English language first made its appearance even before the advent of
the East India Company. The earliest instance can be seen in Din
Muhammad's The Travels of Dean Mohammad in 1794. English
language became the point of convergence and was actually
circulated on Indian soil around 1660 when the factories of the East
India Company flourished along the Malabar and Coromandal Coast.
Due to the interaction that took place between the Englishmen on
Indian soil and native residents who worked for the Company,
linguistic transmission began to take place.
In the early 19th century India was enlightened by a new movement
towards a new life and a new thought i.e. generally characterized as
the Renaissance in India. There was a huge turn or recovery or
change in the time-old spirit and national ideals of India. This
movement had a closer resemblance to the Celtic movement in
Ireland and led to the birth of nationalism and spiritual forces.
When the Company came to India their chief goal was to set up trade
and become wealthy. Gradually they became the administrator of the
country. They succeeded in the pursuance of their design and
established the East India Company in 1600 A.D. After setting up the
Company they faced certain dilemmas regarding the method of
educating the Indians. There was a controversy as to whether India
was to be wholly westernized with English as the medium of
instruction or they should be allowed to carry on with their study of
Sanskrit and Persian. Till the beginning of the 18th century the
Company did not take any far reaching measures to educate the
Indians. during that time there were four types of indigenous
educational institutions in India--
1) Pathshalas of the Hindus
2) Madrassas of the Muslims
3) Persian schools
4) Schools teaching through the modern languages
In 1781 Warren Hastings established Calcutta Madrassa in order to
qualify the Muslims. In 1791, Johnathan Duncan started the Sanskrit
College at Banaras to educate the Hindus so at this point education
system in India was mostly religious.
Sir William Jones, a liberal Englishman; founded the Royal Asiatic
Society of Bengal on 15 January, 1784 in order to motivate the
historical researchers of the country and therein he published
powerful renderings of Shakuntalam and Hitopadesha. Sir William
Jones wholeheartedly promoted the Indian culture and its
development and also had respect for the sacred literature of India.
He addressed a number of odes to Hindu gods and wrote a long verse
tale, The Enchanted Fruit, which is based on the Mahabharata
episode.
Meanwhile three other factors cropped up it played a major role in
determining the course of education in India:
i) The new intellectualism and passion for renaissance among the
Indians as represented by Raja Ram Mohan Roy.
ii) The determination of the Christian Missionaries
iii) Most significantly, the influence and metallic clarity of
Macaulay's English prose style.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy is generally considered to be "the morning
star of the Renaissance". Indian Writing in English can be considered
as the demonstration of the new innovative force in India which is
referred to as the literary 'Renaissance' in India. He was destined to
function as the connecting link between India and England because
of his vast knowledge of different languages. His 'Letter on English
Education' (December 11, 1823) is almost equated with being a
manifesto of the Indian Renaissance. He wrote almost 30 essays in
English on various subjects. "A Defense of Hindu Theism" (1817) is
regarded as the first significant piece of writing in English by an
Indian. When he returned to Calcutta, he was taken aback by the
plight of widows, the darkness of superstition, the miasma of
ignorance, the general backwardness of the country and this ignited
an urgent urge to work for the problems. In 1821 he started a weekly
paper, Sambad Kamundi, which launched a sustained onslaught on
the forces of prejudice and reaction. His writings included articles on
religion as well as politics. He raised the voice of protest against the
sati system and child marriage.
Secondly, the advent and activities of the Christian Missionaries also
helped in shaping Indian education. Three protestant missionaries:
Carey, a great propagandist; Ward, a painter and Marshman, a school
teacher, popularly known as the Serampore trio offered worthy
contribution from the missionary point of view. The Missionaries
started an agitation in England to show that the anti-missionary
policy of the Company was opposed to the teachings of Christ and
that its neglect of the education of the Indian people was absolutely
unjustifiable. This state of convulsion was supported by Charles
Grant and it led to the emergence of a new educational clause known
as the Charter Act of 1813. He and his followers were of the view
that the best education for Indians was to teach them English through
the Missionaries. Along with this Lord Minto, the governor-general
of India and other company's officials supported the cause of Indian
education. They, on the other hand, believed that the best education
for Indians was to teach their own classics through their liberal
endowment from the Company. Minto was personally fond of
oriental literature and he thought that the study of Orientalism would
come in handy for the western nations as well. Thus the Act
reconciled the views of both parties and this proved to be the turning
point in the history of Indian education. It imposed the Company
with the responsibility to educate the natives of India. The
Missionaries established press in India and they published books in
English as well as in vernacular languages. They published
dictionaries, grammars, translations and even prose in vernacular
language. The printing press also published newspapers and Hicky's
Bengal Gazette was India's first newspaper. After that they
established private schools imparting English education. The period
between 1813 and 1838 was full of experimentation in the field of
Indian education. The Charter Act of 1838 made provisions that no
Indian should be debarred from holding any posts under the
Company by reason of his caste or creed.
Thirdly, Lord Macaulay's "Minute", dated 2nd February, 1835
played a key role in molding Indian education. The colonizers
adopted Orientalism as an official medium of instruction as they
thought that by understanding the "Indian culture" they could run the
Indian administration more conveniently and efficiently. However,
they faced strong resistance from a mass known as Anglicism,
according to whom the encouragement of native Indian language and
literature would lead to an unpleasant outcome. The introduction of
English literature in India came as the solution to the "tension
between increasing involvement in Indian education and enforced
noninterference in religion". Macaulay was of the opinion that "a
single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native
literature of India and Arabia". He declared that it was both
necessary and possible "to make natives of this country good English
scholars and that to this end our efforts ought to be directed". In the
wake of Macaulay's well-known 'Minute', the Governor-General,
William Bentinck adopted the English Education Act under which
the teaching of English was taken out of "the Sanskrit College and
the Madrassa and confined to institutions devoted to studies entirely
conducted in English". On March 7, 1835, Lord William Bentinck
declared that "the great objects of the British government ought to be
the promotion of European literature and science among the natives
of India; and that all the funds appropriated for the purpose of
education would be best employed on English education alone".
Charles Wood also made significant contribution in this field. His
Despatch of July 19,1854, also known as The Education Despatch of
the Court of Directors was of historical significance. It was a long
document of 100 paragraphs and it deals with several questions of
great educational importance. According to this, both English and
Indian language should be pursued together, mother tongue would be
the base, but English would reign at the higher levels to develop
proper education in India."... The logical outcome of Wood's
Despatch was the establishment of the three first universities- those
of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras- in 1857. These universities soon
became the nurseries of the resurgent Indian genius, which within
hardly a generation thereafter ushered in a renaissance in the
political, social, cultural and literary spheres of Indian life." (Naik)
During the period of 1835 to 1855, the number of English speaking
persons increased which contributed to the emergence of Indian
English literature. As Iyenger puts it, it is the "phoenix-hour that
bred Indo-Anglian literature" and he gives interesting details : "it is
said that even in 1834-35, 32,000 English books were sold in India
as against 13,000 in Hindi, Hindustani and Bengali and 15,00 in
Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic. The vogue for English books increased
and the demand came even more from the Indian than the
Englishmen in India..."
Gauri Viswanathan in his Masks of Conquest tells that the
significance of these policy moves in relation to education in India.
"The English Education Act of 1935, proposed by Governor-General
William Bentinck on Macaulay's advice, made English the medium
of instruction in Indian education". The imposition of English-
centered education in India led to "the literary renaissance in India".
India has come far since those times and today india is among the
English speaking countries of the world. We also have a distinct
genre of English literature called ‘Indo-Anglian Literature’or Indian
Writing in English. It is referred to as that
literature which is produced in the English language by Indian
authors.
Sir C.R.Reddy in his foreword to K.Srinivas Iyengar’s work on Indo-
Anglian literature points out “Indo-Anglian literature is not
essentially different in kind from Indian literature. It is a part of it, a
modern facet of that glory which, commencing from the Vedas, has
continued to spread its mellow light, now with greater and now with
lesser brilliance under the inexorable vicissitudes of time and history
and increasingly up to the contemporary time of Rabindranath
Tagore, Iqbal and Aurobindo Ghose and bids fair to expand with our
and humanity’s expanding future.”
The introduction of the Western Culture, the study of English
literature, the adoption of Western scientific techniques -- all these
brought in a new awareness, a sense of urgency, a flair of practicality
and an alertness in thought and action. Mr. Arthur Mayhew says:
"Under English rule in India, the impact of two civilizations may
have produced unrest. But it has also sustained and stimulated life".
It is an extraordinary story of endurance, assimilation and integral
transformation.
Indo-Anglian literature exhibit unmatched and unparalleled signs of
progress in various fields such as Prose, Poetry, Fiction, Drama and
Criticism.
Indo-Anglian literature is marked by Mysticism, Humanism and
Socialism essentially Indian. It presents a synthesis of our ancient
cultural heritage and the awareness of present social and humanistic
outlook.
K.R.S. Iyenger has said “We cannot have Raja Ram Mohan Roy
and Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo, Lokmanya Tilak and
Gokhale, Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi in the calendar
of our prophets and yet cultivate a blind antipathy towards the
language they used as the forceful means of communicating their
meaning and message to India and the world. These stalwarts were
among the makers of modern India, and what they said and wrote
must therefore be cherished as our national literature. English, then,
is one of our national languages and Indo-Anglian Literature too, is
one of our national literatures.”
Prose:
The "re-discovery of the Indian past and a strong awareness of the
problems of the day" in India influenced the prose writings of the
period. Some outstanding figures in this field are Raja Ram Mohan
Roy, Mahatma Gandhi, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Surendranath
Banerjee, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo and Swami
Vivekananda.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833): He was a pioneer of English
education of India and he believed that India could only prosper if
they had enough knowledge of modern subjects such as
Mathematics, Geography and Latin. He also emphasized on the
teaching of English in India. He also put his effort in the
development of his mother tongue. His Gaudiya Vyakaran in
Bengali is considered to be the best among his prose works. His
Bengali was terse, simple and elegant. He promoted the dignity of
Bengal by translating the scriptures of the Hindus into Bengali
language. He started the tradition of writing autobiographies.
Mohandas Karmchand Gandhi (1869-1948): The Father of the
Nation, a humanist, a man of religion, nationalist and a patriot
influenced the language and literature of that era through his writings
in English as well as Gujarati. His first major work which expressed
the Gandhian doctrine of soul-force, passive resistance and non-
violence is Hind Swaraj. It was later translated to English with the
title Indian Home Rule. His famous autobiography The story of My
Experiments with Truth was written in his native language Gujarati.
He also ran two well-known journals Young India and Harijan. Naik
states: "Gandhi's place among modern Indian English prose writers is
as distinctive as his role in the life of modern India has been".
Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920): He contributed to English
prose Writing through his The Orion:Researcher into the Antiquity
of the Vedas(1839) and The Arctic Home of the Vedas (1903). His
English speeches were collected in Writings and Speeches (1922).
Surendranath Banerjee (1848-1925) :He was acclaimed as the
most powerful orator in English of the century. His autobiography, A
Nation in Making: Being the reminiscences of fifty years of public
life (1925) traces the growth of the Indian National Movement.
According to Naik, the "most noteworthy prose of the period" came
from the trio in Bengal-- Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo and
Swami Vivekananda. Tagore has made a brilliant contribution to
poetic plays, social plays, short stories, essays, autobiographical
fragments, novels and letters. His prose writings in English were
delivered as lectures. His earliest collection of lectures was
Sandhana which reveals his philosophical views. Other collections
include Personality, Nationalism, Creative Unity, The Religion of
Man. Aurobindo's contributions include writings on religion,
metaphysical, social, political, cultural subjects and so on. His
earliest prose writing were a series of nine essays published in
Induprakash under the caption "New Lamps for Old". Vivekananda
earned the American sobriquet "the Hindu hurricane" because of his
brilliance in the field of oratory. His speeches and lectures are
contained in the Complete Works.
S. Radhakrishnan (1888-1875), another distinguished author wrote in
a prose style is flowery, colourful and rhetorical. He stands a match
with the most celebrated English authors. Nirad Chaudhari (1897-
1999), author of A passage to England Autobiography of an
unknown Indian is also an acclaimed master of English prose. Dr.
Chakravarti Rajagopalachari(1878-1972), the first Indian Governor
General of Free India, too was a renowned prose writer and orator.
Drama:
Indian English Drama came into existence from 1831 when Krishna
Mohan Banerji wrote his first Indian English play The Persecuted or
Dramatic scenes of the present state of Hindu Society. This play
depicted the conflict between Indian orthodoxy and the new ideas
which came from the west. The most significant contribution to this
field was made by Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo Ghosh and
Harindranath Chattopadhyaya.
Aurobindo's plays reveals his knowledge and fascination for a wide
variety of periods and locales, from ancient Greece to many foreign
lands. He wrote a total of 11 verse-dramas of which five are
complete and six are incomplete. The five complete plays include:
The Viziers of Bassora, Perseus the Deliverer, Rodogune, Eric and
Vasavadatta. We can find the influence of Elizabethan drama in his
plays.
Tagore wrote almost more than 40 plays of all kinds including social
comedies, allegorical plays, symbolic plays, etc. Some of his plays
include Chitra, The Cycle of Spring, Red Orleanders, Sacrifice and
Other Plays.
Chattopadhyaya's first play was Abu Hassan. His most significant
social plays were included in Five Plays. Iyenger describes his plays
as: "manifestoes of the new realism".
T.P. Kailasam's contributions include The Burden, Fulfilment, The
Pirpose, Karna or The Brahmin's Curse, Keechaka. The Indian
epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata provided the plots for his plays.
Bharati Sarabai, another eminent dramatist wrote under the influence
of Gandhian thoughts and influence. Her plays include The Well of
the People and Two Women.
The main cause of the paucity of good actable dramas in Indo-
Anglian Literature was that the natural medium of conversation with
the
people was the mother tongue rather than English.
Fiction:
The Gandhian movement for freedom influenced the Indian English
novels in the 20th century as seen in K.S. Venkataramani, one of the
earliest novelist. His plays include Murugan, The Tiller and Kandan,
The Patriot. A.S. Panchakapekasa Ayyar wrote historical novels:
Baladitya and Three Men of Destiny. Krishnaswamy Nagarajun
wrote Athawar House and Chronicles of Kedaram, which reflected
the changing aspects of the contemporary society.
The most significant contribution to this field was made by Mulk Raj
Anand, R.K.Narayan. Anand was influenced by his experience of the
European tradition as well as the Indian past. His first five novels
are: The Untouchable (1935), Coolie (1936), Two Leaves and a Bud
(1937), The Village (1939) and Across the Black Water (1940). His
novels portrays Indian social life with a sense of sympathy for the
down-trodden. Narayan's novels have an imaginary town named as
Malgudi, hence his novels are generally described as "Malgudi
novels". He depicted the conditions of life which he experienced
around him . A blend of humor, irony, quite realism and fantasy form
the important aspects of his novels. Some of his novels include:
Swami and Friends (1935), Bachelor of Arts(1936) and The Dark
Room (1938).
The Three Musketeers of Bengal literature - R.C.Dutt, Bankim
Chandra
Chatterjee and Rabindranath Tagore also made significant
contribution. Rabindranath Tagore’s novels Gora, The Home and the
World, The Wreck and short stories were originally written in
Bengali but later on they were translated into English. His
translations are praiseworthy and opened up two important aspects-
realism and social purpose. He gave emotional and psychological
depth to character portrayal. Ahmed Ali, the author of Twilight in
Delhi(1940) and Ocean of Night (1964) impressively spans the
imperial past and the independent present.
Short Story:
The history of Indian English Short Story began with the publication
of Realities of Indian Life: Stories collected from the Criminal
Reports of India by S.C. Dutta and The Times of Yore: Tales from
Indian History by S.C. Dutta and S.M. Tagore. The most significant
contributions were made by Anand, Narayan and Raja Rao. Anand
published seven collections of short stories which includes The Lost
Child and Other Stories (1934), The Barber's Trade union and Other
Stories (1944), The Power of Darkness and Other Stories (1959), etc.
His stories are wide-ranging in mood and tone with a strong sense of
social awareness inherent in them. Narayan's short stories include
Cyclone and Other Stories (1943), Dodu and Other Stories (1943)
and Malgudi Days (1943), filled with irony and humor. Raja Rao's
collections include The Cow of the Barricades and Other Stories
(1947) and The Policeman and the Rose(1978).
Poetry:
I.A. Richards defines a poem “as a class of experiences which do not
differ any character more than a certain amount, varying from each
character, from a standard experience. We may take this standard
experience
as the relevant experience of the poet when contemplating the
completed
composition.”
Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809-1831) :The beginning of Indian
English poetry can be credited to Derozio, who is ‘aspired to be
India’s national bard’. He has been the 1st Indian native to post
noteworthy verse in Indian English poetry. He deeply appreciated
the world of Nature. His sonnets and lyrics are pregnant with Indian
imagery, mythology, legend and other themes. In his poems we can
see his remarkable command over the English language and the
beauty with which he express himself. He was the moving spirit of
the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Though he had a short
literary career, he is well remembered as a journalist, teacher, poet
and leading intellectual of his day. His 2 published volumes of
poetry include Poems (1827) and the Fakeer of Jangheera: a
metrical tale and other tales (1828). The long poem ‘The Fakeer of
Jangheera’ (1828) is an attempt to fuse the Byronic romance with
social criticism of contemporary Indian modes. His shorter poems,
satires and long narrative poems bear proof of his influence by the
English romantics like Byron and Scott. His burning nationalistic
zeal gets reflected in poems like To India- My Native land and The
Harp of India.
Michael Madhusudan Dutt (1824-1873) occupies an eminent
position in the history of Indian English poetry of his age. He too
was influenced by Byron and Scott as seen in his long narrative
poem The Captive Lady (1849), which narrates the heroic exploits of
Prithviraj. This poem is remarkable for its flawless beauty and the
smooth narration. He imitates Milton's style of imagery and simile in
his famous sonnet Satan. Dr. M.K. Naik writes: "Dutt’s sonnet is an
extremely competent imitation of Milton, an almost exact echo of
Milton’s voice". He was often called the ‘Milton of Bengal’ by the
Bengali poets.

Kashi Prasad Ghose (1809-1873) : Another notable figure was
Kashi Prasad. He also imitated English prosody and versification.
His remarkable poem Shair (1830) was modeled on Walter Scott’s
The Lady of the Last Minstrel (1805) .His best poem To a Dead
Crow is a semi comic poem and a parody. His poetry did not have
any original features, it was mostly of the imitative and derivative
style.
Manmohan Ghose (1869-1942) : He found no inspiration in Indian
life and culture and thus his poetry includes themes and images
which are Western and universal.
Once he wrote to Binyon in 1887: “I shall bury myself in poetry
simply and solely.” His promise and his ambitious nature bear the
fruits of some great poems such as Perseus, The Goorgan Slayer,
Nala and Damayanti, Love Songs and Elegies . His short lyrical
poems were published posthumously in 1926 under the title Songs of
Life and Death. His themes in poetry were taken from his sense of
exile, loneliness, love for solitude and intense sorrow caused by his
wife's death. George Sampson writes that “Manmohan was the most
remarkable of Indian poets who wrote in English. A reader of his
poems would readily take them as a work of an English poet trained
in the classical tradition.” He also had a strong inclination towards
Greek literature, Greek art Greek mythology.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941): He was an all round versatile
genius. He is an integral part of the Indian literary Renaissance. The
symbols and imagery in Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry is often
marked by spiritual significance. His collection The Gardener
comprises of some of his best Nature poems. His Gitanjali, a
masterpiece of Indian English poetry, is made up of more than a
hundred pieces strung together by a unifying theme of the devotional
quest expressed through a variety of forms. His appeal is universal.
His poetry in English is essentially lyrical in quality. W.B. Yeats
puts it this way: “As the generations pass travelers will hum them on
the highway and men rowing upon rivers, lovers while they await
and one another shall find in murmuring them. This love of God a
magic gulf where in their own more bitter passion may bathe and
renew its youth.”
Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) : The great seer of Pondicherry presents
a glaring contrast to his brother Manmohan Ghose. A poet of
eminence, Sri Aurobindo made abiding contribution to Indo-Anglian
poetry. After he returned to india he discovered his roots in indian
culture and thought which inspired his poetry. he tried his hand at
different kinds of verse such as lyric, narrative, philosophical and
epic. The influence of Milton, Keats, Shakespeare and Tennyson is
noticeable in his poetical works. His early short poems were mostly
minor verse celebrating familiar poetic themes of love, sorrow and
death in a typivally Romantic style. but his later poetry is mystical
and meditative expressing his originality. Some of his poems include
Savitri, Love and Death, Songs To Myrtilla, Urvasie. ‘Savitri: a
legend and a symbol is Sri Aurobindo's monumental work and it
remains a landmark in the history of indian english poetry.
Toru Dutt (1856-1877) : Indian poetry took a new and remarkable
turn with her poems. She developed poetry from imitation to
authenticity. She had a unique intellect and manifested an
exceptional mastery and originality in developing Indo-Anglian
poetry and took poetry to a high level of excellence. She had the
calibre to write poems which were marked with pure creativity and
imagination and it also signifies her almost flawless technical skill.
Her first collection of poems comprises of translations from French
to English: A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields(1876). Her second
collection: Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan (1822) shows
her rootedness in the soil of Hindu thought and tradition as well as
her attempt to interpret and replete with Indian myths and legends
and show her understanding of the spirit underlying them. Her early
death in 1877 due to tuberculosis at the age of twenty did not stop
her from producing some splendid and awe-inspiring pieces. She
created a body of poetry which, in the words of Milton ‘the posterity
will not willingly let die.’ She was a romantic at heart but unlike
Derozio and her other predecessors, she was not a conscious imitator
of the English romantics. She was the first Indian poet who never
attempted to anglicize her 'oriental' themes. She is an objective poet
who avoids conscious comments and describes events, scenes and
persons clearly without over-elaboration. She is a narrative poet of
rare charm. Her poetry also reveals a keen sensitiveness to nature,
specially to colour and her powerful observation to the world of
nature, specially the trees and flowers. The elements of story-telling,
romantic longing for the past are also noticeable. She wrote two
novels, the English is Bianca, and the other in French: Le Journal de
Mademoiselle d’ Arvers. The most significant aspect of Toru Dutt’s
literary career was her use of the rich Indian heritage of myth and
folk lore. She is a poet of senses par excellence.

Sarojini Naidu (91879-1949): At the beginning of her poetic career

she caught attention as an English poet, but gradually she came to
occupy some of the highest positions in the public life of India. Her
poetic career began with the publication of The Golden Threshold
(1905) followed by The Bird of Time (1912) and then
The Broken Wing (1917) . Her poetry was essentially lyrical which
had been strongly influenced by British Romanticism. She was also
known for her progressive thinking, her acerbic wit, her compassion.
Her poetry is marked by restrained imagery, everyday words,
colourful adjectives, symbolism, imagery, mysticism, native fervour
and most significantly the bird like quality . She was considered a
major poet with the excellence of wit, humour and charm. Naidu’s
poetry on mysticism reflects her faith in the language of the Hindu
mystic poets and Sufi mystic poets. The themes and background of
her poetry were purely
Indian and she sang in full-throated ease of the festivals, occupations
and life of her people as a true daughter of her motherland.