Does Indian literature owe its global success to the Raj?
As close to 50,000 people prepare to celebrate India’s bulging roster of nationally and internationally renowned authors and poets at the seventh annual Jaipur Literary Festival, a public spat between its British organiser and an Indian magazine over allegations of perpetuating “a Raj that still lingers” threatens to ignite a decades-old debate over the role of colonial English in the country’s literary success.
As Delhi-based William Dalrymple and his fellow organiser stress the festival’s intent to showcase works from India’s array of states and dialects to thousands of book lovers, an article in India’s Open magazine this month claimed the festival matters “because of the writers from Britain it attracts”.
India’s literary elite has long wrestled with its complicated post-colonial legacy, sharpened by the huge international success of Indian writers such as Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth and Kiran Desai, who have put the former British colony on the literary map, but live, sell more books and win more awards in the UK or the U.S.
In the past five years, two Indians — Desai and Chennai-born Aravind Adiga — have won the prestigious Man Booker Prize. While the prize has been attacked by some for its arguably colonial legacy of rewarding writers in English from the British Commonwealth, Desai and Adiga saw their international profile soar, replicating the global success of former winners Rushdie and Arundhati Roy.
The article, titled “The Literary Raj” argues that the festival reaffirms the inferiority complex among Indian writers who crave international and specifically British recognition, suggesting that through his western-centric festival, Dalrymple has become “the pompous arbiter of literary merit in India”.
“The festival then works not because it is a literary enterprise, but because it ties us to the British literary establishment,” wrote Hartosh Singh Bal, an Indian novelist himself, in the January edition of the magazine.
Kevin Rudd: Re-reassuring Indians?
The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, currently in India, is expected to address concerns in India over attacks on Indian students.The issue blew up in May this year after a spate of attacks on Indian students amid allegations of racism.The Australian leaders have been defending the safeguards and measures taken since then, but every time there is a fresh attack the media goes to town with the issue.With over 80,000 students enrolling in Australian every year the attacks, whatever their nature, have hardly dampened the outflow of students.Rudd won’t be the first to offer a reassurance and given the regularity with which incidents are reported it doesn’t look like he would be the last.Indian students continue to be interested in Australian education.Is this because they can sense that the issue is has been blown out of proportion?Or are they voting with their feet on the state of Indian education system?Are we still sold out over the lure of a ‘foreign degree’ and willing to run the risks for it?
An Indian national man has been charged with sexually molesting two girls 11 and 12 in my home town in Australia
So is this going to get headlines in India. I think not
Attacks on Indians in Australia: racist or recessionist?
A spate of attacks on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney has seen the Indian media accuse Australia of being a racist nation.
Newspaper articles warning of a culture of “curry bashings” in Australia have sparked off debate and people around the world have spoken out against the attacks in online forums.
Some insist the majority of attacks may have been purely criminal.
As an Indian studying in the U.S. for the past three years, I am yet to come across any instance of Indians being targeted on the basis of their race.
I have never heard my American friends say anything against Indians or students of any other nationality.
Does that mean Indians are safer in New York than in Melbourne?
The attacks on Indians did take place in Australia, but then they could have happened anywhere.
1. Australia is one from the less racist countries in the world, from the most opened and tolerant countries in the world.
2. The terrorist attacks in New York increased the xenophobia and they racist attacks not only against Muslims but against Jews, Sighs and other foreigners.
3. The rapid change of the synthesis of Australian population, only 35% of Australians said that they come from English ancestors ( 2006 census) and less than 18% of Australians are Anglicans created worries to extreme nationalists.
4. The international financial crisis increased the unemployment and local labors saw that they lost their job not only of cause the financial crisis but because migrants work harder for less money and worst conditions and they took the jobs.
5. last years the number of foreign students increased rapidly , hundred of thousands of foreign students, while the government has allowed them to work many hours per semester. Foreign students work with very low wages in very bad conditions and of cause the financial crisis they have created huge problems to local unskilled, low income labors. It is the unskilled, non educated people who become racists and attack the students or migrants.
6. For these reasons and much more has created a dangerous combination of conditions which expressed not only with racist attacks but with many other ways, including the increase of criminal attacks.
7. There are many studies mainly from Western Sydney University and from Australian National University about the race discrimination in Australia and especially in NSW, Victoria and Queensland. We know from these studies that the race discrimination exist and for some ethnic groups as Lebanese in Sydney or Muslims or Asians is very high, higher than the race discrimination against blacks in USA .
8. Unfortunately, Australian governments, Federal or states, Liberal or ALP instead to try to support the victims of race discrimination, instead to try to minimize the race discrimination they try to limit migrant’s role in Australia. The attacks against multiculturalism from federal governments, Liberal and ALP, the citizenship test are sound proves.
9. There is a study from the Western Sydney University about the attacks against Muslims, you can find it in a report of the Australian Human Rights Commission, from this study we learned that more than 90% of attacks against Muslims comes from Anglos, although they are less than 35% of the population, according to 2006 census.
10. Without doubt most racist attacks comes from extrem nationalists, white supremacists etc.
11. Unfortunately many migrants or foreign students do not trust the police and they do not report the attacks at all or on time, this is not helpful at all, we can not expect from the police to stop the attacks when we do not inform them for the attacks.
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide
My initial impression of Bal’s first piece was that Hartosh Singh Bal has a major chip on his shoulder and/or is a publicity-seeker.
My opinion, after his rebuttal, did not change.
As has been pointed pointed out by numerous commenters and Dalrymple himself, the nature of audiences, sessions and speakers at JLF destroys Bal’s claims. Pre-JLF, Indians complained that no-one was taking notice. Now, Bal has found a new grouse.
In terms of approval, I think there is a larger phenomenon at work here. When it comes to politics and diplomacy, successive Indian Governments always sought the approval of the US in the post-Cold War 1990s period. Registering complaints against what they perceived as ‘transgressions’ by Pakistan occurred regularly. This probably happened because the US was seen as the world superpower at the time.
Similarly, Indians have traditionally grown up on a diet of British literature, reading about well-established British literary awards. It is natural to think of Britain as a leading literary power.
Apropos ‘celebrity’ writers getting more attention than ‘great writers [from Europe]‘, doesn’t the celebrity culture pervade all aspects of public life? Who does Bal think would get more media attention during red carpet movie award/music events?
As for any ongoing need for British approval, more and more Indians in the middle-class see the US as their choice for higher education, etc. American television and cultural influences, American slang, trends are all more prevalent in India today. Gone are the days of domination of English public-school and Oxbridge-educated grandees in the Indian political and diplomatic circles. It therefore baffles me how Bal finds this particular kind of cultural cringe to be very strong in India….. And his tone in his first piece is shockingly offensive (as with most such offensive pieces, a result of his ignorance).
To me, Bal’s pieces suggest his refusal/inability to accept Dalrymple as an Indian writer. And refusal to accept that a British-born writer could head a major Indian literary festival without it having imperial-colonial implications.