MEG 07
INDIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE
IGNOU MEG 07 Solved Free Assignment
MEG 07 Solved Free Assignment July 2023 & January 2024
Q. 1. Write short notes on:
(a) Message of Sri Aurobindo in ‘Life and Death’.
Ans. This poem is also short and has a similar structure of a quatrain and a couplet like A Tree. The rhyme scheme that this poem follows is also similar to that of A Tree, which is ababcc.
In this poem the poet tries to reconcile the opposite ideas of life and death. According to the poet both of these ideas have been regarded as antimonies ever since but now he has been illuminated by a new knowledge, which seems to him like “long hidden pages are opened, liberating truths undreamed.”
The new knowledge which the poet talks about is: “Life only is, or death is life disguised, …”. The first part of this statement claims that there is nothing called death.
Everything is life. But in the later part of the line, the poet says that even if there is something called death then it is but life in disguise.
This claim is very big as if it can potentially change one’s attitude towards one’s life. If we reject the idea of death then we have to believe that we are immortal which is not what we see in our everyday life.
But to see it from the perspective of the second part of poet’s new found knowledge it seems that what may appear as death is but a disguise for people do not die but they pass from one form of life into another.
In the last line of the poem, the poet reverses the entire scheme of thought that we have till now developed.
Earlier he discarded the idea of death and now he says that life on earth, the life as we know it, is nothing when compared to the life after death.
In this poem the poet tries to present the opposite ideas of life and death together. The poet says that both of these ideas have been regarded as antimonies ever since but now he has finally found a new wisdom or knowledge.
The new knowledge which the poet talks about is: “Life only is, or death is life disguised, …”.
The first part of this statement means that there is nothing called death. Everything is life. But in the later part of the line, the poet says that even if there is something called death then it is but life in disguise.
This claim is very big as if it can potentially change one’s attitude towards one’s life. If we reject the idea of death then we have to believe that we are immortal which is not what we see in our everyday life.
But to see it from the perspective of the second part of poet’s new found knowledge it seems that what may appear as death is but a disguise for people do not die but they pass from one form of life into another.
In the last line of the poem, the poet reverses the entire scheme of thought that we have till now developed.
Earlier he discarded the idea of death and now he says that life on earth, the life as we know it, is nothing when compared to the life after death.
In this poem the poet tries to present the opposite ideas of life and death together. The poet says that both of these ideas have been regarded as antimonies ever since but now he has finally found a new wisdom or knowledge.
The new knowledge which the poet talks about is: “Life only is, or death is life disguised,…”. The first part of this statement means that there is nothing called death.
Everything is life. But in the later part of the line, the poet says that even if there is something called death then it is but life in disguise.
This claim is very big as if it can potentially change one’s attitude towards one’s life. If we reject the idea of death then we have to believe that we are immortal which is not what we see in our everyday life.
But to see it from the perspective of the second part of poet’s new found knowledge it seems that what may appear as death is but a disguise for people do not die but they pass from one form of life into another.
In the last line of the poem, the poet reverses the entire scheme of thought that we have till now developed.
Earlier he discarded the idea of death and now he says that life on earth, the life as we know it, is nothing when compared to the life after death.
(b) Ruskin Bond’s Art of story Telling.
Ans. Ruskin Bond, is known for his stories for children. We will also look at the art and craft of story writing for children.
But at first it is important for us to know that have this form of story writing is different from the usual form of story writing. How and why children’s stories are considered as different and special branch of literature.
The requirement and qualities of children’s stories are very different from the literature. The materials which can be exploited for stories for children are in attendance in the old Indian classics.
In spite of this fact the children’s literature in India is not very rich, although there have been several serious attempts made to popularize this form of story writing off late. Ruskin Bond is one of the few major story writers in children’s literature.
Children’s literature has grown into a specialized form of writing and has come to be recognised as a distinct genre of literature in recent times.
While writing a story for children it is important for a writer to be conscious about the themes because of the specific and special nature of the target audience.
Is not that when a writer writes a story for children of different age groups, he uses the same approach. Actually, the approach towards the story varies depending on the age group of the target audience.
Some of the popular themes amongst children for stories are: animal stories, fantasies, fairy tales, heroic adventures, mountaineering, see-faring, dacoits, bandits, police, exploration and travel, space of disease, stories of courage, self-reliance and initiated.
It is important for a writer to deal only with those themes in his stories, if he is writing for children, which children can identify with.
If the writer chooses to deal with the themes which children find it difficult to identify with, then the stories would defeat the purpose. Usually, such stories have child protagonists, who engage him/herself in different journeys, voyages and adventures.
Usually, children’s stories are not lengthy because children are not able to hold their interest to too long. Very often these books are equipped with lively and colourful illustrations, which children find interesting and useful.
If one looks into the general intrestof children it would not be very difficult to understand that usually children are fascinated by the work of wonder, which are often ignored by adults.
Children love adventure and excitement. They are fascinated by exciting and dangerous situations and like to know what happens next. They are glued to the story because of curiosity and suspense.
It is only natural for children to imagine things, to create a world of their own imagination and fantasy full of magic and unreality.
In this world of fantasy one must not be surprised to find unreal people and creatures doing things which are not usually expected by adults and indulging themselves into an adventure which are usually beyond the expectations of adults.
But even in this unreal and adventurous and fantastic world one can find moral. But the genius of the writer lies in the fact that he should not make the moral way too obvious.
The primary aim of a children’s stories to entertain a child. But at the same time the story also present some moral lessons.
Some of the essential themes of a good children’s story are love and kindness towards animal as well as people and triumph of good over evil.
In India, the history of children’s story can be traced in the oral tradition of folk tales and stories told by travellers who would wander specifically for this purpose.
These stories were often drawn from the Indian classics like Ramayana, Mahabharata, Panchtantra, Hitopadesh, Kathasaritasagar and Jataka stories. A lot of stress is put on moral teaching in the tradition of oral storytelling.
Though the tradition of Indian storytelling for children is rich, unfortunately the country has not been able to produce a rich or even satisfactory literature for children.
Sometimes ago, people did not consider writing for children is something serious. There was a general tendency to believe that writing for children is child’s play and a kind of secondary writing.
Children’s writers were not given their due respect. There was lack of children’s magazine in the country.
Even parents did not think that it is a good idea to spend money so soke requires has been prescribed by the school, so why spend money on some other books which might corrupt the minds of the child.
But in recent times lot of effort has been put by the organisations and people in order to promote children’s literature.
One of such organisation is Children’s Book Trust, New Delhi, which has tried very hard to promote children’s literature by producing good literature for children.
One of the most famous children’s story writers is Rudyard Kipling, who is known for starting an interest in the animal fantasy in modern times with his books like Jungle Book and Just-so Stories. Kipling formed an association with A.A.
Milne to create a unique world of jungles and beasts in his famous book Winnie the Pooh.
Some of the writers to have further expanded the animal world in children’s literature are: Beatrice Potter, Kenneth Grahame, Margery Sharp, C.S. Lewis, Llyod Alexander, Michael Bond and Robert Lawson.
Jim Corbett, a writer who has produced a wide variety of work for children expanding the theme of animal world, has following works to his credit: Man Eaters of Kumaon, More Man-Eaters of Kumaon, The Temple Tiger and The Man- Eating Leopard of Rudra Prayag.
There are other writers to have contributed to a great extent in the genre of children’s literature.
Some of them are Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland, L.Franb Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, and Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio. All these books create a world full of fairy tale and eccentric characters.
Fairy tales are one of the most popular subjects for children’s literature and many contemporary authors have contributed in it. Jay William is one of such writers, who is known to have written Practical Princess.
In a similar manner the famous book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, takes us into a world of fantasy but not without a touch of modern-day realism.
It is often considered that writing for children is difficult from writing for adults, the reason being as an adult one can speak in his/ her own voice while writing a story for adults, but while writing a story for children it is important to speak in a voice of child, a phrase which we have long passed.
And that is why in order to write for children it is important for a writer to put him/herself back in time and look things from a child’s perspective.
It has been noticed that great writers of children’s literature did not speak in their own voice rather they speak in the voice of a child. The use of simple language and avoid the use of clichés and complex structures.
Ruskin Bond adopts a different approach in his writings. The protagonist of his story, who is a child of course, seems to highlight the drawbacks in the world of adults and in their approach to nature.
(c) Narrative techniques in Gajar Halwa
Ans. Gajar Halwa is a famous sweet dish in the north India, made of carrot and milk. Most popular during winter season, this dish is equally loved by all.
Githa Hariharan makes use of this sweet dish as an effective imagery to represent a lot of hard work.
The preparation of this dish requires a lot of peeling and grating and stirring, which leaves the maid, who does it all, with stiff figures and numb hands.
In the story it’s not only symbolises life in the city, but also symbolises the new life of our little protagonist.
Just like in the Danish as the carrot strips or, suck and swallow the sugar, the milk and the ghee, the city of sorts people like Perumayee and Chellamma.
The author uses the narrative technique of contrast to highlight the rural migration into the city. While still at her village Perumayee had never cooked anything else apart from rice or gruel or sometimes, maybe dal.
But in the city for the first time in like she comes across such a huge pile of carrots before her. She also comes across gas stove and fridge.
In the cities the family eats meat three times a week. For her it is something that she never even dreamt of.
The narrator also contrasts the never ending queue at the water tap in the village, with the war and freshwater coming out of the kitchen tap in the city, which is also never ending.
The two things which we see being contrast it are- scarcity and abundance. In the village her mother worked carry baskets of gravel the whole day to earn her living, while in the city her mistress would drive around in the car while ordering her.
There is a sharp contrast between her mother, who had to work hard to gain two meals a day for children, and her mistress who went to school and has a smooth pink skin. The word of the city is like a dream land for Perumayee.
For Perumayee the city has its other attractions as well. Perumayee decides to buy a blue sweater for herself before sending any money home.
She once saw a girl wearing that sweater while she was at the milk booth in the queue.
And once she has bought the sweater she will no more have to sleep covering herself with a lumpy mattress, pretending to be a blanket. It girl like her to have such an aspiration.
The author makes use of language in order to represent the moves of the character and stress certain points.
Repetition of words like peel and grate represents the size of the pile of carrots and the hard work involved in making a dish out of it. The words stir represents the anger and authority of the mistress.
The author also makes use of colours in order to heighten the effect of the story. Both the stories that we have discussed in this chapter shows us how women are trying to make their own space in the Indian society.
(d) Central theme of poem ‘My Grandmother’s House by Kamala Das.
Ans. This poem was also included in the collection called Summer of Calcutta. This poem takes us back in the childhood of the poet and talks about happy days in her grandmother’s house.
The poem is a reminiscence of the poetess’ grandmother and their ancestral home at Malabar in Kerala.
Her memory of love she received from her grandmother is associated with the image of her ancestral home, where she had passed some of the happiest days of her life, and where her old grandmother had showered her love and affection.
With the death of her grandmother the house withdrew into silence. When her grandmother died, even the house seemed to share her grief, which is poignantly expressed in the phrase “the House withdrew”.
The house soon became desolate and snakes crawled among books. Her blood became cold like the moon because there was none to love her the way she wanted.
The poet now lives in another city, a long distance away from her grandmother’s house. But the memories of her ancestral house make her sad. She is almost heart-broken.
The intensity of her emotions is shown by the ellipses in the form of a few dots. Now, in another city, living another life, she longs to go back.
She understands that she cannot reclaim the past but she wants to go back home, look once again through its windows and bring back a handful of darkness – sad and painful memories, which she would have made her constant companion, to keep as a reminder of her past happiness.
The poet is unable to proceed with her thoughts for sometime as is indicated by the ellipses (dots).
The poet is now choked with the intensity of grief. She yearns for love like a beggar going from one door to another asking for love in small change.
Her need for love and approval is not satisfied in marriage and she goes after strangers for love at least in small quantity.
But she does not get it even in small change or coins. Her love-hunger remains unsatisfied, and there is a big void, a blank within her, she seeks to fill up with love but to no avail.
The image of the window is a link between the past and the present. It signifies the desire of the poet for a nostalgic peep into her past and resurrect her dreams and desires.
The poem springs from her own disillusionment with her expectation of unconditional love from the one she loves.
In the poem, the image of the ancestral home stands for the strong support and unconditional love she received from her grandmother. The imagery is personal and beautifully articulates her plight in a loveless marriage.
Thus, the old house was for her a place of symbolic retreat to a world of innocence, purity and simplicity, an Edenic world where love and happiness are still possible.
Q. 2. Comment on the problems and challenges faced by the Post 1930s Novelists.
Ans. The reason Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and R.K. Narayan are considered as the three most important novelist in the Indian English fiction is because they were the first to set the operative sensibility, which, more or less, can be seen even today.
In order to understand and appreciate Midnight’s Children as an Indian English novel, it is important for us to first place the novel in the literary tradition of Indian English fiction.
It is important to understand the literary inheritance of Rushdie. So let us first look at what it meant to be Anand, Narayan and Rao to be writing in English about characters of Indian society.
The problem that Rao, Anand and Narayan felt was convey the Indian sensibility in a language that was not strictly Indian and also they did not have any model to follow. The time in which these writers wrote was different from today.
Back then India was still under British rule and the superiority of British in everything including ideas, system and culture was powerful among majority of Indians educated in English.
These English educated Indians were the ones who were supposed to read novels written in English.
But this does not mean that these writers wanted to write anything to satisfy the reading thirst of Educated Indians. They did not want to especially to imitate British models.
They felt great desire to prove their literary richness. While they burned with the desire to write novels in English, they also knew that connection that existed between, the language they chose and culture associated with it.
And therefore they felt the need to redefine English in their own ways so as to the resultant language would still be English but essentially Indian.
Though the problem they faced was difficult but not impossible. They were the writers with sense of expression.
Their attempts to use the language of colonizer in a decolonized way have been document by themselves, which are useful for us to understand their struggle and experiments.
One of the most important and significant statement on the decolonizing of English was given by Raja Rajo in his famous foreword to Kanthapura, published in 1938. He said:
“The telling has not been easy. One has to convey in a language that is not one’s own the spirit that is one’s own….(English) is the language of our intellectual make up… but not of our emotional make up.”
One of the major challenges that these writer faced was to use of English in expressing the emotion of their characters. We know that English is a language which we intellectually and not emotionally.
We do not use English for reflex expressions. There these writers struggled a lot to express the emotions of their Indian characters.
Another challenge was to transform English in a language which can be encountered on the streets.
English is not a language to be spoken by a milkman or maid servant in India, so when such characters have to speak in an Indian English novel, the writer cannot switch from English to their mother tongue.
So the question how should the writer write dialogues suitable for these characters. In order to overcome this difficulty Rao, Narayan, and Anand experiment with the language and tried hard to come up with phrases and idiom s to suit their characters.
Rao in his novel was successful creating a feeling of Kannada, while the written language was actually English.
His use of language is so effective in his novel Kanthapura that even those who are not aware of social structure of South Indian village, can see that in the novel a man’s caste can be identified with his language.
Similarly Anand created the Punjabi essence in his English novel successfully.
R.K. Narayan’s style is different though. In his novels he conveys the Tamilian essence in an obtrusive way. He is so skilful in embedding Tamilian proverbs or creating them that one is hardly able to see his experimentation with the language.
For example, in the novel The Bachelor of Arts, he uses the phrase “rupees do not grow on trees”. The phrase is actually the modification of the English idiom “money does not grow on tree”.
The modification was necessary in order to give the phrase and Indian touch. Apart from such modification one can also see other cultural markers in his writings like Tamilian customs, religious fasts and ceremonies. Narayan very cleverly bends the language to suit his purposes.
The same is also done by Rao and Anand, but they do it consciously and obtrusively. Both Rao and Anand makes use literally translated Indian expressions.
It is important to see that all these writers and writers like G.V. Desani and Bhabani Bhattacharya have something in common. All these writers use their modified English to convey the regional reality of small geographical area.
They use translated expressions from regional languages like Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada or Bengali depending upon their place.
Today many may consider it as a limitation, but without a doubt the contribution of these writers is immense and therefore the appreciation of their effort is important before we can appreciate Rushdie’s contribution to Indian English fiction.
Q. 3. Attempt a character sketch of the Astrologer. How does this story evoke sympathy/anger?
Ans. One of the most celebrated art critics Herbert Read once said that “all art is in order to form”. A storyteller and artistes tries to capture the world and give it is certain for so that within the confines of the form at make sense.
If the design of the story has been well thought than it would have an effective arrangements of different events, incidents and situations, in such a way that the narrative of the story will emerge as interesting and authentic.
An Astrologer’s Day is an example of such a carefully designed story.
What comes next surprises the reader as well as the client, the stranger. Astrologer starts telling him that he was strapped and left for dead and was pushed into well nearby in the field.
He’s also even able to tell the stranger his correct name – Guru Nayak. When the stranger asked him that when he would be able to confront the person who tried to kill him, our astrologer confidently tells him that the man is dead, he died four months ago and asked him to stop the hunt.
He advises the stranger that he should go home take the next train and stay there and should never travel to South again.
The readers are taken by surprise and now filled up with a new-found admiration for our astrologer. It seems that he has after all mastered the art of stars and somehow has come to possess some uncanny powers.
The story has other surprises for us in store. As the astrologer goes home and meets his wife he tells her that a great load has been lifted from his chest.
He says it all these years he has been thinking that he had killed a man, which explains his running away from home, settling here, and marrying his wife.
Today, he says, he realised that the man he thought he kills was still alive. Now we know the reality, now we know the truth about how our astrologer was able to tell the correct name of the stranger and also about his past.
As the light was not proper, Guru Nayak failed to recognize astrologer as his assailant. But the astrologer recognised him in the matchlight when the stranger had lit his cheroot.
Astrologer started to feel uncomfortable after recognising the stranger but somehow managed the situation by telling him not to leave his village in that his silence has been there for four months now.
Guru Nayak convinced that the man he was chasing has already died or perhaps go back to his village and would never travel southwards again.
The story is full of irony. It comments equally on both the ways of astrologer and gullible masses.
We see that the astrologer knows nothing about astrology but he is perfectly aware about the psychology of a common man, which he manipulates for its own benefit and that is how he has survived all these years.
His “Eyes sparkled with a sharp abnormal gleam which was really an outcome of a continual searching look for customers, but which his simple clients took to be a prophetic light and felt comforted”.
Narayana comments on the common people and how they allow other people, like astrologer, to fool themselves and taken for a ride.
Narayana also comments on the people who have misused the signs of astrology for their own benefit and maligned its name.
The consequence of which is that the educated and intelligent people have started to distrust astrology and astrologers.
One can also sense a change of social satire in the story. We are told that as youngsters astrologers and his friends gambled and drank.
The consequence of which is for us to see. It is for us to see that how it affected their lives. Life never remain the same for astrologer and his friends after that.
According to Srinivas Iyengar, “There are no good or bad characters in Narayan’s works. Human nature is presented in veraciously and interestingly and memorably and there is no overt condemnation or praise.”
Q. 4. Examine the treatment of time in ‘Clear Light of Day’.
Ans. The motif, which is at the center of the novel, is the paradox concerning change and continuity.
And it has been captured perfectly towards the end of the novel, in the episode when Bim and Baba go to listen to Mulk Mishra and his guru sing:
“She saw before her eyes how one ancient school of music contained both Mulk, still an immature disciple, and his aged, exhausted guru with all the disillusionments and defeats of his long experience.”
After understanding and looking at time from this perspective, she is able to look at her own life with far clearer insight.
” With her inner eye she saw how her own house and its particular history linked and contained her as well as her whole family with all their separate histories and experiences-not binding them within some dead and airless cell but giving them the soil in which to send down their roots, and food to make them grow and spread, reach out to new experiences and new lives, but always drawing from the same soil, the same secret darkness.
That soil contained all time, past and future, in it. It was dark with time, rich with time.
It was where her deepest self-lived, and the deepest selves of her sister and brothers and all those who shared that time with her.”
Alamgir Hashmi, while talking about the nonlinear treatment of time says: “Indeed, time is an emotional sequence of events rather than a serial imitation of chronological perception.
Since the story is told in the stream-of consciousness style, the linearity of the actual event is not imitated by the writing; the nature of the event is emotional’ as recollected by the characters.
through whose eyes the reader sees and assesses the situation. With a shifting point of view, and the frequent time lapse, the narrative is realised gradually and gathered skillfully.”
This notion of non- linear time is also apparent in the way Bim approaches life. She tells Tara: ‘There are these long still stretches-nothing happens-each day is exactly like the other-plodding, uneventful-and then suddenly there is a crash-mighty deeds take place-momentous events- even if one doesn’t know it at the time – and then life subsides again into the backwaters till the next push, the next flood? That summer was certainly one of them-the summer of ’47- “The partition of India and partition of Das household parallels each other.
Time has different roles to play for different characters in the novel Clear Light of Day. All Das children had certain ambition and aspirations, but only Tara’s ambition gets materialized.
As a child she always wanted to be a mother and knit for her children. She marries Bakul and has two daughters.
However, Bim and Raja fail to achieve what they wanted to be as children for they got trapped in circumstances and thus could not fulfill their dreams.
Q. 5. Trace the origin of Indian English Poetry.
Ans. When looked at the historical evolution of Indian English poetry, many find the identity of it ambiguous and confusing. The earliest Indian English poets are listed as Anglo Indian poets.
Many even define early Indian English poetry as Anglo Indian poetry. Interestingly the early collection of Indian English poetry can be found in poetry collection book edited by David Richardson in 1840 in Calcutta.
This collection was entitled Selection from the British Poets from the Time of Chaucer to the Present Day with Biographical and Critical Notes.
In this collection one can find poems from Chaucer to the Romantics. In this collection Richardson also included a forty page supplement which contains poems of British Indian poets like Henry Derozio and Kasirasad Ghose.
The reason Richardson used the term British Indian because he was sensitive towards the difference between Indians who wrote about English and British who wrote about India. F. Oaten came up with Sketch if Anglo-Indian Literature, the first serious critical study of this body of writing, in which he saw Indian English poetry as an appendage to Anglo-Indian literature.
As the time passed the term Anglo-Indian seemed to be inadequate in the description of Indian work in English.
And therefore new term Indo-Anglican began to used, which was coined by James Cousin in 1883 in a book called Specimen Compositions from Native Students, but was popularized by K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar in 1943.
This term, in spite of not sounding very good, was used but later Indian English literature or Indian writing in English replaced the term. Indian English has now been legitimized by Sahitya Akademi.
The periodization of literature can simply be defined as the classification of literary history to convenient time slots, like Elizabethan literature, the Augustans, Romantic literature, etc. Such classifications can be done in more than one ways.
One way to do it is by referring to the monarch of the period so in English literature we have Victorian literature, Georgian literature, Edwardian Literature, etc.
Another way is to do by referring to the kind of literature, like Romantic, or metaphysical. But in today’s world literature are not classified by referring to the name of monarch.
This shows the changed relationship between state and literature and also the decline in the importance of British monarch. Periodization is important because it helps us classify and organize a literary tradition.
Now a question can be asked that how does periodization become important for a relatively young literary tradition like Indian English literature.
The question is valid to certain extent but still the importance of periodization is there. We know that the literature produced in the early decades of 20th century is different from that of their predecessors.
And to assert this difference we call the early twentieth century literature as modernist literature.
Similarly, one can see the difference when one moves from the poetry of Sarojini Naidu to the poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. The periodization helps us assert and acknowledge this difference.
Now another question to be asked is that whether we can use the same term to classify Indian English literature which we use of English literature.
The changes brought by modernism in Europe during early decades of 20th centurywere seen in Indian English literature during the 50s. Since there is time gap, the question becomes valid and crucial for the task of periodization.
While studying Indian English poetry there are certain things which must be considered. In certain ways Indian English Poetry is similar to English poetry but in certain other ways it is different.
The extent to which we can explain the differences and similarities shows our understanding of Indian English poetry.
It is also important to consider that what is right for Indian English poetry is also right for colonial and postcolonial literature of other nations. Let us try to understand it with American literature as an example.
In spite of the fact that American gained its independence from Britain in the year 1775, for more than a century America literature followed the pattern of British and European literature, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that still American Literature
shares a symbolic relationship with British and European literature. And therefore just like Britain, America also had puritan, neo- classical and romantic literature.
But it should be kept in mind that romantic, puritan and neo-classical literature may similar to that of their British counterpart, but in no way we can say that they were identical.
The distinctive identity of American literature is reflected in the way America adapts and rejects the influence of British and European literature.
Quite similarly in Indian English poetry one can see the reflection of British and American poetry. The reflection is so strong that some critics like Rajiv Patke have gone as far as to say that all Indian English poetry is derivative.
How true is Patke’s view is not our concern, instead what we are concerned about the fact that Indian English poetry indeed was shaped by the forces of outside culture, and that to a large extent.
And to say that because of this Indian English poetry is inferior would be unjustified. It was only natural for Indian English poets to have been influenced by British poetry, for English was introduced by British.
There were some Indian poets who could not go much beyond imitating the British poets, but at the same time some poets found their own voice. The best example of this can be seen in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri.
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