10 - Tabish Khair: Marketing Compulsions and Artistic Integrity

Summary

Tabish Khair started his literary career with the widely acclaimed critical book, Babu Fictions: Alienation in Contemporary Indian English Novels (Oxford University Press, 2001), which has proved to be a valuable addition to Indian English criticism. Very soon, Khair shifted over to writing poetry and novels, but sadly his position as a poet/novelist is still to be acknowledged in the literary world. This is largely due to the fact that he lives and writes in Denmark and not in London. Charles Lock points to this predominant exoticism of London's presence among Indian writers, that ‘London has long been the place where every Indian writer (in English) aspires to be published; Britain is a place where middle-class Indians have long felt at home. That Khair had been living in Denmark for some years before he ever went to Britain is a deviation from the conventional path that distinguishes him from other Indian writers, and that gives his work an unusual shape, in terms of both theme and audience.’ This comment ostensibly maps the continuity of colonialism in the postcolonial period, which necessitates that Indian writing has to be written from the centre or the colonies where the Whites have been to as rulers, like the US, Canada or Australia. In order to be considered visible and successful, an Indian writer must speak from the centre and not from the erstwhile colonies.