The teaching of English language and literature in India is a futile exercise in the academia since this mechanically imitative academic activity is carried out with total indifference and insensitivity to the needs and hopes, and aspirations and ambitions of thousands of students who join B.A. English either on their volition or on compulsion. While framing course objectives and syllabi, Boards of Studies in English in Indian universities never take into account the needs and competencies of the prospective students who join the course without any academic preparation at the school. English Studies is being offered at all levels as if it were an extension of the colonial project. Its grand objectives are incommensurate with contemporary Indian realities. Ironically, it is a sordid state of affairs that English language and literature students can leave the portals of their institutions with degrees in first class but without ever having truly read any literature or acquired functional literacy skills in English at all. Indigestible literary explications in the form of dry lectures in the classroom without their being solicited by student demands drive students to rely upon rote learning through bazaar notes, and the demand for proficiency in English remains a distant dream for many a student even after M. Phil degree programme. English language and literature teaching in India has become a highly subsidized sick industry with a vicious circle of imagined consumers and untrained or ill-trained workforce. It lacks both direction and vision. It has to be revamped with changing times and needs by making it more consumer-friendly and relevant with objectives revisited. Students of English literature as well as General English demand the acquisition of skills in communicative modern English. Literacy skills in English are a prerequisite for the appreciation of literary merits of the canonical literature. Literary skills of reading and interpreting literature and cognitive skills of academic, research, and rhetorical writing on literary works are the demands of the students of English literature.

The teaching of English literature with contrived aims and objectives has become a cultural-educational reality in India. The reasons for its introduction as a colonial project and its sustenance and maintenance now in postcolonial India as an academic discipline in its own right should be different, or else the academics will be accused of perpetuating the colonial mindset among free citizens. Aims and methods of teaching English literature need to be interrogated with the changing times and needs though such an interrogation might inevitably entail self-criticism on the part of English literature teachers who very often assume to be qualified as purveyors of literary epistemology without any formal and professional training. This paper aims at analyzing the aims and objective of English literary education in India, scrutinizing its pedagogical practices, and integrating literary theories with literary studies as a means of achieving the (mis)stated goals.

2023

The paper problematizes various issues, like nomenclature, sense and sensibility, Indian-English and suitability as teaching materials, related to “Indian English Literature” and discusses them in all possible dimensions. The discussion on the appellation concentrates on “Indo-Anglican Literature”, “Indo-English Literature”, “Indo-Western literature” and “Indian English Literature”. The reasons for the last term being dumped by the literary historians, creative writers and critics in favour of “Indian Writing in English” are explored. It is argued that the makers of this hybrid literature neither use Indian English nor do they display Indian sense and sensibility. The paper contests the claim that the diasporic writings are Indian writings. It is postulated that the themes of this literature do not enlighten the reader about the concerns of the main Indian society in the light of the matrix of the multinational publishers and the displaced authors in the capitalists and globalized world. If this literature could be used to achieve the objectives of NEP-2020 and if it could be taught in Indian regional languages are the other issues taken up.

It is not uncommon to hear from the academics that standards of English studies have drastically deteriorated over the period of time. One of the causal factors normally attributed to this decline in standards is students' incapacity and incapability to read and appreciate literary texts. But one should not conveniently overlook the fact that English studies in India is made available only through academic institutions where teachers and pedagogy play a vital role in benchmarking and sustaining standards. Here prevails the pedagogic pandemonium first in the minds of literary academics who themselves face the linguistic handicap of English as a second language. They cannot equate themselves as much with native teachers of English literature as teachers of regional literatures in India. Ironically, for a majority of English literature students at all levels, English is still a foreign language. Hence, while English literature teachers face a single disadvantage of using English as a second language, English literature students confront doubt disadvantages: English as a foreign language and they have no competence in it. Hence, it is a silent conspiracy to exclude language study from literary study by way of emphasising the contents. Linguistic competence is the first and foremost requirement for acquiring literary competence. Both cannot be acquired simultaneously, but only successively. Analysis and appreciation of literary texts mercifully rests on language which provides the necessary matrix for the creation of literature. It is not justifiable and fair to level charges against students when they never ever get an opportunity to acquire literary competence for both aesthetic appreciations subjectively and cognitive comprehension objectively. Students, in fact, become victims of the 'cell-prison' status being internalized first by the academics and then accorded to 'lang-lit' components of aesthetic branch of human knowledge. This paper aims to examine the importance of language as a subject and as a medium in teaching of English literature, and it sets a working hypothesis that language is an equally important and indispensable tool for creation and consumption of literature. 2

Artha - Journal of Social Sciences, 2019

The article highlights how new sub-disciplines such as Malayalam literature are increasingly emerging as the mainstay of Literary studies in India. Though there is a debt to the British model that highlighted the canon from Chaucer to the twenty-first century, it has become increasingly clear that India will have to find its own understanding of what English Studies can best represent for contemporary Indian interests. Innovation will thus have to emerge both in terms of the content and a student-centred pedagogy. Shift in languages, with an increasing interest in gender, caste, visual culture has been an important step. In terms of pedagogy, negotiation between the need for articulations in mother tongue and English as a second language requires pedagogical reflections.

2013

The people of the Subcontinent have had exposure to English as the second language (L 2) since the sun of Stamford has risen in the East. However, now a days the sub continental writers, like writers of all colonized nations, are using English as a weapon to write back, if not curse back; a situation where, in Rushdie’s words the Empire is writing back to the centre. Sub continental writers are now attempting to celebrate local culture and give the foreign language a local color. Besides, contemporary sub-continental literature in English is a vibrant and a powerful mixture made out of the English language and local experience tuned to the sociopolitical changes. Therefore, sub continental literature can be vehicles of culture as well as communication helping the teacher create a congenial educational atmosphere which can help students overcome their constraints regarding foreign language learning. The literary piece which talks about our daily life will be able to create motivation...

Literature views reality critically. Literature presents the essence of reality linking things together. As art is the negative knowledge of the actual world, it exists in the real world and has a function in it. Yet, it offers a knowledge that negates a false condition.

Abstract. The paper deals with the theory and praxis of decolonising English Studies in India. The paper suggests appropriate measures to pull out English studies from the Macaulayan paradigm and to recast the priorities in English Studies in the light of changing role for emerging India in the unipolar world realities, rising aspirations of the middle classes, democratic and egalitarian needs. The project of ‘decolonising’ education at the macro-level and English Studies at the micro-level has been discussed with reference to curriculum, teaching methods, materials, evaluation, research and publication and medium of instruction in all possible details in the paper. The paper attempts to deal with contemporary realities like various treaties and market economy and issues like making a distinction between real knowledge and colonial knowledge along with historical context of English Studies. Several measures have been suggested to make English Studies in India relevant to the contemporary times, to save them from being derivative and to reshape Euro-American knowledge about English culture, Literature and Language from Indian perspective. Practical suggestions to decolonise curriculum have been made keeping in view the distinction between teaching literature and language in the first and the second language situations. Keywords: curriculum, decolonisation, education, English literature/ language, Gandhi, India, Macaulay, publications, research, teaching methods.

Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies, 2013

Th e emergence of Indian literature in English as an object of study is a landmark in the history of English Studies in India.1 One need not reiterate the space it has occupied in English Studies curricula and research over a period of more than fi ve decades, although the pioneering work undertaken by eminent Indian teachers of English from the early generation —K.R. Srinivasa Iyangar, C.D. Narasimhaiah, G.S. Amur and M.K. Naik among them— in promoting the fi eld and attaining international recognition should be acknowledged. Th ey trained several generations of students in the fi eld through their courses, their extensive research and abundant publications. Of these pioneers, G.S. Amur stands out as unique,2 for his sheer profundity and range of engagement not only with Indian literature but also with American and postcolonial literatures and, more prominently, Kannada literature. He initiated interest in the fi eld by conceiving the idea of a book on Indian literature in English,...