Indian writers in English

Many times, it is better if our idea/thinking is corroborated by another person. We atleast get the satisfaction that another human being is thinking or thought on 'similar lines'. That was the case with the article in Hindu newspaper today - Mirror, Mantra. Though I felt that the author was indulging in euphemisms or maybe the author is a 'natural' pacifist -

No, I am not accusing Rushdie and Naipaul of bland mimicry or of consciously catering to Western opinions

They are not the Other. They are not even different, really. They are the West today.

Unfortunately even an Indian who writes about India in English is not likely to be made visible by agents, clubs and book chains in the West: she has to write about India in certain approved ways, ways that very often depend on a celebration of the “multicultural” West either as actual presence or enabling possibility.

On the other hand, I am fully convinced that all, yes ALL, Indian writers have been conformist not to Indians but to Western audience. I remember an article long back in Hindu about 'occidental'ization and 'oriental'ization - former referring to works of India or the 'East' being "tempered" to suit the Western audience and latter referring to works of UK or US or West being "tempered" to suit the Eastern audience. When I was in my school, I knew that my 'opinion' will be trampled but still I had the opinon that RK Narayan, for instance, was trying to hard to translate appalam, dosai etc - why should he or for that matter any Indian writer? Of course, I liked RK Narayan for his simple and down-to-earth books.

Salman Rushdie - I never understood what was 'great' about him - UK guys should be crazy to give him Booker Prize, but maybe he wrote what they WANTED to read. I found 'Midnight's children' mediocre or taken off from Indian (melo)drama and not really reflective of India, forget Indian muslims. Should a novel or book be 'autobiographical'? I dont know but I am inclined to believe that there should be some 'level' of it because that is how the author perceives this world, the people and the events. My friend once gave a perspective - Salman Rushdie writes about a Jew in India (not many may know that there are Jews in India as well), so he does all the research to get his 'facts' right in his novel and thus 'synthesis'es a novel to bring a new perspective - something like 'what if?'. I can only say that I am not a fan of such techniques. Similarly desis cant write about India of now, they can probably write with old India of their time as background. Obviously world or any country is changing over time continuously. They cannot read newspapers or articles in magazines and newspapers about India and add 'their old masala' to cook up some fiction. Rather it is 'pseudo-fiction' - why should fiction have a 'real canvas/background'? Infact, I am also not keen on scientific fiction. They say (Krugman too says) that Isaac Asimov's Foundation series is great etc but I found it too boring. Going to another planet or changing DNA as in Robin Cook's book etc is 'fiction' and 'fiction' to a great extent is escapist. I rather would like to read what, how and more importantly why things are, the way they are. I think that I can think 'better' than others on how things 'add up', reason out why what happened the way it happened and what 'trends' are.