Rise and Development of Indian English Novel
The first Indian novel published in English was Rajmohan’s Wife in 1864 written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. In the beginning, the novel established itself both in quality and quantity with a direct impact on the social and religious aspects of life. In the 19th-century fiction writing was rather limited. The second attempt at writing fiction was done by Toru Dutt in the form of Bianca or The Young Spanish Maiden which was of course of posthumous publication. Ramesh Chandra Dutt translated two of his novels into English from Bengali namely The Slave Girl of Agra and The Lake of Palms. Dr. (Mrs.) Meenakshi Mukharjee observes, “The novel, the genre of imaginative literature which gives artistic form to the relationship of man and society was conspicuously absent until the nineteen twenties.” The earliest Indian novels were written in Bengali as Bengal was the first region to come under the domineering influence of the British. A novel by an Indian writer demands a sense of belonging and direct involvement in values and experiences which are valid in the Indian context. Thus the Indian English novel made an appearance in the nineteen twenties, then gradually gathered confidence and established itself in the next two decades. Regarding the formative stages of Indian novel in English, it is both imitative and derivative, realistic and symbiotic, and modernistic and post-modernistic. The whole corpus of Indian fiction in English can be divided into three groups: 1) A traditional novel of Social Realism before Independence, 2) The modern novel of Experimentation after Independence and 3) The New Contemporary novel since 1981. The first phase is of “Nativity” from 1864 to 1930, The second phase is of “Confluxion” from 1930 to 1980 and the third phase is of culmination” since 1981.
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