A Background to Indian English Poetry

Early Indian English Poetry

Introduction:

Indian English poetry was born under a romantic star. The period from 1850 to 1900 is
the imitative phase when the Indian poets were romantic poets in the Indian garb or in George
Bottomley's words "Matthew Arnold in a saree" or as some derogatively observes "Shakuntala
in a mini-skirt." It was highly influenced by the poetry of the English romantics like
Wordsworth, Keats, Shelly and Byron. It began with verse romances and lyrics written in the
romantic vein. Toru Dutt’s poems are the best case in the point.

Genuine lyric poetry and lyrical narrative poetry were attempted with enthusiasm in the
last quarter of the 19th century. Toru Dutt’s ‘Ancient Ballads’ (1882), Manmohan Ghose’s ‘Love
Song and Elegies(1898)’ Shri Aurobindo’s ‘Songs to Myrtilla’ (1895) and Sarojini Naidu’s ‘The
Golden Threshold’ (1905) are the publications reflecting the love of romantic art. Michael
Madhusudan Dutt’s ‘The Captive Lady’ is a poetical romance in the manner of Scott and Byron.
Manmohan Ghose’s melancholy strain in his poems echoes Keats’.

Most of the Pre-Independence Indian poets in English lived and wrote when the Indian
freedom struggle had become a deep-rooted nationalistic upsurge. In the words of P.K.J. Kuroki
“the pre-independence Indian poetry in English was the voice of the contemporary Indian time-
spirit”. Sri Aurobindo wrote that it was an “attempt of a re-awakened national spirit to find a
new impulse for self-expression which shall give the spiritual force for a great reshaping and
rebuilding”. Derrozio’s sonnets ‘The Harp of India’, ‘To India- My Native Land’, ‘My Country in
the Day of Glory Past’ express his ardent love for Indianism.

Nationalism in Indian literature initiated at the time of 1857 revolt although its root
arose in 1835 when Kylas Chunder Dutt wrote “A Journal of Forty-Eight Hours of the Year1945”
and Shoshee Chunder Dutt wrote “The Republic of Orissa: A Page from the Annals of the
Twentieth Century”, both project into future, describing battles of liberation against British.
Bankimchandra Chatterjee (1838-94) significantly influenced the notion of Indian religion and
secular nationalism through his writings. He uses religion as an important tool to rise the people
against colonial rulers.

We can find in Tagore’s poetry the numerous aspects of the anti-colonial nationalist
struggle in India against the colonial regime. He proposed of nationalism on humanitarian
ground instead of nation. “It is my conviction that my countrymen will truly gain their India by
fighting against the education which teaches them that a country is greater than the ideals of
humanity”. He opposed the ideas of the nationalism imitated from west. Toru Dutt,
Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekanand, Sri Aurobindo and Sri Sarojini Naidu were the
prominent poets who revealed the soul of India to the west through their poetry.

Indian English Poetry is now more than two hundred years old. In Indian English Poetry,
Henry Derozio’s Poems was the first volume in1 827. To understand the development of Indian
English Poetry and its proper perspectives, it is necessary to consider its origin and continuity.
Some critics consider Indian English Poetry into two parts: Pre Independent and Post
Independent.

Early Indian English Poetry (By the Indian Revolt of 1857)

Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809 – 1831) is the noteworthy first Indian English poet. He was a
son of Indo – Portuguese father and an English mother. Derozio lived too short poetic career
which was of hardly half a dozen years. There are two volumes of poetry on his name: Poems
(1827) and The Fakir of Jungheera: A Metrical Tale and Other Poems (1828). The short poems of
him revealed a strong influence of British romantic poets in theme, sentiment, imagery and
diction. His satirical verse and long narrative poems indicated his affinity with Byron. Burning
nationalistic zeal was a notable feature of Derozio’s poetry. His patriotic utterances certified
Derozio as an Indian English poet, a son of soil. He is also a pioneer in the use of Indian myth
and legend, imagery and diction.

In 1830, the first volume of verse appeared The Shair of Ministrel and Other Poems which was
by a pure Indian blood, Kashiprasad Ghose (1809 – 73). . It was an outcome of an ambition to
compose original verse in English.

The Dutts: Rajnarain Dutt (1824 -89), Shoshee Chunder Dutt (1815 - 65) and Hur Chunder Dutt
(1831 - 1901) contributed to Indian English poetry with their undistinguished poetic works.
Michael Madhusudan Dutt (1824 - 73) is also well known as an Indian poet. He wrote some
sonnets, short poems and two long poems in English. The poets like Scott and Byron were his
models. His In Vision of Past (1849) is in the form of Miltonic blank verse, with weighty, abstract
diction and Latin inversions.

In this period of Indian English literature the British rule was accepted as a great boon. The
holocaust of the Indian revolt of 1857 ushered in different ideas.

Indian English Poetry in the Period of Freedom Struggle (1857 to 1950)

The Dutt Family Album (1870) is the first notable poetry work of this period. It is the only
instance of family anthology in Indian English Poetry. This is a collection of 187 poems by three
Dutt brothers – Govind Chunder Dutt, Hur Chunder Dutt and Greece Chunder Dutt. Their major
subjects are Christian sentiment, nature and Indian history and legend.

Ram Sharma (1837 – 1918) was another notable poet of the time. In his poetry the Hindu yogic
experience was expressed through conventional western myth and frame.

Toru Dutt (185–77) brought up Indian English Poetry from imitation to authenticity. Torulata
was born in a Hindu family but was baptized with family members in 1862. Reading and music
were her hobbies. She learnt English in France and England. She sailed for Europe in1869 and
returned to India in 1873. She died at the age of twenty one when her talent was maturing.
Toru Dutt’s Keatsian progress during the last two years of her life is revealed in her posthumous
publication Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan (1882). The themes of these poems
indicate that Toru Dutt is the first Indian poet who used Indian myth and legend extensively.
Though she was brought up in Christian living or in a half anglicized environment, she gives the
treatment of instinctive and spiritual understanding of the legends. Her diction is naturally of
the Victorian romantic school. She shows her prosodic skill in using different forms like ballad,
blank verse and the sonnet. Unlike Kashiprasad Ghose and M. M. Dutt, Toru Dutt’s poetry is
virtually free from imitation.

Other contemporary poets were Cowasji Nowrosi Vesuvala, M. M. Kunte and Nagesh
Vishvanath Pai. They belonged to the then Bombay Presidency. But it is said that Bengal was
the first home of Indian English literature. Moreover it continued its dominance on the Indian
English poetry for many more years.

Manmohan Ghose (1869 – 1024) was educated in England. He was sent to England at ten. He is
a classic example which shows an exile heart, sense of alienation and unhappy childhood and
adolescence. Manmohan Ghose published Premveera a collection of verse in 1890, Love Songs
and Elegies in 1898 and Songs of Love and Death in 1926.

Sir Aurobindo (1872 – 1950), Manmohan’s younger brother, had also same kind of upbringing.
He had passed Civil Service Examination and was a master of many languages like Greek, Latin,
French, English, German, Italian, Sanskrit and Bengali. In due course, he became Mahapurusha,
a Mahayogi. He founded the centre of yoga at Pondicherry. Sir Aurobindo is well known as a
poet and critic of life and letters. His Collected Poems and Plays is the best known. Sir
Aurobindo has a parallel record of poetic achievements as a translator and narrative poet, as a
metrical and verbal craftsman, as a lyricist and dramatist and as a ‘futurist’ poet. ‘Urvasie’ and
‘Love and Death’ are his beautifully articulated narrative poems. ‘Baji Prabhu’ is a first rate
action poem, Percus, the Deliverer is a blank verse drama. ‘Thought the Paraclete’ and ‘The
Rose of God’ are the finest mystical poems in the language. Savitri has created a new kind of
epic poetry. He has been aptly called as Milton of India.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was another prominent contemporary poet. Mahatma

Gandhi called him as ‘The Great Sentinel’. He touched and enriched modern Indian life in many
ways. He was poet, dramatist, novelist, short-story writer, composer, painter, thinker,
educationist, nationalist and internationalist also. He as a bilingual poet occupied the significant
place in Indo – Anglican poetry. ‘The Child’ and a few other poems are written in English.

His Geetanjali (1913), a prose poem, compelled a worldwide attention and he won the Nobel
Prize for literature. His prose works too were written originally in English for international
public. After Geetanjali, Tagore wrote ‘The Gardener’ (1913), ‘Stray Birds’ (1916), ‘Lovers Gift
and Crossing’ (1918) and ‘The Fugitive’ (1921). W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound were the admirers
of Tagore’s poetry. Tagore’s verse in English had lyrical quality; it had rhythm of free verse. He
dealt with simplicity, seriousness and passion. He used colloquial idiom and archaic vocabulary
like ‘thee’ and ‘thou’.

Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) started her career as a poet but later she became a prominent
politician of Gandhian era. She had recognition in England much earlier. Her first volume of
poetry, The Golden Threshhold (1905) was followed by The Bird of Time (1912) and The Broken
Wing (1917). Her collected poems appeared in The Sceptred Flute (1946). Her lyrics are strongly
influenced by British romanticism and Percian and Urdu poets. In all the four volumes by
Sarojini Naidu witness her unerring sense of beauty and melody. Her poems present a feast of
delight to the reader. As a lyricist, she always spoke in a ‘private voice’ and never bothered to
express the burning problems of her day. But she is the first rank artist having the strength of
perfect rhythm with which she can be close to Toru Dutt, Rabindranath Tagore and Sri
Aurobindo. Though she appears hopelessly outdated by the standards of modern poetic taste,
she is historically significant and intrinsically important.

Harindranath Chattopadhyay, born in 1898, is also a well-known poet. He has written some
brilliant pieces of poetry. Many of his poems are marked a devotional note and his belief in
Marxist ideology. He has remained as an idealist and seeker of spiritual truth. He published
numerous volumes of verse like ‘The Feast of Youth’ (1967), ‘Virgins and Vineyards’ (1967), ‘The
Magic Tree’ (1922), ‘Poems and Plays’ (1927) and ‘Spring in Winter’ (1955).

In the first quarter of the twentieth century, many poets continued to write in the Romantic
and Victorian fashion. The poets like Swami Vivekanand, Harindranath, Meherjee, A. F.
Kabardar, N. V. Thadni, Nizamat Jung and Anand Acharya exploited Indian or oriental thought
and legend. N. W. Pai produced a romance blank verse, ‘The Angel of Misfortune’ (1905).

In this period Indian English literature came into existence. India’s rediscovery of her identity
became vigorous. The Indian English literature began to progress, though by absorbing, learning
and imitating from the West.

The Post Independent Indian Poetry in English (After 1950)

Like American, Australian and Canadian English literatures, Indian English literature used
to express the British influence. But the post independent poetry of modern India discarded the
so called influence of the West.

 The post independent Indian poetry in English shared beliefs, values, customs,
behaviours etc. of the society.
 The poetry gave wide range cultural trait through symbols, situations, themes and
others.
 They presented the real world conditions, i. e. the contemporary India.
 Indian legends, folklores, situations, idioms, and themes became the features of Indian
English Poetry.
 Naturally the variety of myths, symbols, images, emotions, sentiments became
associated with Indian tradition and culture. The poets’ attempts were consciously
Indian.
 Even the conventional poetic language was replaced by colloquial.
 The modern Indian English poets reflected perspective and milieu after the
independence.

Due to the changes in the modern world, the nature, living standard and behaviour of
the man was being changed. The persona in this poetry was also changed. His inner conflict,
alienation, failure, frustration, loneliness, his relations with himself and others, his individual,
family and social contexts, his love, etc. became the themes of the poetry. At the same time the
modern Indian poetry in English became complex, harsh and defiance of tradition. Indian
poetry in a true sense was being appeared by the fifties. In 1958, P. Lal and his associates
founded the Writers Workshop in Calcutta which became an effective forum for modernist
poetry. The first modernist anthology was ‘Modern Indo-Anglian Poetry’ (1958) edited by P. Lal
and K. Raghavendra Rao.

Nissim Ezekiel (1924 – 2003) was the first of the ‘new’ poets. He is aptly called the father of
modern Indian poetry in English. He is a very Indian poet in Indian English. He experimented
idioms and language of Indian’s which became the matter of criticism and was looked down
upon as ‘Baboo Angrezi / Bombay English / Hinglish etc. His published poetry collections are: ‘A
Time to Change’ (1952), ‘Sixty Poems’ (1953), ‘The Third’ (1959), ‘The Unfinished Man’ (1960),
‘The Exact Name’ (1965), ‘Hymns in Darkness’ (1976) and ‘Latter Day Psalms’ (1984). He is the
poet of situations, human beings about which he wrote with subtle observations. He wrote with
a touch of humour and irony but with genuine sympathy. The alienation is the central theme of
Ezekiel’s work. He is the poet of city culture especially of the city, Bombay. Obsessive sense of
failure, self-doubt and self-laceration, exile from himself, love, marriage, art and artist are also
themes of Ezekiel’s poetry.

A.K. Ramanujan (b. 1929 -) is the most outstanding poet of the sixties. He wrote in Tamil and
Kannada, ‘The Interior Landscape’ (1967), and ‘Speaking of Siva’ (1972) are translations into
English respectively. Though A. K. Ramanujan settled in America, his poetry grows out of Indian
experiences and sensibility with all his memories of family, local places, images, beliefs and
history. His memories play a vital role in composing poems. Ramanujan’s Indianness is notable
in terms of Indian myths, history, culture, heritage and Indian topography and environment. His
style is lucid and calm. The volumes of his poetry are ‘The Striders’ (1966), ‘Relations’ (1967),
and ‘Second Sight’ (1976). ‘Selected Poems’ (1986), ‘The Collected Poems of A. K. Ramanujan’
(1995) and ‘Uncollected Poems and Prose of A. K. Ramanujan’ (2001) are posthumous
publications.

R. Parthasarathy (b. 1934 - ) is a Tamil poet who is acutely conscious of complex relationship
between Tamil mind and Europe. Though he was hoping for England, as a future home, he
returned with ‘a new understanding of myself and India.’ His ‘Rough Passage’ (1977) is an
autobiographical work that deals with his mother tongue, homeland and his personal
experiences. He uses shocking but apt imagery and metaphors.

Gieve Patel (b. 1940) is an Indian Parsi poet, playwright, painter, as well as a practicing
physician/doctor based in Mumbai. Patel belongs to a group of writers who have subscribed
themselves to the 'Green Movement' which is involved in an effort to protect the environment.
His poems speak of deep concerns for nature and expose man's cruelty to it. Like Ezekiel, an
outsider, being neither Hindu nor Muslim in India, he is rather conscious. But he feels no
rootlessness. Patel’s works include Poems (1966), How Do You Withstand, Body (1976) and
Mirrored Mirroring (1991). His style is colloquial and ironical and most directly reflective.
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (b. 1947) writes poetry in which the image is all dominant. He began
his career in 1966 with ‘Bharatmata’ (Mother India), a long satirical poem on modern India.
‘Woodcuts on Paper’ (1967), ‘Pomes / Poems / Poemas’ (1971) and ‘Nine Enclosures’ (1976) are
volumes of poems on his name. He enjoys imaginative freedom and his world is of childhood
fantasy and play. He is an experimentalist and force of liberty in Indian English poetry.
Mehrotra is a surrealistic who returns to realism later. His poetry is an immediate reaction to
his discovery of various modern and post-modern styles and poetics. Some of his poems are
autobiographical and nostalgic. A. K. Mehrotra asserted, ‘I am not an Indian poet but a poet
writing a universal language of poetry, of feeling, of love, hate and sex.’

Jayanta Mahapatra (born 22 October 1928)

He is the first Indian poet to win a Sahitya Akademi award for English poetry. He is the author of
poems such as "Indian Summer" and "Hunger", which are regarded as classics in modern Indian
English literature. He was awarded a Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian honour in India in
2009. Mahapatra was part of a trio of poets who laid the foundations of Indian English Poetry,
which included A. K. Ramanujan and R. Parthasarathy. Over time, he has managed to carve a
quiet, tranquil poetic voice of his own, different from those of his contemporaries.

Mahapatra has authored 27 books of poems, of which seven are in Odia and the rest in English.
His poetry volumes include Relationship, Bare Face and Shadow Space. Besides poetry, he has
experimented widely with myriad forms of prose. His published books of prose include Green
Gardener, an anthology of short stories and Door of Paper: Essay and Memoirs. Mahapatra is
also a distinguished editor and has been bringing out the literary magazine, Chandrabhaga. His
poems have appeared in prestigious poetry anthologies like The Dance of the Peacock: An
Anthology of English Poetry from India, published by Hidden Brook Press, Canada.

Mahapatra has also translated from Odia into English, and some of his translations are
published in the bi-monthly literary magazine Indian Literature. Some anthologies of his
translations have also been published.

Mahapatra is a poet of landscape and mostly, his poems are but a kind of search for peace in
the natural essence. He is a poet who begins with some sort of image (or group of images) and
then follows to make it into a poem. His poems mostly talk about the grim realities of India or
the great landscapes, the geographical beauty our country has.

Vikram Seth (born 20 June 1952) has written several novels and poetry books. He has won
several awards such as Padma Shri, Sahitya Academy Award, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, WH
Smith Literary Award and Crossword Book Award. Seth's collections of poetry such as Mappings
and Beastly Tales are notable contributions to the Indian English language poetry canon. Seth
has published eight books of poetry and three novels.

Contemporary Indian English Poetry

Features
1. Modern Indian English writers reject the old tradition of using mythical story. They do not
exaggeratedly glorify the Indian culture.
2. In the modern era of writing, poetry become more secular and realistic in nature. The potes
are now less romanticizing the reality. They do not live in a utopian world now. They are more
concerned about the fact and real situation of the country.
3. The focus of the poets has been shifted from the nature, ancient mythology, and legends to
the dirty poverty striken dingy cityscapes.
4. The poets are more candid and jolly and friendly in the mode life of expression and
clarification. They now freely talks about sexuality without any hesitation and other themes
which apparently would seem obscene to the poets of the pre-independence old poets.
5. Irony becomes the most sharp weapon of the poets. They use satirical and sarcastic ideas to
mock or criticize others which make them popular among the readers.
6. Moreover, almost all the poets of the post-independence era suffer from a sense of
alienation and they are continuously in search of a sense of integrity with their cultural rules.

Notable Poets:

Meena Alexander (1951–2018) Born in Allahabad, India, poet Meena Alexander was raised in
Kerala and Sudan. Described as “undoubtedly one of the finest poets of contemporary times”
by The Statesman (India), she was the author of numerous collections of poetry,
including Atmospheric Embroidery (2018), Birthplace with Buried Stones (2013), and PEN Open
Book Award-winner Illiterate Heart (2002). In her poetry, which has been translated into several
languages, she explores migration, trauma, and reconciliation.

Mamang Dai (born 1957 ) is an Indian poet, novelist and journalist based in Itanagar, Arunachal
Pradesh. She received Sahitya Akademi Award in 2017 for her novel The Black Hill. When she
began writing, she wrote romantic verse and stories. She then moved from the theme of the
self to focus on a larger reality. She reflects upon the sense of a close knit community living in
remoter towns and villages. River Poems (2004), The Balm of Time (2008) Hambreelmai's
Loom (2014), Midsummer Survival Lyrics (2014) are her poetry collections.

Mamta Kalia (Born: 2 November 1940) is an Indian author, teacher and poet, writing primarily
in Hindi and focusing predominantly on the lived experiences of women from middle-class
families in India.

Eunice de Souza (1940 – 2017) was born into a Goan Catholic family settled in Pune. In a career
spanning four decades, de Souza published five collections of poetry and a couple of novels,
compiled anthologies of Indian women’s writing, edited volumes of folk tales and poems for
children, and contributed review articles on art, literature and culture for a weekly column to
the Mumbai Mirror.

Her poetry is imbued with a sense of the personal, distilled from the lived experience of being a
Catholic woman in a patriarchal set-up, and is simultaneously also political in its trenchant
critique of the oppressive forces of the family and the Church that constitute her cultural
milieu.
Her poetry collections include Women in Dutch Painting (1988), Ways of Belonging (1990),
Selected and New Poems (1994), A Necklace Of Skulls (2009) and Learn from the Almond Leaf
(2016)

Karthika Naïr (born 1972) is a French-Indian poet and dance producer and curator. Her notable
works include Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata, published by HarperCollins India
and Arc Publications in 2015. She is India's only poet to have won a literary award for fiction for
a work of poetry. Nair’s poems embody the fierce human impulse to survive in a marauding
universe where dreams are constantly snuffed out. The proximity to performing arts, and to
dance in particular, is evident in much of Nair’s poetry.

Vivek Narayanan was born in India and raised in Zambia. Narayanan's books of poems
include Universal Beach (2006), Life and Times of Mr S (2012), and After (2022).

Jeet Thayil was born in Kerala, India in 1959 and was educated in Hong Kong, New York and
Bombay. He is a performance poet and songwriter with four published collections of
poetry: Gemini (1992); Apocalypso (1997); English (2004) and These Errors Are Correct (2008).

He is also the editor of Divided Time: India and the End of Diaspora (2006), a book of essays;
the Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets (2008)

In 2012, he wrote the libretto for the opera, Babur in London, in collaboration with the
composer Edward Rushton.

His first novel, Narcopolis (2012), set in Bombay in the 1970s and '80s,was shortlisted for the
2012 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

Meena Kandasamy (born 1984) is an Indian poet, fiction writer, translator and activist from
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Meena published two collections of poetry, Touch (2006) and Ms.
Militancy (2010). From 2001-2002, she edited The Dalit, a bi-monthly alternative English
magazine of the Dalit Media Network. Kandasamy is one of the Dalit writers who attempted to
spread light on such aspect of Dalit life which found no representation in the mainstream
literature. Untouchables in her poetry are represented neither as sympathetic beings nor as
inferior human beings.