Remembering the Founding Fathers of Indian English Fiction

Though historically Indian English fiction owes its origin to Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife (1864), its foundation was laid by Mulk Raj Anand when he published his Untouchable in 1935. R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao joined him in giving, as it were, ‘a local habitation and a name’ to Indian English fiction in nineteen thirties. Anand’s Untouchable and Coolie, Narayan’s Swami and Friends and The Bachelor of Arts, Raja Rao’s Kanthapura mark the beginning of Indian English fiction. And these three novelists continued to write till the end of the twentieth century.