Indian English Fiction: Issues and Concerns

We, human beings are peculiar social animals on the planet. One of the distinctive aspects of human beings compared to other animals is their instinctive urge to express their feeling and experiences, and literature is one of the media for this. In such a direction, literature possibly can best be described and understood by situating it in its socio-cultural ethos, as no literature can be produced in a vacuum. This paper attempts thematically to look how the Indian English novel as a literary phenomenon, is pre-eminently a social form, and is concerned with social issues and relationships. It takes a brief survey of concerns and themes that Indian English fiction has preoccupied itself with in lieu of depictions of Gandhism, freedom struggle, the plight of Untouchables and the poor, partition, communal tensions, issues women, the East-West encounter and such other social and political issues.