Indian English Literature, also admiringly referred to as IEL in short, pertains to that body of work by writers from India, who pen strictly in the English language and whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous regional and indigenous languages of India. English literature in India is also intimately linked with the works of associates of the Indian diaspora, especially with people like Salman Rushdie who was born in Indian but presently resides elsewhere; as such, Indian English literature is also at times recurrently referred to as `Indo-Anglian literature`. As a categorised concept, this yielding of literature in India in English, comes under the broader territory of postcolonial literature - the yield from previously colonised countries, just as India once was.

Indian English literature is an honest enterprise to demonstrate the ever rare gems of Indian writing in English. From being a singular and exceptional, rather gradual native flare-up of geniuses, Indian English has turned out to be a new form of Indian culture and voice in which India converses regularly. While Indian authors - poets, novelists, essayists, dramatists - have been making momentous and considerable contributions to world literature since the pre-Independence era, the past few years have witnessed a gigantic prospering and thriving of Indian English writing in the global market. Not only are the works of Indian authors writing in English surging on the best-seller list, they are also incurring and earning an immense amount of critical acclamation. Commencing from Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan, Anita Desai, Toru Dutt to Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Allan Sealy, Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Arundhati Roy,Vikram Chandra - the panache of fine Indian writers is long and much augmented. Indeed, if one begins to explore the highly curious and arresting history of Indian English literature and also experience its various facets, as expressed in Indian English literature plays and movies and other media, he is sure to be lost amidst such profundity, in the abstract sense.

Indian English literature (IEL) precisely conforming to its gradual evolution had all begun in the summers of 1608 when Emperor Jahangir, in the court of the Mughals, had welcomed Captain William Hawkins, Commander of British Naval Expedition Hector, in a gallant manner. It was indeed India`s first tryst with any Englishman and English. Jahangir had later also allowed Britain to open a permanent port and factory on the special request of King James IV that was communicated by his ambassador Sir Thomas Roe, which led to the consequent sizeable English arrival and people thus had begun to stay back in India. Though India was under the British rule, still, English was adopted by the Indians as a language of understanding and awareness, education and literary expression with an important means of communication amongst various people of dissimilar religions.

Indian English literature, quite understandably spurs attention from every quarter of the country, making the genre admired in its own right. Creative writing in English is looked at as an integral part of the literary traditions in the Indian perspective of fine arts. Indeed, it has also been a rather lucky happening and news that the harshness of critics has also accepted that Indian literature in English is one guiding factor of present identification, which had begun several decades ago and is still in a continuous process of metamorphosis. There appears to be an acceptance of Indian English literature as, Indian writing represents a new form of Indian cultural ethos. This literary body has become thoroughly absorbed and is presently a dynamic element of the quintessential Indian way of life.

Beginning in the early times of British rule, much prior to the advent of the novelistic writing, it was indeed the Indian English dramas and Indian English poetry, that had tremendously arrested attention of the native masses. Times back then were much severe, as can be known from British Indian history. Indeed, the present generation must always consider themselves fortunate that the British incitement and oppression was reason enough for Indian English literature to flourish despite horrible intimidation. Heart-rending and grievous issues were time and again brought up in these dramatisations and poetical expressions by stellar and legendary poets and playwrights. Every possible regional author was dedicated in their intelligence to deliver in the `British mother tongue`, highly erudite and learned as they were even in such periods. The man that comes to surface more than once in all the genres of Indian English literature, is Rabindranath Tagore, who possibly was an unending ocean of knowledge and intellect, still researched as an institution in himself.

And in this British context of an overwhelming English arrival, generally always comes to surface the factor of any Indian writing in a foreign and alien lingo, much deviated from their original roots. It can be said to be a challenge for the Indian English writer to pen about his experiences in a language which has developed in a very different cultural setting - in a "foreign" language. Indeed, there was also witnessed times in pre-Independent India, when people conceived Indian English literature to create a very different sense of reality and intensity in Indian life in the medium of English language, far more differentiated than any regional Indian language. The truthfulness and honesty of the writers writing in English is often made a theme of suspect in their own country and in other English-speaking countries they are indeed addressed as `marginal` to the mainstream of English literature. Indian English literature writers are sometimes incriminated of forsaking the national or regional language and penning in a western, "alien" language; their dedication to the nation is considered in much suspicion, a rather unfortunate sensibility for such intelligent and cultured wonders.

Indian literature in English dates back to the 1830s, to Kashiprasad Ghosh, who is considered the first Indian poet writing in English. Sochee Chunder Dutt was the first writer of fiction, thus bringing in the tremendous attraction and brilliancy of admiration of Indian English novels. In the beginning, however, political writing in the novel or essay format was dominant, as can be seen in Raja Rammohan Roy and his extraordinary output. He had written and dedicated pages about social reform and religion in India, solely in the medium of English.

`Stylistic influence` from the local languages appears to be an exceptional feature of much of the Indian literature in English - the local language construction and system is very much reflected in the illustrations, as is mirrored in the literal translation of local idioms. Yet one more breathtaking and praiseworthy feature of these English Indian writers is that they have not only `nativised` the `British mother tongue` in terms of stylistic features, but, they have also acculturated English in terms of the `Indianised context`. A broad view that the mother tongue is the primary means of literary creativity, is still generally held across cultural diversity. Creativeness in another tongue is often measured as a deviation from this strict norm. The native language is considered `pure`, it is addressed as a standard model of comparison. This however have caused difficulties for non-native writers of Indian English literature and it is more than infrequently that they have to guard themselves writing again, in English.

Besides the legendary and hugely venerated Indian English literary personalities of Rabindranath Tagore or R K Narayan, later novelists like Kamala Markandaya (Nectar in a Sieve, Some Inner Fury, A Silence of Desire, Two Virgins), Manohar Malgaonkar (Distant Drum, Combat of Shadows, The Princes, A Bend in the Ganges and The Devil`s Wind), Anita Desai (Clear Light of Day, The Accompanist, Fire on the Mountain, Games at Twilight) and Nayantara Sehgal, have ceaselessly captured the spirit of an independent India struggling to break away from the British and traditional Indian cultures and establish a distinct identity. Such was the already established solid ground of Indian English literature, an aspect that has acquired much more momentous adjectives.

During the 1980`s and 90`s, India had emerged as a major literary nation. Salman Rushdie`s `Midnight`s Children` had become a rage around the world, even winning the Booker Prize. The worldwide success of Vikram Seth`s `The Golden Gate` made him the first writer of the Indian Diaspora to enter the sphere of elite international writers and leave an indelible mark on the global literary scene. Other Indian English literature novelists of repute of the contemporary times include - V.S. Naipaul, Shobha De (Selective Memory), G.V. Desani, M Ananthanarayanan, Bhadani Bhattacharya, Arun Joshi, Khushwant Singh, O.V. Vijayan, Allan Sealy (The Trotternama), Sashi Tharoor (Show Business, The Great Indian Novel), Amitav Ghosh (Circle of Reason, Shadow Lines), Upamanyu Chatterjee (English August, The Mammaries of the Welfare State), Raj Kamal Jha (The Blue Bedspread), Amit Chaudhary (A New World), Pankaj Mishra (Butter Chicken in Ludhiana, The Romantics), Vikram Seth (Mappings) and Vikram Chandra (Red Earth and Pouring Rain, Love and Longing in Bombay).

The writer in the genre of Indian English literature, who took the world with a storm, was Arundhati Roy, whose `The God of Small Things` won the 1997 Booker Prize and became an international best-seller overnight. Rohinton Mistry, Firdaus Kanga, Kiran Desai (Strange Happenings in the Guava Orchard), Sudhir Kakar (The Ascetic of Desire), Ardeshir Vakil (Beach Boy) and Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter of Maladies) are some other renowned writers of Indian origin. Former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao`s The Insider; Satish Gujral`s A Brush with Life; R.K. Laxman`s The Tunnel of Time, Prof. Bipin Chandra`s India After Independence, Sunil Khilnani`s The Idea of India, J.N. Dixit`s Fifty Years of India`s Foreign Policy, Yogesh Chadha`s Rediscovering Gandhi and Pavan K.Varma`s The Great Indian Middle Class, are also outstanding works of the recent times.

The mid-20th century Indian literature in English had witnessed the emergence of poets such as Nissim Ezekiel (The Unfurnished Man), P Lal, A K Ramanujan (The Striders, Relations, Second Sight, Selected Poems), Dom Moraes (A Beginning), Keki Daruwalla, Geive Patel, Eunice de profoundly were influenced by literary movements taking place in the West, like Symbolism, Surrealism, Existentialism, Absurdism and Confessional Poetry. These authors heavily had made use of Indian phrases alongside English words and had tried to reproduce a blend of the Indian and the Western cultures.