Indian Writing in English — Mock Test 6

Tendulkar's Marathi plays include The Cyclist, His Fifth Woman, Gidhade (The Vultures), Encounter in Umbugland and Sakharam Binder (1972). Scandal in Fairyland is Badal Sircar's and The Fire and the Rain Karnad's.

Currimbhoy wrote The Captives (on the 1962 border war), An Experiment with Truth (on Gandhi) and Angkor. Princes is Gieve Patel's and Dance Like a Man Dattani's.

Naipaul's Booker was for In a Free State (1971). A House for Mr Biswas (1961) predates the prize, which began in 1969.

English, August (1988) is Upamanyu Chatterjee's. Sea of Poppies (2008) and Flood of Fire (2015) belong to the Ibis trilogy, and Gun Island appeared in 2019.

Provincializing Europe (2000) and The Climate of History in a Planetary Age (2021) are Chakrabarty's. Selected Subaltern Studies was edited by Guha and Spivak, Identity and Violence is Amartya Sen's, and In Other Worlds is Spivak's.

Note: Item B appears in the source as 'The Subaltern Studies Reader' (ed. Ranajit Guha).

Naik (Sahitya Akademi, 1982); McCutchion (Writers Workshop, 1969); Iyengar's The Indian Contribution to English Literature (1945), the forerunner of his Indian Writing in English (1962); Gokak (1964).

Kachru (1985): the Inner Circle of native-speaker nations (UK, USA), the Outer Circle of postcolonial second-language users (India, Nigeria), and the Expanding Circle where English is a foreign language (China, Japan).

Following Natyashastra conventions, the king and Brahmins speak Sanskrit, women speak Shauraseni Prakrit in prose and Maharashtri in verse, and low characters (the fisherman, policemen) speak Magadhi.

After Macaulay's Minute and Bentinck's English Education Act (1835), English replaced Persian, the Mughal court language. The formal change in the courts followed in 1837.

Sir Charles Wood's Despatch (1854) set out a graded system from primary schools to universities, which led to the universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras (1857).

Ghosh's Bengali Macbeth was staged at the Minerva Theatre, Calcutta, in 1893, with Ghosh in the title role.

Aurobindo's epic Savitri; Kamala Das's Summer in Calcutta (1965); P. Lal's Calcutta: A Long Poem (1977); Toru Dutt's translations A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1876).

Note: List II item I appears in the source as 'Other Poems' (i.e. Summer in Calcutta and Other Poems).

The Guide (1958) ends with Raju's fast and an uncertain rain. 'The Martyr's Corner' is in Lawley Road. His characters are middle-class, he never won the Booker (The Guide won the Sahitya Akademi Award), and Malgudi is fictional.

A Time to Be Happy (1958) is Nayantara Sahgal's. Some Inner Fury (1955), The Nowhere Man (1972) and The Golden Honeycomb (1977) are Markandaya's.

The Fire and the Rain is Girish Karnad's and A Touch of Brightness Partap Sharma's.

Adiga wrote The White Tiger (2008, Booker), Between the Assassinations (2008) and Last Man in Tower (2011). The Blue Bedspread is Raj Kamal Jha's and The House of Blue Mangoes David Davidar's.

Mamta Kalia's sardonic, anti-patriarchal collection (Writers Workshop, 1970).

Charles Wilkins's The Bhagvat-Geeta (1785), with a preface by Warren Hastings. Jones translated Shakuntala (1789).

The Minute is dated 2 February 1835; Bentinck's Resolution followed on 7 March.

Siddhartha: Eine indische Dichtung (1922).

Visarjan (1890), Muktadhara (1922) and Chandalika (1933) are Tagore's plays. Parineeta (1914) is Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's novel and Punarnava Hazari Prasad Dwivedi's Hindi novel.

Anand (Untouchable, 1935, with Forster's preface), Narayan (with Greene's help) and Raja Rao emerged then. The wars produced Europe's modernist mood of crisis.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's Anandamath (1882), set in the Sannyasi Rebellion.

Gooneratne's poem on English and the colonised self; Dharker's Postcards from God (1997); Agha Shahid Ali's 'Postcard from Kashmir' (The Half-Inch Himalayas, 1987); de Souza's 'Advice to Women' (Ways of Belonging, 1990).

Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (2006 Booker).