The book before me reminds me of my pleasant visit to Zakir Hussain College in Delhi as a guest to its Zakir Hussain Lectures event. This prestigious institution enjoys the pride of inheriting a 300 year long educational history beginning with the founding of the Madrassah Ghaziuddin in the closing years of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb's rule. With the passage of time, the madrassah gave way to a new educational institution called the Delhi College in 1824. The college came to a close after being destroyed during the struggle of 1857. However, it was resurrected in 1867 under the name Anglo-Arabic College. After the Partition the institution regained its original name, but once again in 1975 it was given a new name. Now it is known as Zakir Hussain College.

In 1992 the college administration thought of starting an annual lecture under the title 'Zakir Hussain Memorial Lecture' to commemorate 'the vital role Mr Zakir Hussain played in the governance of the Anglo-Arabic College in the pre-independence period and its successor Delhi College in 1948'.

There is before me a collection of 12 lectures delivered under this arrangement annually from 1992 to 2004. From among these lectures I have marked off one titled 'The Hegemony of English and Modern Indian Literature' for the reason the esteemed scholar Sisir Kumar Das deals here with a phenomenon of India shared equally by Pakistan, though on a lesser scale.'The English language in India', he says 'is one of the greatest ironies of our contemporary history. It was the language introduced to us by our foreign masters little more than 200 years ago, and by now it is the only language which unifies the whole of India'.

I don't intend to add anything to what he has said. I am only trying to follow his argument faithfully just to know how he has understood this ironical situation. 'It [English]' he says 'did not come to us as the language of Shakespeare and Milton, but as the language of the East India Company.'

And about Indian writings in English, he says, 'Despite being written in the prestigious language of the masters, the new literature hardly received respect either from the Indian readers or from the English critics, with occasional exceptions. Things changed very radically indeed, after independence, with the valourisation of English in India and its transformation into a global language.'

The Tamil short story writer Pudumaippittan wrote, 'The thoughts which are closest to the life and being of a people can only be expressed in the language that is closest to their hearts. That alone becomes literature.'

Discussing the pre-partition situation of Indian writings in English, Mr Das tells us that 'The Indian English writer had almost no relation with the Indian language literature. Indian language writers too did not consider Indian English writings to be anything more than a substandard literature which was neither Indian nor English.' He cites the example of R.K. Narayan. Soon after the publication of his novel The Bachelor of Arts, the avant-garde Tamil short story writer Pudumaippittan wrote, 'The thoughts which are closest to the life and being of a people can only be expressed in the language that is closest to their hearts. That alone becomes literature. Howsoever fine a testimony 'The Bachelor of Arts' might be to Shri Narayan's skill, the story it tells will remain counterfeit.'