Contemporary English Writing in India - JPCS

Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies
ISSN No. 1948-1845 (Print); 1948-1853 (Electronic)
Internet?) and also difficult to simply exclusively associate their writings with their cultural
background, as if they were living in a plastic bubble. In this sense, this issue of the Journal of
Post-Colonial Cultures and Societies has attempted to provide a space for discussion and
analysis that helps to deepen our current understanding of contemporary English writing in India
through a variety of critical stances.
Yet, the preparation of this volume has given rise to coexisting opposing forces. The
whole message and core idea that contemporary English writing in India deserved special
attention was utterly buried by the avalanche of essays dealing with some of the abovementioned
authors. This was a sign of the great attention attracted by the literary quality of such
writers and the scarce interest on the part of the academia to Indian writers living in India.
However, those few accepted papers (four out of only eight received) engage with connections
between history, economics, literature, society, religion, and so on. Indeed, these articles devote
to the analysis of how contemporary Indian writers deal with cultural and social problems or
Indian public issues through literature. This approximation may offer an illuminating perspective
complementary to that other more common approach that one usually encounters.
The reason why literature written in English by Indian authors living in India does not
receive an equal amount of interest may possibly thus lie in a dominant Westernized critical
approach. It is quite striking to find out that all the authors contributing to this issue have Indian
names. Hence my statement pointing out that a Westernized critical approach may have had
something to do with this situation. It can be a symptom of the biased stance in Western
academia but also a proof of the difficulty of approaching an utterly different cultural paradigm,
not to mention historical, sociological, literary or linguistic, from one’s own. Be that as it may, I
Editorial. Cristina M. Gámez-Fernández. JPCS. Vol. 3, No. 2, 2012.
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