Mediocre crop

SPECIAL FEATURE : LITERATURE

Mediocre crop

When A Suitable Boy was making waves and drawing rave reviews, there was one mocking voice: Prof. M. Krishnan Nair, the trenchant Malayalam literary critic and one of the best read Indians, dismissed Vikram Seth as a mediocre writer. He is no less contemptuous of other Indo-English writers and in his eyes only Upamanyu Chatterjee merits a ‘slight’ consideration as a good writer.

"The Indo-English literature is plain mediocre. It is only the media, English-writing critics and the western literary establishment which have given it prominence. Its mediocrity flows from its dominant anti-India streak which is designed to appeal to the west. Take for instance, The Moor’s Last Sigh in which Rushdie calls a dog ‘Jawahar’ and says, "Bark, Jawahar, bark". Such writings are superficial and carry no conviction.
"Indian writing in English is very poor compared even with our regional literature. The hallmark of great literature is the spiritual dimension. World over, this aspect is on the decline. While our regional language writers show at least a modicum of spiritual dimension, the Indo-English writing is totally devoid of it. It tends to fall in the category of trash.
"I have read many of the much-trumpeted works of Indo-English writers like Rohinton Mistry, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth and Shashi Tharoor. They are all superfluous. The only work which I found exciting, at least to a limited extent, was English August: An Indian Summer by Upamanyu Chatterjee.
"I don’t think that they exhibit any more vigorous literary expression than a mediocre writer of the earlier generation like R.K. Narayan. The modern writers may be more fluent in English, but they do not show any narrative energy in their works. All of them seem to stuff their themes and narratives into a predetermined craft, whether it suits the craft or not. Great works appear when the narrative finds its own craft and format. The Indo-English writers are clever but silly."
--VINU ABRAHAM

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