Secondly: If *only* South Asians living in South Asia (preferably in ‘subaltern’ situations) can write authentically about South Asia; the logical corollary occurs to your humble correspondent:
Therefore, South Asian writers living in South Asia can ONLY write about South Asia.
Which to me renders their ‘discursive location’ once more, little better than quaint, native informants…
I stand with Sepoy and thabet. Judge on literary merit; not on always already subjective points of ‘authenticity’.

The unspoken assumption of those who would criticize “Indian writers in English” FOR writing in English is that these writers are to be held culpable for their reception as “authentic ambassadors” by some of their audiences (in the West? not necessarily, or not only in the West; the Sundarbans of Amitav Ghosh’s “The Hungry Tide” are, I suspect, almost as unfamiliar to his audiences in India as to audiences elsewhere). Certainly they are complicit, in that they are aware of the manner and mode of reception, but that doesn’t make them culpable in the way that Ms. Roy’s piece appears to me to suggest.

I’m certainly not taking the position that we retreat from the essentialism of “authenticity” to the essentialism of “literary merit”– but I am suspicious of attempts to impose some sort of litmus test on Indian writers, or any writers, because they write in English. Undoubtedly, the fact that they write in English is the legacy of, and encodes, a certain history (of colonialism, of elite vs. “popular” culture, of class, of– to use Mahmood Mamdani’s schema– the “citizen” who inhabits the metropolis versus the “subject” out in “the countryside”), but many of the writers-in-English themselves are conscious of, and attempt to explore, these themes. As well they might, for the histories cannot be denied (the criticism might stand on a different plane if the writers we were speaking of were blithely unaware of and oblivious to their position).

I agree with Anil: “authenticity”– or more accurately, the policing that authenticity necessitates– runs the risk of falling prey to a reactionary politics (why stop at those who write in English? What about those who don’t DRESS in the traditional manner? Or those who don’t worship? And what is the writer who is born and raised in India, or who merely visits occasionally, but is more comfortable writing in English than in any other language, to DO?

BUT: Another reading of her column is to take her point about “distance” quite literally. Certainly, Rupa Bajwa can’t be accused of ‘inauthenticity’ along the Indian/Western axis, since Bajwa has spent nearly her whole life in Amritsar. The problem in Bajwa’s novel, if anything, is its blindness regarding the class-positioning of her characters.

In short, maybe what we’re talking about here fundamentally is social class, and only secondarily acculturation and language-choice.

This is untrue. I don’t know why you’re generalizing across Indian languages, and I’d be surprised if it were even true for yours.

I think the argument that only someone who has lived and continues to live in India can write well about it is flawed. A story is the sum of an author’s views and imagination. Not having lived a life in India or not having seen people like his characters first hand would not necessarily limit a good writer from writing well. Conversely having seen things first hand in India does not mean you can write well or even accurately about it – at least I can’t, yet.

desesperanto: ok, I will bite. If you have examples of vernacular writers being hit by the authenticity stick, I look forward to hearing about them. At least in Urdu or Punjabi or Sindhi literature, I cannot think of any examples.

Two immediate examples: Kalki v. Manikodi re: populism/elitism, or Geetha’s writings on using Dalit speech in children’s books. Developing a generally accessible literary language, which community’s speech that privileges, purifying vocabularies, avant garde techniques in literature etc have all been debated in terms of elitism, populism, authenticity.

What people may also sometimes forget is that occasionally, the reason for writing in English, despite being desi, is that as a whole, the language is the most accessible. I’m Punjabi, but I wouldn’t write in Punjabi because as a writer, I’m looking to target a demographic that goes beyond purely linguistic barriers; I want as many people as possible to read as much of my work as possible, partly because of royalties, partly because of recognition. The fact that I also happen to be more comfortable in English than I am in Punjabi/Hindi/Sindhi/Urdu is an unfortunate side-effect of my education and up-bringing, but my no means should it invalidate the merit and quality of my work.

Especially when the imaginary brat who screams for artistic liberty when his bona fides are questioned will also, when he thinks he can get away with it, pimp his authenticity for all it’s worth.

I wonder if there is some literary scholar who has connected all of this to Benedict Anderson’s work on long distance nationalism.

I am in need of your research prowess. I am looking to find as much information about Muslim mirasies in Pakistan (Punjab) as I can find. There is nothing on the internet and there are interesting historical gossip in my family about which I’d like to learn at the earliest. See my email address. Thank you for your kind help.

I don’t really what authentic means, however, there is a difference between Indian writers in local languages, or even English (like R.K Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand) and writers like Salman Rushdie. I do think the quality of literature by people like Rushdie is really good but they all seem to be informed by a very different set of concerns than those that occupied someone like RK Narayan, or Mulk Raj Anand etc.

I’m interested in what happens when a character becomes unconvincing, or a narrative forces me to segue away from the text, for the wrong reasons. Sometimes this happens when the writer literally doesn’t know his or her subject. This is clearly not the case with Ali, who sees Brick Lane in a certain way, or Bajwa, who lived in Amritsar, or Swarup. I’m saying that their characters don’t work for me in literary terms: they don’t live for me the way Mr Biswas does, or Yossarian does. I don’t know whether Naipaul “lived” Biswas’s life; I have no idea whether Yossarian was drawn from Heller’s experience of war; and I don’t care. Those characters, they’re alive for me. Bajwa’s attendant, Swarup’s beggar turned quiz contestant, and yes, Hasina in Brick Lane–they don’t work for me, as literary characters.

Why? I should be able to answer this. The closest I can come to is to suggest that these authors haven’t made the imaginative leap into their lives. Is Bajwa’s India authentic or not, is Brick Lane an accurate reflection of Bangladeshi immigrants in London or not? How would I know? And as a reader, not a critic, it’s irrelevant. As a reader, what matters to me is that these books don’t work for me, that they are unsatisfying–not as reflections of the real world, but as works of fiction.

That’s a minority opinion. But it’s mine. As for language, you use what comes to hand, what is yours. As for authentic India, I live in this country, but I haven’t the foggiest idea whether I would qualify as an authentic Indian. When you find one, let me know.

In your column, you successfully question the debate on authenticity but then condemn “the books about India and by writers of Indian origin that come to us on an ocean of advance publicity” and that such books form, “a body of writing by authors of Indian origin, about India, that forms a library of hollowed-out books.” My emphasis is to point that you are referring to more than Ali or Suri.

Why are they all ringing untrue and hollow to you? why the constant low-level hum? my reading of your column was that it is because you don’t buy the [indian] world these writers are constructing for you. I read it as a decrying authenticity and Amardeep as distance from the subject. This lack of “imaginative leap” could be either or neither. But why is it prevalent?

also related to this discussion: Wendy Shalit’s thoughts on outsider insiders fiction in this sunday’s NYT.

If “literature” (works of fiction) replaces the role of religion, as some contend, then this “literature” will neccessarily be a “reflection” of the “real world” because it will involve some form of ethical criticism (previously the duty of religious leaders).

Further how far can “it’s just a story” hold up to scrutiny when the authors themselves publically defend particular readings of their own text? It appears that when they do this the “work of fiction” becomes part of the “real world”.