In Pursuit of Paradigm Shift: Indian Literary Criticism in English

Abstract

The goal of the current paper is to demonstrate that literary criticism in India written in English has not been able to attract much interest as a subject deserving of its own investigation. The research was motivated by the observation that, although being more than a century old and displays considerable variety, the majority of historical analyses of Indian English literature do not even have room to discuss the contributions of different Indian English critics to the corpus of Indian English literature. Thus, it is said that from the commencement of English studies in India until the present, one scarcely finds a distinct study of the major tendencies in Indian English criticism. One of the main characteristics of the current article that indicates a crisis in the area of literary criticism in India is the absence of meta-critical resources in connection to Indian English criticism. The critical riders in focus are: • Why is it so usual for any researcher to encounter limits in Indian critical practice? • What is the reason for the predominance of an Anglo-centric approach in Indian critical practice? • How can Indian literary criticism in English be decolonized?