The native verus the NRI writer

Seen against the body of regional writers, we considered the body of IWE writers as a unified whole. Peering closer into the latter, we find there exists the boundary between the native writer (meaning IWE writer based in India) and the NRI one (meaning the Non-Resident Indian IWE writer). The divide is yet another facet of the all-pervading issue of authenticity.

What the regional writer wields as a weapon against IWE as a whole, the native IWE writer wields against the NRI. The thrust of his argument is how can someone not living in India write and present authentic stories about India. To the native writer, the NRI writer is as good as a foreigner. He is not aware of the ground-level problems to the extent a person living in that society is. All he gets is information filtered through the media, and he has to make his assumptions and judgments based on that.

The second point of accusation against the NRI writer is that he presents a deliberately erroneous picture of India. He exoticises. Not having a feel for existing realities because of distance is one thing, but creating and contorting a stereotypical "reality" is another. This he does by focussing by and large to the picture of India that already exists in the western mind: progressing from snake-charmers and elephants, to rajahs and maharajahs, arranged marriages, gender oppression, exploitative and casteist society, spices, saris and so on. He panders to the West, and is hence, a sell-out.

He wants to have the best of both worlds: live in the comfort of the West, and present himself as a portrayer of India (that's the only thing he is allowed to portray). When someone has the best of both worlds, there must be something unethical involved.

Notice the strong parallels between the regional v/s the IWE and the native v/s the NRI cases. Just like the regional writer, the native IWE writer considers himself to be on relatively higher moral ground vis-a-vis his proximity to authentic India. He stands in long queues, is compelled to pay bribes to find his way through government offices, knows the inside-out of political developments, and thus knows India first-hand unlike the NRI.

Rebuttals by the NRI writers flow in from various fronts. Looking in from the outside enables them to take in the big picture of India. This, they say, is not possible for someone living in the midst of it all. You have to be at a certain distance to make out what is happening in the overall scheme of things, and they are better equipped than the native writer to do this.

He is not a sell-out. He is based abroad (mainly UK, US or Canada) mainly due to business reasons. The bigtime publishers, the markets, the readership, literary agents are there. Publishing is an organized profession there, unlike in India, where things are haphazard. The native writer is against the NRI precisely because he does not enjoy these advantages. In other words, he is plain jealous of the NRI's success.

So the responses also, are almost on the same track as that of IWE writers to the regional writers. Even the commenators. Rushdie's dismissal of Indian vernacular writing finds an echo in Dalrymple's assessment that the future of IWE lies in the hands of the NRI writer.
Our conclusions?

Again, we have a mixture of truths and untruths. There are few places purely black or white; the world is all the shades of grey. The NRI writer cannot be called a fraud simply because he has a New York or a London or a Montreal address. There is some validity to their claim of an outsider looking in. A writer should be judged by his book, not by his address. If he is not authentic, if he doesn't have a true picture of India in his mind, it will show on the pages of his book. And if he is, that will show too.

On the other hand, the accusation of exoticising India also holds true--for some writers. I am instantly on my guard when I come across titles containing masala, tamarinds, chilis, memsahibs, arranged marriages, cuckoos and saris. It is like putting baseball or stars and stripes in the title to indicate this is a book about USA. In most such cases, you get the feeling of mediocre writers trying to cash in on the publishing fad of exotic India, making hay while the sun shines, so to speak.

For a writer serious about his claim to fame and wealth, it makes good sense to be based in the West; the route to being published there is easier, or at least, more organized. A book well-received in the US or UK, is almost certain to do well in India, but the vice versa is not true.
A true writer will sound true no matter where he is based. Amitav Ghosh, Amit Chaudhuri or Vikram Seth are never blamed of exoticising because they don't. Lesser writers do. While every NRI writer cannot be a fake, neither is it true that none of them are. But it takes an exceptional writer to be based abroad and yet sound true. The onus of proving their authenticity seems to lie with the NRI rather than the native writer as if by virtue of being native, he is automatically authentic.

Back again to the minefield of authenticity. Next time, we will gingerly step into that minefield.

Regional literature versus IWE

In the last couple of posts, we saw authenticity (call it realism or genuineness if you will) as a millstone that IWE has to carry around its neck wherever it goes. We also touched upon a few topics with authenticity at the heart of the issue : regional or vernacular writing v/s IWE (the topic of the current discussion), Indian IWE v/s NRI IWE writer, and what is authenticity actually.

It looks like there has to be a "versus" in the relationship between regional writing and IWE. Using an innocent conjunction like "and" would probably give an incorrect picture. To reiterate our conclusions from previous discussions, the English language enjoys (or suffers) a different status with respect to India's regional languages. And that different status is primarily due to the none-too-flattering inter-related tags of colonialism and elitism.

This otherness of English creates a state of friction instead of cohesion in the body of Indian writing as a whole. We are compelled to say "Indian Writing in English", but we sound ridiculous saying "Indian Writing in Hindi or Bengali". The status of these regional languages as Indian is unquestionable, while that of English continues to be questioned (mostly in nationalist rhetoric. Practically, English seems to be entrenched firmly in India for a long, long time to come.)

Officially, India has twenty-odd recognized national languages which more or less map to individual states (whether dividing the nation into states on a linguistic basis was a sound idea is an argument that has kept many a people awake all night). There are around 2000 dialects, so talking about literatures in terms of dialects is absurd. Regional literature thus refers to writing in those twenty-odd national languages.

From the perspective of regional writers, their writing is rooted to Indian realities, and hence much more authentic when compared to IWE. Their problems are essentially Indian, the settings Indian, and their characters talk in the same language as they would if they were real. Their works (many serialized through periodicials) are immediately accessible and open to appraisal by readers who can judge its authenticity at once (and thus decide a writer's success).

This claim of regional writers is irrefutable. IWE, as we saw, is twice-born fiction, while vernacular writing is once-born. There's not much an IWE writer can do setting things right here because this weakness is inherent in IWE; it's bigger than an individual writer.

The other charge of regional writers against IWE is that the big money and publicity accompanying English writing is strangling regional writing. Glamour and limelight is the lot of the IWE writer (underservedly), while obscurity (except within a state) and almost no money to speak of is the fate of the regional writer. (If writing is an art and has nothing to do with material success, then regional writers have nothing to complain of on this count!)

This again is a charge IWE writers can't do much about (apart from refusing his share of fame, which doesn't really help anyone). Publicity and big money come to an IWE writer only if he is backed by a reputed publishing house in the US/UK. Those IWE writers depending on only an Indian readership hardly earn anything as the English readership in India is minuscule (a sale of 5000 copies implies a bestseller). The big numbers (and money) come from a worldwide readership.

For the regional writers, their readership starts and ends with the people who speak that particular language: geographically limited to one or a few states of India at the most. There are simply are not enough numbers that can bring about big money-publicity-glamour et al.

IWE writers bristle at the accusation that they are not authentic enough, but the range of Indian subjects they can portray realistically is limited. Some IWE writers like Rushdie dismiss vernacular literature as having little value and widen the chasm between the two bodies.

As both the charges--lack of authenticity and profusion of wealth and fame in IWE--don't have a feasible solution (at least I can't think of any... unless India becomes an English-speaking country, or regional languages gain a worldwide readership), the chasm is likely to remain. It is unlikely that both IWE and regional literature will be clubbed in a seamless category of Indian literature. IWE will continue to be looked upon as a bastard child of Indian literature (regional literature being the legitimate offspring), a wealthy, pompous and snobbish bastard at that.

Dream within a dream - II

Carrying on with the discussion on whether IWE makes sense.

The English language in India carries with it a connotation of elitism, as opposed to native languages which are seen as being down to earth, belonging to the people proper. Or as opposed to French literature in France, or English in America, which are the native languages in those nations. Perhaps French spoken in the Czar's court in Russia, or the use of Italian in operas in Germany in the past had a similar tag of elitism that English has in India today.

The English-speaking population in India has grown since, say, the era of Independence, and it is certainly not as exclusivist today as it was then. But the English language has a terribly long way to go before it reaches the acceptance-level of another British legacy: cricket. Seen objectively, both English and cricket are imports of the Raj. Then why should one have a colonial taint attached to it (indeed many movements in India have viewed the continued use of English post-Independence as a continuation of mental slavery), while the other has practically replaced the national game of hockey, is baffling. (And one would think that the knowledge of English has done more for India than the pursuit of cricket.)

No IWE writer can ever dream of approaching Sachin Tendulkar's iconic status. But then writing could hardly have the mass appeal that cricket has. And writing in English, impossible. The point to note is that Sachin's cricketing genius makes him a national hero, but an IWE writer, however great he is, will carry an elitist tag with him, maybe even one of pandering to foreign tastes.

The vernacular writer thus, considers himself, closer to reality and hence more authentic than the IWE writer. (IWE versus the vernacular writer will be a separate topic for discussion later.) The IWE writer based in India considers himself more authentic than the NRI IWE writer. (India-based versus NRI IWE writers is another topic too!)

According to an extreme criticism of IWE in Waffle of the Toffs (the title says it all, a rough and alliterative translation of which reads: the pointless prattle of pretentious people), only those belonging to the poorer strata of society are fit to write the real stuff (what is real for whom is--you guessed it--another topic). In India, an IWE writer is almost certain not to belong to that strata, and as a corollary, no one in that strata will write in English. So whatever is a genuine subject for literature, can never get written in English in India. That's the extreme stand.

Fictive writing, as everybody knows, is not real. The tacit understanding between a writer and a reader is that the writer has created a dream, and the reader lives that dream as if it were real, though knowing fully well that it is not. (We don't really believe Amitabh Bachchan beating up a dozen armed baddies, do we?) This agreement is termed the "willing suspension of disbelief". The writer's part of the contract is that he will make the dream as real as he possibly can.

And when the IWE writer's Indian characters all talk and think in English, he is asking the reader for another indulgence, for a higher degree of suspension of disbelief. The reader needs to accept that not only are the characters and their story real, but also their language. That's why IWE is also called twice-born fiction, or a dream within a dream (some also call it the waffle of the toffs).

So where does all this discussion lead? The question we started with still hangs fire. Does IWE make sense?

Such a subjective question merits a subjective conclusion too; a simple true/false answer is incomplete. It is true that IWE suffers from handicaps that other literatures don't. The IWE writer has to labour under additional constraints, work doubly hard or take recourse to literary sleight of hand in order to maintain an air of authenticity. A few modern writers like Rushdie recognize that traditionally realistic IWE is not possible, and hence instead of creating a semblance of reality, deliberately make their fiction as fantastic as possible (so that the reader is compelled to follow only the rules the writer lays down).

One cannot deny that IWE has an extra layer of artificiality built within it. This is not due to the inadequacies of IWE writers, but a congenital weakness. The reader of fiction is fully aware that he is sharing a dream, living within a bubble, while he is reading a novel. Does it then matter, whether that bubble is inside another bubble?

If a reader is strict about having only one bubbly layer between him and the world, then IWE does not make sense to him. If another reader considers a two-layered bubble as good as a single-layered one, then IWE makes sense to him. Ultimately, it is upto the reader to decide whether he wants to carry on with his dream, or burst the bubble. He could dismiss fiction in any genre or form as unreal if he were that strict... and find pleasure in reading only newspapers.