Indian Literatures and Aesthetics

Indian English fiction

Indian English fiction refers to prose and dramatic works written in English by Indian authors, and the term is used loosely to cover novels, short stories, plays and poems. Students should first separate the genre of a work from its language, since a work can be in English and still be a play, a novel or a poem. For example, a one-act play and a full-length play are both dramatic works, whereas a novel is a work of prose fiction, so a question that asks which work 'does not belong' usually tests this genre distinction. Many of the major Indian English novels of the late twentieth century are long multi-generational narratives that use history, especially Partition and the making of the nation, as their setting. Poetry and dramatic verse also form part of the tradition and often bring the historical past into the present through images of ruins, tombs and forgotten monuments.

The key contrast for exam purposes is between writing originally in English and writing in another Indian language that is later translated. A play written in Marathi and known to English readers through translation is not an Indian English work in the original sense, even though it is widely read in English.

• genre — the category of a literary work, such as novel, drama or poetry. e.g. 'A novel is a work of prose fiction, while a play is written for performance.'
• Partition novel — a novel that takes the 1947 division of India and Pakistan as its historical background. e.g. 'The Partition novel often examines how private families absorb public violence.'

Rasa theory

Rasa theory is the central aesthetic theory of Indian drama and poetry, which explains how a work of art produces a special emotional relish (rasa) in the audience. The theory is systematically set out in Bharata's Natya Shastra, a foundational treatise on drama, dance and aesthetics, and it is the first text a student should associate with the concept. The theory holds that the stable emotion (sthāyibhāva) of a character is aroused and transformed into rasa through a set of components, and the traditional list counts nine rasas, often called the navarasa.

The determinants (vibhāva) are the causes that arouse the stable emotion, and they are divided into ālambana (the basic support, such as the character who feels the emotion) and uddīpana (the stimulus that intensifies it, such as the setting or season). Vibhāva is used as a technical term with several synonyms, including kāraṇa ('cause'), nimitta ('occasion or instrument') and hetu ('reason'), all of which denote what gives rise to the emotion. By contrast, pariṇāma ('outcome' or 'result') does not name a determinant, and the consequent responses are the anubhāvas and the transitory emotions (vyabhicāribhāvas).

• vibhāva — the determinant or cause of an emotion in rasa theory. e.g. 'The moonlit garden is a uddīpana that deepens the lover's longing.'
• anubhāva — the visible response of a character, such as a gesture or tear. e.g. 'Her trembling voice is an anubhāva of her fear.'
• sthāyibhāva — the dominant or stable emotion that becomes rasa. e.g. 'Love is the sthāyibhāva of the śṛṅgāra rasa.'

Dalit narrative readings

Dalit narratives are works written by or about Dalits, the communities at the bottom of the traditional caste hierarchy, and critics have long debated how such texts should be read. A common problem is that readers reduce these works to a single meaning, treating them as sources of pity for caste humiliation, as stories of heroic protest, or as stories of an individual's rise from poverty to success. Each of these readings captures something real, but when it is made the only reading, the text loses its social, historical and literary complexity.

The reductive reading is connected to a wider pattern in which dominant readers keep the marginalised 'Other' in a space of difference and treat the Other as permanently exotic. This pattern explains why the single-dimensional reading occurs, because a reader who sees the Other as strange is more likely to read a Dalit life only through suffering or spectacle. Two assertions of this kind can therefore be compatible, one describing a narrow mode of reading and the other offering a framework that accounts for it. Students should not treat a statement that gives one plausible explanation as the only explanation, since general tendencies are rarely exclusive.

• single-dimensional reading — interpreting a text through one theme only, such as pity or triumph. e.g. 'A reading that sees only suffering misses the author's critique of the social order.'
• the Other — a group defined as different from the dominant self, often treated as exotic. e.g. 'Colonial travel writing often fixed the Other in a timeless, strange landscape.'

Translators of Indian literature

Much of Indian literature reaches English readers through translation, and each translated work is associated with a specific translator who made the English version. Students should memorise the pairings of major authors with the translators who rendered their works, because these pairings are regularly tested. For instance, the Kannada novel Samskara by U. R. Ananthamurthy is widely known in English through the translation by A. K. Ramanujan, a scholar who also translated classical and folk poetry.

Some authors wrote in English under a different name, which can make the author and the pen name look like two separate writers. Kamala Das, the Malayalam-English poet, published some of her English writing under the pen name Madhavikutty. Marathi poetry by Namdeo Dhasal, the Dalit Panther poet, was translated into English by Dilip Chitre, a poet and translator who brought Marathi poetry to a wider readership. Students should therefore check whether a question gives the pen name or the real name, and whether it asks for the author or for the translator.

• translator — a person who renders a text from one language into another, often making choices about tone and idiom. e.g. 'A good translator preserves the rhythm of the original where possible.'
• pen name — a name used by an author instead of the real name. e.g. 'The writer published her later stories under a pen name.'

Indian independent publishers

Independent publishers in India are houses that operate outside the large commercial publishing conglomerates, and many of them are known for specialised lists rather than general trade publishing. A niche publisher focuses on particular genres, regions or kinds of writing, and this focus is what distinguishes it from a large house that publishes across all categories. Writers Workshop and Blaft are examples of such independent houses, and students should recognise them as publishers rather than magazines, archives or cultural groups.

The term can be confused with other forms of literary production. A little magazine is a periodical published in small print runs, often by a group of writers who share an aesthetic, so it is a different category from a book publisher. Reading circles are social groups that meet to discuss books and are not publishing bodies, and digital archives store texts without publishing them as new books. Exam questions often offer these categories as distractors, so the key feature to look for is whether the entity publishes books as a commercial or independent press.

• niche publisher — a publisher that concentrates on a narrow category of books. e.g. 'The press specialises in translated crime fiction and small-run poetry.'
• little magazine — a small-circulation literary periodical that often promotes new writing. e.g. 'Many modern Indian poets first appeared in little magazines.'

G. V. Desani's All About H. Hatterr

G. V. Desani's All About H. Hatterr, published in 1948, is one of the most celebrated early experimental novels in Indian English. It is widely regarded as a landmark because it breaks with the realist conventions of the earlier Indian English novel, using a self-conscious, comic and highly mannered narrative voice. The narrator addresses the reader directly and mixes registers, moving between formal English, colloquial speech and invented phrasing, which makes the text a work of linguistic play as well as a comic narrative.

Students should not confuse Desani with later Indian English novelists, whose works are often more realist or are set in a clearly defined historical period. The novel's humour, its playful use of language and its parodic treatment of the self-narrating hero all mark it as an early model for the postcolonial experimentation that followed. For exam purposes, the author should be linked to this title and to its place as a pioneering comic novel, rather than to the later writers who share the same literary tradition.

• self-conscious narrative — a narrative that openly draws attention to its own telling. e.g. 'The narrator keeps interrupting his story to comment on his own style.'
• register — the level and style of language used in a particular context. e.g. 'The character shifts from formal register to slang within a single sentence.'

W. B. Yeats

W. B. Yeats was the Irish poet and playwright who won the Nobel Prize in Literature and who played a key role in introducing Rabindranath Tagore to English readers. Yeats wrote the introduction to the 1912 English edition of Tagore's Gitanjali, which Tagore had translated from Bengali himself. This introduction, together with Yeats's advocacy of the volume in London, helped bring Tagore's poetry to a wide Western audience and contributed to the attention that followed Tagore's Nobel Prize in 1913.