Being English

This book critically examines the cultural desire for anglicisation of the Indian middle class in the context of postcolonial India.

It looks at the history of anglicised self-fashioning as one of the major responses of the Indian middle class to British colonialism. The book explores the rich variety of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writings that document the attempts by the Indian middle class to innovatively interpret their personal histories, their putative racial histories, and the history of India to appropriate the English language and lay claim to an “English” identity. It discusses this unique quest for “Englishness” by reading the works of authors like Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Rabindranath Tagore, Cornelia Sorabji, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Dom Moraes, and Salman Rushdie.

An important intervention, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of postcolonial studies, Indian English literature, South Asian studies, cultural studies, and English literature in general.