The Fiction Writer in India: His Tradition and His Problems

by K. K. NARAYAN

ALL imaginative writing in India has had its origin in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, two very Jong and very old epic poems, written in Sanskrit, perhaps as much as five thonsand years ago. An author would pick up an incident or a character out of one or the other and create a new work with it, much as Shakespeare transmuted Holinshed’s Chronicle or Plutarch‘s Lives. Kalidasa’s Shakuntala (fifth century A.D.), one of the world’s masterpieces, was developed out. of an incident in the Mahabharata. Tulasidas rewrote the Ramayana in Hindi, Kamban in Tamil, and Kumaravyasa retold the Mahabharata in Kannada, each one according to his own genius. Each of these authors dedicated his lifetime to the fulfillment of one supreme task, etching the stanzas with a stylo on dry palm leaves hour after hour and day after day for years, before a book came into being.

The completion of a literary work was marked by ceremony and social rejoicing. Economic or commercial considerations had no place in a writer’s life, the little he needed coming to him through royal patronage or voluntary gifts. The work was read aloud to the public, assembled in a temple hall or under the shade of a tree. Men, women, and children listened to the reading with respectful attention for a few hours every evening. A literary work lived not so much through the number of copies scattered over the world as in the mind and memory of readers and their listeners, and passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation.

These traditions were modified by historical changes. Let us skip a great deal of intervening histoty and come down to British times. The English language brought with it to India not only a new type of literature but all the world’s literature in translation. Indian writers were exposed to new forms such as the novel and short story. These not only revealed new artistic possibilities for a writer but also stimulated his social awareness. Thus while many stories dealt with impossible romance, melodrama, and adventure, others exposed the evils of certain social customs such as early marriage, the dowry system, suttee, and caste prejudices. Many of the realistic Indian novels of this period of British influence are in effect attacks on the orthodoxies of the day. They suffered from didacticism, of course, but they had a core of artistic quality, so that many books of the Victorian period are still readable although their social criticisms are out of date.

Between the era of British rule and the present we might note a middle period when subject matter became inescapably political. All of India’s energies were directed to the freeing of the country from foreign rule. Under this urgent pressure the mood of comedy, the sensitivity to atmosphere, the probing of psychological factors, the crisis in the individual soul and its resolution, and above all the detached observation, which constitute the stuff of fiction, were forced into the background. It seemed to be more a time for polemics and tract writing than for storytelling. Since the attainment of Indian independence in 1947 this preoccupation is gone, and the writer can now gather his material out of the great new events that are shaping before his eyes. Every writer now hopes to express through his novels and stories the way of life of the group of people with whose psychology and background he is most familiar, and he hopes that this picture will not only appeal to his own circle but also to a larger audience outside.

The short story rather than the long novel has been the favorite medium of the fiction writer in India. Perhaps this is because its brevity makes it the most suitable for the variegated material available. But more likely it is simply because the writing of a short story takes less time. The writer of a novel has to spend at least a year’s labor on it. This complete surrender is something few can afford, since most writers can write only part-time while doing something else for a living. Fiction writing as a full-time occupation has still to be recognized in India. Why is this so?

Above all there is the problem of language. Its complexity can be understood if we consider that there are fifteen major languages in India in which writers are doing their jobs today in various regions. Every writer has to keep in mind first his own regional language, then the national language, which is Hindi, next the classical Sanskrit, which thoroughly pervades all Hindu culture— it is far from a “dead" language — and finally English, which has shaped our new literary forms. Some of the regional languages are understood only within limited boundaries and cannot provide more than a few thousand readers for a book. Only book sales on an all-India, multilingual basis could yield royalties sufficient to give writers a livelihood. But to make that possible the urgent need is for an organization, a sort of literary clearing-house and translation service, which could give a writer a country-wide audience whatever might be the original language of his writing.

Indian book publishing must be revitalized. Under existing conditions there is little general publishing in the country. There are many publishing firms, to be sure, but they are most concerned with the manufacture of school texts, which alone, by diligent maneuvering can give a publisher (and incidentally his author) a five-figure public.

On the other hand, it must also be admitted that all is not well with the reading public. A certain amount of public apathy for book-buying is depressingly evident everywhere. Only a part of this can be attributed to the high price at which most good books are sold. A visiting American publisher recently asked me how many copies of my novel Bachelor of Arts (available here in the Pocket Book edition costing only a rupee and eight annas — that is, about thirty American cents) have been sold in my own home town of Mysore. I suggested two hundred as a possible figure.

“But what is the population of your town?” my visitor asked.

“Over two hundred and seventy-five thousand.”

“How many among them have enough education to read a novel like yours?”

“At least five thousand,”I ventured.

“And how many among them know you personally and like your work in general?”

“Probably almost all of them.”

“How many could afford to pay a rupee and eight annas for your book?”

“Perhaps all of them.

“In that case what prevents five thousand copies being sold here rather than two hundred?”

I could not answer the question. I am still thinking it over. I think it is for experts in the book trade to discover a solution. Only when that is done will the major problem of the fiction writer in India be solved.