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Literary Canon Studies: An Introduction

Sahdev Luhar

N. S. Patel Arts College, Anand

Bhalej Road, Anand – 388001
Phone: (02692) 250640
 Literary Canon Studies: An Introduction
by Sahdev Luhar
ISBN: 978-81-929029-2-0
First Edition: 2014
© Sahdev Luhar
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in
any form, or by any means, without written permission of the author.

Publisher
Dr. Mohan Patel
The Principal
N. S. PATEL ARTS COLLEGE, ANAND
Bhalej Road, Anand - 388001
Phone: (02692) 250640
Design
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Chief Distributor
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Website: www.divinepublications.org

Published with the UGC Grant of “A College with Potential for Excellence”
 To,

My Parents
who always laboured to make me what I am now
 Contents

Acknowledgement 00
Preface 00

Literary Canon: An Introduction 00

What makes an Indian English Literary Canon?
– A Case of Post-1980s Fiction 00
Language, Canon, and Nation: Some Observations
on Cultural Implication 00
Theorisation and Literary Canon Formation:
Revisiting Rhetoric of Socio-Cultural Interests 00
Alternative Literary Canon: Its Need and
Functions in the Present Times 00
University Syllabi and Literary Canon Formation 00

Notes 00
References 00
Index 00
 Acknowledgement

Many a times while working on some particular topic, one

usually comes across other related and significant information which
can be termed as ‘by-product’. This monograph is the by-product of
my reading for PhD. While working on the first chapter of my PhD, I
found that there are some intellectual issues which require a special
attention. Hence I decided to pen them in this monograph.
For this venture, I am grateful to my research guru, Prof.
Madhurita Choudhary, Department of English, the M. S. University of
Baroda, Vadodara, who made me aware of my potential and constantly
provided me critical remarks. I would also like to express my heartfelt
thanks to Dr. Mohan Patel, the Principal, N. S. Patel Arts College, Anand,
for his painstaking interest and involvement in the publication of the
book. I would like to extend my vote of thanks to Indian Institute of
Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla that provided me a chance to reread the
present essays in the pleasant and intelligible atmosphere of its campus.
“What makes an Indian English Literary Canon? – A Case of
Post-1980s Fiction” was published earlier in December 2013 in Sahitya
Veethika; and, “Language, Canon, and Nation: Some Observations on
Cultural Implication” was brought out in the January 2014 issue of The
Frontiers of English Literature. Both these articles are reproduced here
with some slight modifications. “Theorisation and Literary Canon
Formation: Revisiting Rhetoric of Socio-Cultural Interests” was
presented as a paper in a UGC SAP DRS – II organised National Seminar
at the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, the M. S. University of
Baroda, Vadodara, on March 24-25, 2014. The essay, “Alternative
Literary Canon: Its Needs and Functions in the Present Times” was
written and read during my visit to Indian Institute of Advanced Study,
Shimla as an Associate in April 2014 and was published by Muse India in
August 2014. The last essay, “University Syllabi and Literary Canon
Formation” is based on the research conducted for a sub-topic of my PhD
chapter.

I shall never forget to thank my colleagues, J.K. Singh, Dipesh

Patel, Sandip Shah, Vishal Parmar, Monika Rathod, Bhautik Limbani,
and Kaisarjaha Ansari at Department of English, N. S. Patel Arts
College, Anand, who frequently became readers and critics of my drafts.
Let me also thank my parents and my siblings for their encouragement
and my wife, Mitrasena, for her patience and support.

Anand
November 17, 2014 Sahdev Luhar
 Preface

This monograph serves as a brief introduction to literary canon

studies, a critical approach that evaluates text as an amalgamation of
literary and aesthetic values. The notion of literary canon has undergone
revision time-to-time to pace with contemporaneous change in the socio-
cultural practices. It also advocates an independent status of the post-
1980s Indian English fiction as a literary canon. The six essays of this
monograph deal with the constituents of literary canon as well as the
Indian English literary canon, role of language in canon formation, role
of canon in nation building, diverse literary canons of India, and the
association of theory, social movements and literary canon formation.
“Literary Canon: An Introduction”, serves the purpose of
introducing the concept of literary canon to the readers. It sorts out the
various constituents that make literary canon. It looks in the process of
literary canon formation in the western part of the globe in the earlier
times through the age of postmodernist predicaments; differences
between ‘canon’ and ‘classic’; the American cultural wars and literary
canon; the aesthetic-ideological look-up of literary canon; and, the
artistic representation of contesting cultural group.
“Theorisation and Literary Canon Formation: Revisiting
Rhetoric of Socio-Cultural Interests” analyses the relationship between
theorisation and literary canon formation. Quite often the phrase,
“theorising movements” is caught in the modern dichotomy of ‘theory’
(knowing) and ‘praxis’ (doing). Theorisation, as the Greek sense would
put it, involves the vigorous spectatorial engagements, altruistic or
disinterested. Though the Enlightenment philosophy ignores this
spectatorial factor because of its desire for the pursuit of ‘pure
knowledge’ far removed from the engaged practices, theorisation is
itself a praxis: the praxis of participating in the socio-cultural
movements with multitudes of polemic interests. The act of theorisation
is also a means of institutionalising these movements to ensure a cosmic
response to their motivated aims. To put it in better terms, one may say
that theorising is a stratagem to confirm a huge public participation by
the intellectual persuasion. There has been a trilogical relationship
between ‘social movements’, ‘theories’, and ‘canon formation’, each
influencing the other. The essay aims at revisiting the rhetoric of socio-
cultural interests in the formation of literary canon. The essay raises the
questions such as: is there any correlation between the socio-cultural
movements and theorising? what role does the theorising perform in the
formation of literary canon? The essay analyses the relationship
between the socio-cultural movements and literary canon formation in
terms of Foucauldian theory of ‘power/knowledge’. In addition to these,
the essay also succinctly surveys the emergent literary canons of Indian
English literature as a response to the different socio-cultural
movements.
“Alternative Literary Canon: Its Need and Functions in the
Present Times” explores the possibilities of ‘alternative’ in the studies of
literary canon. The theoretical prepositions developed in the
postcolonial era often view the European concepts as the masked
stratagem of intellectual colonialism. This has significantly led to rise of
‘alternative/s’ in all the fields where the European conceptions have
dominated for a long time. In literary studies as well, there is a marked
cultural politics and consequent canon debates.
“What makes an Indian English Literary Canon? – A Case of
Post-1980s Fiction”, examines the constituents of Indian English
literature. Though the literary canon is acclaimed as a great repository of
‘aesthetic’ values, within the contemporary literary studies, the focal
point has shifted from the consideration of universality-aesthetic values
to a much anxious and discord involvement with the perception of canon
formation as an exercise of political power and social exclusion. This
essay is an attempt to (re)examine the triangular relationship between
language, literary canon and nation. It looks at the importance of
language and its role in literary canon formation. Concurrently it also
focuses on the how literary canon assists in the development of nation
and nationalism with reference to Indian English literature.
“Language, Canon, and Nation: Some Observations on Cultural
Implication” studies the relationship between language, canon and
nation. Literature is the storehouse and guardian of a nation’s culture; it
is the way to access the accumulated cultural heritage of the nation. With
such preposition in mind, the essay aims at assessing the role of literary
canon in preserving the culture inheritance of a nation. It also addresses
the functions of a language in sustaining cultural tradition of nation in
formation of indigenous literary canon, and in the making of a nation. A
literary canon has substantial importance in upholding cultural bequest.
A canonical list that emerges from the particular or peculiar contexts of
the nation’s being has to acknowledge the multidimensional nature of its
literary creation in relation to the ‘legitimate’ cultural practices. No
doubt a literary canon performs function of selecting the genres by the
playing the role a metaphorical judge, determining the literariness or
universal aesthetics of the works, it is always an outcome of the cultural
politics that academia plays in favour of dominant cultural groups.
Apart from this, the literary canon also decides whose culture is more
significant and takes a decision to preserve the dominant cultural
practices on its “own”. Thus, the essay focuses on the multifaceted role
of the literary canon in determining which cultural attributes are
considered authentic and highlights the culture politics involved in
tendency of forming alternatives to deconstruct the colonial perceptions
on the literary issues. This essay is an attempt on this path. In India, it has
been observed that the western notion of literary canon still determines
the canonicity of Indian texts. In fact, the canonicity of any literary text
depends on race, milieu and moment of the nation where the text has
originated. This clearly implies that the western conception of
canonicity must be altered as per the need of Indian literary scene. The
essay hints at the need of the alternative literary canon and imparts some
functions to it. It views the post-1980s Indian English fiction as an
alternative literary canon and claims for its different position. The
present literary scene in India marks two contradictory orientations of
literary appreciations: western and eastern. Some advocate the study of
Indian English literature from the western perspective, whereas the
others demand the traditional Indian poetics as criterion for the
assessment of Indian English literature. To resolve this debate, the
present essay proposes a ‘middle-way approach’ based on the FICTION
formula which might prove significant in advocating alternative reading
practices.
The final essay “University Syllabi and Literary Canon
Formation” explores the relationship between the university syllabi and
literary canon formation in India. It studies the syllabi for MA (English)
of different fourteen Indian universities and tries to conclude that
curriculum of Indian universities is not secular-aesthetic accumulation
of literary texts but a polemic practice of hegemonising some group’s
vision of aesthetic judgement.
Thus, all these essays address the primary queries concerning the
literary canon studies in the field of Indian English fiction. These essays
would also enable the readers to understand the process of canon
formation in a better way.
 I
Literary Canon: An Introduction

1
As dictionaries suggest , derived from the Greek word “?a?? ?”
that means ‘a measuring rod’, ‘reed’ or ‘an instrument of measurement’,
the word ‘canon’ now stands for an authentic set of works by an author or
an artist. The term ‘canon’ actually originates in debates within the
Christian Church about the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and books
of the New Testament. Around in the fifth-century, it was used for the
ecclesiastical purpose of deciding which books of the Bible and the
writing of the Early Fathers were to be preserved as the most
authenticate embodiments of the fundamental truths of Christianity. The
sole purpose of announcing the various canons as pragmatic reflections
of religious authority to the public in this way was to reinforce the
ecclesiastical power of the Christian consecrated writings as well as a
wish of being self-protective to the sacrilegious interpretive
disagreement with such writings which can strike at the foundation of
authority and value, if the canons are not secure.
The word ‘canon’ has two distinct meanings: ‘rule’ and ‘list’. It
acquired in the course of time the more abstract meanings of ‘norm’,

11
‘rule’, ‘pattern’, ‘model’, etc. In addition to these, the same word could
also be used to denote various kinds of list, such as, astronomical, list of
2
rulers, grammatical paradigms, and so on. Christian theological
thesaurus inherited both meanings of the word. The implication of term
‘canon’ as ‘rule’ appears from the end of the second century, whereas its
inference as ‘list’ appears in the Christian writings considerably later in
the fourth century. Ostensibly ‘rule’ and ‘list’ are altogether different sorts
of prodigy. Rule is essentially qualitative and substantial, while list is
quantitative and formal. The liaison between these two undertones of
‘canon’ becomes more intricate by the truth that a list may in itself
represent a norm. However, this is not the case with every kind of list.
There are some lists that are more descriptive than normative or
prescriptive such as dictionaries and directories of various kinds. Thus, if
canon can mean both list and rule, the conclusion might be drawn that
3
some ‘canons’ are more canonical than others.
It is in the nineteenth century, the idea of canon of literary works
emerged in a way to supersede the ancient biblical model. In the second
half of the nineteenth century when orthodox faith and practices seemed
to be losing their authoritative hold over the minds of many people, some
thought that a literary canon might replace the discredited biblical canon.
This gave an upsurge to a body of criticism that argued in the favour of
poetry, drama, and fiction serving as a form of ‘secular scripture’ – a
4
canon for the canonless in a post-Christian world. Matthew Arnold
played the central role in the move for literary works to assume canonical
status. In the nineteenth century when the existence of God was
increasingly subject to doubt, Arnold thought literature could solve this
anarchy. Arnold realised that Darwin’s theory of evolution fragmented the
sensibilities of people who have believed that their lives were regulated
by the Christian idea of birth, suffering, death, and rebirth. Concurrently,
the emergence science as a body of knowledge made people convinced
that it could provide the logical answer to their questions that they
confronted in life. This led to shattering of the religious faith. Arnold felt
that literature could give some direction to the Victorian people in this
regard, which consequently led to the displacement of religious scripture
by literary texts. His famous quote, “to learn and propagate the best that is

12
 5
known and thought in the world” inspired a larger group of the scholars
to formulate the idea of a fixed canon of great books in the study of
literature. Two other names that are associated with perpetuation of
canon in the field of literature are FR Leavis and TS Eliot. Leavis’ The
Great Tradition and Eliot’s “Tradition and Individual Talent” helped in
the formation the English literary canon instilling the sense of literary
tradition.
Literary canon refers to a categorization of literature. It is a term
used widely to refer to a group of literary works that are considered the
most important of a particular time period or place. There are many ways
in which literary works can be categorized, but the literary canon seems
to apply a certain authority to a work of literature. When a work is entered
into the literary canon, thus canonized, it gains status as an official
inclusion into a group of literary works that are widely studied and
respected. There are no rigid qualifications for canonization, and
whether a work will be canonized remains a slanted decision.
Literary canon implies the evaluation or estimation of literary texts
as important. However, it is important to remember that any estimation of
value, as Barbara Herrnstein Smith puts it, essentially involves analysis and
judgment on the part of the concerned evaluator whose opinions depend
6
entirely on his/her perception of the object under consideration. Each of
them will have his/her own interests in the evaluation, and it will be better or
worse for each of them in relation to a different set of desired/able
functions. All evaluations are either subject-relative or potentially
informative about whatever it seeks to judge or define; hence it is pointless
to hunt for the cognitive substance, logical status, and truth-value of
aesthetic judgments. Aesthetic evaluation is performed by the artist or
creator along with the audience that consists of various categories of current
or future evaluators. Evaluation is a process of a transactional relationship
and it includes the writer and all people and institutions exposed to this
writer’s work. These people are the pivots of evaluative authority that are
called upon repeated to devise arguments and preferences that stands to
validate the literary preferences of a community, establishing what David
Hume refers to as the “standard of taste”.7 Asserting and establishing a
standard in this way, literary canon gets its birth.

13
 Literary canon arises from a fusion of history and features of
idealization, reflecting the concerns about frameworks and forms of
imaginations considered valuable in a culture or community. In order to
assume canonical status, a work of art must offer a contrastive language
and framework for a situation delineated in numerous non-canonical
works; it is also expected to provide figures of judgment for the same.
Literary canon is widely accepted as an academic construct that works as
the legitimating backbone of a cultural and political identity which
confirms authority on the texts selected to naturalize this function. This
academic construct or literary academy endeavours to formulate
pedagogic and acculturative devices that are aimed at creating and
maintaining subpopulation of community which can appreciate works of
art and literature through teaching this subpopulation appropriate skills,
cultivating their interests and developing their tastes. By doing this, the
literary academy ensures the continuity of canonical works, functions,
and audience. However, Harold Bloom, in The Western Canon, rejects
the validity of any kind of literary academy:
The deepest truth about secular canon-formation is that it is performed neither
critics nor academies, let alone, politicians. Writers, artists, composers themselves
determine canons, by bridging between strong precursors and successors.8

These statements of Bloom seem debatable as all the canonical

works requires to be selected and transmitted through appropriate
channel. Hardly few will deny the fact that the literary academy today
performs the role of channel. Literary academy channelizes the literary
canon through contemporary selection and transmission in literary
syllabi and also perpetuates it for the future. Whether to overturn or to
transmit the literary canon for the subsequent generation is determined
by the future readers, audiences, or, evaluators in terms of their own
contemporary demands. Writers and works can influence others but they
cannot choose the strategies for their perpetuation; this can only be done
by an evaluative audience of contemporary times or the future.
Another important fact about the literary canon is that it comprises
of those works which generally address the issue that are considered
relevant and appropriate to contemporary need. Adjacent to this, they
need to be accessible to and acquiescent with the reading practices of the

14
evaluators. Further, they have to be intimate with the previous and
prevalent ideological patterns in terms of issues and structures. The
body of evaluators, apart from readers and critics, comprises publishing
houses, editorial and censor boards, libraries, museums, theatres,
schools and universities. Their collective pronouncements affirm the
canonical status of a work. Through their innumerable activities like
publishing, purchasing, preserving, displaying, quoting, citing, and,
performing, besides the “explicit homage” of imitation and translation,
these sources initiate the entry of literary texts into the exclusive club of
9
the literary canon.
Literary canon is subject to (re)configurations as they readily
adapt to nascent circumstances and doctrines predetermined by the
various schools of evaluators. The canonical works, with the passage of
the time, not only subsist but also perpetuate a literary culture. In its
ventures to preserve the past, the canon seems like a theatre in which
each generation plays its role. It does not simply influence literary study
but transmits its ideological framework as a model and produces a
challenge for the future. Therefore, Harold Bloom believes that “the
greatest authors take over the role of ‘places’ in the canon’s theatre of
memory, and their masterworks occupy the position filled by ‘images’ in
10
the art of memory”. This is what that makes a literary work memorable
and helps to sustain writers’ reputations over time. According to Robert
Van Hallberg, a canon is commonly seen as what others, once powerful,
have made, and what should now be opened up, demystified or
eliminated altogether, stresses not only the reconfigurations/
reassessments that canonical texts undergo, but also seeks to assert the
whole purpose of this exercise. He speaks of the need to demystify or
open up and reconsider what previous generations of evaluators
considered to be sacrosanct in terms of canonical status. Those
canonical texts that cannot rise to meet the canonical standards of the
present, as per Hallberg suggestion, need to be eliminated from the
11
pantheon of the canon. This makes it clear that the canonical texts
undergo a process of selection by the literary academy which either
affirms their continuity or ejection from the grid of the canon.

15
 Literary canon endows its author a permit of representing a version
of experience that influences the ways in which the countless readers
view themselves and their world. Literary canon is the repository of
specific values that are considered pertinent by the particular group of the
people during the particular time-period. It is the literary canon, the
readers encounter a vast panorama of author’s imagination, to what
Charles Altieri terms as “project ideals”:
Works we canonize tend to project ideals, and the roles we can imagine for the
canon require us to consider seriously the place of idealization in social life. By
“idealization” I do not mean the projection of propaganda but rather writers’ efforts to
make the authorial act of mind or certain qualities in their fictional characters seem
valuable attitudes with which an audience is moved to identify. In this sense, even the
most ironic of writers use their authorial act to idealize their chosen stance. Canons, then,
12
are an institutional form for exposing people to a range of idealized attitudes...

Literary canon projects the ideals of the society. Canon is the

framework of strategic importance that controls the text and dictates the
methods of its interpretation which have a serious consideration in social
life. The forms of scrutiny that are applied to determine the serious and its
interpretations are, and should be, extensive. Canonical works present
ideals, and are responsible for, the articulation of all those arguments that
form the basis of critical pronouncement and appraisals. Critical
appraisals should not be guided by a desire to evaluate literary works as a
social force that serves to insidiously highlight the critic’s commitment of
political-social ideology. Canon-formation, as Harold Bloom suggests,
should not be seen as “a program for social salvation”; for him, “to read in
13
the service of any ideology is not, in my judgment not to read at all.”
He points out three criterion to decide canonicity: first, ability of a
writer or text to transcend or subsume tradition through the articulation of
new frameworks; second, capacity to pursue the reader for the re-reading
of the text; and third, competency to influence the literary practices of
past, present, and future as well. Bloom believes that a canon confers the
aesthetic value on a text. This is something that can be only recognized or
experienced, but not conveyed (to those who are incapable of grasping its
sensations and perceptions). It emanates from the struggle between texts:
in the reader, in language, in the classroom, in argument within a society.

16
Aesthetic value is engendered by an interaction between critics. Their
interpretative strategies can be the product of the social conflict and may
contain socio-psycho-religious components apart from the major
stance, aesthetic value. Elaborating the constituents of a literary canon,
Harold Bloom observes: “one breaks into the canon only by its aesthetic
strength, which is constituted primarily of an amalgam: mastery of
figurative language, originality, cognitive power, knowledge,
14
exuberance of diction.” This perception foregrounds an important
aspect regarding the aesthetic value that it is made of inherent artistic
qualities of a literary text. However powerful a text is, it needs (at least)
an evaluator who assigns it canonical status confirming its aesthetic
strength. Through the text, the motives of both writer and reader-
evaluator are merged together. The writer through his artistic creation
aspires to achieve literary eternality, whereas the evaluator substantiates
this eternality. This dialogic relationship assumes the aesthetic
experience, once called “sublimity”. In this process, the three essential
views should not be overlooked on the part of the evaluator of the texts:
(a) the value imparted to a literary text is determined by “a correct
15
interpretation of its objective meaning, and rationally justified” ; (b) the
evaluator should not “blather to us about the moral and political values
16
in literature” ; and, (c) the evaluator should “get rid of all the casual,
17
sentimental, and prejudice value-judgments”. The synmonograph of
scientific objectivity and humanistic approach, perhaps what TS Eliot
refers as ‘theory of depersonalization’, is enviable in the evaluative
practices of literary texts while confirming status of a canon. These
evaluative practices should neither to assess the social life directly nor
should they become dogmatic and sectarian; instead they should
concentrate upon the fundamental task of appreciating and judging
artistic craftsmanship.
More than often the canonical assignments (practices of
assigning canonical status) prove to be “transideological” undertakings
while they directly address the social life. In fact the primary concern for
such assignments is the (re)evaluation of textual intelligibility and the
language frameworks. However it is observed that such assignments has

17
axis with ideological constructs. In this regards Lynette Hunter, in her
“Writing Literature and Ideology: Institutions and Making of a Canadian
Canon,” observes that this alliance is “articulated” if “an attempt at
conscious construction and addressing material condition” is made; it is
18
unarticulated if “it rides close to standard ideology”. The closer a text
adheres to standard ideology, the less does it reflect the “unarticulated,”
and the faster it becomes obsolete and extraneous. Such text requires new
reading practices that can regain its canonical status or eliminate it from
the canon altogether. On other side, the emerging canons addressing to
the “unarticulated” issues becomes dominant as they ascertain
propinquity to evaluative practices. The old writing seems to disappear in
the countenance of this challenge if the structural aspects and textual
concerns and perceptive cannot be opened up for convalescence through
new evaluative strategies. Hunter identifies two types of canon: thematic
and structurally focused. The first one has its roots in social behaviour,
and is based on the ideology of humanism condensed into a pragmatic
nutshell of the creator/created. Occasionally when thematic canons deal
with the issues that are socially unacceptable and demonstrate lack of
consistency they serve merely as ‘agents of titillation’ unless they
question and revaluate ideology. On other hand, the structurally centred
canons invite discussion pertaining to style, form and strategies of
writing and are rare in the canon of the English language. Socially
evasive in nature, such canons concerns with literary and linguistic
strategies of discourse and rhetoric. She states that in this approach there
is threat of marginalization of reality as it prefers to admit only the fact
that all human behavior occurs in social and historical contexts. The
acceptance of this reality is, nonetheless, essential for the evaluation of
learning, assessing, teaching and questioning skills within, and for, the
19
written medium. She ascribes the aim of canon formation as:
Literature is writing privileged as of important cultural or social value by a
society in a particular time and place. Institutions are effective policy-making and policy-
enacting bodies in society: the people who make choices and make them felt. Ideology
describes the ethical standards (usually unarticulated) of a society, delimited by the cross-
over between institutions and the epistemological and perceptual set of ideology. Hence
canons are profoundly ideological; and just ideologies may be articulated or
unarticulated, canons to may be ideological in a direct or in an indirect/covert manner.20

18
 Lynette Hunter, thus, opines that canonical writing, clandestinely
and candidly, is ideological construct and embodies the social and
cultural values that are considered significant during a specific time and
place. Institutions, as she says, take part in the process of forming canon
that prove to be ‘policy-making’ and ‘policy-enacting’ bodies of the
society.
Belonging to a literary canon confers a guarantee of literary
greatness, social, political, economic and aesthetic status – none of which
can easily be extricated from the other. In his detailed account of canon
formation entitled as Forms of Attention (1985), Frank Kermode asserts
that the reputation of artists-books is initially made according to a
confluence of judgments of “mere opinion,” but only when their value is
institutionally authenticated as ‘knowledge’ by the academic
professionals, they become canonical. However it is difficult to
distinguish knowledge from opinion, the important point to be marked
here is that the works of art are subject to social and institutional
substantiation. He maintains:
In thinking about canonicity in the history of the arts and literature, we have at
once to reflect that our canons have never been impermeable; that our defenses of them
are always … provisional. … Canons … are of course deconstructible; if the people think
there should not be such things, they may very well find the means to destroy them. … the
21
idea of tradition has never been so weak as it now is, the sense of literary past less strong.

Kermode, however, avoids resignation to the preservative ideas

about the value of canon, adding that “canonicity still seems an important
22
preservative and, though under repeated attack, still potent.” The
importance of canonicity hinges on its practical necessity. He finds the
concept of canons and historical periods distinct but interrelated. By
affirming that some works are more valuable than others, as Kermode
says, canons enable to handle complex historical deposits. Unlike the
humanist critics, Kermode affirms supposed ideological concerns of the
literary texts making a case for their inevitability:
And whatever one thinks of canons as objectionable because formed at random or
to serve sole interests at the expense of others, or whether one supposes that the contents
of the canons are providentially chosen, there can be no doubt that we have not found
ways of ordering our thoughts about the history of literature and art without recourse to

19
them. That is why the minorities who want to be rid of what they regard as a reactionary
canon can think of no way of doing so without putting a radical one in its place.23

Stanley Fish asserts that a literary canon is a historical, political,

and social product, something that is fashioned by men and women in
name of certain interests, partisan concerns, and social and political
agenda. Contrary to Bloom’s idea of a literary canon, David Fishelov’s
idea includes all kinds of literary works as long as they generate
dialogue(s). The canon debate, what John Guillory calls the
24
“delegitimation crisis” , seeks to determine, elucidate and communicate
the relationship between an assortment of frameworks of discourse and
the deconstruction of authority. Furthermore, it examines the role and the
impact of cultural thoughts and ideologies on canon formations,
believing that literature is an ideological product. The current canon
debate reflects growing skepticism about the conventional ideologies of
history and tradition. In this regards, Guillory observes that:
In the recent years the formation of literary canon has emerged as an arena of
struggle over questions of a mere systematic nature than the rise and fall of individual
reputations … The converting of the canon as an institutional construction has had so
demystifying an effect upon the ideology of tradition as to bring about delegitimation
crisis with far-ranging consequences.25

Any discussion about canon is essentially a debate about history,

society, culture and ideology which requires a conscious attempt to
examine the intricate structures that sustain the political, economic,
social and cultural institutions and demonstrate the prevalent versions of
literary history, tradition, form and taste. The canon debate embroils with
the discourse on history, society and culture concurrently attempting to
formulate the literary history and critical discourses. In these attempts,
diverse concepts of truth, legitimacy and authority are determined as the
texts-authors are examined, evaluated and canonized. An elemental
component of this calisthenics entails the valorization of history and
nationalism. The canon debate forms the literary credentials of a country
in harmony with the social, communal and cultural practices.
Thus, today the literary canon can be defined as a polemic literary
construct that asserts certain cultural hegemony or harmony. It is formed
by a particular group to channelize cultural hegemony over others, or, it

20
can be constructed by the governed group to bring about cultural
symmetry. The rise of diverse literatures in English in different parts of
the world after the colonial rule of England was the consequence of a
need to articulate cultural equilibrium. The literary canon formation is
also a focused and dogmatic process. It is always carried out to
accomplish or naturalize certain ideological functions.

21
 II
What makes an Indian English Literary Canon?
– A Case of Post-1980s Fiction

Literary canon, an acclaimed repository of ‘aesthetic’ values, has

always undergone revision time-to-time to pace with contemporaneous
change in the socio-cultural practices. It was the age of Enlightenment
when critical discourses concerning the value of authors and literary texts
were strengthened by philosophical inquiries dealing with more
elemental conundrum of whether impartial ground may be set up for the
aesthetic judgments or not. The value-judgments that Enlightenment
philosophy offered were considered universal, ethical, and rational. In
recent years, however, the Enlightenment category of universality which
was pivotal to the eighteenth century thinkers who sought to transcend
national, linguistic, and other boundaries, has been the subject of vigilant
reassessment and debate. This has been, both, admired as an essential
apparatus of a radical social critique and condemned as the conjectural
nucleus through which local differences such as race, sex, ethnicity, and
class are eradicated under the banner of indistinct universality. Within the
contemporary literary studies, the focal point has shifted from the
consideration of universality-aesthetic values to a much anxious and

22
discord involvement with the perception of canon formation as an
exercise of political power and social exclusion. The Enlightenment age
had assumed a common culture of artistic ‘taste’, whereas the
contemporary debates are marked by the postmodernist concerns of
pluralism and fragmentariness of culture as well as an instantaneous
concern for the reclamation or construction of cultural unities. The
hermeneutic factors that have escorted the reassessment of universality
and aesthetic values include the intensified political consciousness of
class, race, gender, and ethnicity, the academic professionalization of
criticism, a marked turn towards cultural relativism, and the
postmodernist erosion of boundaries of ‘taste’. Coincidently the
postmodernist era happened to be the era of postcolonial temperament
which witnessed the rise of the counter-canons in the field of literature.
Indian English literature is also marked by this tendency of ‘writing
back’ to the Empire.
It is essential to understand what makes ‘Indian’, before one turns
towards the query raised in the title – ‘what makes an Indian English
literary canon?’ According to Raja Rao, “it is not the Indian who makes
1
India but ‘India’ makes the Indian”. So it is India where one should seek
for the constituents of ‘Indianness’. The qualities such as, to list a few,
‘unity in diversity’, secular faith, democratic ideals, interest in cultural
traditions, and plurality of imagination together make ‘Indian’. In his In
Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (1992), Aijaz Ahmad confronts the
difficulty of dealing with ‘Indian’ literature theoretically. He opines that
The difficulty in thinking of an ‘Indian’ literature … is not that it is spread over
many languages, with the histories of very uneven development, nor that the state
boundaries which have historically contained these literary production have been
shifting through all the centuries we know of. The difficulty lies, rather, in the very
premises that have often governed the narrativization of that history which has (1)
privileged High Textuality of a Brahminical kind to posit the unification of this literary
history; or (2) assembled the history of the main texts of particular languages (in a very
uneven way) to obtain this unity through the aggregative principle; or (3) attempted to
reconstruct the cross-fertilisation of genres and themes in several languages, but with
highly idealistic emphases and with the canonizing procedures of the ‘great books’
variety, with scant attempt to locate literary history within other sorts of histories in any
consistent fashion.2

23
 Ahmad’s perception of ‘Indian’ literature from the Marxist
standpoints disregards the uneven development or linguistic plurality of
regional literatures as a hindrance to categorisation of it. As a matter of
fact, he finds in India an unfinished bourgeois project that can be
characterised through certain notion of canonicity in pushbike with the
bourgeois, idea of the Brahminical classicism, the hegemonic control of
upper-caste over nation-state, shared-reliance over the western
theoretical prepositions, strong obsession of formulating self-defined
supra-linguistic ‘Indian Literature’ etc. Defining the terms ‘Indian’ and
‘Indianness’, Prof. VK Gokak notes that “an Indian, then, is a person who
owns up the entire Indian heritage and not merely a portion of it. This
3
integral cultural awareness is an indispensible feature of Indianness.”
He furthers his argument stating that “the extent of Indianness of work of
art will depend upon the intensity and manifoldness with which an Indian
writer responds to this tradition and recreates it in his own
4
consciousness.” So the literary canon which emerges out of Indian soil
must depict these qualities in an aesthetic vein. Any attempt of defining
something makes its meaning more slender and obscure. Hence the task
of defining Indian literary canon is risked with trailing its charm and
magnetism. Even this attempt of defining Indian literary canon is as
intricate as the form of India as well, let it be geographical, social,
cultural, religious, etc. The Indian literary canon can be described as the
artistic literary output in aesthetic vein dealing with Indian soil and
subjects, marked with national ethos rooted in cultural practices, socio-
religious plurality, linguistic incongruence, and mythic-oral traditions,
essentially written in Indian languages by the Indian writers residing in
India or abroad. It reflects “the multilayeredness of Indian life with its
uneasy co-existence of different time-worlds, of the rational and
spiritual, of real and surreal, in their startling images, syncopated rhythm,
employment of novel patterns, dream-like mixing and substitution of
time and space, unexpected leaps of thought and fancy, transgression of
established norms of decency and propriety, odd combi-natorial plays of
folk and the classical, indigenous and exotic elements, remapping of
Indian mythology in the fresh contexts of life and language, forays into
5
legends and archetypes and conscious use of everyday language.”

24
Indian English literary canon is descendent of the Indian literary canon.
It is not an offshoot of English literature but of Indian literature in
language which India has made its own during the dreadful colonial past.
The use of English as a medium of (literary) expression reminds of the
outrageous past but English language has attained an Indian avatar in the
postcolonial era. English is now essentially an Indian language. So when
one speaks of Indian English literary canon, it has to be concluded that
he/she speaks of Indian literature written in English language, not
anything else. The term ‘English’ is not used to denote any relationship
to England. No doubt, certain literary genres Indian literature has
derived from English literature but this is an artistic derivation and
dialogic too.
What constitute a canon and how are these constituents
epitomized in a canon? – This pragmatic query, it is interesting to note
here that, has largely remained unexplored in the domain of Indian
English literature. It has been noticed that many scholars do not
distinguish between classic and canon; they treat both alike. The primary
understanding regarding their differences would certainly assist us to
comprehend the idea of Indian canon in a better way. A contemporary
literary scholar Joel Weinsheimer argues that many treat both canon and
classic the same6; though the canon and classic have a number of the
things in common, they are essentially different from each other. At
linguistic point, as a noun canon is a collective expression for a group of
the works. It is interesting to note here that there is no word in English to
refer a single canonical poem, play, or fiction. Whereas the classic as a
noun is applied to only individual work; there is no word in English for
the group of works made up by the individual classics. This observation
of Weinsheimer makes it clear that a canon is plural but determinate,
while a classic is singular and inclusive. In the canon, any number of
works are perpetuated or discontinued with each passing generation as
they are sensitive to shifts in judgment, taste, and value, while the classic
endures throughout ages. What makes the classic alive is its power to
speak directly to the readers across the span of centuries; its ability to
question or talk back to the readers when they interrogate. Hence, Roger
Lundin says that classic “challenges our understanding of God, our

25
 7
values, and our very sense of ourselves”. In his influential essay “What is
a Classic?,” TS Eliot says that if there is one single word in which one can
suggest the maximum of what is meant by the term ‘a classic’ – the word
maturity. He confirms that a classic can only occur when a civilization is
mature; when a language and a literature are mature; and it must be the
work of a mature mind. To him, maturity of thought, maturity of
expression, maturity of style, and maturity of diction constitute a classic.8
Attributing the qualities of a classic writer, Charles Augustin Sainte-
Beuve, a leading French critic, says:
A true classic […] is an author who has enriched the human mind, increased its
treasure, and caused it to advance a step; who has discovered some moral and not
equivocal truth, or revealed some eternal passion in that heart where all seemed known
and discovered; who has expressed his thought, observation, or invention, in no matter
what form, only provided it be broad and great, refined and sensible, sane and beautiful in
itself; who has spoken to all in his own peculiar style, a style which is found to be also that
of the world, a style new without neologism, new and old, easily contemporary with all
time.9

These words of Sainte-Beuve make it clear that a classic refers to a

work of art that has achieved excellence and has set a standard of its own
kind. A classic enriches human mind, unearths the eternal passion, and
expresses noble thoughts that touches almost all the hearts. The
constituents that form a classic are general human interests (an ability to
address a large group of the people), element of form (grandeur of
thought, diction, and expression), endurance over the time, and aesthetic
satisfaction. The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1985) defines
literary classic as “a work considered first-rate or excellent of its kind of
its kind, and therefore standard, fit to be used as a model or imitated.”10
Thus, a classic is secular piece of artistic writing which has ability of
speaking to all the human generations and providing aesthetic pleasure.
At the outset only, it is important to deconstruct some popular
myths regarding the canon: first, it does not provide a universal rule of
evaluation that determines in advance which literary works are
meritorious, but instead it constitutes a restricted cultural arena within
which an evolving process of judgment occurs; second, the literary canon
does not substitute a list of timeless masterpiece, but rather a shifting

26
repertoire of normative exemplars that are necessary in ongoing
maintenance of public life; and third, a canon is not a classic. Canon
refers to the works which have to validate their canonical position time-
to-time, whereas it is assumed that classic has already established it
worth and therefore it does not require getting its status endorsed with
passage of time. Canon is more exclusive, classic is more inclusive.
Canon is polemic, classic is balanced. Canon is debatable, classic is
indisputable (however, around 1960 and later the postmodernist critical
theories has questioned the status of ‘classic,’ yet many regard it
incontestable). Canon is the term which can be applied to current works,
classic is generally applied to old works (originally it suggested the
Roman-Greek works but later on came to designate any literary work of
eminence). Canon is generally used to accomplish the self-centered
intentions of particular group of the people, while classic has only one
objective to fulfil, i.e., providing artistic delight. A canon has a temporal
fixity, whereas a classic has an everlasting fixity.
Elaborating the constituents of a literary canon Harold Bloom
observes in his The Western Canon that “one breaks into the canon only
by its aesthetic strength, which is constituted primarily of an amalgam:
mastery of figurative language, originality, cognitive power, knowledge,
exuberance of diction.”11 The canonical revisions that have taken place in
the postmodernist era have substituted the aesthetic constituents of a
literary canon with the extra-aesthetic constituents. The literature that
has come out in the postmodernist period is not simply an artistic and
aesthetic outpouring; it is vociferous melange of socio-political designs
in artistic echelon. Bloomian constituents can confirm the status of
canon to a text; however, it seems that Bloom has overlooked very
essential factors related to literary politics in the postmodernist time. The
contemporary literary politics has widely changed the meaning of the
literary canon from aesthetic to ideolised status. Indian literature is not
exemption of this truth. Before turning to the constituents of Indian
English literary canon, especially to Indian English fiction, it is essential
to get acquainted with the current state the canon conflict in the Western
academy.

27
 The Western canon is trapped up in power politics of theories such
as Cultural studies, Marxist criticism, New Historicism-cultural
materialism, and, (post)structuralism that see the canon as the apparatus
of socio-cultural hegemony and espouse that there is a direct connection
between the universities and canon formation. They articulate that
universities are caught up in a nexus of other institutions such as
economic, political and cultural which induce universities to generate
and reinforce cultural hegemony, and as a result the literary curriculum of
universities is never impartial accumulation of knowledge consisting of
canonical texts, but it is always a part of a selective tradition: someone’s
selection, someone’s vision of legitimate knowledge and culture, one that
in the process of enfranchising one group’s cultural capital disfranchising
another’s.12 Observing the same, Michel W. Apple, an American
educational philosopher, remarks that –
What counts as legitimate knowledge (canon) is the result of complex power
relations and struggle among identifiable class, race, gender, and religious groups. Thus,
education and power are the terms of an indissoluble couplet. It is at the times of social
upheaval that this relationship between education and power becomes most visible. Such
a relationship was and continues to be made manifest in the struggle by women, people of
color, and others to have their history and knowledge included in the curriculum.13

It is essential to realise that hubbubs over canon that usually centre

around what is included and excluded in literary curricula really signify
more profound political, economic, and cultural relations and histories.
Conflicts over canonical texts are often proxies for wider questions of
power relations. Canonical texts are really messages to and about the
future. As a part of a curriculum, they engage in constructing the
knowledge system what society has recognized as legitimate and
truthful.
But this case is quite different with regards to Indian universities
and the canon formation taking place. Indian universities, unlike those of
the Western universities as viewed by these theories, seem to be
promoting cultural democracy through the formation of literary canon.
We cannot assume that all the canonical texts included literary curricula
of universities simply represent the relations of cultural domination or
include the knowledge of dominant class. The statement, even with its
recognition that canonical texts participate in constructing ideologies and

28
ontologies, appears misleading in many important ways. It is observed
that, however diversified culture of India is, Indian universities have
always tried to encourage cultural fraternity. Literary syllabi of Indian
universities accommodate texts without any bias of gender, class, caste,
or religion. It seems that canon formation in Indian universities is
nonaligned and is carried out on the basis of literary potentials the text
possesses. It appears, as if, Indian universities have their own criteria for
constructing canon.
A cursory look at the literary syllabi of the Indian universities
makes it clear that these universities have been promoting cultural
fraternity through the prescription of balanced syllabi. The curricular
shifts that the departments of English have witnessed in 1990s and 2000s
are in fact the attempts of ensuring cultural equilibrium. Earlier teaching
of literature in India meant the teaching of ‘English’ literature; the term
‘English’ was not merely indicative of linguistic medium but of colonial
construct of the British nationalism that aspired to dominate the psyche
of the readers. The constituents of the post-1980s Indian English literary
canon consist of robustly extroverted style, propensity of imagination
towards magic, fairy tales and fantasy, non-linearity of narrative,
intellectual resonance, fictionalisation of histories and myths, ideolised
aesthetics, cultural representativeness, and, ontological queries. One
should note that Indian life is plural, multivocal, and, decentred, hence
the canon of Indian literature must be the same. It is rooted in the liberal
middle-class conscience. The post-1980s India is a hybrid entity and
hence the language of its canon should be equally hybrid – to use
Rushdie’s term ‘chutneyfied’.
Indian English fiction, which has its origin way back in 1863, has
been judged canonical by various factors time to time. Indian English
fiction is a huge treasure trove of fictional narratives that give an
expression to the cultural ethos of nation. In fact, the very edifice of
Indian English fiction stands on trimetric of land, culture and identity
that defines and imparts shape to it. The rapid developments in the field
of trade commerce, telecommunication technologies, liberalized
economies, emergence of diasporas and open markets, and, the global

29
cultural changes have perplexed the notion of cultural identity,
consequently leading towards the ‘emergence of newer identities, which
14
are often fragmented, hyphenated and palimpsestic in nature’ , and these
all have been emulated in post-1980s Indian English fictions. The post-
1980s Indian English fiction means a grand narrative of wide range
cultures verbalizing and forming the cultural identity of the nation. It has
been observed that the more a text has cultural allusions, the more
chances it gets for inclusion in canon. And hence, it would seem
improper to judge Indian English fictions as canonical without making
an analogy to some of the canonical elements they possess.
The instances of three post-1980s Indian English fictions,
Midnight’s Children (1981), The Shadow Lines (1988), and, The Binding
Vine (1992), selected arbitrarily, would probably succinctly indicate how
these elements form the canon. In 1981, the publication of Rushdie’s
Midnight’s Children brought a considerable change in the way Indian
English fiction came to be conceived as canonical. This work set new
criteria for the canon of Indian English fiction. The parameters deciding
canon up to and in 1970s were “humanistic”; they, in proportion with
aesthetic qualities, artistic form and general human interest, question
tradition eventually making compromise with it; but post-1980s period
grabbed serious observation and fancy of creative writers towards
political decisions, social activism, and cultural changes, which have
long lasting implications on the life of the people, taking place during the
time, and thus, opening a new vista for the appraisal of Indian English
fiction as canonical.
A close look at these three fictions would substantiate the existence
of all these canonical constituents. The most of post-1980s Indian English
fictions exploit the rich heritage of Indian history and myths. The
fictionalisation of history has a significant purpose to serve.
Fictionalisation of history is way towards rescuing history from the
colonial paw and imparting a renewed cultural substance. Frantz Fanon, in
his The Wretched of the Earth (1965), shows the importance of liberating
history of from the colonial custody to reinstate the eminence of native
culture and history in opposition to the European negation. He observes:

30
 The claims of the native intellectual are not a luxury but a necessity in any
coherent programme. The native intellectual who take up arms to defend his nation’s
legitimacy and who wants to bring proofs to bear out that legitimacy, who is willing to
strip himself naked to study the history of his body, is obliged to dissect the heart of his
people.15

Indian English fiction has always used history-myth as motif

since its inception. Raja Rao, one of the early fathers of Indian English
fiction in the colonial era, also substantiates importance of fictionalising
history in the introduction to his Kanthapura (1938): “there is no village
in India, however mean, that has not a rich sthala-purana, or legendary
history, of its own… One such story from the contemporary annals of a
village I have tried to tell”.16 Thus, the fictionalisation of history-myth is
its liberation from the colonial trap and a literary strategy of ‘writing
back’. This has been clearly visible in the post-1980s Indian English
fiction. Midnight’s Children has many traces from the history of
pre/post-independent India; the appearance and story-telling style of the
narrator, Salim Sinai, recalls the great story-teller Lord Ganesha. The
Shadow Line can be thought of as a historical fiction as it is interested in
recuperating histories squeezed out of the state’s homogenizing myth of
nation. The Binding Vine deconstructs the typical myth of Indian woman
through the character of female protagonist Urmi who reacts to
dominant paternal social spectrum. All these texts inherit aesthetic
qualities but they have their own ‘ideolised’ aesthetics, for instance, the
appearance of a certain post-modern playfulness, the turn to history, a
new exuberance of language, the reinvention of allegory, the sexual
frankness, even the prominent references to Bollywood in Rushdie’s
Midnight’s Children makes it aesthetically different from the previous IE
(Indian English) fictions. For Rushdie, politics is central to his art, but
his art is also central to his politics. Rushdie’s political engagement,
however, is not registered in the subject matter he chooses to address; his
political arguments are also inseparable from his conception of the
17
nature and function of the arts. Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines, listed in the
curricula of several universities in India and around the world, centers on
the ideology of nationalism and its shortcomings in the subcontinent. In
the background of the novel lies the assignation of Indira Gandhi in 1984

31
and the violence and unrest that followed; it brings together fictive
reconstruction of the past based on memory and official history based on
ostensibly neutral facts. Ghosh highlights imagination as a way of
transcending hegemonic official representations and challenging their
neutrality, concentrating more and more on the political and power-
18
related aspect of language and narration. Set in India of 1980s,
Deshpande’s The Binding Vine is a multi-dimensional narrative about
family bonds, human relationships, and women’s right to their body and
need to speak out to set right the wrong. Thus, it is for sure that the
canonical Indian English fictions embody ideolised aesthetic qualities.
Cultural representativeness is an important thread that weaves a
canon. In fact, all the literary texts have cultural images-metaphors;
however these cultural metaphors were ignored as one of the qualifying
factors for canon formation. Nevertheless Indian universities have
strongly considered this cultural representativeness as one of the
significant factors that make canon. Post-1980s Indian English fiction
represents the culture of postcolonial politics. Including these three, the
post-1980s Indian English fictions’ emphasis on the political value of re-
description in the act of writing finds its theoretical analogue in Edward
Said’s analysis of cultural representation, Gramsci’s notion of hegemony
and Foucault’s idea of power/knowledge. Edward Said in Orientalism
(1978) exposes the strategies of cultural domination of the Occident over
the Orient and offers a tactic for recognizing and resisting these
strategies in our readings of the texts. As there is no going back to
colonization, the post-1980s Indian English fictions confront these
colonization by ‘writing back’, decolonizing the cultural jurisdiction of
the west. All these cultural perspectives have to be taken into
consideration while discussing the canon of Indian English fiction for
the Post-1980s Indian English fiction constructs a newer cultural identity
of India through defiance to the western colonization. Timelessness, the
next significant factor, is very abstract in nature but the subject-matter
and its treatment by the respective author makes it universal in
temperament and appeal and is also visible in these fictions with their
touching appeal to human race without the fence of time, age or space.

32
 Indian English fiction has also played a significant role in
enriching the intellectual tradition, in many cases, through the newly
visible spirit of questioning; Midnight’s Children and The Shadow Lines
broke the traditional way of thinking through their turn towards history
and altogether different treatment to familiar subjects, and, this way,
opened up a new direction for Indian English fiction. The Binding Vine
proclaimed the rights of women, it challenged the patriarchal authority. It
appears that these fictions also make some ontological queries; Indian
English fiction always entwines some philosophical concern. Finally,
these three fictions also pass the test of the remaining factor called
‘narrative techniques’; all the fictions employ inimitable narrative
techniques. Usha Bande, in her interesting essay, points out that the
authors of Indian English Fiction reclaim the Indian identity by re-
mapping their cultural territory by reverting to the traditional narrative
strategies that also in indigenous framework.19 The post-1980s Indian
English fiction has turned to tradition grand narratives. Though it has
rested on the Western fiction for the inspiration, the post-1980s Indian
English fiction has marked a significant sign of originality.
To sum it up, one can say that the post-1980s Indian English
fiction has established itself as a new canon. The above mentioned are the
constituents of this newly emerged canon.

33
 III
Language, Canon, and Nation: Some
Observations on Cultural Implication

Literature can never be written in a vacuum; it is a product of the

society. Literary text-authors, as Prof. Taine suggests, are always
influenced by the ‘race’ (‘the hereditary temperament and disposition of
the people’), ‘milieu’ (the totality of people’s surroundings, climate,
physical environment, political institution, social conditions and the
like), and ‘moment’ (‘the spirit of the period, or of that particular stage of
1
national development’) of the nation they belong to. Hence, literary
history can never be separated from the other forms of history. It is not
just the genealogy of the writers, their works and literary schools and
movements but a cerebral endeavour which narrates, chronicles,
analyses, demarcates, and contrasts other forms of nation’s activities as
well. Literary history, together with literary canon, is the progressive
revelation of nation’s mind and character and describes the zeitgeist of
the nation in which it is written. The rise of literature and nation is a
dialogic process; literature forms the nation and, in turn, the nation
provides raw material to literature – literature draws its contents from the
social, cultural and political life of the nation. It is also important to bear

34
in the mind that though literature is universal and borderless, it is not
possible to identify literature outside the framework of nation.
Literature exists within the periphery of nation and its cultural life.
Nation and Literary Productions: Justifications for a National
Literary Canon
The idea of ‘nation’ is of the Western origin and, as many believe,
it surfaced along with the rise of the Western capitalism and
industrialization and was an essential constituent of imperialist
expansion. These days it has been a common practice to map the world
as a collection of different nations. Each nation is segregated from the
other by a boundary – a boundary that has been nourished by the blood of
groups of the people through the ages. In the words of Ernest Renan:
A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things, which in truth are but one,
constitute this soul or spiritual principle. One lies in the past, one in the present. One is
the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other day is present-day
consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that
2
one has received in an individual form.

For Renan, a nation is a spiritual principle which is outcome of the

profound complications of history. It is more spiritual family and not a
group determined by the shape of the earth. Hence things as race,
language, material interest, religious affinities, geography and military
necessity are not adequate for the creation of such spiritual principle.
What is required for a nation is that a common possession of rich legacy
and a desire to perpetuate the value of the received heritage in the
present. Though Renan holds an illuminating outlook of a ‘nation’, a
truth cannot be ignored that nation formation is not a natural
phenomenon but an influential mode of social and political
identification. Nation is an important solidarity which is constituted by
‘the feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the past’ and is
prepared to make in future; ‘a nation’s existence is a daily plebiscite, just
as an individual’s existence is perpetual affirmation of life’.3 Just like a
man, a nation also passes through stages of escalation and decline.
While Renan holds as a devout idea of ‘nation’, Benedict
Anderson in his influential work, Imagined Community: Reflections on

35
the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (1983) proposes a politicized
definition of a nation. He defines the nation as “an imagined political
community”.4 He inscribes a political character to the idea of nation
because he believes that “the members of even the smallest nation will
never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of
5
them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion”. His
book has shaped a ‘myth of nation’ which can be summarized as: (a)
6
nations are ‘an imagined political community’ ; (b) nations gather
together many individuals who came to imagine their ‘deep, horizontal
7
comradeship’ ; (c) nations depend upon the invention and performance
of histories, traditions and symbols which sustain the people’s specific
identity continuous between past and present8; (d) nations stimulate the
9
people’s sense that they are the rightful owners of a specific land ; (e)
nations standardize a unitary language accessible to all the people10; and
(f) nations are narrated through forms of representations which promote
the unities of time and space.11 In the same vein, John McLeod echoes
materialistic views on nation (of himself and others) in his Beginning
Postcolonialism (2010). He opines that “nations, like buildings, are
planned by the people and built upon particular foundations – which also
means that, like buildings they can also rise and fall.”12 Thus, nation is
primarily an idea. It is also important to argue here that in its youth, the
West injected the idea of ‘nation’ in its people for the Empire-making,
and now the same West is proposing the idea of ‘Globalisation’ or
‘global-fraternity’, in its days of decline, only to save itself from the
attacks of those who want to prevail Europe, if not politically then
economically or culturally.
Literature is one of the basic ‘foundations’ on which a nation
stands and builds its empire. In literature, the nation or its people find
their cultural identity. Moreover it also acts as a showcase of nation’s
cultural identity for the outsiders. A best way to understand a nation is
probably to know its literary tradition. Civilisation ends but literature
persists. It is through the literature we have come to know the richness of
the past of countries/empires such as Greece, Rome, India, etc. Those
civilisation and golden days are no more now but literature written

36
during those days still enlivens their cultural affluence. Through
literature, we can come in contact with people and their culture, races,
aspirations, as well as their past. While discussing of nation and writing,
it is important to remember Salman Rushdie. Rushdie in his “Notes on
Writing and the Nation” writes:
Beware the writers who sets himself up or herself up as the voice of a nation.
This includes nations of race, gender, sexual orientation, elective affinity. This is the
New Behalfism. Beware behalfies!
The New Behalfism demands uplift, accentuates the positive, offers stirring
moral instructions… Seeing literature as inescapably political, it substitutes the political
values for literary ones. It is the murder of thought. Beware! 13

Rushdie’s observation on the political use of literature is really

agreeable. One should beware of the negative ‘Behalfism’ but not of the
positive Behalfism. Naming a literature by associating with it the name
of nation or language, for instance Greek literature, English literature,
French literature and so on, is itself a form of Behalfism, ‘a voice of a
nation’. The changing literary conventions always integrate the race,
gender, sexual orientation and elective affinity in assessment of a
literary text. Our desire for self-expression is the first impulse behind
the literature! It should not be forgotten that one must distinguish
between the authentic voices and mere echoes. Authentic voices are
good form of the Behalfism but mere echoes are dangerous to the image
of a nation.
Another contemporary novelist, Amit Chaudhari, also connotes
the same idea in context of India. He opines that “it is worth
remembering that those who write in the languages of India, whether
that happens to be English or one of the modern ‘vernaculars’, do not
necessarily write about ‘India’ or a national narrative…, but about
cultures and localities that are both situated in, and disperse the idea of
14
nation.” Sudhir Kumar, similar to Chaudhari, relates literature with
larger Indian collectivity. In regards to Indian English literature, he puts:
The issue of narrating the nation is invariably linked with its people, their lives,
beliefs, inter/intra communal relationships and issue of culture and politics. […] Hence
the need and significance of locating a text within the sociocultural discourses operative
in the nation. […] Reconstruction of the nation is also the reconstruction of shared

37
meanings which the text carries either as subtext or traces.15

This makes it clear that any literature is framed within the image of
a nation, if not real then certainly imaginary. Bhisham Sahni, the writer of
a famous novel Tamas, in the context of political-ideological disposition
notes that –
An ideology can, however, become a dangerous intrusion if a writer takes it as a
dogma and tries to fit his creativity within the framework of that dogma. For a writer, life
is primary, and it is a mystery of life that he is ever seeking to unravel. It is when dogma
becomes dominant with a writer and the claims of life recede into the background that a
writer’s view gets distorted. Then life and truth and his own vision become subservient to
dogma.16

Thus it can be deduced from the arguments of Rushdie,

Chaudhari, Kumar, and Sahni that any political-ideological
engagements for literary purpose exterminate the literary aesthetics.
Unlike Rushdie, one should not infer that unfolding nation is an act of the
Behalfism, framing national identity is a significant act of any literature.
However many believe that nation is a ‘mythical entity’; it does
exist, not corporally but psychologically. If one needs to map the global
literary territory, it can be done through only mapping the national
territory. Hence, there is a need of (a) national literary canon(s). A
national canon is inherently a canon that endeavours to relate the process
of the development of a literature in context of a particular nation. It
draws its infrastructural pattern not only from outstanding texts or
authors of the nation, but also from the general principles that engenders
and determines literary selection and evaluation.
Canon formation in India: Challenges for Indian English
Literature –
In the countries like India, one will certainly encounter numerous
problems in forming a national literary canon. India is the land of five
literatures in archaic languages, twenty-one literatures in common
Indian languages, and two literatures in the foreign language.17 All these
literatures faithfully record the ‘Indian’ sensibility, culture, and ethos.
There is no problem in forming national literary canon in the mono-
lingual country but in the multi-lingual and pluralistic country like India

38
where people speak more than 452 languages (including 22
18
constitutionally recognized languages) and 4000 dialects-tongues ,
there are hundreds of problems in forming a national canon. In multi-
lingual country like India, assigning the status of national canon to one
particular literature in particular language leads to frenzied situation.
Even literature in the national language, Hindi, cannot form single-
handedly the national literary canon as it has be accepted by all without
any discrepancy. In such a critical condition and in country like India
where millions of the people still believe that English is the language of
their colonial master, it is almost an invitation to language-based
controversies to think of Indian English literature as a national literary
canon. Many of Indians are not ready to consider Indian English
literature as ‘desi’ literature; they still believe Indian English literature
still works as an apparatus for psychosomatic colonization. Many of
them still believe that English as a medium of expression for Indian
literature cannot genuinely record the feeling which one can describes in
other Indian languages or his/her mother-tongue. At this point, it is
essential to deconstruct some popular myths concerning Indian English
literature that causes problem in canonisation of Indian English
literature.
Firstly, Indian English literature is not videshi literature. It is
indeed ‘desi’ pulsing with Indian nationalism, culture and indigenous
ethics. It was not written to win the favour of the English rulers but to
show the wretched condition Indian masses to the global community. It
came into existence to demonstrate the blood-sucking ruthlessness of the
British Empire in India.
Secondly, Indian English literature is not a part of the imperial
design to re-rule Indian psyche but it is essentially a part of Indian agenda
to build a nationalist community globally. The myriad voices of India’s
early canon-makers shared a common concern: they yearned to carve out
their own national identity and forged a literary stance rooted in their
own soil and imagination. A close look at the conditions under which
Indian English fiction has developed in India will certainly support the
argument that it emerged not so much to capture the surfacing of

39
individualism in India but to manifest the birth of a nation. The canon of
Indian English fiction was formed to shape the modern national
consciousness. The Indian National Movement helped discard western
life and thought that were marked by despondency and stagnation. An
unprecedented surge in the literature of the Indian languages bears
testimony to this. This literature took off from where the realistic writing
of England, France and America had left in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. Its primary interest lies in building a community and instilling a
feeling of nationalism into this community. A sense of mutual, national
belonging was to be developed by this newly emerged literary canon. As
Eric Hobsbawm has argued in The Invention of Tradition, a nation
depends upon the invention of national traditions which are made
manifest through the repetition of specific symbols or icons. He believed
that the performance of national traditions keeps in place an important
sense of continuity between the nation’s present and its past, and helps to
devise a unique sense of the shared origins, a common past and a
collective identity in present.19 This function, as hinted by Hobsbawm,
was carried out by the literary canon of Indian English fiction. The rise of
this literary canon played a vital role in the anti-colonial movement
through the spread of the feeling of being connected. Its rise also
promised a new dawn of independence and political self-determination.
The issues like decolonizing the Indian mind and disclosing the power-
dynamics were associated with the rise of Indian English fiction; its
growth signaled emotional independence of India. Thus, this literary
canon was marked by the spirit of anti-colonial nationalism and the birth
of a unique identity. The literary canon developed by Rabindranath
Tagore, Premchand, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao reflected a movement
from the humanist-rational to genuinely nationalistic and eventually to
committed socialist attitude.
Thirdly, the usage of English as a medium for expression for
literary output has not failed to articulate indigenous feeling, psyche, and
cultural enunciations. Indian writers have exploited English as per their
own need. They have Indianised English language to make it an
appropriate vehicle for the vivid expression of ideas and thought. Salman

40
Rushdie, Anita Desai, Amitav Ghosh and others have really
‘chutneyfied’ English in their works. It would not be an exaggeration to
note that they have imparted a mother-tongue like touch to English
language.
Of course, to conclude one may say that, there are some problems
in creation of a national literary canon to distinguish the Indian response
to literature globally; we must consider Indian English literature as one
of the contestants for it. Indian English literature would provide an equal
chance for the regional representation of all Indian states in the days to
come. English has a potentiality to confer the status of globally
recognized canon. Use of English can also ascertain vivid portrayal of
national consciousness, cultural traditions, history and myth, as well as
native traditions.

41
 IV
Theorisation and Literary Canon Formation:
Revisiting Rhetoric of Socio-Cultural Interests

The rudimentary term “theory”, which has its roots in the Greek
noun “theoria”, suggests the practice or attitude of “looking” or “gazing
at”. As per the Greek lexicon, the verb “theorein” means “to consider, to
regard, to ponder, to view, or to see.” The person who is engaged in the
1
practice of “theorein” was called a “theoros,” a looker, a seer, a spectator.
Such conventional nuances might lead someone to presume that the
theory is: (i) a closed system of statements constructed according to
logical rules of deduction and induction; (ii) supposedly value-neutral;
(iii) objective and modeled on the lines of natural sciences; and, (iv)
2
characterised by technical-instrumental rationality. But the mid-
twentieth century witnessed the ruins of such mimetic assumptions
because of the postmodernist hermeneutic postulates. The second cause
for these ruins was the vast void between ‘theory’ (knowing) and ‘praxis’
(doing). The postmodern era witnessed a need of theory that endeavors to
bridge the cleft between theory and practice, transcendentalism and
functionalism. Hence, the term ‘theory’ procured the critical orientations
during this time. This led to the belief that (i) the critical theory firmly

42
says that there is no absolute subject of knowledge and that the
coincidence of the subject and object lies in the future not merely due
intellectual progress but also due to the social progress in which the
relationship between the subject and object is defined; (ii) the method of
sciences is different because the ends determine the means in their case
whereas in the case of critical theory the means is also equally important
as the ends; (iii) it is a critical reflection on ideology and it accepts that as
a historically grounded method, it is not itself free from the influences of
the societal framework; and, (iv) it also realizes the importance of praxis
and reposes faith in the cherished Enlightenment ideals of freedom,
justice, and happiness.3
Before proceeding further, it is essential for us to deconstruct two
popular myths concerning a theory: (i) theory is always scientific, and,
(ii) theory is the same as the philosophy. Though theory is a systematic
approach having logical rules of deduction and induction, it is not always
scientific (as the theories of pure sciences). Likewise, though a theory
may philosophise its subject of inquiry, it is not philosophy precisely. As
Jurgen Habermas puts it, “the sciences focus away from their
constitutive contexts and confront the domain of their subject matter
with an objectivistic posture; while, obversely, philosophy has been only
too conscious of its origin as something that had ontological primacy.”4
Science has certified objectivity and philosophy has celebrated
“ontological primacy”, but a theory cannot claim of objectivity and or
ontological predominance. This leads us to a significant inference that
the process of ‘theorising’ (theorisation) is propelled by the postmodern
socio-cultural upheavals. Theorisation, as the Greek sense would put it,
involves the vigorous spectatorial engagements, biased or disinterested.
Though the Enlightenment philosophy ignores this spectatorial factor
because of its desire for the pursuit of ‘pure knowledge’, the postmodern
spirit anticipates the presence of predisposed spectatorial practices.
Theorisation is itself a praxis: the praxis of participating in the socio-
cultural movements with multitudes of polemic interests. The act of
theorisation is also a means of institutionalising these movements to
ensure a cosmic response to their motivated aims. To put it in better

43
terms, one may say that theorising is a stratagem to confirm a huge public
participation by the intellectual persuasion.
With this primary understanding of ‘theory’ and ‘theorisation’, let
us now move towards the consideration of liaison between ‘socio-
cultural movements’ and ‘theorisation’ as well as the role of literary
canon formation in proliferation of socio-cultural movements. Generally
theorisation is carried out before the inception of movement or after the
beginning of the movement. There has been a trilogical relationship
between ‘socio-cultural movements’, ‘theories’, and ‘canon formation’,
each influencing the other. Socio-cultural movements are monologic and
political in character. They are goal-directed and purposive. They are
more protective than offensive; however they may turn out offensive.
They form a kind of rhetoric to carry out the socio-cultural interests of a
particular group. Socio-cultural movements require some agents that can
maximally spread out their ideological contents to the masses. Such
agents are of two types: (i) human, and, (ii) non-human. Human agents
are the goal-oriented participants who are technically termed as
“activists”, whereas the non-human agents consist of the processes that
direct the activists towards the pre-decided goals. Ghanshyam Shah has
termed these processes as the ‘components of movement’. For him,
objectives, ideology, programmes, leadership and organization are
important aspect of social (-cultural) movement.5 These components are
interdependent and always influence each other. The non-human agents
need to be institutionalised through a proper mechanism that can impart
to such movements a quality of rationality. Theorisation is one of the
processes through which the socio-cultural movements are canonised.
Theory prepares an intellectual premise on which the socio-cultural
movements stand. It is more structured approach to the understanding of
the nature of socio-cultural movements.
Shaping literary canon is the best way to institutionalise the socio-
cultural movements. Since many years, it has been observed that the
literary canon formation is carried out to facilitate such movements and
American Cultural Wars of 1920s and 1960s is a good instance of this
claim. The Cultural Wars that America witnessed in the (post-) modern

44
era led to the institutionalization of different literary canons of Feminists,
gays, liberal Marxists, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-
Americans, and, Native Americans. Literary canon functions as a
facilitator to the ideological agendas of the socio-cultural movements. It
helps fill the gape between theory and praxis. The socio-cultural
movements are always being rooted in literary-academic domain
because such institutionalisation imparts perpetuality to these
movements and it reasonably makes their effect long lasting.
Institutionalisation of the socio-cultural movements in the form of
literary canon is, in fact, is a guaranteed step to concretise their ideology
in the minds of intelligible groups. It does not simply spread the ideology
but many a times gains the sympathetic support of the people. It is not a
passive process but it actively engages the people’s mind to expand the
sphere of the ideological contents. This leads to the discussion, debate,
critical analysis and finally to the participation in the socio-cultural
movements.
The Bhakti movement can be cited as one of the earliest examples
of movement in India. Bhakti denotes a movement of social protest
against caste, class, religious, or gender inequalities. The period of the
bhakti movement in India ranges from sixth to sixteenth century. The list
of bhakti poets include Alvars and Nayanars of South India, the
Virashaiva saints of Karnataka, Jnaneshwar, Eknath, Namdev, and
Chokhamela of Maharastra, Akho, Dadu and Narsinh Mehta of Gujarat,
Kabir and Surdas of North India, Meera of Mewar, Nanak of Panjab,
Tukaram and many other saints poets of India. All these poets where the
bhasa poets; their prime interest was to abolish caste, class, religion, or
gender-based disparities. Bhakti movement is not properly theorised but
the canons of the bhakti poets that form its theory. Bhakti movement has
indeed helped to form the nativistic tradition in Indian literature.
The Gandhian era witnessed a flood of different social, cultural
and political movements. The Indian National Movement (INM) in the
first half of the twentieth century, pioneered by Mahatma Gandhi, was
the largest socio-political movement whose spirit left no one untouched.
It inspired the peasants, the workers, the women, the middle class youth,

45
bourgeoisie as well as the rich to forge unshakable unity against the
colonial rule. The oomph, that this movement generated, was really
immense. For the first time in the history of Indian writing, it firmly
asserted the concern for freedom, national identity, social equality,
fraternity, and democracy. Actually, at this point, the canon of Indian
English writing started taking a shape along with other regional
literatures. Indian English writing chose a distinct path for it to embrace
the common issues faced by the masses in a nationalistic vein; and thus, it
came closer to the rural, semi-urban, and urban India. Blending with the
larger nationalist process, it clinched the significance of socialism that
was the sweeping influence over the world.
Gandhi desired to mobilize the masses with his idea which was in
fact a chance to fetch the diverse possibilities. He wanted to involve
ordinary people in the struggle against the Empire. The first step towards
this was the identification of a social group that typified national ethos.
Gandhi found such a social group in the Indian peasantry that formed a
larger portion of Indian population at that time. Gandhi’s famous quote
that India lies in its village was not an abstract idea but the central truth.
Gandhi’s avowed mission through mobilizing the masses was to liberate
the Indian peasants from the imperialist-feudal structures. Indian
peasants, who were the base the Indian economy at that time, were
squashed by the imperialist machinery and the local bureaucratic
hierarchies active in the rural India. Gandhi’s clarion call to the Indian
peasants to join the struggle against the British rule gave them a hope and
vision of the better future in days to come. It resulted in the growth of
INM in India’s political scene. Soon, the voice of INM became the voice
of a larger segment of India. Bipan Chandra also support this claim
saying that –
The goal of Congress was changed from the attainment of the self-government
by the constitutional and legal means to the attainment of Swaraj by peaceful and
legitimate means. The new constitution of the Congress, the handwork of Gandhi,
introduced other important changes… Gandhi … knew that the Congress could not guide
a sustained movement unless it had a compact body that worked round the year.
Provincial Congress Committees were now to be organized on a linguistic basis, so that
they could keep in touch with the people by using the local language. The Congress

46
organisation was to reach down to the villages and mohulla level by the formation of
villages and mohulla or ward committees. The membership fee was reduced to four annas
per year to enable the poor to become members. Mass involvement would also enable the
Congress to have a regular source of income. In other ways, too, the organisation
structure was both streamlined and democratized.6

These concerns for peasants led Gandhi towards another two

projections: (i) the cause of women, and (ii) the awful life of the
untouchables. Visibly one cannot see any connecting link between
‘peasants’, ‘women’, and ‘untouchables’ but Gandhi’s eyes were clear
enough to find out association among these three. Women were
inseparable part of peasantry. They did not simply look after the
household, but worked in the farm to support their male partners.
Gandhi’s insistence for the women participation restored the grandeur of
femininity and ensured a larger participation of women in the INM.
Similarly Gandhi could realise that the untouchables worked as labours
closet to the peasants in the farms. They were more deprived than the
peasants and socially outcasted. The ideals of equality and fraternity
moved Gandhi to associate the untouchables in the INM. He knew it well
that the participation of the untouchables in freedom struggle would raise
their social standards and impart the noble feeling of their importance in
the society for which they had been craving for immemorial days. Thus,
Gandhi chose three most deprived section of Indian society for the
participation in the INM that was nothing but the manifestation of
Gandhi’s modern rationalist thought.
Gandhi’s agendas were powerful for the attainment of freedom
but they also required a strategic elaboration of the ideological contents
among the so-called product of the British education system. Gandhi’s
ideological agendas were institutionalised using literary genres. The
gifted writers who were influenced by Gandhian philosophy they used
literature as a tool for expanding the nationalistic ideals. The literary
works of Tagore, Premchand, Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and others
shaped the canon of Indian literature and created a unique ‘Indian’
identity throbbing with the Gandhian ideals. Tagore’s Ghore Bahire (The
Home and the World), Premchand’s Godaan (The Gift of the Cow),
Anand’s Coolie, and Raja Rao’s Kanthapura clearly demonstrated

47
Gandhian philosophy and tried to unite the reading masses of the society
for the freedom struggle. Ghore Bahire redefined the role of woman and
her attitude towards the family structure quite shocking for the orthodox-
traditional conceptions. The terms ‘Ghore’ and ‘Bahire’ signifies the
country and the larger Indian space and society across ethnic, regional,
cultural, and linguistic boundaries. Godaan, a tragedy of Indian peasant,
belongs to the period when the INM was at its high peak and went closer
to the interests of what can be called bourgeois classes. It made the people
to realize that the INM was the only saviour that could promise them the
ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. In Coolie, Anand represented the
life of the deprived labour who has no shelter, no protection, and no
security except his bare body to make his living. Anand’s adherence to the
Gandhian philosophy becomes vivid in his selection of the social group
as the characters for his novel. Anand’s Coolie gives an account of the
plight of the ordinary people whether it is coolie, peasant, untouchable, or
common worker. Similarly, Raja Rao’s Kanthapura records the tremors
of Gandhi’s impact on a South Indian village in a chatty language of an
elderly widow. It can be termed as a true Gandhi Puran because of the
unfolding of Gandhian principles and its theme, ‘Gandhi and Our
village’. Realistic in their outlook, these novels showed the condition of
weaker section of Indian society caused by the colonial rule. They
encouraged the reading masses of India and abroad to fight for the
independence of India. Thus, the canon formation assisted in bridging the
gap between the educated and the non-educated Indians, the
downtrodden and the privileged classes of the Indian society.
The case of feminist movement from the canonical perspective is
quite different. Because of the absence of theory of feminist literature and
properly formulated feminist aesthetics in Indian literature, it is difficult
to evolve in a feminist canon in the context of India. Indian theorists tried
to develop feminist theory but in the western apparel. One may find at
least four problems while defining the feminist canon: (i) the women’s
movement in India was a social movement. It did not simply deal with the
issues of gender and class but also caste, region, and religion. Hence, in
India, there is no single nature ‘patriarchy’ but diverged types of
‘patriarchies’. ‘Patriarchies’ emerged because of their overlapping with

48
feudalism, caste and with rural and urban experiences; (ii) the earliest
feminists were men who set out to introduce reforms in upper caste
Hindu society addressing social evils like child marriage, dowry, female
illiteracy and the practice of sati. These necessarily limited their goals
and vision since it did not question patriarchy or its unequal distribution
of property rights; (iii) the feminist readings of literature and society
came out of the works of historians, sociologists, social workers,
political theorists, and not out of departments of English. In fact, the
feminist writing in English in India is largely in the nature of critical
responses to literature, history, and society. In other words, literature
production in India lacked feminist perspective or a feminist literary
theory that was culture specific. Hence in the context of the feminist
canon of Indian English literature, we need to depend on the definitions
and perspectives provided by the Anglo-American tradition; and (iv) all
significant feminist writing by men and women, and there is larger
corpus of it, was in the regional literatures as it continues to be even
today. Indian English literature has been singularly lacking in a feminist
perspective. We first need to evolve in a feminist aesthetics. In the
absence of an authoritative definition of female aesthetics, we need to
consider very carefully, the many ways in which writing can be
7
feminist. Thus, it makes it clear that Indian English literature lacks the
adequate theorisation of feminist movement. The different writers have
taken up the different issues for the literary elaborations. Despite of such
situation, we may count the following works that have established a
feminist canon of Indian English literature in a response to the women’s
movement in India in post-1980s.
Namita Gokhale’s A Himalayan Love Story (1996), Mountain
Echoes (1998), and, The Book of Shadows (1999); Anees Jung’s
Unveiling India: A Woman’s Journey (1987) and Beyond the Country
Yard (2003); Shashi Deshpande’s The Intrusion (1997); Urvashi
Butalias’s The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India
(2000); Manju Kapoor’s Difficult Daughters (1998) and Married
Women (2002); and Shobha De’s epistolary novel, Speed Post: Letters to
my Children (1991) form the feminist canon of post-1980s Indian
English fiction. It is important to note here that though the women

49
experiences are important to these writers, yet there is no centrality of
their experiences in theoretical terms. These writers do not consider
themselves as the agents of women movement to bring change in the
lives of females, but as the narrator of the condition of women. The
feminist canon of Indian English literature lacks the fixed standards of
judgment. This has happened because of because of the inadequate
theorisation on the feminist movement. The focused female perspective
seems problematic because of profoundly rooted patriarchy in female
consciousness. Indian English literature has produced successful women
writers using the patriarchal norms. Indian English literature requires
innovation in form and subject, narrative techniques, and, pattern of
thought and speech that are distinctively feminist.
Another significant movement that Indian literature witnessed is
the Dalit movement which earlier originated in Maharastra. Dalit
literature started emerging in 1960s with the little magazine movement.
The earliest writings by Dalit writers were published in the little
magazines. Annabhau Sathe, Baburao Bagul, Yashwant Manohar,
Namdeo Dhasal, and Narayan Surve were the prominent writers of this
period. The launching of the Dalit Panther Movement in 1972 brought
the Dalit literary movement in the notice of literary circles of the Marathi
literature and the other regional literatures of India. Dalit panthers,
militant in their attitude, do not claim for any aesthetic orientation of their
literature. They are more political and ideological in nature. To challenge
the traditional Brahmanism and eliticism is their main goal. The names of
the contemporary Dalit writers who have formed the canon of Dalit
fiction include Daya Pawar (Baluta – Social Claim, 1978), Laxman
Mane (Upara – Outsider, 1980), Laxman Gaikwad (Uchalya – Petty
Thief, 1987), Om Prakash Valmiki (Joothan), Sharan Kumar Limbale
(Akkarmashi – The Outcaste, 1984) and others.
Watered by the vision of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar and Jotirao Phule, the
modern Dalit writing adheres the twenty-two vows of Dr. Ambedkar,
taken while embracing the Buddhism on October 14, 1956, as doctrine
for the movement. Dalit aesthetics has been theorized by the writers like
Sharan Kumar Limbale and others in the light of the principles

50
propounded by Dr. Ambedkar and Jotirao Phule. Apart from being a
social movement, Dalit movement seems political in character. It seeks
to revolutionise the prevalent structure of the society by advocating
egalitarian existence, social justice, dignity, equality, and economic
progress for the Dalit. The activist poet like Daya Pawar decided to
include the illiterate Dalits in the Dalit movement by the inspirational
songs and folk tales describing the disparaging and repulsive life of the
Dalit. If one analyses the Dalit movement, it would be found that it is
inherently strategic and goal-directed since its inception. It chose
Mumbai as a centre for its spread because at that time Mumbai was the
prosperous and commercial central of the national importance. It was
one of the cities where the British introduced the education first. Thus, it
became the hub of cultural exchange. Having realized that the education
is the only way out from the disgraceful life, the Dalit movement inspired
its activists to get educated first. They also demanded for the political
participation. Thus, the Dalit movement became powerful on the
strength of organization, clear agendas, education, politics, and its
literature. However, it would not be a hypocritical thesis to say that Dalit
literary movement is more polemic than rational. The criticism that has
supported the Dalit literary movement is not objective, or
depersonalized, but an effective fallacy.
Thus, there has been a trialogic relationship between ‘socio-
cultural movements’, ‘theorisation’, and ‘literary canon formation’, one
influencing the other. Though the literary canonisation is believed to be
disinterested construct that includes aesthetically packed works, it is
polemic in nature. What makes the literary canon polemic is its
relationship with socio-cultural movements and theorisation.

51
 V
Alternative Literary Canon: Its Need and
Functions in the Present Times

Is there any fixed (universal) criterion for determining the

canonicity of a literary work? – The response to this query is probably
‘No’. Any attempt of establishing a ‘fixed’ standard for literary
canonicity is contingent to the ‘race’, ‘milieu’, and ‘moment’ – a kind of
temporal fixity. It should be noted here that these three determiners for the
fixity of canonicity in each nation pass through the different socio-
cultural temperaments at a given time. This clearly suggests that each
nation has its own ‘race’, ‘milieu’, and ‘moment’ and thus the fixity of a
literary standard does not have any universality. In his work Beginning
Postcolonialism (2010), John McLeod remarks that “the texts studied as
Commonwealth literature written ostensibly in English, they were to be
evaluated in relation to English literature, with the same criteria used to
account for the literary value of the age-old English ‘classics’” (original
1
emphasis). He goes on stating that the English canon “functioned as a
2
means of measuring its value.” This observation of McLeod is indeed
suggestive of the fact that in spite of a commonness of language, a text
which has altogether different setting, a different group of people as a

52
stock for its characters, and a different set of social and cultural traditions,
would certainly differ from the text written in the European setting. The
criterion for canonicity of one literature cannot be applied to another
3
literature.
The paper is divided into two parts: the first talks of the conception
of ‘alternative literary canon’, its need and functions. It views the post-
1980s Indian English fiction as an alternative canon. The second part
survey the oppositional east-west critical tradition. It proposes alternative
reading practices that may lead out from the complexities created by the
existing traditions.

I
The postcolonial hurricane that blew through the Indian
subcontinent in 1980s, considerably after Said’s Orientalism (1978),
made Indian scholars aware of the need for an ‘alternative’ literary canon.
The alternative literary canon suggests a tendency to ‘alter’ the Western
literary practices with the ‘native’ traditions. The phrase ‘native tradition’
does not merely imply the reading of a text from the point of view of the
classical Indian Aesthetics and the ancient critical traditions of ‘tikaa’. It
suggests the appraisal of a literary text focusing on the social, cultural,
psychic, ethnic, and political conditions of a nation, India. The reasons
for the need of alternative literary canon are several – Indian scholars
wanted to: (a) subordinate English literature in the Indian subcontinent,
in the same way as “in sphere of politics, economics, and mass media,
Britain and other European imperial powers have been superseded or
4
have been relegated to a relatively minor place in international affairs” ;
(b) deconstruct the cultural hegemony maintained by “the West through
consigning postcolonial literatures as isolated national off-shoots of
5
English literature as per the western standards” , and (c) rewrite the
literary text in such a way that it can deconstruct the popular myths about
the essentialist notion of literature.6 An alternative literary canon does not
merely imply the practice of replacing one set of literary works with
another. It is more profoundly a set of focused reading practices which are
inhabited in institutional structures such as educational curricula and

53
publishing networks. It involves recognition and articulation of these
practices and institutions. Such insurgence will result not only in the
replacement of Eurocentric literary texts with indigenous texts, or, in
redeployment of hierarchical values in them, but it will also result in the
construction of indigenous and independent canon and alternative
reading practices.
Indian English fiction of post-1980s has emerged as an alternative
literary canon. This alternative canon has three-fold functions to serve: it
has to (a) confront the essentialist European construction of Other
countries, (b) displace the political, racist, and sexist ideologies of Euro-
American writing, and (c) emerge as a potent ‘counter-canon’ to
authenticate native Indian culture, traditions, and, voices in the form of
‘writing back’. The anti-imperial consciousness made the scholars read
Indian English literature in terms of colonialism and its aftermath.
Though these scholars have acknowledged literary independence of
Indian English literature for last few decades, they hesitate terming it as
an “alternative” literary canon. It is now high time to perceive it as an
“alternative” literary canon.
An important point to discuss here is that how the post-1980s
Indian English fiction is an alternative canon – what makes it ‘alternative’
and how? The rest of discussion that follows illustrates this query in
detail. However, in simple terms, one can sum up the makers of
‘alternative’ literary canon of the post-1980s in this way:
First, the break from the Western pattern of fiction writing in the
post-1980s era makes the Indian English Fiction an alternative canon (to
the English fiction). The term ‘alternative’, here, also extends its
meaning to connote the sense of ‘independence’. Essentially ‘novel’ or
‘fiction’ as a genre has its roots in the Western paradigm. Indian literature
has borrowed the novel form from the Western literature(s). Indian
writers imitated the Western pattern of writing a novel. Hence, the
Western novel has worked as a role model for the Indian writers up to
1980. Of course, the Western writers have deeply influenced the Indian
writers (during their education, in their practice of creative writing, and in
their goals as writer), the post-1980s Indian English fiction shows

54
‘decolonizing’ of Indian mind. The post-1980s Indian English fiction is
marked with a different set of patterns. In the words of Viney Kirpal, who
uses the phrase ‘the Third World Novel’ to designate the contemporary
fiction, the post-1980s Indian English fiction differs from the Western
fiction in five ways: (a) “the loose, circular, episodic, loop-like narrative
technique”; (b) “the plotlessness of these novels from the Western point
of view”; (c) the use of language which is regional, ritualistic, proverbial,
metaphoric, and therefore quite distinct from language in the English
novel”; (d) the use of myths as “value-endowed paradigms” of reality;
and (e) “illustrational” or “archetypal” rather than “representational”
characterization.7
Secondly, the veering from the pre-1980s Indian fiction makes the
post-1980s Indian English fiction an alternative literary canon. A
question that may arise here is that can a change in the style of writing
qualify to be an alternative canon? Well, the style of writing reflects
substantive cultural content; the change in the style of writing in the post-
1980s Indian English fiction demonstrates a marked change in the
selection of the cultural material and the focal point of the narrative. The
style of writing is not a simple narrative phenomenon but it has the
potential of being a landmark in the history of narrative. The post-1980s
Indian English fiction seems to be a new wave in the field of literature
which differs from the earlier fiction on the basis of writing style, their
reach, their focal points, etc. Earlier though the subject matter was
essentially Indian, its treatment had some western touches in it. The
earlier novelist extended the Indian tradition of the story-telling by
incorporating the western mode of fiction writing into their texts. Their
contact with the west has broadened the range of their themes and thereby
they appropriated the fiction as per the taste of the western reader. One
reason for such condition was that there was a small group of readers who
can read English in India, the larger and biggest group was that of
foreigners. Hence, it was the task of the early Indian English fiction to be
the comparable to their standards. But now in India itself, there is a huge
group of the readers who can read, write, comment on the fiction, so the
post-1980s Indian English no longer needs to be appropriated as per the
western taste. The earlier fiction reached out to the Indian masses,

55
whereas the post-1980s fiction made a considerable impact on the whole
world. The representation of the nation in the earlier novel was village-
centric backgrounding the freedom movement of the Gandhian era,
whereas the post-1980s fiction is city-centric having metropolitan and
cosmopolitan backgrounds of the post-Nehruvian era. Jon Mee, in his
“After Midnight: The Novel in the 1980s and 1990s”, in this regards
acknowledges that “the 1980s witnessed a second coming for the Indian
novel in English. The appearance of Midnight’s Children in 1981 brought
about a renaissance in Indian writing in English which has outdone that of
8
the 1930s.” Amit Chaudhari also voices the same idea when he says:
In the past eighteen years, after the publication of Midnight’s Children and the rise
of the Indian novel in English, Indian fiction in English has not only come to seem central
to the idea of Indian literature in the mind of both the popular media and the academic
intelligentsia, but has also edged out from every day consciousness those indigenous
languages and their modern traditions that seemed so important a few decades ago, and
9
were so crucial to the evolution of modern Indian identity or identities.

The outlooks of Mee and Chaudhari clarify one major point that
the publication of Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children in 1981 makes the real
start of “Indian” English fiction. No doubt, the trio of Anand, Rao, and
Narayan has greatly contributed to the formation of Indian English
fiction; these writers seem more Dickensian in their approaches clearly
signifying interminable influence of the West, whereas the post-1980s
Indian English is seemed establishing itself as an independent genre.
During this period, the robustly extroverted style, innerness of
multiplicity and polyphony, propensity of imagination, use of myths,
fairy tales and fantasy, and, the nativised language make the post-1980s
Indian English fiction an alternative to the conventional Indian English
fiction.
Thirdly, the advocacy and practices of reading the post-1980s
Indian English fiction differently, without evolving much into the finicky
Western critical theories or into the pedantic Indian aesthetics, make it an
alternative literary canon. Instead it focuses on the national
consciousness, cultural practices, and indigenous ideals as represented in
the post-1980s Indian English fiction. The reason for engaging in a quite
different reading practice is to solve out the oppositional west-east

56
critical dimensions. No doubt, Indian literary studies needs the West-free
critical orientation to be ‘Indian’ in reality; simultaneously the present
literary scene requires the extension of the ancient Indian aesthetics in its
modern avatar. It is possible to be the entirely West-free in the literatures
written in Indian languages but not in English. As the genre ‘fiction’ and
the language ‘English’ both are the western in character, it is not possible
to detach Indian English studies from the western critical practices. Nor
it is completely possible to study it from the Indian literary tradition.
Hence by advocating alternative reading practices, it may be possible to
form alternative literary canon.

II
In his essay, “In Search of Indian Novel”, Herbert McArthur notes
that –
A tenaciously particularized religiosity in polyglot jungle of temples and
swamis; a more or less official ideal tradition in aesthetics and philosophy but an actual
history of eclectic ferment; “non-western” way of thinking often defined and infused by
European romantic idealism. One thinks of Gandhi in London, rediscovering Hinduism
by reading Annie Besant.10

When it comes to Indian literature, this attributive scrutiny of

Indian English fiction is not merely a view of Herbert McArthur but of
11
many. The Indian English fiction of post-1980s is essentially different
from the earlier Indian fictions; religiosity in polyglot jungle of temples
and swamis does not feature in the contemporary fiction, it might be the
matter of past when Indian fiction was dependent on the western
tradition but it is now a sovereign genre; it has created its own identity.
However, it is indeed difficult to develop a separate framework for the
analysis of the Indian English fiction. There are certain problems in
forming the ‘alternative’ literary canon because the formation of
alternative literary canon would also require the alternative reading and
evaluating practices. It has been observed that Indian readers, due to their
western-patterned education, are trained to read literature in the western
style frequently relying on the western theories of interpretation.
Analytical practices in India have caught amidst the eastern-
western polarities.12 The present scenario of English literary studies in

57
India marks two opposite traditions. There are the supporters of
traditional Indian literary practices for the evaluation of the texts
whereas the others prefer the western or the western-Indian merged
tradition. Similarly, those who advocate a different orientation of Indian
English fiction, they largely rely on the western tradition (Aijad Ahmad,
Meenakshi Mukherjee, Makarand Paranjape etc.) or the traditional-
pedantic Indian tradition (Kapil Kapoor, Bhalchandra Nemade, G. N.
Devy, and others). Nemade’s Nativism13 probably had a potentiality to
alter the reading practices but too much dependence on the traditional
Indian theories makes it difficult for the common reader to follow
Nemade. Probably the ‘native’ (the human subject) is missing in the
conception of ‘Nativism’ due to the focus on native literary traditions of
interpretations. Nemade’s writings arise certain questions – for whom
does we are interpreting the text in the pedantic shastriya method of
bhasha tradition that nativism proposes? Are we creating a kind of
elitism among the readers? Is the bhasha tradition of literary appreciation
only way to protect or revive the culture? Would the conception of
Nativism allow us to concentrate on national consciousness, cultural
practices, and indigenous ideals? Doesn’t the Nativism show the sign of
what Herbert McArthur means to say by the phrase “rediscovering
Hinduism by reading Annie Besant”? Cultural practices are different in
each corner of India; does it mean that we require as many Nativisms as
the different cultural practices of India? Instead focusing on the bhasha
tradition, one needs to focus on the native, his life, his culture, his
aspiration, his relationship with the outer world, his conflicts. This shift
in perception would create its unique ‘Nativism’ that would have
potentialities of preserving cultural practices and indigenous ideals. That
is why one should go beyond traditional Nativism and restructure a “neo-
Nativism” which would focus the social, cultural, psychic, ethnic, and
political conditions of a nation for the literary appraisal. Neo-Nativism
would not restrict itself to the regional cultural territories but would see
the nation as one single cultural unit, vividhata me ekta. It would
celebrate the diversity of cultures. It would have capacity to indentify the
foreign cultural influences and convert it into nativistic life-style and,
thus, it would make the foreign culture the part of the larger evolving

58
cultural tradition of the nation. Neo-nativism would make a cry for the
change of mind and not only the change of heart. It would not be
governed by the outer cultural influences but it would govern them by
adopting them in a native tradition. There would be only one motto of
neo-Nativism – celebrating diversity. 14
15
In this time (of globalization ), it is difficult to go with any single
approach. The relationship between ‘East’ and ‘West’ is dialogic;
actively or passively both depends on each other. Therefore, it is not
possible to adopt a totally confrontationist position towards the West. At
the same time one should not forget that in many field this relationship is
also dialectical. Hence, it is not possible for to combine the both together
due to their contradictory natures. Therefore, one has to be very selective
while dealing with the East and the West. Even Gandhi realized this and
he told to accept the best from the West. He says that if the English
become Indianised, the Indians can accommodate them. Simultaneously
he also warns that if they wish to remain in India with their civilisation,
there is no room for them. Gandhi did not have problem with the western
tradition but he was against the blind imitation of the West; he knew it
well that the irrational parody of the West would result in the intellectual
amnesia. Hence, he favoured the presence of the West but in Indian
uniform.
Unlike Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo says that “the idea of taking over
what is best in occidental civilisation, is a false notion without a living
meaning… In fact, we have been for a long time so imitating the West,
trying to become like it or partly like it and have fortunately failed, for
that would have meant creating a bastard or twy-natured culture; but twy-
natured, …, is no-natured and a bastard culture is no sound, truth-living
culture. An entire return upon ourselves is our only way of salvation”. 16
However, an entire return to ourselves, i.e., to our cultural roots seems
impractical in the present times. Today, it is not possible to denounce the
western thoughts from the critical discourses; doing this might narrow
down the extent of one’s understanding. It is unfeasible for any culture to
be entirely self-sufficient or completely closed from the outside world.
Such culture will wither away with the passage of time. Even Sri

59
Aurobindo realized it immediately. Realising the problem, Sri Aurobindo
lays down the following theoretical framework:
1. To recover its own centre, find its own base and do whatever it has to do in its
own strength and genius is certainly the one way of salvation. But even then
a certain amount of acceptance, of forms too, – some imitation, if all taking
over of forms must be called imitation, – is inevitable. 17
2. There is in every individualised existence a double action, a self-
development from within which is its greatest intimate power of being and
by which it is itself, and a reception of impacts from outside which it has to
accommodate to its own individuality and make into material of self-growth
and self power. 18
3. To a healthy individuality the external impact or entering energy, idea,
influence may act as an irritant awakening the inner being to a sense of
discord, incompatibility or peril, and then there is a struggle, an impulse and
process of rejection; but even in this struggle, in this process of rejection
there is some resultant of change and growth, some increment of the power
and material of life; the energies of the being are stimulated and helped by
the attack. 19
4. At no time did Indian culture exclude altogether external influences; on the
contrary a very great power of selective assimilation, subordination and
transformation of external element was the characteristic of its processes; it
protected itself from any considerable or overwhelming invasion, but laid
hands on and included whatever struck or impressed it and in the act of
inclusion subjected it to a characteristic change which harmonised the
element with the spirit of its own culture. 20

These theoretical positions of Sri Aurobindo suggest that it is

impossible for any culture or nation to be entirely self-reliant and
detached from other cultural influences. The cultural invasions many a
times seem culturally and intellectually favouring the dominated culture.
One cannot totally reject or accept the idea of the cultural invasion. Hence
Sri Aurobindo suggest the method of selective assimilation, enrich
oneself from another culture. (Perhaps Sri Aurobindo accepts Gandhi’s
proposal adopting the best; however what is the difference between
Gandhi and Aurobindo is that Gandhi accepts the best in Indian form,
whereas Aurobindo accepts it in the western form as it is.)
In the vein of Sri Aurobindo, the critics like Makarand Paranjape
and others employ the method selective assimilation in the field of

60
literary studies. Gandhi’s proposal for selecting the best in Indianised
form would have been a better than the notion of selective assimilation.
The idea of selective assimilation leads to some queries: are we again
proposing the study of Indian English literature (fiction) through the
western parameters? How is it possible to combine the Indian literary
tradition which has its roots in aesthetic soil and the western literary
tradition which has its grounding in the materialistic notion of the world?
In such uncongenial condition, one has only one way that is middle-way
approach, a moderate position that would safeguard the interest of the
protagonists of the western tradition and also preserve and protect
cultural practices, national ethos, and native identity of India.21 The
middle-way approach hints at the formulation of altogether different
reading practices that occasionally depends either on the West or the East.
And if it depends on the West, it would be appropriated as per the purpose
of the nativised interests. Such mutual wining over the western tradition
would certainly make us indigenous. The best way to deconstruct the
western identity is to formulate alternative conceptual framework. Hence
the middle-way approach deals with formulating such reading practices
that can be used by all without involving much in the western or eastern
literary traditions. It can be even practiced by the readers of any nation
without being conscious of the traditional literary practices. It would just
focus on the text for the literary analysis and would study the native life,
their aspiration, their struggle, etc. The neo-nativism may also function as
the middle-way approach to the study of Indian English literature in India
One may adopt the following framework for the study of post-
1980s Indian English fiction. One should not forget the fact that the
deconstructive prepositions of postmodernist regime do not approve any
fixity of synchronic relationship, yet he/she may employ this
parametrical frame to evaluate literary fiction of post-1980s. This would
probably take the readers out of the complexities caused by the eastern-
western literary traditions.
1. Fictionalisation – This hints at interpreting the post-1980s fiction
by focussing on the art of fictionalisation. One should pose the
questions, such as, how has the writer created fictional
atmosphere? What techniques has he employed? To what extent he

61
 has succeeded in creating authentic fiction? How native material
like history and myth is utilised to enhance the fictional effect of
the text?
2. Ideolised Aesthetics – It is not possible to accept any text in post-
1980s as ‘purely’ aesthetic creation. Literary texts are always part
of some ideologies. Hence the texts must be assessed focusing on
how the writer has ‘ideolised’ the aesthetics to make it more
relevant to the contemporary needs. What are the textual sources
that make ‘ideological’ and ‘aesthetical’ resonances possible?
3. Culture – The text must be rooted to the culture from where it
emerges out or to which it is addressed to. One should engage in
analysing the text’s – a. competency of creating cultural harmony,
b. ability of depicting cultural life of people, c. capability of
creating unique cultural identity, and d. trimetric of land, culture
and identity.
4. Time and place – Time and place are the pertinent aspects of the
literary explorations. ‘Moment’ and ‘milieu’ must be the one of
bases of literary analysis. It would make the literary inquiries
more penetrate and rational.
5. Intellectual Resonance – A query regarding the intellectual
resonance is an important area of inquiry. How the text balances
with the already existing knowledge and what is its capacity to
empower literary tradition intellectually? What is the significance
of the subject matter in the present times? – are some of the
questions that one should pose.
6. Ontological Queries – It implies the artistic phenomenon of
probing into metaphysical queries concerning the nature of being,
existence, and, reality. One must peep inside the philosophical
dimensions of the literary account. The metaphysics of the text
must be explored.
7. Narrative Techniques - What are the narrative techniques the
writer has utilised? How has the writer experimented with the
narrative? – such queries would make our study of the fiction
more interesting.

62
 A careful look at the first letter in each parameter tries to convince
that probably using “FICTION” formula to form alternative reading
practices for the post-1980s Indian English fiction. Using these
parameters even the neo-nativism can more focus on the text and the
native life-style and traditions. This would ground the literary study on
the social, cultural, psychic, ethnic, and political conditions of a nation.
Adopting these measures can lead to a question that are we going back to
the liberal humanist approach as propound by the pre-modern European
thinkers? The answer to this query is “No”. The liberal humanist
approach was purely aesthetic-artistic construct. The liberal humanists
believed that text contains the meaning entirely within itself; they
thought that it is only through detaching the text from contexts and
studying it in isolation one can understand the text; and they considered
that it is the duty of the criticism to interpret and explain the text to the
readers. They ignored the language studies, historical considerations and
philosophical questions. The liberal humanist approach focused much
more on the artistic components and the formalist22 beauty of the
literature, and, the culture was subdued in it; whereas this FICTION
approach centres on cultural aspects, it celebrates the cultural diversity.
In the liberal humanist approach formalistic content was at the centre,
whereas in this approach native (the human being) and its culture are at
the centre. The earlier is the liberal humanism, the later is the cultural
humanism. It may happen that some individual parameters do not appear
culture-centric; however the beauty of this approach lies in their unity
and not separation. Together they would have the power of celebrative
native culture.
Thus, the alternative literary canon demands alternative reading-
appreciation practices. The parameters shown above together have the
potentiality to emerge out as the solid framework for the study of post-
1980s Indian English fiction. This would also satisfy pragmatic part the
theoretical practices. They are more focused and universal in outlook.

63
 VI

University Syllabi and Literary Canon Formation

“… without a syllabus there is no canon”1

Literary studies has never been a neutral process of imparting

aesthetic knowledge but has proved an institutional mechanism of
cultural (re)production. Since its inception in the colonial time, English
literary studies has been engaged in forming the hegemonic cultural
practices in India. Earlier it was a tool of cultural domination in the hands
colonial rulers, today it is an institutional stratagem to construct a kind of
cultural elitism. Literary syllabus is never impartial accumulation of
literary texts but it is an ideological apparatus of someone’s vision. It been
observed that departments of English in India are passing through a crisis
– many of their postulates which were once considered self-evident and
universal are questioned and challenged.
In the wake of the western critical theories with their anti-
foundational and anti-essentialist notions, what has been commonly
accepted as essential ‘knowledge’ is now subject of hermeneutic
reassessment. There is a cry for the paradigmatic shift in the pedagogical

64
practices. It is essential to realise that hubbubs over canon that usually
centre around what is included and excluded in literary curricula really
signify more profound political, economic, and cultural relations and
histories. Conflicts over canonical texts are often proxies for wider
questions of power relations. As a part of a curriculum, they engage in
constructing the knowledge system what society has recognized as
legitimate and truthful. What are the cultural and ideological
implications of university syllabi for literary studies? What is the
cultural relevance of what has been sold as “required knowledge”? Who
has the responsibilities of designing the best syllabus for the students and
how it has been regulated? – these are some of important queries that the
university departments are facing today.
In his influential essay, “The Politics of Official Knowledge: Does
a National Curriculum Make Sense?,” Michael Apple notes that –
The curriculum is never simply a neutral assemblage of knowledge, somehow
appearing in the texts and classrooms of a nation. It is always a part of a selective
tradition, someone's selection, some group's vision of legitimate knowledge. It is
produced out of cultural, political, and economic conflicts, tensions, and compromises
that organise a people.2

Such discernment of Michael Apple is not merely anguish to the

academic conflicts that America witnessed; it is a widely acknowledged
sentiment of those ‘marginalised’ groups who teach and study in most of
the universities of the world. A disinterested endeavour to disseminate
the concerns of curriculum, without favouring the marginalised or
privileged groups, would result in a conclusion that curriculum or
syllabus of university education is opinionated, polemic and some
group’s vision of legitimate knowledge. Even if the process of finalising
syllabus is not biased, “a list of texts is transformed into a list of
representative authors or social identities”.3 In this way, syllabus proves
a cultural arena where common turns out uncommon and does not
remain simply a list of texts.
The term ‘syllabus’ first made its entry in Oxford English
Dictionary in 1656 to refer to ‘a table of content’. Its meaning changed
in 1889 to denote ‘an outline of lectures or a course’ which proved
ambiguous: in some fields the term has been used to mean ‘a course of

65
 4
study rather than a document outlining information about the course’.
The terms ‘canon’ and ‘syllabus’ have some interconnections with each
other – both pre-eminently mean a list of texts. As Guillory suggests, “if
the origin of these texts is typically referred to an absent author in such
shorthand phrases as “texts by women”, “texts by blacks” (along with the
more traditional “texts by Shakespeare” or “texts by Joyce”), this
subordination of text to author is nevertheless only a rhetorical effect,
however powerful.”5 The association of a text to its author is in fact an
attribution to the author’s race, gender, class, caste or culture. It forms
social identity. A question that arises here is that if both ‘canon’ and
‘syllabus’ hint at the same thing, where should a boundary line be drawn?
Guillory opines that the distinction between these operates in the realm of
6
‘imaginary projection’. Syllabus seems, however it is not, a disinterested
term, whereas the idea of canon constructs ‘an imaginary’ realm of its
authorship, and thus, a list of texts is transformed into a list of
representative authors or social identities. Remarking on the dissimilarity
between the terms, Guillory notes that the difference lies between the
phrases: adding a “text by a woman” to the syllabus and “adding a
woman” to the syllabus. This difference suggests the imaginary
representation. Syllabus is more inclusive term; it blurs all distinctions.
Canon is more exclusive, it vitalises all kinds of distinctions.
Terry Eagleton opined that university department of English are
7
“part of the ideological apparatus of the modern capitalist state” and
literary canon executes the agendas of the state. He believed that teachers
of literature, together with literary critics and theorists, choose those
literary works which are more acquiescent than others to the discourse of
literary criticism. These selected texts form “canon”. The selection of
literary texts for the purpose of curricula symbolises an exercise of
power; it distributes power to the texts which in turn categorises them as
‘canonical’ or ‘non-canonical’. Thus, the process of selection of literary
texts forms a discourse which supports those who are in power. This
makes Eagleton to observe that literary curriculum of university reflects
“the ruling power-interests of society at large, whose ideological needs
will be served and whose personnel will be reproduced by the

66
preservation and controlled extension of the discourse in question”.8
This observation may lead to an inference that curriculum or syllabus is
never neutral. It has numerous intensions which one needs to interpret
carefully.
In the departments of English of Indian universities, the syllabus
of English for postgraduate studies is designed by a committee called
“Board of Studies,” each university has its own committee in each
subject. This committee consists of the subject experts-teachers of
different class, caste, religion, and region from the same university or in
some cases from other university. Ostensibly the members of Board of
Studies represent all the sections-groups of the society. Hence whatever
text that is selected in name of syllabus is considered a result of collective
endeavour and thus secular. The growing ‘canon concerns’ in the foreign
universities encouraged the Indian universities for the canonical revision
of the syllabus. This led to the inclusion of many national canons like
American, Canadian, Australian, Indian, etc., along with gender-caste-
region-based canons into the syllabi of English at postgraduate level.
Notable changes have been introduced, at postgraduate stage, in the
syllabi of English in last three decades. A study of the selected
departments of English of Indian universities suggests that the
departments of English have engaged themselves with formation of
different canons.9 In the last three decades, the MA (English) curriculum
has undergone a drastic change. It has offered variety of papers. The
papers which were offered earlier have been replaced by more thematic,
innovative and skill-oriented papers. Here, an attempt is made to study
the relationship between university syllabi and canon formation using
instance of the Indian English fictions. The following Table A shows
separate theme based papers that the Indian universities have introduced:

67
Table A: Separate Theme-based Papers in MA (English)
L a n g u a g e M a n a g e m e n t a n d European Classics (AU)
Communication Skills (AU)
History and Spread of English Colonial Encounters (AU)
Language (AU)
Classroom Applications (KU) Indian Classics in Translation
(KU)
Cultural Diversity in Canadian Regional Literatures in Translation
Literature (KU) (KU)
Environmental Canadian Writing Survival Canadian Writing (KU)
(KU)
H i s t o r y o f E n g l i s h a n d Biography, Autobiography and
Fundamentals of Literature Thought – Maulana Azad Studies
(MANUU) (MANNU)
Fundamental of Information T h e C h i l d r e n ’ s L i t e r a t u r e
Technology (MANUU) (MANUU)
Comparative Literature (MANUU, History, Structure and Description
UK) of English (OU)
Wr i t i n g f o r A c a d e m i c a n d Literature and Film (OU)
Professional Purposes (OU)
Modern Classics in Translation Women’s Writing
(OU)
Phonetics and Spoken English English Grammar and Writing
(GDU) (GDU)
History and Literary Movements Indian Diasporic Writing (KnU)
(GDU)
English Language Proficiency Gender Studies (KnU)
(KnU)
Communicative English (KnU) Colonial and Postcolonial Studies
(KrU)
Literature and Gender (KrU, UJ, Literature and Philosophy (KrU)
UK)

68
Commonwealth Literature (NEHU) Environment and Indian Writing in
English (NEHU)
Cultural Studies (PU) World Poetry/ Novel in Translation
(PU)
Applied Linguistics (PU) Modern English Grammar and
Usage (PuU)
Translation and Translation Theory Modern European Literature (UJ)
(UJ, UK)
Linguistics and Stylistics (UK) Twentieth Century Novel (UK)
Lingo-Literary Studies through Thinking and Cognition (BU)
Contemporary Films (BU)
Literature: Analysis, Approaches Copy Editing (BU)
and Applications (BU)
ELT and CALL (BU) Public Speaking, Journalistic and
Creative Writing (BU)
Literature and Cognitive Sciences Soft Skills through Literature –
(BU) Personal Qualities (BU)
Research Methodology (BU) Reading Skills (BU)

Apart from the genre-wise, period-wise, nation-wise literature,

the university departments of English have also introduced numbers of
theme-based papers. It is quite perceptible that in university departments
of English, the concerns for the ‘region’, where they are located, have
increased. Many university departments have introduced the regional
works in English translation to make the students aware of regional
literary output. For instance, Kakatiya University (KU) which is located
in Warangal (Andhra Pradesh) has introduced Annamayya and Vemana
as well as Bhakti tradition of Nayanars and Alwars, Virasaivism and its
contribution to social reform, Vaishnava Bhakti, Haridasa movement etc.
in paper named as “Indian Classics in Translation”. Similarly the
University of Kashmir (UK), Kashmir has introduced Kashmiri writers
such as Shaikh-ul-Alam, Lal Ded, Mahmood Garni, Rasul Mir, Qurat-ul-
Ain Haider, Akhtar Mohi-ud-Din, HK Bharati, and HK Koul in the paper

69
called “Translation and Translation Theories”. The same is the case with
other universities as well.
There were often some complaints that the university departments
of English have failed to ensure the quality education. Those who became
teachers or lecturers after the university education practically failed in
their classrooms; the objective of producing qualitative teachers seemed
weakening. The university departments, realising this threat, decided to
prepare the students for the actual classroom condition. Hence, the papers
that can help the students started appearing in the MA (English) syllabi.
The papers like “Language Management and Communication Skills”,
“Classroom Applications”, “Fundamental of Information Technology”,
“Writing for Academic and Professional Purposes”, “English Grammar
and Writing”, “Communicative English”, and “Modern English
Grammar and Usage” are the consequences of such efforts of the
university departments of English.
Another shift that can strike to even a common reader is that the
eradicating distinction between English Language Teaching (ELT) and
English Literature Teaching. Of course, there are some institutions which
offer the separate postgraduate course in ELT; in many of the universities
the postgraduate course in English includes one or two basic paper/s.
Initially, for both the courses, there were different syllabi and altogether
different institutional set up; now the university departments of English
have realised that a student of English ought to be good at ELT in the same
manner he/she is good at papers of literature. However the study of ELT is
made optional for the students. Similar is the case with Linguistics.
Earlier there was a separate course on linguistics but now it is an optional
part of literary syllabus. Thus, the contemporary syllabus of MA
(English) has brought the study of literature, language teaching and
linguistics together.
Now the study of MA (English) is not limited to English-British
literature; numbers of the literatures either in English or in English
translation are the parts of English studies. The MA (English) course is
stretched to incorporate Indian, American, Australian, Canadian, African
and other Commonwealth literatures. Apart from these, Greek, Spanish,

70
Russian, German, Arabian and other literatures are also taught in English
translation. The papers entitled as the “World Classics in Translation”
and “Modern European Classics” have made the study of classics of the
different parts of world possible. In some of the universities a paper
called “SAARC Literature in English” is introduced under which the
literary texts written in courtiers like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal,
Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and Maldives are taught.10 The papers named as the
“Comparative Literature” and “Regional Literatures in English
Translation” has the potential to enrich the students with the knowledge
of regional literatures of India. The regional literatures of India is
translated English and taken as a good substitute of English literature.
There is a strong need of introducing the paper namely “Comparative
Literature” in all the universities of India as this paper has the ability of
providing a compendium view of regional literary offspring of India. It
would bring all the Indian literatures together and would enhance the
knowledge of the students. Though the Comparative Literature is in itself
a large field, its study at postgraduate level, in form of a paper or two, is
really beneficial. The university departments of English have also
engaged themselves in formation of new literary canons. The papers
named as “Gender Studies”, “Women’s Writing”, “Indian Diasporic
Writing” and “Indian Writing in English” are in fact attempts of forming
feminist, diasporic, Indian English canon and others.
The university departments of English have also decanonised
some of the subjects. Earlier in many universities, the paper called
“Literary Criticism and Theory” consisted of a portion dealing with the
study of Indian Aesthetics wherein different Indian theories of literary
appreciation were taught but this portion seems vanished in the syllabi of
many Indian universities. The students of MA (English) are exposed to
the western tradition of literary criticism only. The students must be
taught how the Indian theories of literary appreciation can be practised
over Indian (English) texts. The decline of the Indian aesthetics in MA
(English) classroom would prove fatal for the Indian universities.
Similarly in the 1980s the Dalit studies has emerged out as a budding area
of study. However the analysis of these fourteen university syllabi
suggests that the dalit studies is ignored intentionally or unintentionally.

71
Many universities have showed their concerns for the Black literature or
Afro-American literature but the dalit literature which is home-grown
literature is ignored with no reason.
One must appreciate the inclusion of the papers such as
“Children’s Literature”, “Literature and Film”, “Cultural Studies”,
“Literature and Philosophy”, “Environment and Indian Writing in
English” in the syllabi of MA (English). But these papers are not offered
by all the universities. Literature, being a product of different societal
influences, must be analysed in relation with culture, film, philosophy,
environment, etc. “Cultural Studies” has emerged as an important field in
the western universities but in many of the Indian universities it is still
alien. The same is the case with the “Children’s Literature”. Considering
it frivolous, one should not divert his/her attention to the study of
mainstream literature only.

Table B: Pre-1980s and Post-1980s Indian English Fiction

in MA (English) Syllabi
Pre – 1980s Indian English Post – 1980s Indian English
Fictions Fictions
Ahmed Ali, Twilight in Delhi Amitav Ghosh, The Shadow
(1940)* Lines (1988)
Anita Desai, Voices in the Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies
City (1965) (2008)
Bankimchandra, Raj Anita Desai, Clear Light of the
Mohan’s Wife (1864) Day (1985)
Bharati Mukherjee, Wife Anita Desai, Fasting Feasting
(1973) (1999)
Chaman Nahal, Aazadi Anita Desai, In Custody (1986)
(1975)
Kamala Markendeya, Nectar Anita Nair, Ladies Coup (2001)
in Sieve (1954)

72
Khushwant Singh, Train to Arundhati Roy, The God of Small
Pakistan (1956) Things (1997)
Krupabai Satthianandhan, Bapsi Sidhwa, Ice-Candy Man
Kamala: A Story of Hindu (1991)
Life (1895)
Manohar Malgokar, A Bend Chitra Banerji Divakaruni, Sister
in Ganges (1964) of My Heart (1999)
Mulk Raj Anand, Coolie Githa Hariharan, Thousand Faces
(1936) of Night (1992)
Mulk Raj Anand, Namita Gokhale, Gods, Graves
Untouchable (1935) and Grandmother (1994)
Nirad C. Choudhary. An RK Narayan, Tiger for Malgudi
Autobiography of Unknown (1983)
Indian (1951)
Raja Rao, Kanthapura Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance
(1938) (1995)
Raja Rao, The Serpent and Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long
the Rope (1960) Journey (1991)
RK Narayan, Swami and Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last
Friends (1935) Sigh (1996)
RK Narayana, Man Eater of Shashi Deshpande, A Matter of
Malgudi (1968) Time (1996)
RK Narayana, Waiting for Shashi Deshpande, The Binding
Mahatma (1955) Vine (1992)
Rudyard Kipling, Kim Shashi Deshpande, That Long
(1901) Silence (1988)
VS Naipaul, A House for Mr. Shashi Tharoor, The Great Indian
Biswas (1961) Novel (1989)
VS Naipaul, The Mimic Men
(1967)
*Note: Ahmed Ali later turned out a Pakistani writer after the partition of
India.

73
 Both the periods, pre and post 1980s, differ from each other on
thematic line. The pre-1980s fictions generally deal with the themes of
freedom struggle, independence, partition, and immediate post-
independence condition. The trio of Rao, Anand, and Narayan dominate
the field of pre-1980s fiction. Rao’s Kanthapura (1938), Anand’s
Untouchable (1935) and Coolie (1936), and Narayana’s Swami and
Friends (1935) are the social critique of the colonial Indian. They are
marked by the quality of nationalism, zeal for social change, and,
Gandhian ideology. Most of these fictions propagate the Gandhian idea
of annihilation of caste and social distinctions and highlight the grandeur
of simple, rustic life.
Likewise, Nirad Choudhary’s An Autobiography of Unknown
Indian (1951), Raja Rao’s The Serpent and the Rope (1960), R.K.
Narayana, The Guide (1958), Man Eater of Malgudi (1968) and Waiting
for Mahatma (1955) are distinguished the Gandhian influence.
Choudhary’s Autobiography is a “more of a national than personal
11
history.” It describes Choudhary’s childhood memory, family
antecedents, rural cultural milieu, the nationalist fervour in the wake of
the Partition of Bengal, coming of Gandhi, and the beginning of the ‘new
politics’ in the 1920s. The Serpent and the Rope is more complex than
Kanthapura and is full of religious and philosophical symbolism. It can
be described as a complex blending of the cultures and religions of the
East and the West. This leads to K.S.R. Iyengar to pronounce that “if
Kanthapura could be described as a purana, as a Gandhi Purana, and The
Serpent and the Rope as an epic, a mini-Mahabharata in the idiom of our
12
age”. In Waiting for Mahatma, the stress in not only on the Gandhian
philosophy but Gandhi himself. Readers find the appearance of Gandhi
in the novel. Though the novel seems as a romance between Bharati and
Sriram, it encompasses the condition of India in the pre and immediate
post independent era. Narayana’s The Guide and Man Eater of Malgudi
are excellent examples of his craftsmanship.
Emergence of female writers and representation of feminine
sensibility is marked quality of pre-1980s Indian English fiction.
Bankimchandra’s Raj Mohan’s Wife (1864), Krupabai Satthianandhan’s

74
Kamala: A Story of Hindu Life (1895), Kamala Markendeya’s Nectar in a
Sieve (1954), Anita Desai’s Cry, the Peacock (1963) and Voices in the
City (1965), and Bharati Mukherjee’s Wife (1973) tell the story of female
heart. Bankimchandra’s description of Matangini, the heroine of the
13
novel and Raj Mohan’s Wife is a “perfect flower of beauty”. Raj
Mohan’s Wife is the very first novel that deals with the laws of threshold.
The courageous acts of Matangini make the novel the revelation of the
modern India. Krupabai’s Kamala is the story of Kamala, the only child
of a Brahmin sanyasi who becomes a child-bride and later turn into a
young widow. The struggle of Kamala in fact highlights the unforbidable
struggle of women in the Indian Hindu society. Markendeya’s Nectar in
a Sieve is the story of a poverty-stricken Hindu family in a remote rural
village in southern India. This poverty forced the only daughter into
prostitution and caused three sons to leave the village to seek
employment. Largely focusing on the condition of women in the rural
colonial India, the novel shows the role of women in the Indian society
and agriculture. Desai’s Cry, the Peacock (1963) and Voices in the City
(1965) also deal with the feminine sensibility. These two novels depict
the author’s quest for psychological insight and awareness. Cry, the
Peacock talks of the marital discord between Gautam and Maya. Voices
in the City presents the female psyche mainly through the character of
Monisha, a childless, sensitive and victim of mismatched marriage.
Similarly Bharati Mukherjee’s a short novel, Wife, is a story of disturbing
account of the conflict between the western and Indian culture as
embodied in the life of Dimple Das Gupta, the heroine of the novel.
Dimple is a tragically drawn character whose life ends up in depression,
madness and murder. Rudyard Kipling’s Kim and Ahmed Ali’s Twilight
in Delhi seem off-bit novels. Kipling’s Kim portrays the imperialist
experiences of the colonial India. Similarly Ali’s Twilight in Delhi deals
with India’s changing socio-cultural and political scene following the
colonialism.
Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan (1956), Manohar
Malgonkar’s A Bend in the Ganges (1964), and Chaman Nahal’s Aazadi
(1975) narrates the trauma caused by the partition of India and Pakistan.
Singh, though he himself was one of the witnessed, depicts the tragedy

75
 from the objectivity of a narrator, whereas Nahal gives
autobiographical touch to this tragedy. Nahal calls it, “… a hymn to one’s
14
land of birth, rather than a realistic novel of the Partition.” It is rightly
said that if Khushwant Singh deals with traumatic condition prevailing in
India in his Train to Pakistan, Nahal engages himself with the harrowing
tragedy that occurred in Pakistan in his Azadi. Similarly where
Malgonkar’s A Bend in the Ganges ends, Nahal’s Aazadi begins. A Bend
in the Ganges, one of the best three novels of 1964 that E. M. Foster
selected, begins with the Civil Disobedience Movement of early 1930s
and ends with the beginning of the Partition riots in Punjab.
V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas (1961) and The Mimic Men
(1967) deal with identity crisis. Mohun Biswas’ search for house in A
House for Mr. Biswas is identical to man’s search for identity in the
world. Similarly, in The Mimic Men, Ralph Singh, the protagonist, has
no strong bonds to any one geographical place. He lives amongst the
antagonistic cultural geo-space where a man loses his own cultural
identity and becomes part of confused global identity which brings
problems to his life.
One can easily notice that since the beginning of the Indian
English fiction, in 1864 to the seventh decade of the twentieth century,
hundreds of the fictions have came out but the university departments of
English just focus on the writers who have succeeded in winning prizes
and praises in India and abroad. It seems that it has been the tendency of
the university departments of English to select those fictions which deals
with the colonial struggle, postcolonial predicaments, problems of social
life, caste system, and identity crisis. In many of the universities, the
departments of English are offering more post-1980s texts to replace the
traditional themes with the emerging. The decade of 1980s is considered
as the new beginning for Indian English literature. In the fields of poetry,
drama, and fiction, it marked ‘newness’. Both the pre and post-1980s
Indian English fiction generously uses the trimetric of history, myth, and
culture. The post-1980s fiction is a complex fusion of art and aesthetics;
the myth, memory, and culture; as well as native social reality and global
aspirations.

76
Table C: Short Profile of Selected Post-1980s Indian English Fictions

Name of the Text Name of Publisher Award Author’s Present

the Author (Country) Religion Place of
Domicile

Midnight’s Salman Jonathan Booker Prize (1981) Muslim Britain

Rushdie Cape Booker of Bookers
Children (1981) (United (1993)
Kingdom) Best of Booker
(2008)

The Moor’s Last TIME Magazine’s

Best Book of the
Sigh (1996)
Year
Such a Long Rohinton McClelland Governor General’s Parsi Canada
Mistry and Stewart Award
Journey (1991) (Canada) Commonwealth
Writers Prize
Books in Canada
First Novel Award
Short listed for
Booker Prize (1991)

A Fine Balance Giller Prize

Short listed for
(1995) Booker Prize (1996)
Ice-Candy Man Bapsi Milkweed --- Parsi United
Sidhwa Edition States
(1988) (United
States)
Tiger for Malgudi R. K. Viking Press -- Hindu India
Narayan (US)
(1983) Heinemann
(UK)
Clear Light of the Anita Heinemann Short listed for Hindu United
Desai (United Booker Prize (1980) States
Day (1980) Kingdom)
In Custody (1984) Short listed for
Booker Prize (1984)
Fasting Feasting Chatto and Short listed for
Windus Booker Prize (1999)
(1999) (United
Kingdom)

77
 That Long Silence Shashi Virago Sahitya Akadamy Hindu India
Deshpande (United Award (1990)
(1988) Kingdom)

A Matter of Time Penguin India ---

(1996)
The Binding Vine --
(1992)
The Shadow Lines Amitav Ravi Dayal Sahitya Akadamy Hindu New York
Ghosh Publishers Award (1989)
(1988) (India)
The Hungry Tides Hutch Crossword
Book Award
(2005)
Sea of Poppies John Murray Short listed for
(United Booker Prize (2008)
(2008) Kingdom)
The Great Indian Shashi Viking Press --- Hindu India
Tharoor (United
Novel (1989) States)
Thousand Faces of Githa Penguin India Commonwealth Hindu India
Hariharan Writers Prize (1993)
Night (1992)
Gods, Graves and Namita Rupa & Co. -- Hindu India
Gokhale (India)
Grandmother (1994)
The God of Small Arundhati IndiaInk Booker Prize (1997) Hindu India
Roy (India)
Things (1997)

Sister of My Heart Chitra Anchor Books --- Hindu United

Divakaruni (United States
(1999) States)
Ladies Coup (2001) Anita Nair Penguin India --- Hindu India

A cursory look at Table C indicates numerous things in context of

the post-1980s Indian English fiction. If one divides the above mentioned
writers in Hindu and Non-Hindu categories, he/she would certainly
observe that the majority of the Hindu writers (around 50%) who are
taught in MA (English) classroom are Brahmins. Remaining 50 per cent
are occupied by those non-Brahmin writers who are upper-caste
westernised Indians. Salman Rushdie, the hero of 1980s, is the only
Muslim writer introduced in MA (English). Bapsi Sidhwa and Rohinton
Mistry are the Parsi writers, the first lives in the USA and the other in
Canada. Apart from these three writers, all are Hindus, Hindu upper
caste.

78
 The cultural critics like Stuart Hall, Dick Hebdige, Ronald
Barthes, John Guillory, Pierre Bourdieu and others assume that literary
productions entail the idea of “culture capital” and anything that
functions as culture capital indulges in hegemonic practices. But as
discussed earlier, Stuart Hall holds it, the hegemony can be maintained
by “wining and shaping consent so that the power of the dominant classes
15
appears both legitimate and natural” and it can be sustained so long as
the dominant classes “succeeds in framing all competing definitions
16
within their range”. If this hidden agenda fails, it anyway ensures that
the presence of the subordinate groups in an ‘ideological’ arena which
does not appear ideological at all. Such hegemonic control, perhaps, is
reminiscent of what Barthes calls ‘mythology’ which performs the
functions of naturalisation and normalisation. These assertions lead to an
essential facet of hegemony that “it has to be won, reproduced,
17
sustained.” Precisely the same apparatus was employed by the
Brahmins to maintain their superiority over the ‘other’ castes. An
‘intellectual’ space that the Brahmin writers have formed for themselves
is in fact the consequence of their shrewdness which came to them
through the colonial transaction. They realised that teaching of Sanskrit
to the Indian masses would distort its vitality and would pose challenges
to them. They did not want to lose the culture capital that they have
attained through long-standing pedantic-hegemonic practices. They
thought that the socio-religious capital which they had earned through
selling the Sanskrit; similarly they could also acquire newer emergent
culture capital through learning English. During the colonial epoch only,
they could envisage the formation of English as a global language and
took up the opportunity to rule over the masses. They were the masters of
Sanskrit, the language of Gods, and wanted to be the master of English,
the language of the rulers. Both the languages kept the close to the power
– religious and colonial. Since the formation of the caste-system they
knew it well that educating the masses imparts the power to control them,
hence the Brahmin as a community, first of all, learnt English only to
teach the ‘other’ masses and to maintain their hegemony. But the colonial
era was the time of cultural insurgency when it was not possible to entice
the majority Indians masses only through teaching. They realised that
they must integrate the national flavour in their teaching; it had to be
made more social and easily acceptable. The increasing caste-
consciousness in the colonial era indicated to them that the shifting wind
wanted them to cast off their Brahminical self and this was the only way
out to win the consent of the ruling the masses. This led to the process of

79
de-Brahminisation which was again a stratagem of reproducing and
sustaining their Brahminical hold. Prof. VKRV Rao opines that “the de-
Brahminised Brahmin may no longer be a caste, but his new ways, being
in tune with the forces of change, are likely not only to ensure his survival
18
but felicitate his retaining a position of high status and authority.” The
de-Brahminisation was a policy to embrace a newer-secular identity
without giving up hereditary caste-based privileges. One can easily find
this ideological apparatus still present in the contemporary Indian
society and these selected fictions points towards this fact.
This is the reason why the post-1980s Indian English fiction
seems more Brahminised, elite or upper caste. Prof. Rao who believed
that –
Whether in the national movement, or in the fight for democracy and socialism,
or migration to urban areas, or in education, or in pursuing science and technology, or in
upholding the rights of underprivileged and backward classes, or in adopting western
values and knowledge for attacking or qualifying Indian values, or going in for a Western
way of life and daily habits, the Brahmin has placed himself in the forefront of the social
change, even though it means his shedding the very traditions, values, symbols and way
19
of life that has given him hitherto superior position in Indian society.

Though many of the Brahmins have placed themselves in

forefront for the social change and easily responded to the progressive
social forces and even do not hesitate to adopt the position which goes
counter to their caste interests, all these have ideological implications. It
is obvious that the Brahminism makes qualitative repercussions on the
art and ideas of fiction, however one must ask the question: is the
selection of the post-1980s Indian English fiction for the purpose of
syllabus in university departments of English democratic-secular? As
the above arguments indicate, the answer is certainly ‘No’. Though the
universities have formed “Board of Studies”, which ensures democratic
and secular process for the selection of texts, there must be some unseen
power that regulates this process and makes it hegemonic. Probably the
selection process of the members of Board of Studies is polemic and
more inclined towards the Brahmins or elite groups. Or the members of
the Board of Studies are uninterested and passive subject experts who do
not wish to introduce any reform. Whatever may be the case, such
circumstances points out the inefficiency of the “Board of Studies”.
The educational-professional of these writers suggest that Indian
English fiction is a domain of the Brahmins or the wealthy upper-caste
who are privileged enough to receive education. Amitav Ghosh

80
receivedthe degree of D.Phil. in Social Anthropology from Oxford. The
Indian Government awarded him with Padma Shri in 2007. He started his
career as an editor and at present he works as a professor in one of the
recognised university of USA. Anita Desai, who completed BA English,
worked as the Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Anita Nair is a graduate in
English. Arundhati Roy, a political activist, attended the School of
Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. Bapsi Sidhwa has taught at the
University of Houston, Rice University, Columbia University, Mount
Holyoke College, and Brandeis University. Chitra Banerji Divakaruni,
the Betty and Gene McDavid Professor of Writing at the University of
Houston, went to the United States to attend Wright State University for
her post-graduation. She also received a PhD in English from the
University of California, Berkeley in 1985. Githa Hariharan obtained a
BA (in English) from Bombay University and a MA (in
Communications) from Fairfield University, USA. R.K. Narayan was a
BA and was a college teacher. Rohinton Mistry completed BA in
Mathematics and Economics from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. He
went to Canada in 1975 with his wife and settled there. He also received a
BA in English and Philosophy from the University of Toronto. Salman
Rushdie, after competing his schooling from Cathedral and John Connon
School, Mumbai, received education from King’s College, University of
Cambridge. Shashi Deshpande holds degrees in Economics and Law.
Shashi Tharoor, the former member of Indian Parliament (Lok Sabha)
and a member of Indian National Congress, is an MA, MALD, PhD from
the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. This hints
at the fact that Indian English fiction has remained a province of
privileged. The most of the writers have received their education abroad.
It may be the possible that their literary sensibilities have been shaped in
the west or by the west.
Out of these twenty one fictions, sixteen fictions have won some
literary prizes or at least they have been shortlisted for the prizes. These
sixteen fictions are introduced in the syllabi of more than two
universities. Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981), which is
introduced in seven universities, occupies the first rank if one looks at the
number of repetition of post-1980s Indian English fiction. If one
considers the list of both pre and post 1980s Indian English fiction, Raja
Rao’s Kanthapura (1938) surpasses the popularity of Rushdie’s
Midnight’s Children and is introduced in twelve out of fourteen

81
universities. Those fictions which are not awarded any award or prize are
introduced once only. This tendency suggests that the university
departments of English are fascinated by the award-winning fictions or
writers. Awarding prizes do not reflect over the quality of the text or by
no means have they hinted at standardised practice, they only show the
influence of the west. Whatever the west stamps as good by awarding
prizes are warmly welcomed by the university departments of English.
The valuation of literary texts through awarding prizes does not
guarantee aesthetic value. Terry Eagleton believes that “value is always
‘transitive’ – that is to say, value for somebody in a particular situation-
20
and … always culturally and historically specific”. Similar to other
cultural forms, a literary text does not have intrinsic value – its value is
contingent. Hence the award which is announced on its contingent value
does not emerge as a locus of immanent value. Such prepositions lead to
the following observations of Graham Huggan:
One such regime of value pertains to the Western (Euro-American) education
system, which is increasingly invested in the promotion and certification of “marginal”
products. Another is the metropolitan publishing industry, which has placed its stake in
the postcolonial as a convenient device for merchandising of exotic-culturally “othered”
– goods. Both these agency arguably participate in what we might call an “alterity
industry”: one which involves the trafficking not only of culturally “othered” artefacts
but of the institutional values that are brought to bear in their support. As I have argued
elsewhere, postcoloniality implies a common condition of contradiction between anti-
colonial ideologies and neo-colonial market schemes. ... It is rather to see that work as
being bound up in a late-capitalist mode of production, where such value-laden terms as
“marginality,” “authenticity,” and “resistance” circulates as commodities available for
commercial exploitation, and as signs within a larger semiotic system – the “postcolonial
21
exotic”.

Literary prizes entail a symbolic value which is generated by the

western academy and the metropolitan publishing industry. Through
promotion and certification of the literary texts in the form of awarding
the literary prizes, they hegemonised the literary studies. It seems a neo-
colonial strategy of the ruling the literary products of the ‘marginalised’
countries. Pierre Bourdieu opines that the literary prizes exist in the
wider regime of the symbolic consecration and are announcers of the
cultural capital. They do not simply represent a significant achievement
of the writer but claim a monopoly of judging-legitimising the writer’s
work:
The fundamental stake in literary struggle is the monopoly of literary
legitimacy… the monopoly of the power to say with authority who are authorized to call
themselves writers; or, to put it in another way, … the monopoly of the power to
consecrate the producers or products (we are dealing with a world of belief and

82
consecrated writer is the one who has the power to consecrate and to win assent when he
22
or she consecrates n author or work–with a preface, a favourable review, a prize, etc.)

Bourdieu finds at least four “agents of legitimation” engaged in

the formation of cultural capital. They are: writers, literary industry,
media, and the audience or the “valuing communities”. The writers and
the audience play passive role, whereas the literary industry, which
includes publishers, booksellers, reviewers, etc., and media, both print
and electronic, are actively engaged agents of this process. These active
players have the power of endowing the consecrated authority to those
texts which have potential as well as to those which do not have. In
present times, the financial sponsorship of the literary awards has raised
many questions at its authenticity. Numerous literary awards are
sponsored by the transnational corporate houses. The sponsorship of the
literary awards guarantees a huge publicity to such companies which
function as an authority of deciding the worth of the texts. Bourdieu
observes that the contemporary corporate houses have overtaken the
earlier hierarchical systems of public and private patronage through
which ideas of literature and literary value were upheld. The Sahitya
Akadamy Award, the highest recognition for literature in India, is
sponsored by the State or the government. Those who function as the
mediatory between the State and the writers, in fact, are not always the
men of literary taste. Besides, the selection process is always influenced
by the functioning government. It has been often observed that the
writers whose texts support the ideology of the ruling government are
awarded with the prizes. Even the criteria for the selection of literary
texts go on changing with the shifting State authority. Even those who
work as a Jury in the selection committee are often the teachers of the
university whose literary taste is formed through the English education
system and are influenced by the western tradition. In nutshell, one may
argue that awarding prizes do not guarantee aesthetic values. However,
the university departments of English in India are fascinated by the
award-wining fictions.
A fleeting look over the publication profile suggests that out of
twenty one fictions only seven fictions are published in India (around
33% only). Penguin India, Ravi Dayal Publishers, and Rupa & Co., and
India Ink are the only four India-based publishing houses. Rest of all
(around 67%) are located outside of India. It means that India creativity
still largely depends on the western publishing houses for its emergence.
The west still has the monopoly over the publication industry and thus
hegemony over literary creativity. The publication industry is not simply

83
an economic sight but is field of culture production. The publishing
literary text is in fact production of cultural goods. The publishing
industry creates, what Bourdieu says, symbolic goods. One which has the
power to authorise symbolic good has the power to dominate. Because of
this, the western publishing houses decide what Indian readers ought to
read and how their literary taste should be shaped. What Indian read
considering good is first stamped as good by these publishing mega-
players; they stamp it good in favour of the west. And what the west can
favour as good is generally that thing which supports its hegemonic
ideology. Hence, one may conclude that the most of the Indian English
fiction which have came to India through foreign publication agencies are
supportive of the western hegemonic practices. Another important fact is
that the most of publishing house are multinational corporate houses. The
texts which are produced in these houses are guaranteed a wide publicity
and huge readership. The wide publicity and readership do not penetrate
upon artistic and aesthetic quality but are economic strategies of these
corporate houses. Thus, the consideration of the Indian English fiction as
an artistic construct certainly requires some serious pondering.
Another important aspect for the consideration is the authenticity
of representing India. Out of the twelve living writers (except R.K.
Narayana who passed away in 2001), six writers are non-resident Indians.
They have lived in foreign land for considerable years of their life; they
hardly visit India regularly. India lives in their imagination. When such
writer writes a novel on Indian theme, it certainly arouses a question
about the authenticity of his/her experience and of the disinterestedness
of cultural representation. Salman Rushdie, in this connection, observes
that the writers who write outside of India will “create fictions, not actual
cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the
23
mind.” For these writers, there is no single India but manifold Indias.
Hundreds of the versions of India take shape in their mind. Rushdie adds:
Writing my book in North London, looking out through my window on to a city
scene totally unlike the ones I was imagining on to paper, I was constantly plagued by this
problem, until I felt obliged to face it in the text, to make clear that… what I was actually
doing was a novel of memory and about memory, so that my India was just that: ‘my’
India, a version and no more than one version of all the hundreds of millions of the
possible versions. I tried to make it as imaginatively true as I could, but imaginative truth
is simultaneously honourable and suspect, and I knew that my India may only have been
one to which I (who am no longer what I was, and who by quitting Bombay never became
what perhaps I was mean to be) was, let us say, willing to admit I belonged.24

84
 So the Indian writers who write from the abroad in fact deal with,
in Rushdie’s terms, “broken mirrors, some of who fragments have been
25
irretrievably lost”. Rushdie’s observations make it clear that numerous
shreds of memory function as inspirational source for the non-resident
Indian writer. So whatever they write, it cannot be claimed true, it is
memory’s truth. Similarly the attempts of discovering Indian culture
from the texts of such writers lead to disappointment. However, despite
of physical disconnectedness with one’s country, one remains
emotionally attached with one’s nation when he/she is out of India. This
attachment with nation’s past is a kind of endearment to the memory.
This memory helps him to preserve the same cultural tradition from
which he/she has departed at a certain point in the past. Rushdie could
also realise this and that is why he affirms that –
It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that
its loss is part of our common humanity. Which seems to me self-evidently true; but I
suggest that the writer who is out-of-country and even out-of-language may experience
this loss in an intensified form. It is made more concrete for him by the physical fact of
discontinuity, of his present being in a different place from his past, out of his being
‘elsewhere’. This may enable him to speak properly and concretely on a subject of
26
universal significant and appeal.

This view of Rushdie may certainly help to solve out an ongoing

debate that whether one should take the representation of India by non-
resident Indian as authentic or not. Though these writes resides in the
different parts of the world their sympathies-empathies are always with
India. This emotional attachment to India is faithfully represented in
their fictions.
The above analysis would certainly force to an inquirer to pose a
question: “whose curriculum is this anyway?” Does it represent, in its
making, the democratic India? Or, does it carry someone’s ideology with
it? It is for sure that the curriculum of the university departments of
English is not an accumulation of artistic and aesthetic values. The
artistic and aesthetic strength of literary texts is determined not by
indigenous practices but by the imitation of the western criterions. It is
also observed that the ‘common’ man is missing in the syllabi of the MA
(English) in the Indian universities. Most of the texts which are selected
by the curriculum-makers are written by the Brahmin or the privileged
caste. Very few texts deal with the common masses of India; in their
narration as well they centre on the privileged castes of India. Most of the
writers by their profession are engaged with the ‘white colour’ jobs and
have received good education in India or abroad. Hence, the voice which

85
Indian English fiction reflects is in fact a voice of the elite and not
common. It also becomes visible that the most of the texts which are
selected for MA (English), in the selected university departments of
English, have won or at least are shortlisted for some literary prize. So
again this leads to a question: is it the case that these texts are stamped as
good by awarding prizes that is why the student are made to study them?
Another point of observation is that around 67% Indian fiction are
published in abroad; thus what is claimed as an Indian product has
originally get birth in foreign publishing press. It also hints at an
important fact that Indian creativity is still dominated by the west; what
the west decides good and publish, the Indian reads that much as Indian
writing. The most of the famed Indian writers do not reside in India, they
write from abroad. Hence what they write has an imprint of imaginary
homeland.
Thus, the above analysis of Indian English fictions makes it clear
the university syllabi and literary canon formation are closely connected
with each. It is difficult to imagine literary canon without syllabi. Indian
universities seem more democratic in the selection of the syllabi but a
careful look at the syllabi suggests that Indian universities are also
engaged with formation of the canons. They have actively formed caste-
class-religion-region-based canons, literary as well as non-literary.

86
 Notes

I – Literary Canon: An Introduction

1. Several dictionaries such as Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus
(2006), Webster’s Online Dictionary (http://www.websters-
online-dictionary.org), Online Etymological Dictionary
(http://www.etymonline.com) and others point out these
connotations.
2. Thomassen, Einar. “Some Notes on the Development of
Christian Ideas about a Canon.” Thomassen, Einar, ed. Canon
and Canonicity. The Formation and Use of Scripture.
Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010. Press. (p.9)
3. Ibid. (p.10)
4. Lundin, Roger. “The ‘Classics’ Are Not the ‘Canon’.” For
further reading on this idea please visit: http://www.
catholiceducation.org/articles/education/ed0018.html
5. Refer to Matthew Arnold’s seminal essay “Functions of
Criticism in Present Times.”

87
6. See Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s essay “Contingencies of Value”
for meticulous study of literary and aesthetic value and
evaluation in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 10, No. 1, “Canons” (Sep.,
1983) p. 22.
7. Ibid. (p.18)
8. Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of
the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994. Print.
(p.522)
9. Von Hallberg, Robert. Canons. Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1984. Print. (p. 374)
10. Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of
the Ages. p.39.
11. Von Hallberg, Robert. Canons.
12. Altieri, Charles. “An Idea and Ideal of a Literary Canon”.
Critical Inquiry. Vol. 10, No. 1, Sept., 1983. Print.
13. Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of
the Ages. p.29.
14. Ibid. p.29.
15. Hirsch, ED Jr. The Aims of Interpretation. Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 1976. Print. p.108.
16. Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of
the Ages. p.40.
17. Frye, Northrop and Robert Denham. Anatomy of Criticism:
Four Essays. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2006. Print.
(p.19)
18. Hunter, Lynette. “Writing Literature and Ideology: Institutions
and Making of a Canadian Canon.” P. Easingwood, K. Gross, W.
Kloos, ed. Probing Canadian Culture. Augsberg: AV-Verlag,
1991. p. 54.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Kermode, Frank. Forms of Attention. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1985. Print. pp. 78-79.

88
22. Ibid. (p. 89)
23. Ibid. (p.)
24. Guillory, John. Cultural Capital: the Problem of Literary Canon
Formation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Print.
25. Ibid.
II – What makes an Indian English Literary Canon? – A Case of
Post-1980s Fiction
1. Rao, Raja. The Meaning of India. New Delhi: Vision Books.
1996. Print.
2. Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. New
Delhi: Oxford University Press. 1992. Print. p.244-245
3. Gokak, VK. “The Concept of Indianness with Reference to
Indian Writing.” Indian Writing in English. Mohan, Ramesh, ed.
Madras: Orient Longman, 1978. Print. (p.24)
4. Ibid.
5. Satchidanandan, K. “Shattering of Gestalt”. Frontline. (Sept.
21, 2013) p.93. K. Satchidanandan’s article proves an
interesting study of the modernism in Indian literature. He has
used the vernacular terms for the word ‘modern’ and suggested
that each vernacular term has its own unique connotation which
signifies different aspects of modernism in Indian literature.
However he seems to be very much pessimistic when he says
“modernism in Indian literature, in retrospect, appears to have
been a way of documenting the dehumanisation of society after
independence with its attendant alienation, morbidity and loss
of identity.” The quoted words he has used to suggest the
features of the Indian poetry produced during the period of
1965-70, but I find these qualities more apt to the post-1980s
Indian literature.
6. Weinsheimer, Joel. Philosophical Hermeneutics and Literary
Theory. London: Yale University Press, 1991. Print.
7. Lundin, Roger. “The ‘Classics’ Are Not the ‘Canon’.” In
Cowan, Louise and Ginness, Os, ed. Invitation to the Classic.
MI: Baker Publication Group, 1998. Print.

89
8. Eliot, TS. “What is a Classic?” Walder, Dennis, ed. Literature in
Modern World: Critical Essays and Documents. Oxford: OUP,
2004. Print. (p.496)
9. Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin. “What is a Classic?” pp. 4-5.
10. The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1985)
11. Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of
the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994. Print.
(p.29)
12. Williams, Raymond. The Long Revolution. New York: Encore
Editions, 1961. Print.
13. Apple, Michel W. Official Knowledge: Democratic Education
in a Conservative Age. New York: Rutledge, 2001. Print.
14. Komalesha, HS. Issue of Identity in Indian English Fiction: A
Close Reading of Canonical Indian English Fictions.
Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2008. Print.
15. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth (trans. Constance
Farrignton). New York: Grove Press, 1968. Print. p.221
16. Rao, Raja. Kanthapura. New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 2008.
Print.
17. Teverson, Andrew. Salman Rushdie. New Delhi: Viva Books,
2010. Print.
18. Huttunen, Tuomas. The Ethics of Representation in the Fiction
of Amitav Ghosh. Finland: University of Turku Press, 2011.
Print.
19. Bande, Usha. “Re-presenting Culture, Repossessing History:
Cultural Nuances in Three Indian Novels”. Sivaramakrishanan,
Murali, ed. The Dynamics of Representation: Literature,
Aesthetics and Culture. Spec. issue of Studies in Humanities and
Social Sciences. XIV: 2 (2007): 128-137. Print.
III – Language, Canon, and Nation: Some Observations on
Cultural Implication
1. For a detailed account on this regard refer, WH Hudson’s An
Introduction to the Study of English Literature. (New Delhi:
AITBS Publishers, 2006). p. 39.

90
2. Please refer to Ernest Renan’s interesting article “What is a
nation”, translated and annotated by Martin Thom in Homi
Bhabha, ed. Nation and Narration. London: Rutledge, 1990,
p.19.
3. Ibid (p.19)
4. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Community: Reflections on the
Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 1983. Print. (p.3)
5. Ibid (p.6)
6. Ibid (p.3)
7. Ibid (p.6)
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. One can refer to John McLeod’s Beginning Postcolonialism
(New Delhi: Viva Books, 2010, p.68), the chapter 3 and 4,
namely “Nationalist Representations” and “The Nation in
Question” are the interesting accounts of the idea of nation in
postcolonial vein.
13. Rushdie, Salman. “Notes on Writing and the Nation”. Step
Across this Line: Collected Nonfiction, 1992 – 2002. New York:
Random House, 2002. Print. (p. 60)
14. Chaudhari, Amit, ed. The Picador Book of Modern Indian
Literature. London: Picador, 2001. Print. (p. xxiv)
15. Kumar, Sudhir. “The Politics of Reception: Narrativization of a
Nation”. In Pathak, RS, ed. Indian Response to Literary
Theories. Vol. II. Delhi: Creative Books 1966. Print. (p. 177)
16. Sahni Bhisham. “Narration and Creativity”. In Amiya Dev (ed).
Narrative: A Seminar. New Delhi, 2005. Print. (p.66 )
17. There are five literatures in archaic languages of India: Vedic
literature, Epic Sanskrit literature, Classical Sanskrit literature,
Prakrit literature, and Pali literature. The list of twenty-one
Indian literatures in the common languages of India includes

91
 literatures written in languages such as: Assamese, Bengali,
Bhojpuri, English, Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri,
Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Mizo, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi,
Rajasthani, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. Indian
Persian literature and literature written in North East Indian are
considered the literatures in the foreign languages. For further
detailed information please visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Indian_literature.
18. Makwana, Mehul. “Vividhata ma Ekta? Sorry Boss.” Ardha
Saptahik –Sandesh [Ahmedabad].14 Jan. 2013: 16. Print.
19. Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence.ed. The Invention of
Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1983. Print.
IV – Theorisation and Literary Canon Formation: Revisiting
Rhetoric of Socio-Cultural Interests
1. Refer to Fred Dallmayr’s essay, “The Future of “Theory””, for
the meaning of the Greek terms. Accessed on March 17, 2014,
the essay is posted on the webpage of the Forum of
Contemporary Theory: http:// www. fctworld. org/ Future %20
of %20Theory.htm
2. Sudarsan, P. “Habermas and Critical Social Theory”. Indian
Philosophical Quarterly. Vol. XXXV. No. II. April 1998. 253-
266. Print. (p. 256).
3. Ibid, pp. 256-257.
4. Habermas, Jurgen (trans. by John Viertel). Theory and Practice.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1973. Print. p. 2.
5. Shah, Ghanshyam, ed. Social Movements and the State:
Readings in Indian Government and Politics – 4. New Delhi:
Sage Publication, 2002. Print.
6. Chandra, Bipan. Struggle for Independence. New Delhi:
Penguin, 1988. Print.pp.186-187.
7. For the discussion on these four problems of defining feminist
canon in India, please refer to Block 7, Unit III, “Feminism:
Indian English Writers” in MEG–10 English Studies in India.
New Delhi: IGNOU, 2007. Print. p.24.

92
V – Alternative Literary Canon: Its Need and Functions in the
Present Times
1. McLeod, John. Beginning Postcolonialism. New Delhi: Viva
Books, 2010. (p. 14)
2. Ibid. p.14.
3. This assertion may lead to a query as what criteria one should
apply while dealing with the translated literature or literature in
different dialects within the same language family? As I think,
one should stick to the criterion for the canonicity of that
particular literature. In the case of translation, one must follow
the criterion of the target language, and, in the case of literature
in the different dialects of the same language family one need to
adjust and to have the different criterion for dialect to dialect.
Each dialect has its own aesthetics and hence none has right to
impose criterion of other dialects on it. One should remember it
that the relationship between language and canonicity is also
influenced by the pattern of the intra-lingual dialectical
differences. Patterns of domination get reflected in imposition
of one particular dialect posed as the ‘standard’ over other forms
and dialects or language. This is not a case with only with the
Indian languages; it is equally applicable to the European
languages. English, French, and Spanish also have dialects and
there are patterns of domination there as well. French language
spoken and written in Paris is quite different from the one in
Normandy or in Grenoble. Therefore, one must be aware of
‘internal colonialism’ within a linguistic family apart from the
class distinction within a linguistic group and in the manner the
classes use the language.
4. Ashcroft, Bill, et al. The Empire Writes Back. New York:
Pantheon, 1987. Print.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Kirpal. Viney. “What is the Third World Novel?” Journal of
Commonwealth Literature. 23.1 (1988). Print. (pp. 144-156)

93
8. Mee, Joan. “After Midnight: The Novel in the 1980s and 1990s”.
AK Mehrotra (ed). An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in
English. (p. 318)
9. Chaudhari, Amit ed. The Picador Book of Modern Indian
Literature. London: Picador, 2001. Print. (p. xxiii)
10. McArthur, Herbert. “In Search of Indian Novel”. The
Massachusetts Review. Vol. 2, No. 4 (Summer, 1961), print.
Pp.600-613.
11. There had been a long chain of the ‘critics’, such as Herbert
McArthur, David McCutchion, Gordon Bottomley, and others,
who think that Indian (English) fiction is parody of English
fiction.
12. The east/west binary is primarily non-Indian construct. It has
been constructed by the scholars mostly coming from the west.
Several travelers (who wrote monumental travelogues), and
then, the colonial officers-scholars down to Max Muller found
the need to familiarize themselves with Indian languages not
because the fell in love with the literature that Indian languages
contained, but because without that linguistic ability they could
not have tightened their imperial grip over the Indian colony.
Probably once they must have realised that Indian languages and
literature not only have diversity but literary cultural richness
that those languages have gained over centuries of history. They
had to establish the supremacy of western languages and
literature therefore they needed to undermine and relegate
indigenous literary canons and aesthetics. The notion of
‘Orientalism’ is really the product of this imperative of
imperialism. Euro-centrism is the other side of the coin that had
flavours of racism, colour, and pre-conceived notions of
modernity (as oppose to tradition).
13. One should also concentrate on the dichotomy of European and
Nativism. It is introduced through bypassing the fact that Europe
has abundant diversity within. However, their imperial projects
and aspirations compelled them to keep their diversity subdue
and to project Europe as one, homogeneous, and, united which it

94
 never was. The European Union is also resting on assurance that
their cultural diversity would not be impinged upon by the
European Union government. The word ‘Native’ was introduced
as “Other” of Europe.
14. In one of the National Seminar organized by the Department of
English, the M. S. University of Baroda, Vadodara in March
2014, in his Presidential Address, G. N. Devy had used this
phrase. No doubt he has used this phrase in altogether different
context.
15. One should remember that the neo-colonial idea of
‘globalisation’ is the result of a desperate European need to
continue the domination over the non-Europe. To believe in the
existence of globalisation is equal to accept the western
intellectual discourse.
16. Aurobindo, Sri. “Indian Culture and External Influence”. The
Renaissance in India and other Essays on Indian Culture.
Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1997. Print. pp. 44-
45.
17. Ibid, p.45.
18. Ibid, p.48.
19. Ibid, p.49.
20. Ibid, p.50.
21. The Middle-Way Approach is originally proposed by His
Holiness the Dalai Lama XIV to resolve the issue of Tibet and to
bring about stability and co-existence between the Tibetan and
Chinese people based on equality and mutual co-operation.
22. When I say ‘formalist’, I do not mean the formalistic tendency of
Formalism as proposed by Saussure and others, to me it means
generic elements, the artistic elements that makes a literary piece
literary in reality.
VI – University Syllabi and Literary Canon Formation
1. Jay, Gregory. American Literature and Cultural Wars. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1997. Print. p.138.

95
2. Apple, Michael W. “The Politics of Official Knowledge: Does a
National Curriculum Make Sense?” As viewed on: http:// web.
stanford.edu/class/educ232b/Apple.pdf.
3. Guillory, John. “Canon, Syllabus, List: A Note on the Pedagogic
Imaginary”. Transition. Issue 52. p.40.
4. Parkes, Jay and Harris, Mary B. “The Purposes of a Syllabus”.
College Teaching. Vol. 50, No. 2 (Spring, 2002). Pp. 55-61.
5. Guillory, John. “Canon, Syllabus, List: A Note on the Pedagogic
Imaginary”. Transition. Issue 52. p.40.
6. Ibid. For Guillory, syllabus means ‘a list of texts’ and canon
means ‘a list of authors’. As texts can be alluded to its authors,
one can conclude that canon also means ‘a list of authors’.
7. Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Print. p.174
8. Ibid. p.177.
9. My doctoral research where I am focusing on the formation of
literary canon, especially of the post-1980s Indian English
fiction, I have made this study. The study of fourteen
universities’ syllabi for MA (English) such as Andra, Kakatiya,
Bharathiar, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Osmania,
Gurunanak Dev, Karnataka, Kurukshetra, North-Eastern Hill,
Punjab, Punjabi, Calcutta, Jammu, and Kashmir are selected for
the purpose of analysis. Table A, B, and, C are based on this
study.
10. In University of Lucknow, this course is offered but here it is not
listed because the research is more concerned with the selected
universities only.
11. Iyengar, KRS. Indian Writing in English. New Delhi: Sterling
Publishers, 2005. Print. p. 591.
12. Ibid, p.409.
13. Paranjape, Makarand. “The Allegory of Rajmohan’s Wife:
National Culture and Colonialism in Asia’s First English
Novel.” As viewed on: http:// makarand. com/ acad/ Allegory of
RajmohansWife.htm

96
14. (Quoted in) Dhawan, R. K. Three Contemporary Novelists:
Khushwant Singh, Chaman Nahal, Salaman Rushdie. New
Delhi: Classical Pub., 1985. Print. p.40.
15. (Quoted in) Durham Meenakshi Gigi, and Kellner Diuglas, ed.
Media and Cultural Studies: Key Works. Oxford: Blackwell,
2001. Print. p.150.
16. Ibid.p.150.
17. Ibid. p.151.
18. (Quoted in) Paranjape, Makarand. Towards a Poetics of the
Indian English Novel. P.57
19. Ibid.56
20. (Quoted in) Huggan, Graham. Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing
the Margin. London: Routledge, 2001. Print. p.28
21. Huggan, Graham. “Prizing “Otherness”: A Short History of the
Booker”. Studies in the Novel. Vol. 29, No.3, Postcolonialism,
History, and the Novel (Fall 1997). Pp.412-433.
22. (Quoted in) Huggan, Graham. Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing
the Margin. p.5.
23. Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and
Criticism, 1981-1991. London: Granata Books, 1991. Print.
p.10.
24. Ibid. p.10.
25. Ibid. p.11.
26. Ibid.

97
 References

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Oxford University Press. 1992. Print.
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Community: Reflections on the Origins
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Ansari, Ameena Kazi. English-Canadian Literary Canon: Emergence
and Development. New Delhi: Creative Books, 2003. Print.
Apple, Michel W. Official Knowledge: Democratic Education in a
Conservative Age. New York: Rutledge, 2001. Print.
Ashcroft, Bill, et al. The Empire Writes Back. New York: Pantheon,
1987. Print.
Aurobindo, Sri. The Renaissance in India and other Essays on Indian
Culture. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1997. Print.
Bhabha, Homi, ed. Nation and Narration. London: Routledge, 1990.
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 Index

Ahmad, Aijad The Politics of Official Knowledge

In Theory:... Arnold, Matthew
Akho Aurobindo, Sri
Alam, Shaikh-ul Bagul, Baburao
Ali, Ahmed Bande, Usha
Twilight in Delhi Barthes, Ronald
Altieri, Charles Bharati, HK
Alvars Bloom, Harold
Ambedkar, Dr. BR. The Western Canon
Anand, Mulk Raj Bourdieu, Pierre
Coolie Butalias, Urvashi
Untouchable The Other Side of Silence
Anderson, Benedict Chatterjee, Bankimchandra
Imagined Community Raj Mohan’s Wife
Annamayya Chaudhary, Amit
Apple, Michel W. Chndra, Bipin

102
Chokhamela Uchalya (Petty Theif)
Choudhary, Nirad C. Gandhi, Mahatma
An Autobiography ... Garni, Mahmood
Dadu Ghosh, Amitav
Darwin, Charles Sea of Poppies
De, Shobha The Hungry Tides
Speed Post: ... The Shadow Line
Ded, Lal The Shadow Lines
Desai, Anita Gokak, VK
In Custody Gokhale, Namita
Clear Light of the Day A Himalayan Love Story
Cry, the Peacock Mountain Echoes
Fasting Feasting The Book of Shadows
Voices in the City Gods, Graves and Grandmother
Deshpande, Shashi Gramsci, Antonio
A Matter of Time Guillory, John
That Long Silence Habermas, Jurgen
The Binding Vine Haider, Qurat-ul-Ain
The Intrusion Hall, Stuart
Devy, GN Hallberg, Robert Van
Dhasal, Namdeo Hariharan, Githa
Divakaruni, Chitra Banerji Thousand Faces of Night
Sister of My Heart Hebdige, Dick
Eagleton, Terry Hebrew Bible
Eknath Hobsbawn, Eric
Eliot, TS The Invention of Tradition
“Tradition and Individual Talent” Huggan, Graham
“What is a Classic?” Hume, David
Fanon, Frantz Hunter, Lynette
The Wretched of the Earth “Writing Literature and Ideology: ...”
Fish, Stanley Jnaneshwar
Gaikwad, Laxman Jung, Anees

103
Beyond the Country Yard Mir,Rasul
Unveiling India: A Woman’s Journey Mistry, Rohinton
Kabir A Fine Balance
Kapoor, Kapil Such a Long Journey
Kapoor, Manju Mohi-ud-Din, Akhtar
Difficult Daughters Mukherjee, Bharati
Married Women Wife
Kermode, Frank Mukherjee, Meenakshi
Forms of Attention Nahal, Chaman
Kipling, Rudyard Aazadi
Kim Naipaul, VS.
Kirpal, Viney The Mimic Men
Koul, HK A House for Mr. Biswas
Kumar, Sudhir Nair, Anita
Leavis, FR Ladies Coup
The Great Tradition Namdev
Limbale, Sharan Kumar Nanak
Akkarmashi (The Outcaste) Narayan, RK
Malgokar, Manohar Man Eater of Malgudi
A Bend in Ganges Swami and Friends
Mane, Laxman The Guide
Upara (Outsider) Waiting for Mahatma
Manohar,Yashwant Tiger for Malgudi
Markendey Kamala .3Nectar in Nayanars
Sieve
Nemade, Bhalchandra
McArthur, Herbert
Nativism
“In Search of Indian Novel”
New Testament
McLeod, John
Oxford Companion to English
Beginning Postcolonialism Literature, the
Mee, Jon Paranjape, Makarand
“After Midnight” Pawar, Daya
Meera Baluta (Social Claim)
Mehta, Narsinh

104
Phule, Jotirao Tain, Prof.

Premchand Tharoor, Shashi

Godaan (The Gift of the Cow) The Great Indian Novel

Rao, Raja Tukaram

Kanthapura Valmiki, Om Prakash

The Serpent and the Rope (1960) Joothan

Rao, VKRV Vemana

Renan, Ernest Weinsheimer, Joel

Roy, Arundhati
The God of Small Things
Rushdie, Salman
“Notes on Writing and the Nation”
Midnight’s Children
The Moor’s Last Sigh
Sahni, Bhisham
Sahni Tamas
Said, Edward
Orientalism
Sathe, Annabhau
Satthianandhan, Krupabai
Kamala
Shah, Ghanshyam
Sidhwa, Bapsi
Ice-Candy Man
Singh, Khushwant
Train to Pakistan
Smith, Barbara Hernstein
Surdas
Surve,Narayan
Tagore, Rabindranath
Ghore Bahire (The Home and the
World)

105

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