Indian literature an introduction

If some one were tell to us that Indian literature is a recent cultural phenomenon, what would our reaction be? Would we not b scandalized ? " How can such a statement possibly be true"? -  we are likely to ask. Did n't we have the Vedas, the Buddhist Sutras, the sufi songs, Bhakthi Poetry, the renaissance of art and literature during the period of the mughals, the vijayanagara kings.

How can these traditions, which extend back through centuries, conceivably be recorded be regarded as "recent"?

And at, is not "Indian literature" more than the some of the literature that exists over time in the cultural-geographical mass that is today called India.

What some theorists have suggested is that while there have been diverse expressive traditions in the sub-continent, it was brought together in to a category called "Indian Literature" while we were imagining and building this nation - India.

Clearly, we have processed Indian Writing in English to mean only those writings in genres that have been previously identified as "literary". Now, such and understanding raises a trail of other issues. "Literature", like all cultural concepts, as been continually changing.

Today, because of the challenges thrown at it from various quarters, there have been attempts to redefine literature to include a diverse range of utterances. auto biographies and travel writing have come to be included as literary texts. Primary because as translated works these writings have a circulation and a life as English texts ; they reach audiences that would have other wise been unreachable.

Take for example Sharankumar Limbale's Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature.Various Bhasha Literary traditions have had long history's of  Dalit articulations and authorizations, which are only now getting  translated in to English. Indian literature also brings us to the space that Indian writing in English as among the literature producing other national languages.

How do we place Indian writing  in English in Indian literature? the debates over this issue rages on some would argue that Indian Writing in English has moved from a time in past when it was an unfancied and illegitimate body of writing to the present, when it exerts almost a hegemonic influence.