No Title
SUJIT MUKHERJEE
THE SAHIBS AND THE NATIVES: A STUDY OF GUILT AND PRIDE IN ANGLO-INDIAN AND INDO-ANGLIAN NOVELS Gomathi Narayanan Chanakya Publications, Delhi, 1987, 168 pp., 98.00
May-June 1987, volume 11, No 3

There has been a rather curious reluc¬tance among Indian scholars, especially among those involved with English studies, to engage in critical discussion of British fiction about India. Professor Bhupal Singh of Dayal Singh College, then in Lahore, wrote his pioneering book on the subject more than fifty years ago. Since then sahibs and mems such as Allen Greenberger, Kai Nicholson, Benita Parry, Stephen Hemenway and, most recently, David Rubin (in a book entitled After the Raj published last year) have enlarged the scope of discussion of these novels. But no native has followed Bhupal Singh’s lead, except in stray articles and occasional reviews, and the only volume one can cite as sample of Indian opinion on the subject is the col¬lection of essays commissioned by the English Department of Karnataka University and published in 1971 under the title The Image of India in Western Creative Writing. Many of the essays included in this volume deal with Anglo-Indian fiction. Given this situation, the book under re¬view can claim the distinction of being an uncommon undertaking. In six snort chapters (all but one of less than 17 pages including notes), it presents six different elements of Indo-British relations (upto 1947) with reference mainly to about 15 novels which represent not more than three writers of Anglo-Indian fiction and six of Indo-Anglian novels

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