Unless he can hit upon a fortuitous way out, the Indian novelist in English is forced to exclude large areas of Indian experience. There is also the question of what sort of audience the writer is addressing and how much should be explained. While a few claim that to imagine an audience while writing a book affects authenticity, others maintain that they write for English-speaking Indians. Even if we don t want to make any concessions for foreigners, refuse to put in a glossary of Indian words at the end, there is still the problem of explaining a part of India about which one is writing to people in other parts of India. Here the publicity one gets depends on one s own drawing power alone.
Most publishers don t have a marketing division to speak of.
Many good books get ignored in the bargain. Then there is the abiding hostility to the very notion of Indians writing in English. For years the official attitude to English was to try and suppress it. The Sahitya Akademi, for example, did not have any award for writing in English till the late sixties. He was addressing a gathering at the Sahitya Akademi, and being fluent in Hindi, he often broke into Hindi during his speech.