The Literary Scholar

Rushdie, Roy, Ghosh, and the Globalisation of Indian English Fiction By ABS, The Literary Scholar, who believes commas can cross continents, and novels can whisper louder than nationalism. There comes a moment in every literary tradition when someone turns around, tosses out the rules, and says, “Let’s make a mess.” For Indian English Literature, that […]

Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai, Nayantara Sahgal, Bhabani Bhattacharya—and the tea-steeped fiction of postcolonial India By ABS, The Literary Scholar, who believes in women who penned silence into thunder and sewed metaphors into every sari fold. Before Indian fiction got drunk on postmodernism and magic realism, it went through a rather elegant, emotionally complex phase—where characters

From Kipling’s jungle to Forster’s caves, the British who wrote India—sometimes gloriously, often cluelessly, and always with a baggage allowance By ABS, The Literary Scholar, who believes the British wrote India like a misunderstood metaphor—and India replied with footnotes. Let’s begin with the granddaddy of them all: Rudyard Kipling You knew he was coming. You

From Ismat to InstaLit, from epics to edge cases—Indian English literature closes one circle, and dares another to begin By ABS, The Literary Scholar, who believes the scroll never ends—only changes its ink, its tongue, and sometimes, its reader. Section 1: Echoes of the Past Before hashtags and hybrid forms, there were writers who had

Experimental, regional, poetic, political, and genre-bending voices who carved new shapes into Indian English fiction By ABS, The Literary Scholar, who believes the best stories are smuggled past genre police wearing metaphor like armour. Some writers write books. Others write possibilities. This scroll is not about tradition. It’s about disruption—not always loud, but always deliberate.

Khushwant Singh, Nissim Ezekiel, Shashi Deshpande, Shashi Tharoor, and other bold voices who shaped Indian English literature from within By ABS, The Literary Scholar, who believes literary rebellion requires ink, irony, and absolutely no permission slips. By the time the world had made peace with the fact that Indians could write Booker-winning epics and diaspora

Avni Doshi, Megha Majumdar, Akhil Sharma, Tishani Doshi & the writers who made Indian fiction sharper, darker, and globally relevant again By ABS, The Literary Scholar, who believes that emotional damage, when processed properly, becomes literary acclaim. Literature evolves like fashion. One day you’re wrapped in epic metaphors and Gitanjali gloom, the next you’re writing

Jhumpa Lahiri, Rohinton Mistry, Bharati Mukherjee, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni & diaspora writers who carried India in their suitcases By ABS, The Literary Scholar, who believes exile writes the best literature—and nostalgia is just homesickness in a prettier font. They left India, but India never really left them. It clung to their characters like turmeric in

Raja Rao, R.K. Narayan, and Mulk Raj Anand: The Holy Trinity of Indian English Prose (With a Side of Spices) By ABS, The Literary Scholar, who believes the first stroke of a literary nation was made by a fountain pen dipped in cultural conflict. If Indian English Literature were a three-course meal, this trio served