THE PIONEERING TRIO: MULK RAJ ANAND, R K NARAYAN AND RAJA RAO

Indian Writing in English especially Novel is based on the three pioneer writers such as Mulk Raj Anand, R K Narayan, and Raja Rao

1. The Pioneering Trio of Indian English Fiction Prepared by Rahul Kokni Adhyapak Sahayak (English) Sheth P. T. Arts and Science College, Godhra ( Panchmahal ) Affiliated to Shri Govind Guru University, Godhra, Gujarat, India

2. Indo-Anglian literature? Or Indian Writing in English? Or Indo-English literature?

3. Indian Writing in English There is no clear-cut distinction. “Strictly speaking, Indian English Literature may be defined as literature written originally in English by authors Indian by birth, ancestry or nationality.” – M. K. Naik

4. Indian Writing in English No Anglo-Indian Literature No literal translations by others In 1962, K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar used the phrase ‘Indian Writing in English’

5. The Pioneering Trio Mulk Raj Anand R K Narayan Raja Rao

6. Mulk Raj Anand: A Novelist par Excellence

7. Life & Achievements Born in 1905 at Peshawar Graduated in 1924 from Khalsa College Left India in 1925 for England Awarded PhD in 1929 on the philosophy of Berkeley, Hume and Russell

8. Influences & Acquaintances Tagore, Gandhi, Iqbal, Gorky, Tennyson D.H.Lawrence, Middleton Murry, Herbert Read, Aldous Huxley, T.S.Eliot

9. Interfaces Meets Gandhi in 1932 Returns to India in 1945 Marries Kathleen and seeks divorce to marry Shirin Vajibdar Awarded Sahitya Academy Award in 1972

10. General belief about Anand A period novelist A writer of socio-political fiction social reformer/historian A full reading of Anand reflects : Cosmic view Kaleidoscopic in nature Human touch

11. Range of his Novels Anand, it seems to me, is nothing less than a novelist of the human condition, a novelist whose province is human nature. The appeal of his novels is passionate; this significance is multiple and hopefully timeless rather than topical and temporal. -K.N.Sinha in Preface to Mulk Raj Anand

12. Anand in an Interview to P.K. Rajan I have been evolving a philosophy of the human person which is miscellaneous. It is not doctrinaire thought . It is a number of insights, possibly arising from my experience. I think we are part of a much bigger universe , so we are part of the whole world.

13. A Crusader Abroad Advocated General strike in London annoyed at Eliot’s opinion about Gandhi Sympathized with national struggle in Ireland. Sympathized with Spanish Civil War A broadcaster and script writer in the Film division of BBC. Founded AIPWA

14. Anand’s faith as a writer Art not for art’s sake Literature means to modify society All art is mere propaganda I wish to be judged a writer ,who has tried to tell the truth of life. And some compassion. I am not subject to western categories. The question is how far do my novels recreate life. (Anand, In a letter to Neena Arora)

15. Anand’s views on Life and Literature Writing novels for the sake of writing novels was never my intention. I felt compelled to answer challenges and tried to get out of my own confusion. I do not believe in institutionalized religion. And like Tolstoy, I would like to leave the beliefs of people to their own conscience, collaborating with them for certain secular ends, without objecting to their pet religion.

16. Anand’s First Trilogy: Paradigms of Protest Untouchable (1935) Coolie (1936) Two Leaves & A Bud (1937) Caste theme Exploitation of labour Disgrace of dignity Identity crisis Protest against man, God and civilization If you leave man to the mercy of god, first dig some graves. ------ Iyengar Page – 334

17. Second Trilogy: Volcanic Eruption The Village(1939) Across The Black Waters(1941) The Sword & The Sickle(1955) Characteristics: Assertive and articulate Philosophical thrust Self realization and self actualization Awareness of a split in consciousness Spontaneous urge of a new generation Running between past, present and future

18. Wisdom of the Heart The Private Life of an Indian Prince(1953) The Old Woman or The Cow(1960) Death of a Hero(1964) Characteristics: Freudian dimension Moment of liberation Martyrdom in a communal frenzy

19. Autobiographical novels: Confessions Seven Summers(1951) Morning Face(1968) Confessions of a Lover( 1976) The Bubble(1984) Characteristics: All threads of emotional and spiritual life Background of collective unconsciousness Philosophy of the human person that is miscellaneous Protagonist’s evolution to higher consciousness

20. Views On Life And Death One man can die but life cannot be extinguished in the world altogether until the very sun goes bold and the elements break up. ( The Big Heart) Love everyone and everything. Then through our good deeds shall we rise from our low caste and be warm into a higher caste. (The Road)

21. I am anti-Christ. I want the romantic night even if it brings sorrow and melancholy. I shall have to live through the inner chaos. There is something of water in a woman. Flowing, flowing always in one direction or the another, restless like the waves, sometimes overwhelmingly moody, indecisive and impulsive as a river in storm, sometimes bright and smiling, sometimes soft and sad but always tender and kind.

22. Anand on art All art is propaganda. The art of Ajanta is propaganda. The art of Ajanta is propaganda for Buddhism. the art of Ellora is propaganda for Hinduism. The art of western novel is propaganda for humanity against capitalism. Gorky as a humanist dared to speak of man, man’s condition, not only to say how awful it is but he also suggested what man could be. And thus he did propaganda for man. M.R Anand, Soviet Review, Vol V No.21,1968,P-92

23. Conclusion Men can compete with the disruptive forces and conquer them. If there is discord in life, it is only a stage and not a terminus. Man has in him not only the noises of the earth but also the silence of the seas and the music of the year. Life is not only the rhythmic flow of nerves but also the renewal of vibrations within.

24. Raja Rao (1908-2006)

25. Raja Rao India's finest writer in English the 1988 winner of the prestigious $25,000 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Rao defines the major theme of all his fiction as the search for the truth; man's search for ultimate values. It is a search that has consumed much of his life.

26. Early Life Rao grew up in Mysore, an area of coffee plantations and famous old temples, in the south of India. He was a member of an old and respected Brahmin family. He did not study fiction writing, but came to it naturally. "I wrote as a man of sixteen or seventeen," Rao says. "I wrote in English. I was sent to a very snobbish English school. I learned English from English people in India. I learned Sanskrit much later."

27. Family Background His father was a scholar and professor. But it was from his grandfather, who spoke not a word of English and meditated at length, that Rao got his philosophical bent. "My grandfather started me on the search," he says. "Philosophical inquiry is personal contact. Not merely philosophical thinking. Indian philosophy is thought in the West to be mystical. But it's really logic. Logical and metaphysical."

28. Education He went to the Aligarh Muslim University and to Nizam's College, Hyderabad, in India. At the age of nineteen, he went to France, where he studied at the University of Montpellier and later at the Sorbonne. He left France in 1939, fifteen days before the outbreak of World War II. "If I'd been there fifteen days more, I'd not be alive today," he says, because of his opposition to Hitler. "I was just lucky. When I got to India, I went straight to a sage." France, to my mind, is still the heart of Western civilization," Rao says. His first wife was a professor of French, and for about thirty years -----he lived six months in France; six months in India. For a time he considered becoming a monk.

29. Works His first novel, Kanthapura, about a village in South India affected by the spirit of Gandhi, was published in the United States in 1938. Iyengar - Page No. - 387 The Serpent and the Rope was published in 1960. Other works include a collection of stories written earlier, The Cow of the Barricades, but published in 1947; The Cat and Shakespeare in 1965; Comrade Kirillov in 1976; The Chessmaster and His Moves in 1988. In the years since, Rao had been working on a sequel to his last novel, which has Indian Vedantic philosophy at its core.

30. In the '60s and '70s the search for values was very remarkable. I was really thinking America would be the greatest nation..." Rao points out that America had been fascinated by India even earlier. "The 19th century transcendentalists--Thoreau, Whitman, Emerson--were all influenced by India. Iyengar Page No.-391, 407

31. When I published my first stories in Europe ... Romain Rolland and Stefan Zweig wrote enthusiastic letters to me about them. And Kanthapura, my first novel, was mostly written in a thirteenth-century castle of the Dauphine in the heart of the Alps, and when it came out, E.M. Forster spoke so boldly of my rigour of style and structure, I had, so to say, entered the literary world."

32. Thank You