India has recently seen the arrival of a number of books that feature the skills of the reporter matched with better writing than is generally credited to journalists.
Previously much of this kind of writing on India was done—and still is—by diaspora Indians, like Suketu Mehta, V.S. Naipaul and more recently Anand Giridharadas, or by foreigners.
But a lot more of that kind of writing is coming from people who live here, or have spent large parts of their lives here, and aren’t just passing through.
In May, there was Samanth Subramanian’s “Following Fish,” an account of travels along India’s coastal regions. In October there was Sonia Faleiro’s “Beautiful Thing,” about the world of the Mumbai bar girl. Book blogger Jai Arjun Singh has edited a collection of film writing that’s due in February. And novelist Siddhartha Deb’s “The Beautiful and the Damned,” a narrative nonfiction account of the “new India” told through the lives of five people is due out in June.
Before all of these there was “Curfewed Night,” Basharat Peer’s 2008 account of growing up in Kashmir as India tried to quell a separatist insurgency there.
On the last day of the Jaipur Literature Festival, writers were discussing where narrative nonfiction is headed globally. It seems like a good time to ask if what we’re seeing is the rise of the New Indian Nonfiction—and where it’s headed.
“The last year-and-a-half has been particularly good for nonfiction,” Mr. Subramanian told India Real Time. “There are a lot of people now who are familiar with narrative nonfiction techniques and simultaneously there’s a growing realization that there are stories here to report and tell.”
As Indian journalism expanded in the last two decades and the Internet became easily accessible, many young journalists grew up exposed to a much wider range of writing than even folks just 10 or 15 years older. The economy’s growth has also increased interest in India post-liberalization, meaning there’s a bigger market for nonfiction about India, both here and overseas.
“There’s just more interest in the West about India,” said Mr. Subramanian. “And the interest that is there is of a factual type—not just for another novel of exotica.”
Domestically there are more places for this kind of writing in magazines. One long-time New Delhi magazine, Caravan, recently revamped itself to make narrative reportage its focus.
And as with anthropologists, there’s been a rethinking of the conventional wisdom that it is generally outsiders—folks who haven’t been raised with the assumptions of a particular place or group—who may be better placed to observe and write about them.
The Indian publisher for both Mr. Subramaniam and Ms. Faleiro, said he thought their books required a certain longevity in the country.
“There are certain books where there is a greater power to writing if you are immersed in the milieu,” said Ravi Singh, editor of Penguin India, ahead of the festival.
And yet, although many feel that something new is happening with Indian nonfiction, some of the writers who’ve managed to write well-received works appear the most cautious, describing their work as hard-wrung exceptions.
Journalism is often the breeding ground for writers of longer works of nonfiction, but Ms. Faleiro, who moderated the Tuesday morning session on nonfiction, said that in general most Indian publications don’t push—or allow—their journalists to produce their best writing.
“I don’t think there are publications in India that encourage a high level of journalistic excellence,” she said, speaking to India Real Time ahead of the festival. “What excellence requires is time primarily.”
Others said funding was a real issue, with there being few fellowships or grants open to Indian nationals that would allow for the kind of long-term reporting, research and flexibility that really good nonfiction requires.
“Publishers really need to start loosening their purse strings a little,” said literary blogger Mr. Singh. “You have certain tangible research you need to do. You might need to travel. You do need more than the very basic and meager advance that publishers give…that’s one of the hitches to writing narrative nonfiction in India.”
This article first appeared HERE.
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