The thrill of South Asian literature in English is its confrontations with colonial constraints

The literature of the Indian subcontinent reflects the struggles of generations before and after British colonial rule  

Puja Sarkar
Published : 21 March 2023, 01:36 PM
Updated : 21 March 2023, 01:36 PM

South Asian literature is not a novel concept. Some consider the literature of the Indian subcontinent to be older than that of many Western nations. Western academics have long studied the mythology of this region, like the Puranas, and the Vedas, which stem from India. Numerous ethnographers from the west have travelled to Asia to research how Asian culture is expressed in daily life and conflict. So what unique flavour can South Asian literature in English offer the modern reader when the vast libraries of the world are available at their fingertips?

Most of the people of South Asia, especially those from regions now labelled Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, were under British rule for more than a century. The generations who lived under the occupation and their descendants have, at times, struggled to grasp this clash of divergent local and Western cultures fully. And this makes sense. The British, whose influence on education lingers to the O and A levels of English Medium schools today, heavily influenced how we teach ourselves about our own culture and history. They illustrated the east as deficient in civilisation, spirituality, and culture.

In the British view, South Asia was a part of the world that needed rescuing from itself. To do so, they distorted the self-image of its people, imposing their understanding of us through depictions in media and literature. Some may think we have moved past the British influence in the decades since they retreated, but we still strive to mimic the west in our institutions and ideals. Occasionally, the wealthier among us deceive ourselves into thinking everything in the ‘global north’ is better than our impoverished and backwards ‘developing world’.

For a long time, there was no ‘pan-South Asian’ experience. The numerous native tongues of the region limited us from properly communicating with one another. For outsiders, it was even more challenging to grasp the literature. But then, several notable writers from South Asia – like Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, and Vikram Seth – began reflecting our culture and our history in the language that had become common because of our shared colonial heritage – English.

These writers found success and validation in English-speaking countries across the world. But their descriptions, allegories, and metaphors also resonated with the particulars of our own experiences. From this unusual combination of circumstances, we get the current state of English South Asian literature – our perspective presented back to us through the filter of colonial language. In a way, this warping is in keeping with our own post-colonial experience.

These texts engaged in active discourse with the English literature on the region that came before. But instead of remaining one-dimensional, as things written by outsiders can sometimes feel, they broadened the canvas. This new literature did not exclusively dabble in the ideas of savagery, conflict, poverty, religious discord, flamboyance, and exoticism typical of the older texts. They also incorporated the consequences of generational trauma, war, violence, shifting norms, and the beauties and failures of the South Asian experience. Their characters interacted with the west and were changed, altering their perception inside and outside their communities.

The uniqueness of this South Asian literature isn’t simply limited to this new diversity of topics and subjects. It applies to the form too. These authors have created a unique writing style common to the subcontinent that takes western forms and transforms them through a different lens.  

Shame by Salman Rushdie, one of the key pieces of postmodern literature, was published in 1983 and demonstrated the best aspects of the movement, addressing political issues in a distraught Pakistan in the manner of historical fiction but with a touch of magical realism.

His Midnight’s Children, about a group of children born at the moment of India’s birth as an independent nation, tackles issues of colonial power, place, displacement and migration. Its narrative of contemporary India argues that the pursuit of purity in such a broad nation generates intolerance, violence, and repression.

Arundhati Roy’s experimental collage of patchwork narrative in The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness nearly overwhelms the reader. However, the hook is set by the constant feeling of tactile specificity. Little happens sequentially in the Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things. Instead, multiple events are woven together and linked to a series of pivotal events in a cyclical manner that reflects the recursive nature of the main characters’ memories.

Amitav Ghosh’s work, such as The Hungry Tide and Sea of Poppies, deals with the complications and fluidity of identity as people interact with the natural world and each other. His use of language has a similar push and pull between the ‘native’ and the ‘foreign’ as he tries to explain concepts rooted in local tradition and culture and introduce their historical and metaphoric significance to a broader audience.

As South Asian readers of the English language, our encounters with these works are a matter of gazing into ourselves. By exploring them, we get a firmer understanding of our particular cultural space and its historic implications. And through these works, some emotional, others experimental, we try to transcend the cultural barrier separating us and communicate with each other in terms free of national norms and stereotypes.

This article is part of Stripe, bdnews24.com's special publication focusing on culture and society from a youth perspective.