LANGUAGE IN INDIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH

Abstract

In an article published in 2006, Jahan Ramazani makes a valid point - and a point made less often in mainstream critical circles in USA and UK than in of postcolonial criticism - about dominance of single-nation genealogies in studies of Modem and contemporary poetry in English.* 1 Strangely, case of Indian English poetry can be seen differently: Indian poetry in English has been far too readily and uncritically inserted into moulds of transnationalism. Perhaps this was inevitable, given its name. After all, while critics talk mostly of English, American, Irish, Scottish, Canadian or, even, Jamaican poetry, we talk of Indian English (or, earlier, Anglo-Indian and IndoAnglian) poetry. Its very name inserts Indian poetry in English into transnational networks, and while this insertion is correct and necessary to a point, it can also be misleading and unfair to distinctive character of Indian poetry in English if taken too far.This insertion starts quite early on. After all, as V.K. Gokak famously remarked: Indo-Anglian poetry was bom under a Romantic star.2 One has to agree with this perception to a certain degree, for, at least, historically, when first significant Indian English poet (Derozio) started writing, major British Romantics, like Lord Byron and William Wordsworth, were still alive. Romantic star obviously twinkled in West, and cast its light on Indian poetry in English. But, it did not twinkle in same way as in West - far from it. Let us cast a look at an early poem The Harp of by Henry Derozio (1809-1831).3Derozio starts his sonnet by addressing, with a degree of apotheosis, the of India:Why hang'st thou lonely on yon withered bough?Unstrung for ever, must thou there remain;Thy music once was sweet - who hears it now?Why doth breeze sigh over thee in vain?Forget about Romantic diction of poem: it would be as anachronistic to blame Derozio for it as it would be to rap ghost of Lord Byron, who was alive when Derozio started writing, on knuckle, for poems like The Giaour and The Corsair. What is interesting is fact that Derozio laments silencing of of India. This lament fits into a growing Orientalist tendency in nineteenth century to posit a glorious ancient past for India, and contrast it to degraded present. This was in keeping with nineteenth-century theories of civilization and degeneration and, later, social evolution, and it could cut both ways: it could be used to defend British colonizers (as restorers of India's ancient vigour) and it could be used to critique British colonization4.As such, if Derozio's sonnet, written in English, is a fragment of new culture of colonized India, it is also - despite being written in English - a critique of present circumstances and, hence, at least potentially a critique of colonization. This aspect is under-girded by imagery of second stanza, where of India is presented as having been bound by Silence in her fatal chain, portrayed as neglected and compared, perhaps with echoes of Shelley's Ozymandias5, with a ruined on plain. If ruined monument is a partly Orientalist construct of Indian past, desert plain is a potentially nationalist critique of colonization.The sonnet proceeds. poet humbly acknowledges his inferiority to great poets of past (many a hand more worthy far than mine), notes that those hands are cold, and concludes:... but if thy notes divineMay be by mortal wakened once again,Harp of my let me strike strain!Note again: harp of my country, not of, say, Muses. In eighteenth century, Black Caribbean poet, Francis Williams, wrote a Latin ode to welcome a new British Governor. In itself, an act of colonial mimicry, ode however assumed a radical, independent perspective - voice of subaltern - not only in its direct critique of colour-based racism but also in fact that it was addressed to a black Muse. …