Postcolonial Literary History and Indian English Fiction By Paul ...

“Control over paper crudely equals power over history” (53) and it is in history and by means of paper (Anderson) that nations and novels come into being. It is by controlling the paper that nations and classes perpetuate a history that becomes a discipline for subjects and readers alike.

Rukmini Bhaya Nair argues that historiography in India enjoys a “dashingly radical” prominence because postcolonial uncertainty (here she means the newness of the postindependent ex-colony) cannot relegate the cultural past to the “gentle twittering” of literary criticism or philosophy (45). She goes on to show how a historicised reading can widen our understanding of the conditions within which novels such as Kipling’s Kim and Tagore’s Gora are able to establish “sincerity conditions” for their otherwise subjective and limited claims (in Kipling’s case, how a clearly imperialist work can get away on its opening page with depicting colonial India as a democratic country; in Tagore’s, how an antinationalist could produce a nationalist novel). She also suggests that historicised literary reading might supplement the work of the subaltern studies historiographer. While I have some hesitations about accepting the last proposition, I agree that bringing together historiography and literary criticism is desirable. In fact, I would suggest that the strength of postcolonial writing (whichever way you define the term) is that without surrendering its interests in being literary or expressing philosophical ideas, it cannot allow its reading to be mere “genteel twittering” and refuses a distinction cutting it off from questions of history—both what things are counted and recorded as history and what history itself is.

In responding to such questions, it is also necessary to see where Indian writing in English can be placed within historical context. I do not want, yet again, to survey the arguments about the possibility of authentically expressing Indian life in English. Nonetheless, that debate does arise from history, and Indian English writing finds its place as a field of practice and study within a particular time and place, and has moved from being thought of by nationalistic writers and critics as an obsolete minority offshoot of the Raj to being seen as a threatening fellow traveller of globalisation.