarajan points to a mistake that Ramanujan

makes in" The Hindoo: he reads his Gita and is calm at all events",

When scandal, knives,or cowdung fall on women in wedding lace,

Nagarajan notes "(sic)" after "fall" in the above quotation. 156 This leads to

the old question as to whether Indians ought to write poetry at all in a

language when the best of them can make mistakes. This is a charge to be

repeated about other Indian English poets who though not consciously

writing an Indian English (unlike Ezekiel in his Indian English poems) still

seem to be writing an English which deviates from the Queen's .At this

point it is interesting to note that P.l4J's manifesto for Indian English

poets (first published in 1951 and later in 1959 ) has this to say about the

language used:

We affirm our faith in a vital language as sufficient to write poetry in.A vital language may be modem idiom or 'ancient',but it must not be total travesty of the current pattern of speech, ... King's and Queen's English,yes;Indian E gl. h . "bl "d . 157 n IS ,pemiSSI e;p1 gm ... , no.

But who is to decide what the "current pattern of speech" is and where.

What is Indian English and permissible? What is pidgin? Critics have time

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and again questioned the existence of Indian English and there is still no

consensus of what is acceptable and what is not

Jayanta Mahapatra has often been attacked for his bad English.

John Stachniewski castigates Mahapatra for ''disregard for syntax", for

ignoring "the basic rules of grammar", for his "inept expression", for

various "instances of. bad grammar", and "weird attributions of parts of

speech' ,as well as for his mixed metaphors. 158 On the other hand, others

have praised Mahapatra precisely for this as Sarang does when he says

that "]ayanta Mahapatra seems to have made some headway towards

developing a genuinely poetic Indian English". 159 C.B.Cox in his review

of Mahapatra's The False Start praises Mahapatra's use of English and

states that in his poems "the process of creating a proper unity ,a truly

Indian English, takes a significant step forward". 160 K.N.Daiuwalla,on the

other hand,feels that "On occasions the unorthodox punctuation,or rather

the lack of it, puts you off' ,and feels that there is little to be gained by

subjecting Mahapatra's poetry to a " sytactic scrutiny " - it " only demeans

the reviewer". 161

A similar sense of unease is generated by Kamala Das's poetry.

Carol Rumes states that Das's poetic :

voice operates in an area somewhere between ideolect and dialect.It is outside standard norms of poetic diction, yet inward enough with the language to conjure a sense of these more familiar dialects,sometimes assimilated, sometimes hovering at the edge. The other language asserts an incomprehensible pressure,so that the effect on a reader from outside that tradition is similar, sometimes to that oftranslated poetry. 162

185

Rumens sees this "obliqueness" as "a source of vitality and

power" .Arvind Krishna Mehrotra feels that this continuity between

English and Indian language is an important aspect of Indian English

poetry:

Each poet's 'continuous' language or ideolect is constituted differently: Ramanujan's is of English-Kannada-Tamil, Kolatkar's and Chitre's of English-Marathi, Ali's of English -Urdu.Mahapatra's of English-Oriya,and Jussawalla has in an interview spoken of 'various languages crawling around inside [his]head'. 163

Mehrotra is here developing on Ramanujan's statement about the "inner"

and "outer" forms of his poetry-informed by his life in lndia,his

Kannada, Tamil, classics and folklore; English, linguistics, and •

anthropology. Ramanujan says these are "continuous with each other, and

I can no longer tell which comes from where ". 164 The Indianization of

English is no longer just a conscious process (if it ever was) but is also

both socially and personally an ongoing and accomplished process.

Eunice de Souza's English is continuous with another Indian variety of

English,as Mehrotra points out, "a pidgin spoken only in the submbs of

Bombay" .165 She has a group of poems titled "Queen's English" where she

uses this Bombay variety:

Che bugger Pitu sas asli-chick men.

But however domesticated, the Indian English poet can never forget that

slhe is writing in English,a Wl-( or not so-) Indian language. Adil

Jussawalla in Missing Person has a poem on language:

186

A 's a giggle now but on it Osiris,Ra, An an er ... a cough, once spoking your valleys with light But the's a's here to stay, On it St.Pancreas Station, the Indian and African railways.

That's why you learn it today

ln this post-colonial situation millions in Africca and India and elsewhere

learn the English alphabet where once their own spoked their valleys with

light.The English 'a' like the language itself is

bright as a butterfly's wing or a piece of tin aimed at your throat

Still an 'a', Jussawalla says, it is

expansive as in 'air' black as in 'dark', thin as in 'scream'.

Be it a "library in Boston" or "a death-cell in Patna", the twenty-six

letters of the English alphabet will rule the lives "swelling to 'Duty',

'Patience','Car'. After all this, the poet persona is told by them:

'Tum left or right, there's millions like you up here, picking their way through refuse, looking for words they lost. You're your country's lost property with no office to claim you back. You're polluting our sounds, You're so rude.

187

And then the final punch, as ever:

'Get back to your language',they say.

Jussawalla talks of this awareness of "the guilt of the bourgeois

intellectual". But he cannot be silenced :

His tongue, his one underground worker perhaps, bound by a sentence pronounced in the West, occasionally broke out in a rash of yowls dipping the watch-tower of death, police dogs

But this subversive utterance may only be for "cell-mates/aspiring

to doctorates" in "Texas,Bogota,Bombay". The post-colonial dilemma

doesn't spare any one-writer or reader.

This poem of Jussawalla's does reinforce one important strategy in

Indian English poetry as in other Indian English writing. This is to use the

language to distance the writing from both the British/Western and the

locai/Indi~ while aware that it is the peculiarity of the historical

condition that this can be done at all, and that only others similarly placed

can see the value of the writing. Homi Bhabha uses the occurrence of the

Devnagri letter in Jussawalla' s poem 'Missing Person', to argue that this

untranslated/untranslatable letter signals the hybrid postcolonial context, a

contest produced of competing languages, at the same time as it exposes

the hybrid quality of the co Ionising culture. 166 This use of English so that

it appears as a translation to the western reader (see Rumens on Kamala

188

Das quoted above) while the writing seems to come from the ousider

position to the Indian reader is a characteristic of Indian English

writing. This may be more obvious in fiction but as has been argued here

is inevitable in poetry as well.This is perhaps why Ellis Underwood said

in 1935 that Indian poets' efforts are characterised by " a fondness for

'tall' writing, a delight in 'six-foot ' words and... grand expressions,

magniloquent of style ... coupled with colloquialisms" ,sounding censorious

like a latter day Macaulay! 168 Underwood indicts Indian poets for

"misplaced or misguided idioms or phrases, forced allusion, tags, [and]

quotations". On the other hand the same poetry has been denounced by

Indian critics down the ages as un-Indian as we have seen! As early as

1895,R.C.Dutt declares that "All attempts to court the muses in a foreign

ton~:,rue must be fruitless ... True genius mistakes its vocation when it

stmggles in a foreign tongue". 168 But this struggle in a foreign ton~:,rue

helps the Indian English writer to inhabit a space between cultures and

traditions and s/he uses it to critically engage with her/his own local

traditions in most cases.

Various Indian poetical conventions and traditions inform the

poetry of Indian English poets down the ages and poets have begun to

assert this connection when critics consistently fail to see this.Kamala

Das, for instance,disavows and disdains attempts to link her to American

confessional poets,contending instead that "her literary genealogy is

traceable to the bhakti poets,especially those like Mohadeviyakka and

Mirabai" .169 And in case careless readers miss the influence Eunice de

Souza addresses Sant Tukaram in one of her poems

189

Tuka,forgive my familiarity. I have loved your verses ever since that French priest everyone thought mad recited them.

("Return")

Tukaram amves through a French priest but the connection ts

made- a critical connection made possible by foreign languages and

cultures, but an affirmative connection:

The priests do not sound like you but I'll offer a coconut anyway for someone I love. You made life hard for your wife and I'm not sure I approve of that.

("Return")

Badri Raina makes a very interesting point about the use of English

in lndia.He wonders why it is that many more Indian women than men

among the English educated urban middle classes,even when they hold a

critical view of the Indian colonial experience and of the role of English in

it,conduct their spoken interactions in English. 170

He then attempts an answer, a reasoning that is based on "a

contemporary historical urgency deeply related to choice of language

use". The reason is that they being feminists : 0

such women are perhaps justly suspicious of the qualities of bonding that come into play as soon as the vernacular is used.Often ... the vernacular carries a cultural load which inhibits the desired status of a gender-free and autonomous self-hood. 171

190

Raina's argument can be extended easily to Indian English women

writers/poets and thus one sees that there is more to language choice than

Kamala Das's brush-off: "English being the most familiar,we use it.That's

all." As already seen Das,in her poem "An Introduction", equates people

who castigate her for writing in English with categorizers who will

impose rules on her,not allow her to break free. She rebels and uses

English for it suits her purpose very weii.It may be no coincidence that

From Torn Dutt to Sujata Bhatt it is women poets who have used English

with a greater sense of freedom and felicity. Even Bruce King observes

that "a directness of expression and natural,idiomatic,colloquial vigour is

more often found in the verse of Das,Kalia,de Souza and Silgardo than in

the male Indian poets". 172 English not only offered them a neutral space to

use their writing as "a means of creating a place in the world" 173, they had

to also reject the established "fonnalized British speech and diction" .174

But male poets too assert their Indian connections and distances as

they increasingly and confidently use an Indian English,an English whose

cultural moorings are more obviously (than before) in India, with its other

(than British colonial) histories. Agha Shahid Ali's second collection of

poems The Beloved Witness (1992),draws its title from two meanings of

the middle name:

They ask me to tell them what "Shahid means-Listen: it means "The Beloved" in Persian, "Witness" in Arabic

191

.....

Ali is acutely aware of the various cultural transmutations that have gone

into making his complex self - a situation complicated by his expatriate

status:

I am a dealer in words That mix cultures and leave me rootless

("Bone Sculpture")

He realises that this may be a satisfYing,marketable mix:

I began with a laugh,stirred my tea in English drank India down with a fair British accent temples,beggars and dust spread like marmalade on my toast ("In Memory of Begum Akhtar")

However he is rejected both in the west as in India - "A language must

measure up to one's native dust". Ali makes this sense of loss and non­

belonging his strength on the lines of other Indian English poets, mining

the Urdu poetic conventions and Islamic traditions and the American and

Indian contemporary realities -underscoring that in this post-colonial

condition everything is available to him (however it may be and in

whatever form!):

The only language of loss in the world is Arabic These words were said to me in a language ,not Arabic

("Nostalgists Map of America")

This cultural mosaic ts not just the accidental baggage of this post­

colonial but something absolutely necessary in the definition of his self,as

he says that by the time he learnt to appreciate Faiz

192

I was no longer a boy,and Urdu a silhouette traced by the voices of singers, by Begum Akhtar, who wove your couplets into ragas:both language and music were sharpened.I listened:

and you became,like money, necessary. Dast -e-Saba I said to myself.

But, almost expectedly, it is another emigrant,a woman writer,

Sujata Bhatt,who pushes the limits of Indian English poetry to articulate

her self, to make her place in the world.In her very first book of poems

Brunizam ( in itself a new word compounded of French and Russian

elements referring to the dark brown prairie soil of a kind found in Asia,

Europe and and North America), she uses Gujarati -both in the original

script and transliterations - to create her poems and mark out her territory.

She has poems titled (Udaylee) and (Sherdi), and many of

her poems are peppered with references to places and personages in

Gujarat and to Hindu myths. She has a long poem "Search for my tongue"

in which she uses Gujarati extensively as she explores her situation:

You ask me what I mean by saying I have lost my tongue I ask you, what would you do if you had two tongues in your mouth, and lost the first one,the mother tongue, and could not really know the other, the foreign tongue.

She feels that one can never be a truly bilingual poet:

193

You could not use them both together even if you thought that way.

But if you that

if you lived in a place you had to speak a foreign tongue, your mother tongue would rot, rot and die in your mouth

you have to think again.Gujarati doesn't leave her,nor its associations :"1

can't hear my mother in English" .In an amalgalm of English and Gujarati

she affinns that

I can't (dha) I can't ( dha) I can't forget I can't forget

(dha dhin dhin dha)

A11 her languages do come together even if it is not as easy for hwnans as

for the languages themselves - the sounds common to Gujarati, English,

and German (the three languages between her and her husband)

spell together spill together filling our shoes, filling our love with salt

("The Undertow")

Sujata Bhatt isn't unmoved by the irony of it all- that English, the tongue of

the colonialists,a language used for oppression, should not only be

tolerated by the oppressed after their liberation but loved by them and

their progeny. Can a people and their culture be really wiped our by a

194

different tongue-would they not survive by appropriating the very

language imposed to oppress them?Bhatt asks this series of questions

about language in "A Different History" :

Which language has not been the oppressor's tongue? Which language truly meant to murder someone? And how does it happen that after the torture, after the soul has been cropped with a long scythe scooping out of the conqueror's face-the unborn grandchildren grow to love that strange language

This second section comes after the first where Bhatt establishes the

sacred nature of all knowledge and all life forms in India:

Here ,the gods roam freelyy disguised as snakes or monkeys~ every tree is sacred and it is a sin to be rude to a book .

• All fonns of learning and life forces are related:

You must learn how to tum the pages gently without disturbing Saraswati, without offending the tree from whose wood the paper was made.

Little wonder that this holistic culture embraced English to its bosom!

Debjani Chatterji, an Indian born multinational (grew up in Japan,

Bangladesh, India, Hong Kong, Egypt, and the UK) who Is based in

England stakes her claim to English in no uncertain terms:

195

Your words raise spectral songs to haunt me. I have subverted your vocabulary and mined rebellious corridors of sound. I have tilled the frozen soil of your grammar -I will reap the romance of your promises.

("To the English Language")

Chatterjee's may be the immigrant's voice:

Indifferent language of an alien shore, the journey was troubled but I am here: register me among your step-children.

but she has the same pulls and pressures as other Indian English poets:

That special love that flows easy with my birth-right is for Bengali,my mother-a well rounded tongue, sweet and juicy with monsoon warmth, rich and spicy with ancestral outpourings.

What has proficiency to do with it? I know I dream it endlessly.

It is English that claims her competence,it is English that she can mine:

I know you now with a persistence that a stranger musters, I know the madness hidden in your rules and relics, I see the glory where you would disown it.

But the English is changed,enriched by her Indianness:

I do not come to your rhythms empty-handed -the treasures of other traditions are mine, so many koh-i-noors to be claimed.

196

The language that she inhabits as a poet is no longer British English,her

homecoming is to a changed tongue but one that asserts her love for the

language:

It is now my turn to call you at my homecoming. I have learnt to love you -the hard way.

Every Indian English poet takes this journey to set up home with the

language, changing it and being changed by it. English, thus travels a long

way in Indian English poetry and serves a variety of purposes. English it

has been argued in this chapter, is an empowering and enbabling medium

for most Indian English poets,and is informed by varioous Indian

languages, cultures and traditions. In this appropriation Indian English

poetry makes the English language bear the weight and texture of a

different experience, of different experiences. English becomes a

different language partaking of other traditions.

As Dilip Chitre says "Literatures all over the world have become

multi-traditional'"75 and Indian English poetry partakes of this

multiplicity.An Indian English poet also has a variety of Englishes

available to him/her. Chitre sees the strength of Indian English poetry in

this multiplicity of sources of languages and traditions seeing that it is the

"native Indian literatures" which will enrich Indian English poetry.

Amalendu Bose says in an article written in 1979 that "Indian writers in

English live in multilingual areas although they all have their own mother­

tongues,this fact inevitably qualifies their English". 176 He sees the "

problem of the handling of the language-medium ... [as] the principal

197

aesthetic problem" for the Indian English writer/poet. 177 This he avers is

inextricably intertwined with the poet's "Indian identity"- the principal

question when we get over the poet's competence in English will always

"be the question of his identity, the degree of his Indirumess". 178 Indian

English poets, as we have seen, are acutely aware of these inter-related

questions and have tackled both with success.

198

Notes

1 . This is a more controversial statement than it seems at first glance. Almost every poet in reply to P.Lal's questionnaire, published in his anthology, states that English is the only language that they can write in. But the career of Michael Madhusudan Dutt shows that most Indians would have access to and could improve their competence in at least one other Indian language. Jayanta Mahapatra has also started to write in Oriya lately. The necessary time and effort, and lack of material or even emotional motivation persuade poets not to "choose" to improve their Indian language and instead continue to "choose" to write in English.

2. Buddhadeva Bose, "Indian Poetry in English", reproduced m Modem Indian Poetry in English, ed. P.Lal, pp.3-5.

3. ibid., p.3

4. ibid.

5. ibid.

6. ibid.

7. ibid., p.4.

8. ibid.

9. ibid.

10. ibid.

II. ibid, p.5.

12. ibid.

13. ibid.

199

14. David McCutchion, Indian Writing in English. Critical Essays (Calcutta~ Writers Workshop, 1969), p.9.

15. ibid., p.l5.

16. ibid.

17. ibid.

18. ibid., p.l6.

19. ibid, p.17.

20. R. Parthasarathy, "Meeting Allen Ginsberg", Miscellany, 1 I May­August I967, p.65.

21. ibid.

22. Not surprisingly both Yeats and Spender find mention in answers to P.Lal's questionnaire. See e.g. Deb Kumar Das's reply, pp.85-86.

23. Raja Rao, "Foreword", Kanthapura.

24. Avijit Pathak, "On Vikram Seth and All that he Symbolises", Mainstream, Voi.XXXI, N0.32, June 19, 1993, p.25.

25. ibid.

26.-40 ibid, p.26.

4 I. ibid., p.27.

42. ibid., p.26.

43. ibid.

44. ibid., p.27.

45. ibid.

46. - 54 Vijay Nambisan, "Dreaming Indian, Writing English", The Hindu, March 21, 1993, p.XIII.

200

55. Harish Trivedi, "Indian and Post-colonial Disourse" in Interrogating Post-colonialism eds. Harish Trivedi and Meenakshi Mukherjee, p.239.

56. ibid., pp.239-40.

57. ibid., p.240.

58. U.R. Ananthamurthy is reported by Nambisan to have stated this in an interview to The Hindu, August I 7, I 980, Nambisan, op.cit.

59.- 63. ibid.

64. Vilas Sarang, An Anthology, p.8.

65. - 69. ibid.

70. ibid., p.9.

71. ibid.

72. Stated by Indra Nath Chaudhry, The Hindu, April I 8, I 991, p.xiv.

73. Humayun Kabir, The Indian Heritage (Bombay: 1946), pp.I20-27, reproduced in Gerhard Stilz, Grundlagen zur Literatur in englischer Sprache : Indien (Munchen : Wilhelm Fink, 1982), pp.61-66.

74. ibid., p.65.

75. N.K. Sidhanta "English" in the Indian Literatures of Today : A Symposium (Bombay: P.E.N., All India Centre, 1947), p.24.

76. Bhabani Bhattacharya, "Indo-Anglian", in The Novel in Modern India ed. Iqbal Bakhtyar (Bombay: P.E.N., 1964), p.41.

77. ibid., pp.41-48.

78. Kamala Das, "Replies to the Questionnaire", Modern Indian Poetry, ed. P.Lal, p.1 02.

79. ibid.

80. ibid.

201

81. ibid.

82. ibid., p.1 03.

83. ibid.

84. Nissim Ezekiel, "Replies", in P.Lal, p.168.

85. ibid.

86. ibid.,pp.169-70.

87.-90. ibid., p.170.

91. ibid., pp.l70-71.

92. ibid., p.171.

93. ibid.

94. A.K. Ramanujan, "Replies", in P.Lal, p.444.

95. ibid.

96. - 99. ibid., p.445.

100. R. Parthasarathy, Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets, p.9.

101. ibid.

102. ibid.

103. A.K. Ramanujan, in P~ Lal, p.444.

104. R. Parthasarathy, op.cit., p.4.

105. ibid.

106.- 111. ibid., p.3.

112. ibid., p.7.

113.ibid.

202

114. K.N. Daruwalla, "Replies", in P.Lal, p.93.

115. ibid.

116. ibid., p.94.

117. ibid.

118. ibid., p.95.

119. ibid., p.95.

120. Adil Jussawalla, in P.Lal, p.228-31.

121. S. Mokashi-Punekar, in P.Lal, p.336.

122. ibi"d., p.37.

123. Vilas Sarang, in P.Lal, p.500.

124. ibid.

125. A.K. Mehrotra, in P.Lal, pp.303-304.

126. Pritish Nandy, in P.Lal, pp.371-74.

127. Raja Rao, Kanthapura, p.5.

128. ibid.

129. ibid., p.6.

130. Braj Kachru, the Alchemy of English: The Spread. functions and models of non-native Englishes (New Delhi: OUP, 1989), p.160.

131. Quoted in Arvind Kirhsna Mehrotra, Twelve Modem Indian Poets, p.4.

132. ibid.

133. ibid.

134. ibid.

203

135. ibid., p.5.

136. Pushpinder Sayal, Structure and Style in Commonwealth Literature (New Delhi : Vikas, 1994), pp.27-35.

137. ibid., p.29.

138. ibid., p.30.

139. ibid.

140. ibid., p.31.

141. ibid.

142. ibid., p.32.

143. ibid.

144. ibid., p.33.

145. ibid., p.34.

146. R. Parthasarathy, Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets, p.8.

147. Vilas Sarang, An Anthology, p.10.

148. Bruce King, Three Indian Poets, p.41.

149. ibid.

150. ibid.

151. Pushpinder Syal, op.cit., p.34.

152. ibid.

153. Bruce King, Three Indian Poets, p.61.

154. ibid.

155. ibid.

156. S. Nagarajan, "A.K. Ramanujan", in ed. S. Peeradina, p.l9.

157. P. Lal, op.cit., p.xi.

158. John Stachniewski "Life Signs in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra", The Indian Literary Review, April 1986, pp.79-84 . Quoted in Vilas Sarang, An Anthology, p.l 0.

159. Vilas Sarang, op.cit., p.l 0.

160. C.B. Cox, review of The False Start, The Critical Quarterly, Vol.24, No.I, pp.90-91.

161. K.N. Daruwalla, "The Pain that Moves All", in The Poetry Review, vol.83, No.I, p.18.

162. Carol Rumes, "Dislocated Carnality", ibid., p.35.

163. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Twelve Indian Poets, p.6.

164. Quoted in Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets, ed. R. Parthasarathy, p.96.

165. A.K. Mehrotra, op.cit., p.6.

166. Homi Bhabha, "Interrogating Identity : The Postcolonial Prerogative", in Anatomy of Racism ed. David Theo Goldberg (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1990), p.203.

167. Ellis Underwood, Indian English and Indian Characters (Calcutta : 1935), pp.l0-33.

168. R.C. Dutt, The Literature of Bengal (Calcutta : Thacker Spink, 1985), pp.185-186.

169. Quoted in Sudesh Mishra, Making Faces, p.328.

170. Badri Raina, "Language and the Politics of English in India", in Rethinking English : Essays in Literature. Language. History, ed. Svati Joshi (New Delhi: Trianka, 1991), p.266.

171. ibid.

172. Bruce King, Modem Indian Poetry. p.l61.

205

173. ibid., p.l52.

174. ibid., p.l60.

175. Quoted in A.K. Mebrotra., op.cit., p.l 04.

176. Amalendu Bose, "Indian Writing in English", in Indian Writing in English, ed. K.N. sinha., p.69.

177. ibid.

178. ibid.

206