The Rise And Growth Of English Literature In Indian Literature

RISE AND GROWTH OF INDIAN ENGLISH NOVELS

Indian literature in English originated as a necessary product of the English education in India under colonialism. Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Macaulay suggested English education as a language in India. The British-style of education also had the effect of linking Indian writers to literary traditions of the West, enabling Indian writers’ writing in English to reach European audience as well as in India. In the 19th century, both progressive and orthodox reformers supported female education in India, believing that social evils could be minimize through education. Christian missionaries and Britishers started girls’ schools, especially in Bengal where the English had made their first inroads in the mid 19th century, and Indian women started to graduate from universities. However, the majority of girls did not go to school because the education for women was mainly confined to the larger towns and cities. So, before the rise of the novel, many Indian women composed poetry and short stories in Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. Women were the principal upholders of a rich oral tradition of story-telling, through myths, legends, songs and fables. The novel was not at first a common form, perhaps because the majority of women had less entrée to education than men. It was not until prose began to be used in the late 19th century by Bengali writers who had been exposed to the culture of