AN INSIDE OF THE OUTSIDERS: RESPONSE OF WESTERN CRITICS TO THE FICTION OF RAJA RAO (Pages 79-90) by Dr. Rajesh H. Mehta in THE ENGLISH INDIA / ISSN: 2321-1172 (Online); 2347-2634 (Print)

Indian English fiction, today, hasndian English fiction, today, hasacquired stubborn global identity.The pioneers of the genre R. K.Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, and RajaRao have collectively madeendeavour to attract a serious attention of thereaders all over the globewith their grand canvas.Raja Rao has included almost everything that otherIndian writers have done in fiction – the family, thevillage, the city, the country, the world, and theconcerns appropriate to them. Even while he isdealing with the social, material conditions ofIndian life, almost always the metaphysical and thespiritual are lurking behind and therefore he hasattracted the attention of critics from all over theworld. The critical reception of Raja Rao as a creative writer possesses varied tone and texture. Including both, the inside circle (Indian critics) and the outside circle (non-Indian critics), the overall critical response is multi-dimensional. To critique that body of work, in general and Western critics in particular, would be my humble attempt in this paper. I would try to highlight the overtly visible features in their critical readings and at the same time it would be my polite attempt to justify them. Keywords: English fiction, global identity, Indian writers, material conditions, metaphysical, spiritual, multi-dimensional, Western critics etc.