Nobel Prize in Literature

Indian sub-continental writers of English fiction have always been confrontedwith onerous choices. Inheritors of literary tradition riddled with regional andlinguistic finitude the mere choice of a proper name hopelessly parochializetheir stories. Many critics wonder why such writers did not write in theirregional languages the answer to which is that that would invite self-exilefrom the common market of world literature. Translations even the best ofthem remain surrogate.It is therefore all the more satisfying that duringthe recent decades writers born on the subcontinent like Salman RushdieHanif Kureishi Vikram SethAmitav Ghosh and others have leaped intomainstream English fiction and elicited critical acclaim. Indian writers inEnglish despite being largely confined to a small typical Indian backwater~perhaps because of it ~ have attracted a good deal of attention here andabroad. They have brought to Indian literature a style and feel a convictionand maturity all its own. We have started feeling like heading for a modernreconstituted Indian sensibility. But after a long gap of RabindranathTagore’s success we may ask ourselves as to why Indians cannot write greatliterature. Perhaps Matthew Arnold’s phrase “ lack of epochal significance ”applies to the literary works emerging from our soil. Can we claim honestlythat we have produced a single author who could match the great mastersof Western literature? A Flaubert? A Faulkner? Joyce? A Tolstoy?