Indian Authors Journey to Global Readership

It strikes everyone in beginning to form an acquaintance with the treasures of Indian literature that a land so rich in intellectual products and those of the profoundest order of thought. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel


A few years back while visiting a cousin of mine in UK, I made a discovery about our Indian literature…many foreigners were reading books written by our authors. This opened my eyes to the fact that there is a global reception for them

But even after all this, do we actually know how all of this happened… The journey of a secluded country though rich in culture and heritage… How did India and the Indian writers get the global audience??

Indian literature is arguably one of the oldest and richest literature in the world. The earliest Indian literature took the form of the Sanskrit Vedas. However, not only do Indians take pride in the diversity of their languages but has a great command over the English language as well.

A few renowned authors and their works are Salman Rushdie’s the controversial The Satanic Verses (1988), Arundhati Roy’s debut novel The God of Small Things (1997), Sudha Murthy’s The mother I never knew I had and Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone. He was also cited by The New York Times in 2008 as the biggest selling English language novelist in India’s history attaining a global audience.

So many authors and so many works… sure it’s not easy to know about each and every one of them, because everyone has their own tastes and their own favorites’. Personally, I like Ruskin Bonds ‘The blue umbrella’ and like most of many other Indians, I’m also an ardent fan of Malgudi.. The fictional town created by the very famous RK Narayan.

The crown of literature is poetry. And the enchanting translations of Tagore’s Geetanjali are so epic and beautiful that it had to bag the first Nobel prize for literature for India and had to make its place in the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works. So, we can very well say that we don’t need English to get global acknowledgement. Our vernacular languages have their own place.

https://www.weavermag.com/English/world-book-day-2/

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote. This quote by E. M Forster is brought out to its true essence in Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable (1935) and Khushwant Singhs Train to Pakistan (1956)
The incredible influencing factors on Indian literature like social influence can perhaps never be ignored or overlooked at any time. The society and its social beings are an integral portion of any literature, which forever is mirrored in every writer’s creation.

There are many prizes in India given to encourage the Indian writers. They are like the Jnanpith Award and the Sahitya Akademi.
The literary landscape in India has evolved constantly over the past decade.

We have seen a shift in reading habits due to the prominent rise of contemporary Indian literature and online reading & writing platforms giving people opportunities to showcase their talent.

This decade has also made it lucrative to be an author, especially an award-winning one. The introduction of literary awards like the JCB Prize for Literature and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature has helped place contemporary Indian literature on a global platform.

Another major change to the Indian literary landscape is that social media was used to provide a platform to talk about books and promote new talent. Instead of getting side-lined, literature has used the Internet to evolve.

Give thy minds to books and libraries, and the literature and the lore of the ages will give thee the wisdom of sage and seer. Our literature is a great example of this quote by Newell Dwight Hillis and is also universal. It will for ages be recognized by the world because of our diverse thinking which is a part of our culture.

https://www.frontlist.in/top-20-indian-authors-and-their-books

BY

Masoomi