Ebook: A history of Indian literature. Volume 9: 1911-1956, Struggle for freedom, triumph and tragedy

This account of the literary activities in India during the period between 1911 and 1956 in twenty-two languages, follows, with some modification, the methodology adopted in the earlier volume, Western Impact: Indian Response which took 1800-1910 as its period of investigation. The emphasis in the earlier work was more on die growth of new literary genres, most of them being innovations in Indian literary history. Those genres emerged out of the tensions between the indigenous traditions and alien models and canons in a colonial situation. The history of that period was characterized mainly, if not entirely, by a continuous struggle between the native and the foreign models. Only one stream of literature which was confined among the rural population, remained more or less unaffected by the presence of English, the language of power and supremacy. But very little of it has been preserved—part of it being oral—and almost totally ignored by the English-educated reading community who created the new literature. This history of literature, therefore, does not claim to be a complete account of the literary activities of the whole people, but only of a more articulated group, more favourably placed within the contemporary powerstructure. The genres that gave the new Indian literature its distinct character, became slowly naturalized and by the end of the last century they became powerful medium of new thoughts and sensibilities. This volume continues its inquiries into the new developments in the genre, but thematological inquiries, which received relatively less attention in the previous volume, have been prioritized here. Both genological and thematological studies, however, can hardly be kept separate in any literary history.
The period covered in this volume is much shorter: only forty-six years.