The problematics in approaching Chetan Bhagat
Dr. Sridevi
CTTE College
Book history through postcolonial eyes: Rewriting the script by Robert Fraser in 2008 published by Routledge dismisses Chetan Bhagat’s works as unheard of outside India. Fraser positions Rupa, as a publisher who publishes only best sellers. Hence Prakash Ray’s The Dancing Democracy – a story about the neighbouring Nepal and Anurag Matar’s Inscrutable Americans – an Indian engineering student’s visit to USA are only popular. Fraser comments that Inscrutable Americans is
Couched mostly in Indish (or Indian English) as letters back home. It is a popular and alertly witty work, soothing middle class professional anxieties with the syrup of mild jokes. Much the same, I think, may be claimed for Rupas’s runaway fiction bestsellers, both by Chetan Bhagat(180 – 181).
Frazer continues to discuss the themes of Bhagat and sums up:
This is a literature of identification and displacement, and it sells well, spotlighting the lives of those with whom its readers perceive themselves as locked in a common Darwinian struggle: doctors, lawyers, engineers or technicians. It highlights achievement, while laying anxiety to rest with a balm of consoling levity. Outside India it is almost unknown (181).
The western criticism has simply dismissed Chetan Bhagat’s works. There are a few questions that emerge:
How do we treat art in India - Can a western perception of generification work for the Indian mind? Is art an entertainment or does it have serious purpose? How do we look at a fiction in a regional language that happens to be a best seller – as an entertainment or learning experience – or both? How do we treat a best seller in English in India that addresses Indians – as entertainment or serious literature? Indians use art to heal the wounds of life – as an entertainment. We believe in songs and dance, fight, melodrama. We mix up all the genres, something westerners cannot accept. The tired man reads a novel or goes for a movie for relaxation. This is the profound purpose of art – to keep man’s sanity and peace. When the west fixes an Indian bestseller, it becomes an academic text for Indians.
Are we postcolonial? What is the Indian perception of western models of society? Do we want to move out of the western model of social structure? The Indian has not rejected Eurocentrism. Rather, he has accepted the superiority of Rationalism. Only thing is, Indians do not want to depend on any other society or culture. They have learnt from western models, and want to go on developing their models.
What is the language of Bhagat? Can we call it Indian English? The formal, understandable Indian spoken English – understandable by the country - has arrived with Bhagat. It has brought the entire sub-continent under one language. Thousands of Indians use it in their conversation in India.
Who does Bhagat Address? Is there any attempt to talk to the west? The problems Bhagat discusses are Indian problems. The dialogue is between Indian attitudes and the writer.
What is the narrative style of Bhagat? Why is it so ‘natural’? he reaches his people quite comfortably, easily. The conversational style gives him the space. Bhagat uses a natural narrative to discuss the issues India faces from the perspective of the educated elite that decides policies in India. It is written in the formal language of India – English – used for official purposes and for personal uses by a few people. It is the language of the English print and visual media. Bhagat has used a scattering of the campus language, again used for practical uses only in premier institutes. He has taken the story from his life like any writer.
In a sixty year old polylinguistic nation, carrying a polycultural background on its young shoulders, a writer writes a novel in a supposedly the language of one of the colonizers, and that becomes a hit in local terms in the sub-continent, and how are we going to perceive its success? The people want research in IIT, so that they can become a super power as they believe research will give them the potential. They do not want pseudo secularism and want to become more rationalistic. They hate fundamentalism. They don’t want to be dependent on any foreign power for economical benefits. The novels are the wishes of the people of this particular class. But what we have to remember is, the readers are from the entire country. It is very different from being a writer with a regional voice. Bhagat has a pan Indian readership. The way it has been received by the people shows it is this want to read. They read their dreams in his words. A popular writer has the pulse of the people in his hands. He moves within the morality of society and reinforces the social thoughts.
In Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English in chapter 21 “After midnight: The novel in the 1980s and 1990s” written by Jon Mee, he writes that Rushdie’s Midnight children has a “postmodern playfulness” (318). The book is edited by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and therefore is accepted by the Indian critical idiom. The text is fixed in a position where it is fitted well in the western critical discourse. It goes well with the mainstream now.
Mee says,
Commercial developments in English-language publishing within India have played their part in enabling a new crop of novelists to come forward. Many writers who publish abroad now also insist on a separate Indian edition of their work. Ravi Dayal’s publishing house has nurtured a group of writers identified with Delhi’s elite – St.Stephen’s college – Allan Sealy, Amitav Ghosh, Shashi Tharoor, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Rukun Advani, Mukul Kesavan and Anurag Mathar (319).
Rupa has begun to cater to “expanding urban middle class”. Mee further says, “It is the world of this middle class which provides the most obvious context for the new Indian writing in English” (319). The criticism is that writing in English in India has a framework of metropolitan, and cosmopolitan elitism. Mee says this cannot be ignored. This book is published in 2003.
Whether Bhagat expresses only the urban middle class, or is it the social thought processes of the entire nation being expresses in its arts forms has to be understood. Does the entertainment factor has an association of manipulation, also has to be understood. Whether the writer manipulates the people, or the people manipulate the writer becomes an interesting discussion.
Works cited
Fraser, Robert. Book history through postcolonial eyes: Rewriting the script. Oxon: Routledge, 2008.
Marcuse, Herbert. One Dimensional Man. Routledge, 2007.
Mee, Jon. “After midnight: The novel in the 1980s and 1990s”. Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English. Ed.Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003.
Dr. Sridevi
CTTE College
Book history through postcolonial eyes: Rewriting the script by Robert Fraser in 2008 published by Routledge dismisses Chetan Bhagat’s works as unheard of outside India. Fraser positions Rupa, as a publisher who publishes only best sellers. Hence Prakash Ray’s The Dancing Democracy – a story about the neighbouring Nepal and Anurag Matar’s Inscrutable Americans – an Indian engineering student’s visit to USA are only popular. Fraser comments that Inscrutable Americans is
Couched mostly in Indish (or Indian English) as letters back home. It is a popular and alertly witty work, soothing middle class professional anxieties with the syrup of mild jokes. Much the same, I think, may be claimed for Rupas’s runaway fiction bestsellers, both by Chetan Bhagat(180 – 181).
Frazer continues to discuss the themes of Bhagat and sums up:
This is a literature of identification and displacement, and it sells well, spotlighting the lives of those with whom its readers perceive themselves as locked in a common Darwinian struggle: doctors, lawyers, engineers or technicians. It highlights achievement, while laying anxiety to rest with a balm of consoling levity. Outside India it is almost unknown (181).
The western criticism has simply dismissed Chetan Bhagat’s works. There are a few questions that emerge:
How do we treat art in India - Can a western perception of generification work for the Indian mind? Is art an entertainment or does it have serious purpose? How do we look at a fiction in a regional language that happens to be a best seller – as an entertainment or learning experience – or both? How do we treat a best seller in English in India that addresses Indians – as entertainment or serious literature? Indians use art to heal the wounds of life – as an entertainment. We believe in songs and dance, fight, melodrama. We mix up all the genres, something westerners cannot accept. The tired man reads a novel or goes for a movie for relaxation. This is the profound purpose of art – to keep man’s sanity and peace. When the west fixes an Indian bestseller, it becomes an academic text for Indians.
Are we postcolonial? What is the Indian perception of western models of society? Do we want to move out of the western model of social structure? The Indian has not rejected Eurocentrism. Rather, he has accepted the superiority of Rationalism. Only thing is, Indians do not want to depend on any other society or culture. They have learnt from western models, and want to go on developing their models.
What is the language of Bhagat? Can we call it Indian English? The formal, understandable Indian spoken English – understandable by the country - has arrived with Bhagat. It has brought the entire sub-continent under one language. Thousands of Indians use it in their conversation in India.
Who does Bhagat Address? Is there any attempt to talk to the west? The problems Bhagat discusses are Indian problems. The dialogue is between Indian attitudes and the writer.
What is the narrative style of Bhagat? Why is it so ‘natural’? he reaches his people quite comfortably, easily. The conversational style gives him the space. Bhagat uses a natural narrative to discuss the issues India faces from the perspective of the educated elite that decides policies in India. It is written in the formal language of India – English – used for official purposes and for personal uses by a few people. It is the language of the English print and visual media. Bhagat has used a scattering of the campus language, again used for practical uses only in premier institutes. He has taken the story from his life like any writer.
In a sixty year old polylinguistic nation, carrying a polycultural background on its young shoulders, a writer writes a novel in a supposedly the language of one of the colonizers, and that becomes a hit in local terms in the sub-continent, and how are we going to perceive its success? The people want research in IIT, so that they can become a super power as they believe research will give them the potential. They do not want pseudo secularism and want to become more rationalistic. They hate fundamentalism. They don’t want to be dependent on any foreign power for economical benefits. The novels are the wishes of the people of this particular class. But what we have to remember is, the readers are from the entire country. It is very different from being a writer with a regional voice. Bhagat has a pan Indian readership. The way it has been received by the people shows it is this want to read. They read their dreams in his words. A popular writer has the pulse of the people in his hands. He moves within the morality of society and reinforces the social thoughts.
In Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English in chapter 21 “After midnight: The novel in the 1980s and 1990s” written by Jon Mee, he writes that Rushdie’s Midnight children has a “postmodern playfulness” (318). The book is edited by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and therefore is accepted by the Indian critical idiom. The text is fixed in a position where it is fitted well in the western critical discourse. It goes well with the mainstream now.
Mee says,
Commercial developments in English-language publishing within India have played their part in enabling a new crop of novelists to come forward. Many writers who publish abroad now also insist on a separate Indian edition of their work. Ravi Dayal’s publishing house has nurtured a group of writers identified with Delhi’s elite – St.Stephen’s college – Allan Sealy, Amitav Ghosh, Shashi Tharoor, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Rukun Advani, Mukul Kesavan and Anurag Mathar (319).
Rupa has begun to cater to “expanding urban middle class”. Mee further says, “It is the world of this middle class which provides the most obvious context for the new Indian writing in English” (319). The criticism is that writing in English in India has a framework of metropolitan, and cosmopolitan elitism. Mee says this cannot be ignored. This book is published in 2003.
Whether Bhagat expresses only the urban middle class, or is it the social thought processes of the entire nation being expresses in its arts forms has to be understood. Does the entertainment factor has an association of manipulation, also has to be understood. Whether the writer manipulates the people, or the people manipulate the writer becomes an interesting discussion.
Works cited
Fraser, Robert. Book history through postcolonial eyes: Rewriting the script. Oxon: Routledge, 2008.
Marcuse, Herbert. One Dimensional Man. Routledge, 2007.
Mee, Jon. “After midnight: The novel in the 1980s and 1990s”. Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English. Ed.Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003.
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