The obsession (and unavoidable reality, one may add) with an 'English passport' is well-known, but your point about the 'visa' is a fine nuance, a very important point often ignored by those who conveniently brand Indian writing in English as, 'aesthetically poorer' and, in the same breath, label such writers as 'privileged'!
Similarly, your argument on the paucity of translations from English and between Indian vernaculars deserves acknowledgement and follow-up by anyone with any stake in the future of Indian letters.
Finally, for whatever it's worth, here's The Genie in the Room (https://substack.com/chat/1595135?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android) a 'review' of Heart Lamp that I wrote on an (vaguely proprietorial) impulse, which I then forgot to send to some mainstream publications that were going gaga over yet another Indian making international headlines. And then, as an aferthought, I posted it on my fledgling, perpetually-procrastinating, identity crisis-ridden Substack!
Very interesting post, Tanuj.
The obsession (and unavoidable reality, one may add) with an 'English passport' is well-known, but your point about the 'visa' is a fine nuance, a very important point often ignored by those who conveniently brand Indian writing in English as, 'aesthetically poorer' and, in the same breath, label such writers as 'privileged'!
Similarly, your argument on the paucity of translations from English and between Indian vernaculars deserves acknowledgement and follow-up by anyone with any stake in the future of Indian letters.
Finally, for whatever it's worth, here's The Genie in the Room (https://substack.com/chat/1595135?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android) a 'review' of Heart Lamp that I wrote on an (vaguely proprietorial) impulse, which I then forgot to send to some mainstream publications that were going gaga over yet another Indian making international headlines. And then, as an aferthought, I posted it on my fledgling, perpetually-procrastinating, identity crisis-ridden Substack!