Pretendingit doesn't exist won't make it disappear. Nor will cleverly couching it incultural sophistry and erudition, as Harold Bloom does. Browbeating those of uswho have experienced it first-hand won't make us shut up either.

Bias, prejudice,discrimination. It's a problem faced by Indian English authors today that isalmost never talked about. Often the discrimination begins with the veryclassification of the work as 'Indian English writing'. Notice how effectivelythat shunts such authors into a minority with ethnic overtones?

It's the old 'divide andconquer' mindset still persisting. While we might ourselves use the term 'IndianEnglish' to distinguish English-language writing from other Indian languages,foreign publishers and media often use it as a means of subtly implying thatthis body of work is separate from the mainstream of Euro-American literature.

Are white European authors orAmerican authors referred to by their original ethnicity? Rarely. Yet even theJhumpa Lahiris, Zadie Smiths, Hari Kunzrus, Salman Rushdies, et al, of theliterary world are invariably pegged into the post-colonial slot.

We're not unique in thissegregationist name-calling. Other cultural minorities serve the same crackermaster just as well: African American literature, Native American writing, Asianliterature.

It would take atruly geographically challenged mindset to call Kerala born-and Delhi-residentArundhati Roy an 'East Indian writer'. Yet, the term has been used to describeher more than once.

ShashiDeshpande has often decried the doubly-damnable label attached to her work'Indian English woman writer'. As if the literary merit of a work variesaccording to the sex and nationality of an author! A brave few refuse to becowed down by this covert pogrom of bias.

Amitav Ghosh delivered animpassioned rejection of the Commonwealth Prize for Literature when he wasdeclared the Eurasia region winner in 2001: "So far as I can determine, TheGlass Palace is eligible for the Commonwealth Prize partly because it is writtenin English and partly because I happen to belong to a region that was onceconquered and ruled by Imperial Britain."

He ended by saying: "I wouldbe betraying the spirit of my book if I were to allow it to be incorporatedwithin that particular memorialisation of Empire that passes under the rubric ofthe Commonwealth." Not all authors are as quick to condemn the problems of beingghettoised by our former Imperial masters.

Sri Lankan writer Mary AnneMohanraj commented online that while the interest shown in Indian subcontinentalwriting by British publishers and the media is often largely due to our formercolonial relationship, yet this legacy, and the subsequent interest, is "oftengrounded in good intentions in some hearts".

But try telling that toAmerican publishers, whose interest in Indian English authors is often blatantlyrestricted to books that serve up a suitably exoticised version of the Indiathey want to read about.

Inthis context, Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games is a welcome arrival, heralding, wehope, a more mature publishing perspective wherein we are read by Americanreaders not for our jungle dreams and themes, but for our realistic literatureas well.

We need to re-examineour attitudes with regard to our own writers and their place in the context of achanging multi-cultural world that is becoming increasingly globalised evenwhile it clings fiercely to its ethnic roots.

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