What Remains Foreign in World Literature? The Tale of Two Anthologies of Indian literature

This essay investigates two conceptions of the category called “Indian literature” through the reading of two rival anthologies of modern Indian literature – one edited by Salman Rushdie in 1997 and another by Amit Chaudhuri in 2001. By consecrating and unveiling two antagonistic bodies of works, they advocate two definitions of what Indian literature should be via an oppositional vision of globalization. Rushdie focuses on a literary unit of shared values and universal concerns, whereas Chaudhuri aims at preserving local differences and regional “foreignness”.