On Indian English

Of course I am earnest about Indian English. But Indian English has traveled a long way these hundred years. Vikram Seth's Suitable Boy and many recent books of essays and novels are very much different in style from the early authors. Certain authors in literature, philosophy and religion have attained permanent status, appealing as ever to succeeding generations, like Swami Vivekananda, Sri Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Dr Radhakrishnan, Swami Chinmayananda, and Sri R K Narayan, and many others. But if we read some of the early works, like Altar-Stairs of Rao Sahib Dr Ramakrishna Rao, 1936, we see the difference in style and expressions. In many places in Altar Stairs the author is trying to translate literally his thoughts and feelings set in domestic customs and style. When he writes about Dewan Bahadur R Venkat Ratnam, his mentor, he writes like this - 

"It must suffice by itself as a proper source of pride and pleasure that the most distinguished son of Andhra now at the helm of higher education in the Presidency is, to this Magazine as also to the present writer, a fellow-‘native* of dear old Masulipatam" 

"The ‘boy orator' of the seminary then acquired in the regimental ranks the appellation of ‘the little prodigy with four hands* in recognition of the additional limbs conferred by the strange academic gown. One year of journalistic activity amid the vital formative forces of the metropolis; and, once for all, the noblest of professions claimed for its own the divinely-appointed candidate with the presage and the benediction, ‘This is my beloved son in whom I shall be well pleased.*" 

And it is also true that Indian English is always developing and is becoming more sharp and stylish in reflecting our ethos.
Srirangam Mohanarangan
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