Indian English Literature

Indian English literature (IEL), also known as Indian Writing in English (IWE), is the corpus of work produced by Indian writers who write in English but whose native or co-native tongue is one of India's many languages. Early works by Henry Louis Vivian Derozio and Michael Madhusudan Dutt were followed by Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo. In the 1930s, authors such as R. K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, and Raja Rao contributed to the emergence and popularity of Indian English literature. In some situations, it is linked to the works of members of the Indian diaspora who later produce works in English. Indo-Anglian literature is a term used frequently to describe it. (Not to be confused with Anglo-Indian, Indo-Anglian is a term used exclusively in the context of writing.) Although some Indo-Anglian works can be categorised as postcolonial literature, the repertoire of Indian English literature spans a wide range of themes and ideologies from the late eighteenth century to the present day, making categorization difficult.