Chetan Bhagat: Remaking the Novel in India

Abstract

A curious thing happened to the Indian novel in English on the way to the twenty-first century. It stopped being a child of midnight. It even stopped being a child. Its “midnight” is now spent at the call center, and its “children” are twenty- and thirty-something readers in small towns with weak English and few literary demands, who nevertheless appear to have transformed the publishing landscape in India. In contrast to prize-winning literary novelists such as Aravind Adiga, Amitav Ghosh, and Kiran Desai, whose status is underwritten by recognition overseas rather than in India, writers of the twenty-first century Indian novel in English thrive because of a loyal base in India that keeps them on domestic bestseller lists with print runs of over a million that easily outpace the polite printings of 300 that internationally renowned literary novelists enjoy. India's robust market for English books has led some observers to predict that it will become “the biggest English language book-buying market in the world” by 2020 (Burke). The claim is hardly hyperbolic: in a dense entertainment ecosystem that includes television, print, the internet, radio, cricket, social media, and gaming, all nimbly delivering content skillfully niched to consumers, annual revenues from print in India are double the revenues from film and just behind television. A 2013 report on the Indian media and entertainment industry by the global consulting firm KPMG remarks that “India is an outlier country where print is still a growth market.” For helpful comments on earlier drafts, grateful thanks to: Ulka Anjaria, Nancy Armstrong, Ian Duncan, Eric Hayot, and Peter Logan; audiences at a 2013 talk at George Washington University, especially Kavita Daiya, Nathan Hensley, and Coilin Parsons; the Center for the Humanities at Temple University; a 2014 MLA roundtable on “New Theories of the Novel”; and the participants in a workshop on “Asia's Anglophone Novel” at the University of Pittsburgh organized by Susan Andrade. Special thanks to Amal Nanavati for insisting so long ago that I read Chetan Bhagat's novels. I'm glad I did. Research for this chapter was generously supported by a Summer Research Award from Temple University.