India and Its Cities through the Eyes of Its Writers

Abstract

Baumgartner’s Bombay, Madras on Rainy Days, The Calcutta Chromosome, Twilight in Delhi: it is not hard to find the names of Indian cities registered in the titles of prominent novels. India has the second largest population in the world after China and may by 2022 have the largest. As a nation of 1.252 billion people—17.5% of global humanity—it inevitably has huge cities. Mumbai (formerly Bombay) is the biggest, but Kolkata (Calcutta), Delhi, Chennai (Madras), Bangalore and Hyderabad are not far behind. This vast country, stretching from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean, has perhaps the most demographically diverse composition in the world. Though only Hindi and English are recognised as official languages for government business, the constitution of the Indian republic names 22 mother tongues, whilst hundreds more are spoken in disparate places. India has by some reckonings the largest book publishing industry in the world, certainly one to rival the annual output of the USA and the UK, and its street selling of books and printed matter is unparalleled. India’s has one of the world’s fastest growing economies. In many technological ways it is self-sufficient. It is politically a successful democracy, which has seen many peaceful changes of power at the highest level as the result of the people’s choosing in elections. It has perhaps the most rapidly expanding middle class anywhere on the planet, with impressive figures of widening literacy.