CHAPTER II

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS LITERARY GENRE

From the earliest times of civilization, the man has an urge to express
himself and reveal the world within to someone. He has always tried to express his
inner feelings, cravings and aspirations through a medium of art. One such medium
is the autobiographical narrative which exists in two fornis; oral and written. The
dialogical character of the oral autobiographical narrative is known to all, in which
the narrator quite frequently finds himself interrupted and intervened by the
interlocutor, to whom he is narrating the stories of his life. However, in contrast to
the oral narrative, there emerged, though quite late, written autobiographical
narrative mode, which is monological, characterized by passivity, and is devoid of
any possibility to be intervened by interlocutor during the narration. Here, the
author is writing and expressing his most intimate thoughts and feelings for a
faceless and voiceless interlocutor to be appreciated from cultural, historical and
other perspectives. Undoubtedly, the written narrative is more powerful and has
everlasting impressions on minds of readers as well as the author himself While
reading the text, the reader not only registers the content but also the whole ethos
associated with it: the nairator's attitude, dress, gesture and even the ambient
noises e.g. the chirping of the birds or the music of the guitar.

Autobiography as a narrative form does not have a very ancient past. The
word autobiography was first used by Robert Southey in 1809. Murray's New English
Dictionary notes:

...the first recorded use of the term occurred in 1809. Before

this date, the autobiographical form passed under various
names: life narratives written by the author himself, memoirs,
journal, diary, biography by self, and history by self etc.
(quoted by Dunn 130-131)

Though, each has some or the other autobiographical elements, yet, neither of
these fonns can be construed as autobiography. For example, a narrative discusses life
in its smaller segment, confessions deal with the admittance of the writer's guilt; a
diary or journal provides raw data, which is randomly collected. They convey a sense

21
of contemporariness which is not always present in an autobiography. Letters are
written to express the writer's feelings, emotions, ideas, and aspirations at a specific
time of writing. Biography is also a life story of a person, but it is written by a writer
other than himself. Biography is defined by Gray as "an account of a person's life" or
as "literature which consists of the histories of individuals" (33) written by someone
else, while autobiography is the story of the individual who writes it himself.
Memoirs have also some aspects of autobiography but mainly it is confined to
specific experiences related to professional life. For instance, politicians and military
leaders have often written their memoirs in order to record and publish an account of
their exploits. However, autobiography is very different and quite distinct from the
above mentioned forms.

According to Cambridge International Diclionaiy, autobiography is a "'book

containing the story of a person's life, written by that person". The most lucid
definition of autobiography is given by Roy Pascal. He calls it. "a reconstruction of
the movement of a life, or a part of a life, in actual circumstances, in which it has been
lived....'' (5). An autobiography is inextricably linked to a person's individuality,
identity, origin, culture, and selfhood and not merely to the external forces of the
world. It is an account of the writer's life, and his personal experiences written by
him. James OIney breaks the word autobiography in three different parts:

'autos'- the self, the i ' stated or implied without which the
word would be meaningless. The "bios'- or the "life' that is the
entire life of the individual up to the time of writing and finally
"graphe' or the act of writing has assumed great importance
because it is through writing that the self, and the life takes a
specific dimension and image, it ensures the revelation of the
identity of the narrator in the work, where he poses to be the
protagonist to allow the emergence of the contour of a life
though the final product is "not life, but an artful representation
of life. (4)

James M. Cox claims that autobiography is basically a factual rather than a

fictional "narrative of a person's life written by him" (254). Thus, one is compelled to
think whether autobiography is a fact or a fiction or a mixture of both. As when an
autobiographer selects the incidents from his lived experiences to integrate them in his

22
autobiography, imagination works. Northrop Frye too defines autobiography as a
form of "prose fiction" (307-308). Because when the mind recalls the past
experiences, though based on facts, disconnection from the imagination can never be
ruled out. Memory plays a very significant role in the recreation of the past
experiences. Philippe Lejeune defines autobiography as "a retrospective prose
narrative written by a real person concerning his own existence, where the focus is his
individual life, in particular the story of his personality" (4). It means that as a literary
genre an autobiography is a work that describes a life of the individual, which he has
lived and which he has recreated and relived through the means of writing. It is a way
to organize the story of a life and reflect on the past in order to better understand the
present. Anderson argues:

The impulse to examine the history of the self, to turn

systematic retrospection into art is a European one and the
genre of autobiography is indigenous to Western, Post Roman
civilization; only in modern times has it been produced in the
other civilizations. (398)

Henceforth, the autobiography came in vogue with an objective to provide

self-knowledge to the writer worldwide, with a procedure of inner assimilation which
according to A.O.J. Cockshut involves "... articulateness, fidelity to experience,
sensitiveness to small currents of feelings and above all curiosity" (5-17). But the
relatively recent coinage of the tenn autobiography does not mean that this practice of
self-referential came to prevalence only in nineteenth century. In earlier centuries,
tenns such as memoir (Madame de stael, Gluckel of Hameln) or the life (Teresa of
Avila) or Confessions (Augustine, Rousseau) or Essays of Myself (Montaigne)
signaled the writer's focus on self-reference through speculations of history, politics,
religion, science and culture.

St. Augustine's Confessions (394 AD), regarded as the first autobiographical

work, gives an introspective self-analysis of the author's spiritual crisis and recovery
of faith. It keeps the Greek hero's odyssey from the external world to the inner
consciousness throughout the hundreds of pages as he seeks to control his physical
senses. Indeed, Augustine's account of his youthful sin, the theft of some ripe pears
from the orchard of his neighbor and his joy in that moment throws light on this
man's slowly developing sense of sin. His struggle to overcome the intellectual

23
obstacles to have belief in the Christian revelation and accept subordination of his will
to the will of God is described in detail. Even while surrendering to God's providence,
he stops to revicvv' the problem of human incapability to comprehend the ways of
God. Ultimately he draws the conclusion that the inner struggle is of vast and world
shaping significance, even though the man may surrender his will to God. In antiquity
such works were typically entitled apologia, purporting to self-justification rather than
self-documentation. .John Henr\' Newman"s first published autobiography in 1864
entitled Apologia Pro Vita Sua follows this tradition.

The roots of modern autobiography reach well back before the time Rousseau
gave a sensational impetus to it. Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Confessions (1781)
produced a new model for the human life history. His Confessions tells the story of
the protagonist creating his "self. Rousseau keeps to the Augustine's inner story of
the protagonist's emotional life and conflicts, but his account is without St.
Augustine's sense of sin and the trajectory of his life moves not towards God but
towards the worldly fame and success. Rousseau plays his moral transgression against
a corrupt aristocratic society which scorns him and rejects him as he is in favor of the
individuality of a man. He presents himself as a man of natural manner and morals
whose transgressions against the aristocratic mores are not sins but merely
expressions of a modern view of life. Hence, Rousseau became the first exponent in
autobiography to give priority to the emotions of the individual.

In Rousseau's man of sentiment and natural feeling there lies an embryonic

form of the modem concept of the conflict between the culture of the society and the
individual feelings. Thus the individual's refusal to accept cultural conventions and
asserting that in conflict of social prescription and emotion, a man must act upon his
emotions. The dynamic of action comes from human passion struggling to break
through the confines of inherited convention in his autobiography. With the focus of
attention directed to this world and the life of emotion, Rousseau has set the stage for
the emergence of the modern man, who belongs to the working class rebel and seeks
to overthrow a corrupt system of the society.

It was however, in the romantic period that the autobiography began to

establish itself as a separate and distinct genre and not simply a version branch of
biography. As an increasingly popular kind of writing it did not gain literary

24
respectability, until the middle of the nineteenth century. The Prelude (1850),
subtitled Growth of a Poet's Mind written by William Wordsworth and The
Confessions of an Opium Eater (1821^ written by Thomas De Quincey, were not fully
canonized until the early twentieth century, but its pervasiveness by the early
nineteenth century was such that in 1834 Carlyle has made a mention in Sartor
Resaurtus of "these autobiographical times of ours" (94). Alongside these romantic
types comes the self created economic man, the first given full expression of
Benjamin Franklin in his Autobiography (1818). It is a story of a successful
accumulator of wealth, who makes the journey from poverty to worldly success and
victories, through the economic disciplines of thrift, industry and deferred
gratification. From the times of St. Augustine, such autobiographical works passed
through the Middle Ages, renaissance, the romantic period and till today it has not lost
its chann.

American mj^h and popular culture also produced a native version of the
classical odyssey, in which the frontier hero battles the wilderness, fights against
savage non-Western warriors and opens "virgin" territory to white settlement. The
physical struggle with the forces of nature and with "uncivilized" peoples redefines
the hero's journey in Western imperialist mode, a mode that takes different forms in
terms of the wilderness to be conquered and the relative degree of sophistication of
the conqueror and the conquered. Christopher Columbus's account of his first
encounter with the New World and Captain James Cook's reflections on Australia and
its aboriginal people and travel accounts of the wonders of India, to be followed by
countless narratives of discovery, conquest and eventual European settlement are few
examples of the self narrative modes. In these stories of conquest the Western
European male, and occasionally his female counterpart, is engaged in a literal and
psychological journey. He is tested by the forces of nature and by cultural conflict,
and he acts as an agent of the Western concept of progress, which Europeans thought
promised perpetual social improvement and gave them the right to "civilize" the
world in their image. Hence, the autobiography and the colonization are closely linked
with each other.

25
 By the turn of the twentieth century, with the development of science and
technology, a new quest for authenticity emerged in Western European culture. The
new concern with authenticity was the product of multiple interactions between
economic and cultural forces. The transfer of scientific skepticism to the newly
developing social sciences resulted in the idea of cultural relativism and the visible
cultural effects of a fully articulated urban industrial production system raised for the
first time the possibility of a radical break between nature and the engineered
environment. Decadence, cultural relativism, lost belief and the break with nature
were major themes of modernism which gave rise to a new type of autobiography, the
story of the modern quest for meaning, given classic fonn in narratives like James
Joyce's Portrait of the Artist us a Young Man (1916). Since 19" century onwards the
autobiographical writing rose rapidly, because more and more readers got fascinated
to read about the secrets, convictions, desires and other private affairs of various
people. The readers feel privileged to be admitted to the autobiographer"s intimate
circle.

The most important issue that rose with the pervasiveness of the
autobiography was to contain and control it within disciplinary boundaries. There are
two significant aspects of autobiography that need to be discussed at this point: first,
is autobiography a genre? Second, where is autobiography placed in the creative
milieu? The question of autobiography as a separate genre has always been hotly
debated, as all the literary works are classified under different genres to signify a
literary species or literary form. According to M. H. Abrams. "the criteria for
classification have been highly variable; but the most common names still are such
ancient ones as tragedy, comedy, epic, satire and lyric, plus some relative new comers
like novel, essay and biography"(67-68). Further the classification depends on some
rules which are prescribed by the literary critics from time to time regarding the
subject matter, structure, style and effect. While considering autobiography as a
separate genre, several other factors also creep in, primarily the need to justify self

As regarding a definite form and placing it in the creative milieu,

autobiography is the representation of life and life has no definite form, therefore
autobiography need not have any specific form, in this regard, George Misch opines
that:

26
 The autobiography abounds in fresh initiatives drawn from
actual Hfe: it adopts the different fonns with which different
periods provide the individual for his self-revelation and self-
portrayal-inscriptions on monuments, in the public life of the
city-state and the law-court or in the privacy of the
confessional, in the spiritual intercourse of religious person or
in the domestic records of a merchant aristocracy. (64)

Autobiography is the literary genre which provides vent to the innermost

feelings of an individual. In autobiography, the author expresses his very private
emotions and passions. There is no joy in the world like the expression of oneself, of
one"s ego, in whatever medium one may choose. A man never wishes that the fruit of
his long-cherished dreams dwindle away all the way. He wishes to become immortal
anyhow. Autobiography is an evidence of man's efforts and deeds in life. The main
aim of autobiography is to introduce the autobiographer to the self of the writer. It
may not aim to delight. It is an enactment of drama of life of a person who, according
to Meena Sodhi. "tries to re-assemble himself at a certain time in history" (18).

Many a times, an idea strikes one's mind that perhaps there can be nothing
simpler than the act of people representing what they know the best; their own lives.
Yet this act is anything but simple, for the teller of his or her own story becomes both;
the observing object and the object of investigation, remembrance and contemplation,
during narration. Hence the best approach narrative as Sidonie Smith and Junia
Watson put it. "becomes a moving target, a set of shifting self-referential practices
that in engaging the past reflect on identity in the present'" (4). French theorist
Philippe Lejeune tries to define autobiography in a pronouncement; many would call
definitive, "We call autobiography the retrospective narrative in prose that someone
makes of his own existence when he puts the principal accent upon his life, especially
upon the story of his own personality'' (5). Hence, the main motive of writing an
autobiography emphasizes the projection of one's self

One question that arises at the very outset of the autobiography is who can
write an autobiography? Or whose lives can be considered representative of a culture
or a historical moment to be an appropriate autobiographer? Regarding the most
appropriate subjects of any autobiography. Smith Sidonie and Watson Julia opine
that. ''People who have lived their lives in the public sphere, have participated in

27
important historical events or moments, and have achieved fame or notoriety in
public, are the •representative" and appropriate subjects of what may be designated as
autobiography" (12). In other words autobiography should belong to the people of
lofty reputation or people who have something of historical importance and not the
popular commercial autobiographies for instance pop stars that lack integrity,
debasing self by commodifying it. Such populism could be seen to threaten the
respectability of the form of autobiography. Social distinctions were thus carried
across into literary distinctions and autobiography was legitimized as a form by
attempting to restrict its use. Misch"s emphasis on the autobiographer"s role as a
public presence is part of his scheme of a division between the "high culture" of
achieved and elite cixilizations and the "low culture" of popular and everyday fomis.
High cultural forms, such as classical music, painting and sculpture, the literary epic,
and, for Misch, the autobiography of the great man, summarize the achievement of
culture, entwined with the making of the nation or state (Misch 121).

Who determines then which lives are representative? In the eighteenth

century only "great" public men could and did write their autobiographical works
(though not tenned as autobiography) in the past, and that others were always
excluded from cultural production. Though their access was certainly constrained,
many people, from diverse cultural locations, produced, wrote, and told their stories to
confessors and editors before the twentieth century. Though there are some quite
popular and influential texts, yet these life narratives were not seen as formative of
"civilization" and thus not celebrated as the appropriate subject of stud)'.
Autobiographical memoirs of Tolstoy may be of great value to the society but how
much helpful can be the life-story of a thief or a rogue? Is each man"s life story not
liable to expression? What is the purpose hidden behind the common man's life?
Hence, the art of autobiography developed, this partiality that autobiographies of the
public figures have significance gave way to a broader liberal space where even
common folk found place in this genre.

Before the twentieth century, there existed not only the discrimination of the
human status, but also the gender discrimination in the genre of autobiographical
writing. There was a patriarchal notion about the inherent irrational nature of the
women in the society. Their primary role of reproduction severely restricted their
access to public space and education. Repression of the female speech condemned

28
most women to public silence. The women who tried to violate the norms by seeking
places in the public arena were looked down upon by the patriarchs. But, by the
twentieth century, the outlook of the society underwent a transformation. The women
were allowed the right to education and a fruitful time came for the women to prove
their hidden potential. As Virginia Woolf has written in A Room of One's Own
(1929). "Writing is a voice answering a voice" (5). They were too given a space in the
literary genre and with the combination of their inherent sensitivity and creativity,
they excelled in it. Some examples of the nineteenth and twentieth century women
autobiographies are; Memoirs (1829) by Ann Lady Fanshawe, Wandering of a
Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque (1850) by Fanny Parks, The Story of my Life by
Hellen Keller (1903), Gift From the Sea (1955) by Lindberg Anne Morrow, / Know-
Why the Caged Bird Sing (1970) by Maya Angelon and Black Ice (1991) by Lorene
Cary.

Similarly, the assertion of human status and the exercise of the rights of social
subjects for slaves and, in different ways, for colonized people, were even more
severely and brutally repressed. Slaves were legally understood as "chattel" to be
bought and sold; indigenous colonized people were treated as children suitable only
for labor and entertainment. While the enslaved or colonized were denied any human
identification, they also struggled for their identity and their representation in the
society. Of course, many other groups were also seen as marginal to the public sphere
of great men: the lower classes, religious minorities and persons disabled etc. The
autobiography greatly reflects the period that the autobiographer has lived. The
autobiographies contribute to the historical understanding of that particular time. The
intensity with which a person participates in his/ her contemporary life makes his/her
relationship to the arena of public life eventful. As such the autobiographical mode is
used to expose not only the real determining instances in a man's life but it also
becomes a kind of representation of a history to explain the relationship between the
past and the present. The term "representative" clearly excluded the women or the
fonnerly enslaved or colonized from this category as such in the previous times. In
what ways could they compose a "representative" narrative of a period when they
were denied all their rights to even move freely in the society? Prior to the twentieth
century, few women, fonner slaves, or colonized people achieved the status of
•'eminent person," and those who did were usually labeled "exceptional" rather than
"representative."

29
 Dr. Shanti Khanna says: "An autobiographer can be literary, political or
religious or any kind of figure but it is essential that he should be well-known and
renowned figure of the society" (18). Misch too opines that the "supreme example" of
human accomplishment is '"the contemporary intellectual outlook revealed in the style
of an eminent person who has himself played a part in the forming of the spirit of his
time'" (12-13). But since, the most important aspect of an autobiography is the
individuality of the experience and expression, hence any common man may write his
autobiography. A person passes through a variety of enterprises in life. This
enterprising life should be life-enhancing and touched with emotions. Many a times a
person may search invaluable emotions from the trivialities of life. Mundane realities
do have a classic fervor. In this context, Prasad vicwes that, "to have led an interesting
life is a definite advantage but to be interested in life is real essential" (191).

The next important query that comes to one's mind is why should anyone
write an autobiography? Or what is the objective of the writer behind his/her
autobiography? The preface of an autobiography focuses on the proposed objectives
of the autobiographer. These objectives may differ from person to person. It happens
that an incessantly flowing river of life suddenly changes its course because of a
sudden event. Suddenly a thief turns into a saint. Thus, motivated by a sudden change
in life a person may write an autobiography. When a person achieves extraordinary
success in life, his ambitions are satisfied to a great extent. He would like to share his
innermost feelings with the public at this juncture. Hence, he expresses these feelings
through autobiography. All are not fortunate enough to be successful in life. One has
to be contented with failures also. However, people like to make others precautious
about the future problems. Through his autobiography a person shares his successes
and failures with others and helps others in solving their problems too.

Sometimes a person's life is not justified by his own kinsman and society. In
such a case a person may demand justification of his life through his autobiography.
Thus, self justification may be considered as one of the objectives behind an
autobiography. Many a times a person is leading his life aimlessly. A sudden sickness
or a long illness may lead a person to travel in his/her past. This nostalgic mood may
tempt the person to write an autobiography. The person who has passed his dawn and
noon of the life and entered into the twilight (middle age) may write an autobiography
steeped in the memory of his past. The same events of the same period may be
described by different individuals in a variety of ways. This is because of the special

30
motives of the author. Taking into consideration this special motive, the writer may
write his autobiography. A person may have a special vision of looking at particular
incidents of his life in a special way. We get special delight in reading such special
autobiographies having special insight. Thus, all the above objectives of
autobiographies do not imply that only a celebrity can write an autobiography. A
novel can be written on a king or a beggar. Similarly an autobiography can be written
by a celebrity as well as by a common man. The only condition is that he/she must
have a proper command over diction and its expression. Hence, by the twentieth
century, all the marginal irrespective of their gender, race, class and political status
were considered to be the representatives of their age.

There are three main types of autobiography; Infonnal autobiography, fonnal

autobiography and specialized fonns of autobiography. Infonnal autobiography
includes extremely intimate writings not necessarily for publication. Letters, diaries
and journals for instance reveal the personal life of the author very consciously.
Publication of collected letters of some eminent persons such as the volumes of W. S.
Louis's correspondence with Horace Walpole, an 18th century man of letters (34 Vol,
1937-65) can enlighten the readers about different ways in which a person can reveal
himself or herself. Similarly, Leonardo de Vinci's notebooks reveal his teeming and
ardent brain. Dorothy Wordsworth's Journals (1867) bear the proof of her sensitive
nature. Memoirs and reminiscences emphasize what is remembered rather than who is
remembering. The second category of the autobiography is fonnal autobiography: It
offers a special kind of biographical truth: a life, reshaped by recollection, with all of
recollections conscious and unconscious omissions and distortions. St. Augustine's
Confessions of 5th century A.D. is a remarkably early instance of this genre. The third
category of the autobiographies is, specialized forms of autobiography: They are
classified under four heads: thematic, religious, intellectual and fictionalized
autobiographies. Adolph Hitler's Mein Kempf {\924) and Richard Wright's Native
Son (1940) can be called thematic autobiographies. St. Augustine's confessions and a
few chapters of Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus are instances of religious
autobiographies. John S. Mill's Autobiography and Edmund Goss's Father and son
(1907) are intellectual autobiographies. Fictionalized autobiographies are thinly
disguised as novels. For instance, Samuel Butler's Way of all flesh (1903), James
Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' (1916) are fictionalized
autobiographies.

31
 The dividing line between the fact and fiction is very thin in autobiography.
Roger J. Porter and Howard Robert Wolf opine that "truth is highly subjective matter,
and no autobiographer can represent exactly "what happen back then" any more than a
historian can definitely describe the real truth of the past" (10). Consequently the fact
and fiction get entangled. But this does not mean that the autobiographers create a
fictional account of their life. It is based on facts, but the privilege that an author can
exercise is, as Booth opines, "he chooses, consciously or unconsciously, what we
read; we infer him as an ideal literary, created version of the real man; he is the sum
of his own choices" (68). The author may amplify an event and enlarge some special
aspects of his/her life or minimize the incidents which could interrogate his/her
reputation. However this moulding the facts does not tantamount to fiction or
falsehood.

The autobiographies have two integral constituents, as viewed by Smith and

Watson; first, "the autobiographical pacts" which include the self, the coaxers, the site
and the readers of the autobiography and the second as viewed by Sidonie Smith and
Junia Watson , 'the autobiographical acts", which include memories, experience and
the language (57). The autobiographical fonn gives more preference to self mainly
than to the external world. The outer world is of utmost importance and is taken into
consideration as far as selfliood is shaped and molded by these external forces.
Gerhard Stilz has tried to understand the relation between self and the world through
an autobiography in a figurative manner. He holds autobiography to be an 'elliptic
venture', where the author locates two points on a line; one is self whereas the other
point is the world. Like a mathematician he establishes "an equation between these
two quantities unknown to each other; the mysterious self; who wills and suffers and
the complex outside world; where facts and ideas mingle"" (Stilz 164). These are the
two foci of interest in an autobiography, which are tried by the author to be drawn
together and united neatly. The individual self becomes aware of his existence only
through the reflection of his relationship with the world. The self tries to understand
the world through different codes of the religious beliefs, historical concepts,
psychological world views, culture, education, his own experience and so on. In this
procedure, the prime aim of the autobiography shifts from self to the world and the
repeated co-relation of these two quantities establish a relationship between

32
themselves. Self emerges out of this struggle with the world through resistance and
adaptation and does not get dissolved in it. Hence the description and the preservation
of the self mark the main feature of the autobiography. To quote Gerhard Stilz,
through an autobiography;

What we want to see is the private man or woman behind their

public roles, their internal motives behind their external
achievements, their individual changeability behind the
continuity that may be expected, their soul's struggles against
their self-created images, their continual resistance against
everything which threatens and thereby provokes their
individuality and their true living self (165)

Stephen Spender is of the view that autobiographer confronts not one life but
two. One is the self, observed by others - the social, historical person with
achievement, personal appearance and social relationships. These are the real
attributes of a person living in the world and as perceived by others. But there is also a
self experienced only by that person, a self felt from the inside that the writers can
never get outside of The inside or personally experienced, 'self has a history. It is a
record of the self-observations, not a history observed by others. Spender writes:

We are seen from the outside by our neighbors; but we remain

always at the back of our eyes and our senses, situated in our
bodies, like a driver in the front seat of a car seeing the other
cars coming towards him. A single person...is one conscious
within one machine, confronting all the other traffic. (116)

Some of the life narratives that emerged as ''landmarks" in the critical study of
self-exploration, confession, and self-discovery are St. Augustine's Confessions.
Cellini's Life. Rousseau's Confessions, Fox's '"Journal," Franklin's Autobiography,
Goethe's Truth and Poetry. Mill's Autobiography. Cardinal Newman's Apologia Pro
Vita Sua. Thoreau's Walden and M. K. Gandhi's An Autobiography: The Stoiy of My
Experiments With Truth. These core texts were seen as the highest achievements of
life narrative and were considered to maintain canonical status of the autobiography.
Smith, Sidonie; Watson, Julia assume the autobiographer to be "an autonomous and
enlightened individual" who understood his relationship to others and the world as

33
one of separateness in which he exercised the agency of free will (61). They focused
on a development of narratives usually written late in life as retrospections on their
public or writing careers. They achieved their objective in understanding their self
through reflection upon past achievement and at the same time assumed the
representative status of their contemporary period. Even though the narrator speaks of
his individual life, the patterns of behavior, achievements, intellectual preoccupations,
and relationships with others he rehearses, are the norms or in the case of rebels such
as Augustine, Rousseau, or Thoreau— becomes an inspired choice of the culture. All
of these texts can be (and are being) read very differently with the point of view that
these categories of freedom, individuality, and comprehensible and connected events
of past life were norms at a particular time.

Though the intention of the majority of the autobiographers is authenticity, yet

unlike biographers they are free to shape their life in whatever manner they choose.
They are at liberty to select what they want to include or omit. They may simplify or
amplify an event as per their desires. The autobiographical process is not merely the
depiction of the author's personality, but rather a recreation of his personality in
retrospection. In writing about the life that he has lived in the past, the author
becomes a stranger to himself The life which he has lived belong to the past whereas,
the life about which he is writing belongs to the present. He becomes a historian to
himself in revisiting his past George Gusdorf thinks it to be a "'document about a life
and its historians have every right to check its accuracy" (33). But he has to be
conscious about these two time periods, as T. S. Eliot has mentioned, "pastness of the
past and of its presence too" (quoted by Sodhi 16). Hence autobiography becomes a
revised and conccted version of the writer's life. As Bates puts it:

He (the autobiographer) will often be enlarging on special

aspects of his life, such as the influences that molded him ... or
the services that he rendered to what he most cared about ... a
vindication for the world. ... he may turn his book into a
laundry for the dirty liner of his dirty soul (3).

But the literary value of an autobiography lies not only as a focus on the
author's life but an artistic recreation of his self He recreates a life, which is new and
revealing. The autobiographer is the hero of his own tale and is cognitive to unfold his
past "in order to draw out the structure of his being in time" (Gusdorf 62).

34
Autobiography is a work of enlightenment, where the author too comes to know about
himself. Its success depends upon as Roy Pascal has suggested, ''the seriousness of
the author, the seriousness of his personality and his intention in writing'' (60).

Along with the autobiographical subject and self, the next important feature
of the autobiography is the coaxer. The coaxer, in Plummer's terms, "is any person or
institution or set of cultural imperatives that solicits or provokes people to tell their
stories" (21). The coaxer may be found in the answer to the question, who provoked
the author to write his autobiography. Telling may occur in intimate situations when
someone solicits a personal narrative. In Confessions, Augustine projects a coaxing
God for his confession. Slave narrators were urged to recite their narratives of
slavery's degradations. But coaxing is also more broadly diffused throughout a
culture. Successive generations of immigrants in the United States, for example, have
responded to the need to affirm for other Americans their legitimate membership in
the nation by telling stories of assimilation. Similarly in India also, the freedom
fighters felt a need to inform the successive generations about the plight of Indians
under the British regime, so that they could too understand the hurdles in the
independence of their subjugated nation e.g. Surendernath Banerjea's A Nation in
Making. Some autobiographers publish their life stories in order to defend or justify
their past choices, to "set the record straight" as in the case of Nirad C. Chaudhuri's
Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (Preface ix). Thus, coaxing becomes an integral
part of an autobiography.

After the coaxers, the next significant feature of the autobiography is the site
of storytelling. Linda Anderson suggests to "'think of sites as both occasional, that is
specific to an occasion, and locational, that is emergent in a specific context of
narration" (6). The site is, first, a literal place, may be a talk show, perhaps, or a social
service agency, an airplane mostly may be in the case of oral autobiographies. But the
site of narration is also a moment in history, a socio-political space in culture. The
appropriateness of personal narratives for particular sites is a crucial consideration in
case of the written autobiographies. The autobiographical presentation made on a
website, for example, would not be an appropriate site. Occasional and locational sites
are multilayered matrices at which coaxing and narrating take place. They may be
predominantly personal, institutional, or geographical, though to some extent these
three levels often overlap. Most of the autobiographies by the Indian authors are

35
written with India as a geographical setting, of course varying in their personal
settings for example the autobiographies of M. K. Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Nirad C.
Chaudhuri etc.

A quite significant site in the early nineteenth century autobiographies used to

be the prison cell. Here the locational norm is forced incarceration, and with it the
monotonous and deindividuating routine of daily discipline. Within this context of
state coercion, autobiographical narrative can become "a site of enabling self-
reconstruction and self-determination in its insistence on imagining forms of
resistance to those de-individuatmg routines'" (smith Watson 68). This was certainly
the case with M. K. Gandhi and J. L. Nehru, the Indian leaders as they wrote their
autobiographies in Prison; Gandhi wrote in Yeruvuda prison and Nehru in Naini
prison. They wrote about their experiences of the freedom struggle of India against
the British. They also highlighted the miserable and traumatic conditions of the
colonized Indians under the British rule. Similarly, Albertine Sarrazin, too wrote his
diuXoh'\ogra\)\\y Journal de prison in the prison in 1959.

In many narratives, the geographical location strongly inflects the story

being told. .lane Addams"s Hull House is both a social institution and a location of
impoverished immigrant Chicago in the early twentieth century. Autobiographies as
diverse as Edward William Bok's The Americanization of Edward Bok: The
Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After, Audre Lorde's Zami: A New Spelling
of My Name. Vivian Gornick's Fierce Attachments: A Memoir, and David Sedaris"s
Naked, all situated in New York City, establish richly textured portrayals of its streets,
bars, apartments, and urban scene. In the vast and heterogeneous space of the city,
stories of lives engage its particular locations as well as the complexity of urban life
for various kinds of subjects to produce not 'New York City" but diverse stories of the
highly charged, dense, sensorily saturated, and often jarring or hostile world of the
city. Conversely, narratives steeped in the specifics of rural place or wilderness—
Kathleen Norris's Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, Terry Tempest Williams's Refuge:
An Unnatural Histoiy of Familv and Place. Michael Ondaatje's Running in the
Family— are also socio-cultural sites, in which struggles about environmental,
familial, national, and cultural politics intersect as ''layers" of narrative location. Site,
then, more actively than notions of 'place" or "setting", speaks to the situations of
autobiographical narration.

36
 After the site, the next thing that the autobiographer has to keep in mind is the
readers for whom he writes. Sometimes, as in a diary, that someone might even be
another version of himself. This someone is called "the addressee". The self narrator
whose story is published cannot know who in fact his/ her readers will be. But the
autobiographer cannot tell his/her story without imagining a reader. The implied
readers to which self-referential modes are addressed vary across time, cultures, and
purposes. Some autobiographers imagine an addressee as an intimate, as Gliickel of
Hameln does as she addresses her children in her Memoirs in Seven Little Books.
Spiritual life nan^ators may identify "'God" as the implied reader. Addressees can be
imagined, and addressed directly in the text or indirectly through the text. Narrator
and addressee(s), then, are engaged in a communicative action that is fundamental to
autobiographical acts.

The life narrative is addressed may be to one or more narratees and the
implied readers within the text. Both addressees are implicit in autobiographical acts.
But there are also actual readers of, and listeners to, the personal stories as in the case
of oral life narratives. They are the audiences (or flesh-and-blood readers). When
someone tells his life story before a "'live'" audience, the audience is there, soliciting,
assessing and judging the story being told. Thus the audience directly influences the
presentation of identity. It gets influenced by the inclusion of certain identity contents
and the exclusion of others; the incorporation of certain narrative itineraries or the
silencing of others; the adoption of certain autobiographical voices and the muting of
others. In a sense, then, the performance of such an autobiographical act minimizes
the distance between the narrator and narratee, the implied audience and the
consumer. When the story is being addressed to a live audience, they immediately and
audibly respond. But in case of the written autobiographies, the reading audiences are
not comparably homogenepus communities. They are heterogeneous collectives for
whom certain discourses of identity, certain stories, and certain truths make sense at
various moments.

The autobiographical process takes place with the help of the autobiographical
acts especially in the form of memory. Meena Sodhi opines that recollection of the
past is dependent upon a creative memory, "'that apes and reshapes the historic past as
in the image of the present, making the past as necessary to this present as this present
is the inevitable outcome of that past'"( 20). An autobiographer enters the cave of past
with the search light of memory. In order to write an autobiography the author must

37
have a powerful memory. Through his powerful memory an autobiographer may dive
deeper into his farther past and recollect his fragile emotions. Through his memory
the autobiographer recollects the memories related to particular time and place and
relives the tender moments of the past. The autobiographer whose memory is very
powerful in recollecting childhood moments can portray most of the events of life
very remarkably. Tolstoy is one such writer. His memory is wonderfully depicted in
his autobiographical novels written in trilogy Childhood. Boyhood and Youth in 1855-
1858. He recollects the wooden bath tub and its smell in which he used to bathe as a
child. He is able to recollect the nurse with her novel impression. He feels the heat of
the bathwater, his play with it and even the tender touch of the tub at his bottom.
Thus, memory plays an important role in exposing the moments hidden in our
subconscious. But memory cannot be retained in its original form. It is a mingling of
many foregone events. Many a time memory comes in much transformed form of a
wish or a thought. Therefore, memory depicts not what was, but what ought to be.
Thus, memory diffuses and dissipates in order to recreate. Memory not only depicts
whatever is useful to the autobiographer. Along with time, character, emotions and
facts lose their significance and consequently, several characters and events grow
larger than life and others even become smaller than life.

Another important act of the autobiographical writing is the language and the
style. Style is that aspect of writing which gives artistic touch to autobiography.
Literature is an art of diction. In this genre of literature the artist expresses himself in
the most meaningful terms. Generally, autobiography is considered as a history of
life. This history of life is turned into art of life by the impressive style of the author.
Style is the key of the autobiographer's mind and heart. Autobiographer"s style
depends upon his mood and mode of narration. The autobiographer may employ
narrative, dramatic, descriptive or story-telling method for the expression of his/her
innermost feelings. The more intense the feeling, the more impressive the expression
becomes. The language of autobiography should be simple, lucid and clear, it must
have dignity of utterance. However it should not be too much ornamented and
figurative. The language should cultivate an intimate rapport with the readers.

Another important and the most interesting feature about the autobiography is
that it is never complete. The autobiographical process remains incomplete as long as

38
the biological life of the writer continues. Several writers write their autobiographies
at a very young age. They cannot be considered a full autobiography but a partial
work, only a fragment. As Marlene Fisher too observes "since no autobiography can
be 'finished', the life or the progress through life that any such text purports to
represent can only be one that is in-the-making and therefore a fragment of life''
(127). Philip Dodd advocates that the writers should at least be of middle age. Philip
Dodd quotes Erik Erikson that autobiographies "are written at certain late stages of
life for the purpose of recreating oneself in the image of one's own method; and they
are written to make that image convincing" (21). The autobiographer tries to establish
a compatibility between his present and his lived past and solve several complications
of the present by correlating with "identifiable and well arranged steps performed
successfully in the past" (Stilz 164). Thus an autobiography written at a very young
and tender age may not be a work of satisfaction. Lots more to be seen and
experienced in the world may mould one's personality and hence may sting the genre
of an autobiography.

The genre of autobiography, as opined by Roy Pascal, "essentially European'"

(22), and being purely a Western fonn of writing spread to other civilizations in
modern times. As conceived in the West, an autobiography is usually the story of an
individual, because Western societies are typically organized around the notion of the
individual. As a result of this individualistic tendency of the West, the Western
autobiographers often tower above all the other participants in the story. Therefore,
most of the autobiographies function as stories of the individuals, with prominence of
the autobiographers. The Western man discovered himself in a new way during the
Renaissance and the Reformation. The obsession with self was seen as a reaction to a
widely discursive feeling that the days of the individual were numbered in the post-
industrial World War II Western society. Following the West, therefore, the literary
people in other nations too got fascinated by the genre of the autobiography.

The autobiography has become one of the most popular and powerful
mediums of the self-expression and all sorts of people whether a king or a pauper
started rushing into print with their lives. People are crazy about it; they feel impelled
to write their lives. This craze is symptomatic of man's inner desire to unburden his
heart, to share his feelings with others. The man cannot deny the impact of the society

39
on his/her self. Hence he holds the society also responsible for the identity in which
he/she is shaped. He/she also has a desire that the coming generations must know
about him/her. In this regard, Meena Sodhi too opines that:

Man is dependent on a community and is never isolated from it.

But the life in a community demands that each man must play a
role which had sometime or other been played by his ancestors
and will also be played by his offspring, who would take on the
names of their forefathers. Thus the community life helps in
maintaining a continuity of the individual's self-identity. It,
therefore, implies that the writing of an autobiography is not
possible in a culture, which does not give prominence to man
and to the self (26)

This worldwide craze has also infected the Indians who have taken to this
genre with gusto and vigor. This genre is not new to them. Though in modern India,
during the colonization, with the hybridity of culture, ideas and education of the
colonizers with that of Indian culture, there has been a bursting forth of the
autobiographical impulse that had expressed itself only intermittently and
spasmodically in the past.

It has been customary to distinguish the man in the East from the man in the
West, as it is quite often argued that the Eastern man in general and the Indian in
particular, is an introvert. Though they belong to the same species, Meena Sodhi
opines that, "'the western man is materialistic, more ethical and extrovert", whereas,
•'the eastern man is more intuitive, spiritual and an introxert" (27). He does not feel
inclined to share his innermost secrets, as the Indian norms did not allow the
individuality of a person to be the supreme. The Indian traditions put several
inhibitions on the Indians to portray their self-hood. Moreover, the Indian
autobiographer in English has to use not only a language, which is not his mother
tongue, but also a form, which is alien to his mentality. Writing in English has not
been an easy task for an Indian writer, as Raja Rao remarks in the preface to
Kanthapura, "the English language is not the language of our emotional make-up; it is
very much the language of our intellectual make-up" (v). But the literary renaissance
in India along with the English influence encouraged the Indians to shun all their

40
inhibitions and express themselves through their writing. The spirit of enquiry
coupled with the zest for freedom of the country, gave birth to several Indian
autobiographers.

Establishment of English language as a way of expression among the Indian

intelligentsia was a double benefit in a culture with a diversity of languages. Though
Tagore and Gandhi originally wrote their autobiographies in Bengali and Gujarati
respectively and were translated in English later on under the full supervision of the
authors themselves. The autobiographical impulse was stimulated among Indians with
the literary Renaissance that began during the colonization with the introduction of
the English language in India. It is not that the Indians discovered an autobiographical
tradition for the first time. It did exist in ancient India but due to its irregularities it
could not attain a significant platform in the national culture.

For the rise in growth of autobiographical genre, a certain degree of

individualism is a mandatory, which is the distinguishing mark in the West. The
impression that the Indians in the past did not care to write their autobiographies is
partly true as they never used to give priorities to their 'selves'. The Indians
considered it a sin to be limited only to their own selves. They were more God fearing
and spiritual. As Albert Schweitzer says that the Indian thought is basically governed
by the idea of "world and life-negation" (4), their belief in the doctrine of karma and
fate made them more conservative to which Radhakrishnan adds his opinions that,
"Whatever happens to us in this life we have to submit in meek resignation, for it is
the result of our past doings"" (249). Hence man's deeds are incalculable, as one is not
certain which past deed is responsible for the present happening. To the concept of
fate was added, as Keith puts it, another life-enervating view of "the miraculous in the
shape of divine intervention, magic and witch-craft"' (146), and on the worse is the
concept of time "which, like a wheel, remains constantly moving'" (Mishra 55) in a
circle stifling the very idea of progress and was stuck at the root of self-consciousness
of every individual.

The Indians, though against several odds, managed to find some sort of an
outlet for their autobiographical impulse. There are a few examples of such
autobiographical expressions, though fragmentary and very few in number, possess
their worth as autobiographical documents, llie lament of the Gambler in Rigveda is

41
the most remarkable autobiographical piece in verse. It is a confession of a Rishi
turned a gambler, who narrates his pathetic story full of remorse and repentance. But
Macdonell remarks about this confession of the Rishi. "Considering that it is the
oldest composition of the kind in existence, we cannot but regard this poem as a most
remarkable literary product" (128). But the way the Rishi confesses his weakness and
the extraordinary brevity with which he sums up his whole life reveals the
psychological wavering of an addict's mind. Here lies the autobiographical appeal in
the sincerity and frankness of the speech of ri.shi's failure.

Several kings ruled India, with each having a desire to let the people know of
their lives and victories. Ashoka, "the king of kings" (Wells 115) occupies a
significant place in the growth of autobiographical impulse. One gets a fairly large
amount of his life and victories from his inscriptions engraved on rocks and stone
pillars. He used this method to propagate Buddhism too. The most significant of his
inscription contains the account of the spiritual change he underwent during the war
of Kaling, fought eight years after his coronation. The most remarkable thing to be
noted in these inscriptions is that they are written in first person, revealing "his inner
self, his achievements as well as his weaknesses" (Sinha 16).

Then there is another autobiographical account of Bana Bhatta in his Hrisu-

Carita, written around 647 A. D. R. P. Sinha mentions that it was based on the life of
king Harsavardhana of Thanesar and Kannauj, who ruled over Northern India in first
half of the seventh century (quoted in Sinha 16). He began his story with an elaborate
description of his clan Vatsyuyuna, his life, family and a sort of self-portrayal.
Another inhabitant of Kashmir wrote a lengthy account of biography of his patron
king Vikramaditya VI of Kalyan and attached his own life's account to it. In the
twelfth century A. D. Rujutarungini was written by Kalhana, referring to some facts
of his life. According to A. I.. Basham, "it is unique as the only attempt at true history
in the whole of surviving Sanskrit literature" (58).

However, the autobiographical accounts got a fresh impetus with the arrival
of Moghuls in India. The Moghul emperors were quite fond of writing the stories of
their lives either themselves or got them written by others, with a motive of self-
gloritlcation in the form of reminiscences or travelogues. A few examples are Bahur-
namu, the life history of the Moghul king Babur (1483-1530), Tuiuk-i-Jahangir or
Memoirs ofJuhangir (1569-1627), partly written by himself and partly by Muhamad

42
Khan Etc. Though all these works were written either in Sanskrit, Persian and Hindi,
yet they throw light on the very fact that the tradition of writing about one's own-self
was prevalent in the ancient and Medieval India. Such informal autobiographies
appear to have been written either to promote spirituality or to glorify the auto
biographer himself. However all these works show some kind of self-portrayal yet
cannot be ternied as autobiographical as the Western works emphasize. The
systematic development of autobiography in various languages including English in
India can be traced from the second half of the 19th century, during the Indian
Renaissance.

After that, it gradually developed as a genre in the western sense, followed its
natural trend to display the Indianness of the writers. Indian Renaissance was an
attempt towards the rejuvenation of Indian cultural life. The rapid evolution of
modern India is but an aspect of the Indian Renaissance that commenced in the
nineteenth century. It paved a path for national regeneration. The spirit of awakening,
revival and recreation spread from sphere to sphere of national life and affected
society, religion, literature, industries, crafts and politics profoundly. The Indian
leaders wanted to communicate their grievances to the Indians as well as to their
colonial masters through their personal experiences. In this context, Raja Ram Mohan
Roy was perhaps the first Indian to start the tradition of writing autobiography. He
wrote a brief auto-sketch in 1833, (that appeared in the Athenaeum and the Literaiy
Gazette) which is a very realistic presentation. He inspired other Indian leaders like
Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Surendernath Banerjee, and Rajender Prasad to
communicate their worldview to the Indians through this genre.

The whole process of writing an autobiography became an act of inner

assimilation, which involved the proficiency of the writers to articulate their keenness
and sensitivity to the minutest current of their feelings among the public. They
expressed the conditions in which an Indian grew to manhood during the period of
colonization in India. Thus, it can be said with certainty that autobiography as literary
practice had an intimate relation with the subjugation of India by the colonial powers.
Judith Walsh in her Preface to Growing up in British India, pointed out that. "The
genre of autobiography was virtually unknown in the rich literature of traditional
culture and its appearance in the nineteenth century was clearly the result of Western
influence" (ix). Meenakshi Sharnia considers this genre of autobiography in particular

43
to be "appropriate for a study of the shaping power of the colonial legacy" (13).The
Indian Renaissance, itself a product of colonization, was the beginning point for the
genesis of the Indian autobiography.

George Gusdorf s remark that "'Gandhi's autobiography The Story of my

Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography (1927-1929) is a Western means to
defend the East" is quite presumptuous (35) and his remarks are endorsed by Roy
Pascal, "Where in modern times, members of Eastern civilizations have written
autobiographies, like Gandhi for instance, they have taken over a European tradition"
(22). Hence in the nineteenth century the Indian autobiographies flourished under the
colonial impact as a separate genre. K.C. Yadav, a historian too comments on the
tradition of writing an autobiography in the twentieth century India:

Autobiographical writing in India is basically a product of

modern times. In the olden times, a general notion as persisted
amongst Indians that self-popularity of this belief probably
accounts for the complacent indifference to the composition of
the autobiographical writings during the medieval period when
some of the rules, under the influence of the Central Asian
Tradition, encouraged this fonn of writing. (1)

The first extensive Indian autobiography in English was written by Lutufullah,

a tutor in Persian, Arabic and Hindustani for the British officers in 1857. He wanted
to share his experiences with the English readers, so he wrote this text keeping in
mind the English readers. This autobiography described his escape into the hands of a
thug from a tyrannous father (mentioned by R. C. P. Sinha 18). The British
appreciated his work and employed him as a clerk in the East India. Novelist Lai
Behari Dey's Recolections of My School Days, serialised in the Bengal Magazine
(1873-76), proclaims the superiority of English education to oriental learning.
Nishikanta Chattopadhyaya's Reminiscences of German University Life (1892) and
Rakhal Das Haider's The English Diary of an Indian Student (1861-2) were attempts
of autobiographical writing by the Indians in the 19th century, in the first half of the
20th century there was a quest for freedom. Those great figures who devoted
themselves to the freedom struggle wrote about their own experiences through
autobiographies. Surendranath Banerjec's A Nation Making (1925) is an apologia for
moderate politics.

44
 K. R. S. Iyengar has quoted the French historian that three factors are very
important for any Hterary creativity hke autobiography; "'the race, the miheu and the
moment" (22). Indian race is a mixed Indian race as a result of various invasions and
occupation of the foreigners for a period of more than four thousand years. The miheu
is a variegated Indian subcontinent and the moment, as far as the writing in English is
concerned, is the hybridity of Indian culture with that of the Western culture. The
autobiographies written in this period express a keen sensitivity which is an
embodiment of the Indian spirit and the Indian traditions. The introduction of the
Western culture and its adoption by Indians, although gave a jolt to India's traditional
life, a long domiant intellectual impulse was quickened into sudden life. A new
efflorescence was visible everywhere and the re-awakening Indian spirit went forth to
meet the violent changes of modern science and the civilization of the West. As Mr.
Arthur Mayhew writes, "Under English rule in India, the impact of two civilizations
may have produced unrest. But it has also sustained and stimulated life"' (quoted by
Iyengar 28). It is an extraordinary story of endurance, assimilation and integral
transfomiation of India.

The period between 1835 and 1855 was a period of the promotion of English
literature and science in India by the Colonizers. English books were easily accessible
to the Indians under the policy of the British to make the Indians compatible to the
Western thoughts. Gradually the Indians started adopting the Western manner of dress
and custom. New scientific techniques allured the Indians. It was the open sesame to
knowledge, freedom, and power, which further made a new world for the
beneficiaries. Surendranath Banerjee made an observation that:

Our fathers, the first fruits of English education, were violently

pro-British. They could see no flaw in the civilization or culture
of the West. They were charmed by the novelty and its
strangeness. The enfranchisement of the individual, the
substitution of the right of the private judgment in the place of
the traditional authority, the exaltation of the duty over
custom...Everything English was good-even the drinking of
brandy was a virtue; everything not English was to be viewed
with suspicion. (As quoted by Iyengar 41-42)

45
 Ram Mohan Roy, who was the one of the earUer writers to write in English,
supported "a tradition in which hidians have found a pecuHar intimacy with the
Enghsh language, making it a natural second voice for the Indian mind and
sensibility" (Walsh 32). He further motivated the Indian leaders to write about the
experiences of their lives to guide their contemporaries about the freedom struggle.
The period of Colonization in itself was a record of struggle for survival. The need to
teach the history of existing circumstances to the younger generations and importance
of learning from the activities of the older generations, who shaped the history in
various ways, motivated the genre. The autobiographies written during the
colonization and post-colonial period contain a record of independence struggle, post-
independence disillusionment and the articulation of hope for the better future.
William Walsh is of the opinion that autobiographical writing in English in India is
associated with the extraordinary expansion of English language in India, "which
proved itself capable of expressing the innermost as well as the .strongest and subtle,
feelings of members of a culture immensely remote in history and distance" (124).

Despite the corrosive ways of the colonization, awakened and enlightened

people in India wanted to learn English education, the importation of Western ideas
and techniques, and the fusion of the best in the European culture with the best in the
Indian culture. Consequently, English education took rapid strides and the literary
climate flourished for the Indian intelligentsia. English was considered to be "the gift
of Saraswati". To lndians-"Saraswati is the Hindu Goddess of Learning and Arts" (as
quoted by Iyengar 12). English proved an indispensable tool, a cementing force, a key
and a channel for the Indian growth. It was a period of Indian Renaissance and the
English influence encouraged the feeling of the self-expression among the Indians.

By the year 1885, English language was accepted by the Indians in the Indian
way of life and several universities were opened in the big cities like Bombay,
Calcutta, Madras and Allahabad to further strengthen the education in English. The
Indians, who received education in English, rapidly adopted the English thoughts and
gave a new dimension to the genre of autobiography in India. Rammohan Roy coaxed
the elites of those days to share their life experiences with their native Indians to make
them aware of the colonization as well as their experiences of the freedom struggle.
At the inspiration of Rammohan Roy, several Indian leaders felt the need to reach out
to a larger reading public through this medium and started writing about their lives,

46
like Lala Lajpat Rai, Rabindra Nath Tagore, M. K. Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru etc.
made an attempt in this direction. The autobiographies written by these iconic figures
gave the gUmpse of their minds to the pubHc and at the same time their potential as
creative writers too emerged. These autobiographies reflected mainly the ebb and
flow of the national consciousness along with their self-presentation. In 1911,
Rabindra Nath Tagore wrote his autobiography Jiwunsmhti originally in Bengali,
which was later translated in English under the title The Reminiscences. In this he
wrote about his poetic career and also the projection of his self-hood during the days
of the freedom struggle of India. At the age of eighty, he wrote another autobiography
Chelhela in 1941 that was translated in English in 1943 with the title My Boyhood
Days. In this, he not only wrote about his individual self but about the milieu and the
relationships with his near and dear ones.

With the arrival of Gandhi on the national scene, writing in English became
more functional. Though he was never a writer, as K. R. S. Iyengar says, "Gandhi was
no writer, properly so called, nor was he at any time particularly interested in the art
of writing, but he had to write or talk a great deal (often in English), even as we have
to walk or eat or breathe" (248). Gandhi was coaxed to write his autobiography
apparently by his fellow-workers, but he had an inner compulsion too. An intense
fidelity to truth distinguishes his life as well as his autobiography and the standard of
candor and veracity achieved are still unexcelled.

The five autobiographies that have been taken up for a detailed study in this
research are part and parcel of the growth of genre of autobiography in India. Their
status is inextricably linked with colonization, Western education and Western
thought. These five select autobiographies which will be studied in detail are; M. K.
Gandhi's An Autobiography: The Sloiy of My Experiments With Truth (1929),
.lawaharlal Nehru's An Autobiography (1936), Nirad C. Chaudhuri's Autobiography
of an Unknown Indian (1951) Ved Mehta's Face to Face (1959) and Sasthi Brata's
My God Died Young (1968).

Mohandas K. Gandhi's An Autobiography: The stoiy of My Experiments with

Truth, originally written in Gujarati in two volumes, (Vol. 1, 1927, Vol II, 1929), was
first published in the weekly installments in the Gujarati periodical Navajivan, under
the title Satyano Prayago athava Atma-Katha. Later, it was translated in English by
Mahadev Desai in 1940. According to Sunil Khilnani. Gandhi's life was delivered to

47
the public by installments in the form of "a sequence of parables, a modem recession
of the Buddhist ya/c/Aa tradition" (144). His autobiography is the most famous Indian
autobiography worldwide, because of his immense popularity as an Indian leader not
only in India but in other nations too. His philosophy of Satyagraha i.e. firmness in
truth was a strong power and tool in the attainment of Indian freedom and it was
widely admired and adopted by the world outside India too notably by Nelson
Mandela in South Africa and Martin Luther King in the United States.

Gandhi sometimes, had some reservations about autobiogi-aphy as a fomi,

because of its western heritage. Gandhi confessed that it was not a convention in India
to write about one's own life during those days, and he was indulging in something
that was peculiar to the west. Keeping similar notion in mind, a "God fearing friend"
of Gandhi raises his doubts about the originality of the genre of autobiography to
Gandhi, when he set his mind to write an autobiography during the Yeruvacia
imprisonment by asking. "What has set you on this adventure? ... Writing an
autobiography is a practice peculiar to the West. 1 know of nobody in the East having
written one, except, amongst those who came under the Western inlluence" {An
Aiitohiography: The story of My Experiments with Truth 2. Further reference to An
Autobiography: The story of My Experiments with Truth will appear as page numbers
preceded by TSOMEWT). But he negotiated these problems by pointing out that
while his public life was known throughout the world, he was going to write about the
spiritual life, he alone knew.

Gandhi's autobiography is very different from other autobiographies. The

autobiographies normally contain self-praise by the authors. Their motive is to boost
their image among the public by criticizing their opponents. But Gandhi's
autobiography docs not contain any such matter. Lawrence D" Souza viewes Gandhi's
autobiography as "marked with humility and truthfulness" (8). Without concealing
anything about his life from the readers, with artful artlessness, Gandhi allowed the
details of his life to be constantly witnessed and recorded by all. He extended an open
invitation to all his countrymen: poor or elites, as well as to the colonizers i.e. the
British at large to eavesdrop on him at every moment through his autobiography. The
minutest actions of his life became public; whether it was his dietary routines, his
fevers and depressions, his bowel movements, his sexual habits, his prayers, spinning,
drinking even a glass of lime juice to break the fast, his silences, all became the

48
subject of talk and a legend. Instead of indulging in the self-praise, Gandhi shared the
factual conditions prevailing in India as well as in South Africa and his experiences
there with the people of his nation.

Gandhi's autobiography is not merely a conventional story of the author's life

and work. Instead as mentioned in the title of the autobiography, The Stoiy of My
Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography and explained in the introduction, it is a
story of 'experiments'. He led his life in a scientific way-testing trials and errors and
constant revisions. He considered his life to be a laboratory and himself a scientist, as
mentioned by Gandhi in his autobiography:

1 claim for them nothing more than does a scientist who, though
he conducts his experiments with an utmost accuracy,
forethought and minuteness, never claims any finality about his
conclusions, but keeps on open mind regarding them.
(TSOMEWT 14)

Gandhi's autobiography may be categorized as a spiritual autobiography too

as Gandhi always gave priority to his spiritualism and puts forth his notions that the
real objective of his life is "Self-realization, to see God face to face, to attain mokshu"
(i.e. salvation, freedom from the very cycle of birth and death), (TSOMEWT 13) and
further adds:

I have gone through deep self-introspection, searched myself

through and through and examined and analyzed every
psychological situation. Yet 1 am far from claiming any finality
or infallibility about my conclusions.... If 1 had only to discuss
academic principles, 1 should clearly not attempt autobiography.
But my purpose being to give an account of various practical
applications of those principles. (TSOMEWT 14)

Gandhi's autobiography is rather placed in both; the Western tradition of

autobiography as a confession just like St. Augustine's Confessions and Eastern
tradition of life as a quest for enlightenment, transcendence and perfection. But, CD.
Narasimahaiah thinks that like Augustine's Confessions. Gandhi's autobiography also
falls outside the domain of autobiography due to its pre-occupation with spirituality,
which projects only "a part of the man when you seek to know the whole of him, his
many-sidedness" (120).

49
 While Gandhi expressed his ambiguity about whether his autobiography
should properly be called an autobiography in both its preface and in correspondence,
the text does follow the generic conventions of Canonical autobiography. First of all,
the autobiography is told in the first person and according to Phillip Scott:

... it proceeds largely in linear fashion through its protagonist's

life. Several of its features, indeed will become paradigmatic in
later national autobiographies: the focus on the maternal in a
description of childhood, for example and period of exile that
prompts self recognition in the colonial metropolis. (56)

Then, he was coaxed to write something for the Weekly Ncivajivan. "Why
should it not be the autobiography?" he was suggested by one of his associates
(TSOMEWT 12). Though reluctant initially, he gave his consent just on the plea that
the Indians must know about the life of their leader. The location was the Yeruvada
prison, though he dealt with two geographical sites in his autobiography: South
Africa, where he spent more than twenty years of his life and India, to be more
specific Gujarat, where he spent his childhood and later after his return from Africa,
he led the Indians for the freedom struggle. He established an ashram for the people to
teach them how to lead a life of simplicity and discipline. When he wrote his
autobiography, he was very clear in his mind about his readers that he was going to
write his autobiography only for the people of his nation. But he did not expect them
to regard his autobiography as:

authoritative; rather the experiments should be regarded as

illustrations, in the light of which everyone may carry on his
own experiments according to his inclination and capacity... 1
hope to acquaint the readers fully with my faults and errors.
(TSOMEWT 15)

Though Gandhi's autobiography follows several features of the genre of the

autobiography, yet two features of the text seem surprising in retrospection. Since
Gandhi had already published his book satyagralui, a history of his struggles in South
Africa, then there was hardly any need to devote half of the length of the text of his
autobiography to the events that took place during his sojourn in South Africa. Second
out of the total five sections of his text, only the last i.e. fifth section deals with the
freedom struggle in India, all other four sections are dedicated to his stay abroad.

50
Moreover, the text ends in 1921, with only one section i.e. the last one throwing light
on Gandhi's return to India and his early involvements in struggles that lead to his
engagement in nationalist politics. Though Gandhi repeatedly stressed that his
autobiography was not a history, but a science, yet final comment that since 1921,
"his life from this point onward has been so public that there is hardly anything about
it that people do not know" and that this "principle experiments during the last seven
years have all been made through the congress" (TSOMEWT 446) - essentially
stating that his life had merged with the history of the nationalist struggle,
contradicting his assertion. Sunil Khilnani observes that there were several puzzling
strands of Gandhi's autobiography, which might be unraveled through a focus on an
element of narrative that had proved productive in the analysis of time. The
protagonist in his autobiography is seen right from birth to maturity and much of the
narrative is concentrated on his own characters, delineating all others. Even Kastruba,
his wife plays a very minor role and as such there are no major characters to serve as
rational foils to Gandhi.

There is one another key difference between Gandhi's autobiography and that
of canonical nineteenth century autobiographies. Perhaps for Gandhi, time was not
progressive but immanent. His whole life is a journey with a goal of self-realization,
to see God face to face, to attain moksha. Life seems as if developing according to
over all principle of the nature, rather than development characteristic of modern
autobiography, in which self is fonned through the interaction with the world. Right
from his childhood, Gandhi had encounters with relative truths which later, as
confessed by Gandhi, came to serve as "my beacon, my shield and buckler"
(TSOMEWT 14) in the absence of absolute truth. Gandhi may make plans, but he
comprehended them all in the context of God and Truth. For example, he wanted to
return India early from South Africa, but could not do so as for Gandhi "God disposed
otherwise" (TSOMEWT 186). Another instance, when Gandhi got involved in
tenancy disputes in Champaran, the whole narrative is described in the manner of an
overall historical significance. The protagonist got merged in the history, without
giving even the slightest personal transfomiation in the protagonist. But since
according to Gandhi these all were the experiments with truth and "the lustre of
Truths, a million times more intense than that of the sun we daily see with our eyes"
(TSOMEWT 446-447), can hardly be mentioned as a history and according to

51
Gerhard Stilz. "As long as the ideal of absolute "truth" has not been attained, there is
still scope for autobiography" (167).

After M. K. Gandhi's autobiography. Jawaharlal Nehru took the form still

further in new directions by writing An Autohiogniphv (1935) which in K. R. S.
Iyengar's words is "as sugar to that milk" (303). Autobiography was already an
established form in India to be used as "a platform to deliver windy valedictory self-
testimonials" (KJiilnani 152), as Gandhi had shown its different potentials in his llw
Sloiy of Mv Experiments with Truth in an unornamented prose, about subjects not
usually touched upon. Following the tradition, Nehru wrote his autobiography in a
continuous spell of about nine months from June 1934 to Feb 1935, during his
imprisonment at Naini jail. It was frenzy of writing having an astonishing spate. An
Autobiography is viewed as one of the classics of Indian nationalism. It was an instant
best seller and was reprinted ten times in its first year of publication, representing
astonishing internationals literary success for an Indian. M. K. Naik writes in
admiration of An Autohiogruphy.

A book which has gone into more than a dozen editions and has
been translated into thirty languages. Nehru's An Autobiography
is an incontrovertibly one of the outstanding prose works in the
annals of Indian writing in English. Written at the age of forty
five, it is a literary expression of a man at the height of his
power. (72)

When Nehru set his mind on the task of writing his autobiography, he was not
sure about the category of the readers for whom he is writing:

1 was not writing deliberately for an audience, but if 1 thought of

an audience, it was one of my own countrymen and country
women. For foreign readers, I would have probably written
differently, or with a different emphasis, stressing certain aspects
which have been slurred over in the narrative and passing over
slightly certain other aspects which 1 have treated at some
length. {An Autobiography Preface xiv. Further reference to An
Autobiography will appear as page numbers preceded by AA)

52
 His primary objective in writing his autobiography was to make a constructive
use of his enforced leisure in the prison. "'My object was primarily for my own
benefit, to trace my mental growth (AA 616). As a political leader of the struggling
India for freedom, Nehru had to go several times to the prison and for an intellectual
like Nehru; it would have been a real torture to remain idle in the prison. Thus
knowing the importance of rigorous physical as well as mental discipline for a man in
the prison, Nehru states in his autobiography:

I managed to accustom myself to the gaol routine and with

physical exercise and fairly hard mental work kept fit.
Whatever the value of work and exercise might be outside, they
are essential in gaol, for without them one is apt to go to pieces.
(AA 363)

His autobiography is in the form of self-questioning that persisted throughout

the text. He asks himself. "Why am I writing all this sitting here in prison?" at the
same time consoling himself he adds: "I write down my past feelings and experience
in the hope that this may bring me some peace and psychic satisfaction" (AA 219).
Nehru also makes it clear that his objective in writing his autobiography is "... not to
write a survey of recent Indian history ..., those who want to make a proper study of
our recent past will have to go to other sources" (AA preface 1936 xiv-xv). Nehru
very honestly confessed his limitations. As remaining confined to the four walls of the
prison, it would not have been possible for him to write about the recent past. Hence,
he confesses his autobiographical narrative to be "a sketchy, personal and incomplete
account of the past, verging on the present, but continuously avoiding contact with it"
(AA Preface 1936 xv).

Nehru's autobiography was written in one of the most eventful and

unpredictable period in the history of India. Though a very personal book, yet deals
with the testament of a whole generation that was striving hard to negotiate the
difficult passage from the colonial world to the new independent one. M. K.. Naik
considers it as "personal history fused with the national history" (Naik 73). and it is
really a privilege to view evolution of Nehru's personality in the drama of national
struggle of India.

53
 Essentially an autobiography is a personal document and
therefore it reflects personal views and reactions. But the
person who wrote it became merged, to a large extent, in the
larger movement and therefore represents, in a large measure,
the feelings of many others. (AA Preface 1962 xiii)

Therefore the text comes out not only as a construction of the self of Nehru,
but the making of the mind of the whole nation, India. Indira Gandhi, fornier Prime
Minister of India exalted An Autobiography in forward to 1980 edition, "The
Autobiography has been acclaimed as not merely the quest of one individual for
freedom, but as an insight into the making of the mind of new India"" (AA Preface
1980 xii).

Thus to orient the colonized individual and collective selves, Nehru used this
genre of autobiography as the historical writing to exhibit the anticipation of actions
in India. CD. Narasimhaiah quotes Ernst Toller, who too emphasized that An
Autobiography is witness "not only to a great personality, but to the admirable
struggle of a whole people"" (quoted in Narasimhaiah 16). Nehru, very successfully,
gave historical shape to the slip stream of events taking place in India and expressed
his opinions frankly and strongly.

All autobiographies are written for self promotion and in the words of Sunil
Khilnani, "a calling card solicitously slipped through the letter box of history""
(Khilnani 152). An Autobiography, too gives an undeniable sense of growth of the
author"s mind. Right from his childhood, Nehru passed through different stages; as a
lovely and over-fondled only son, to the Theosophist teen-ager "with Hat and insipid
look" (AA 17) under the influence of Annie Besant, a Shy young student of the
Cambridge days 'a bit of a prig" (AA 29), monotonous, disinterested young lawyer,
who did not find the atmosphere intellectually stimulating grew 'a sense of the utter
insipidity of life (AA 31), growing as a budding politician terrified of public speaking,
and was considered to be different from other Indian leaders and ultimately
developing into a national leader of India with an international outlook. Throughout
the text, time is constantly on the march, events taking shape and changes getting
materialized give a strong sense of history on the anvil. Nehru, being the eye witness,
had the first hand knowledge of the issues and the individuals involved in it.

54
 While writing an autobiography, the author has to be honest while describing
the success, failures, weak points, and moments of bliss and sorrows of his life. The
tomients of the mind which the author lay bare with the restraint of an artist make an
autobiography successful. An Autobiography does not depict any moment when
Nehru has tried to paint himself as a balanced image of self control. Once when Nehru
got news in the prison that his mother got fainted after receiving a severe beating from
the police and was bleeding profusely on the road, he confesses:

1 wonder how 1 would have behaved if I had been there. How

far would my non-violence have carried me. Not very far, 1
fear, for that right would have made me forget the long lesson 1
had tried to learn for more than a dozen years and I would have
recked little of consequences, personal or national. (AA 349)

Nehru did not strike any heroic attitude and instead of exhibiting any patriotic
fervor, like any ordinary man he confessed that he would have retaliated to save his
mother from the brutality of the police. This honesty and integrity of Nehru's
personality sustain the readers' interest in his autobiography.

In Gandhi's The Stoiy of My Experiments with Truth, there was no foil to

Gandhi, but in Nehru's An Autobiography, Gandhi was a constant figure, a kind of
alter ego to Nehru's own self, in concession to the European style of autobiography.
Some of the most memorable writings on the text are about Nehru's engagement with
the enigma of Gandhi-specially his views on religion. Yet Nehru accepted him as such
in spite of his strong reservations on a number of issues like mixing of religion with
politics, fasting. Gandhi's emphasis on the "inner-voice", instead of logic etc.
Elsewhere he complains against Gandhi for not training the nation to think. Despite
all. Nehru's emotional attachment with Gandhi never declined. At several moments,
Nehru's relation with Gandhi used to appear at the brink of break down because of
some genuine difference of views, but Nehru was mature enough not to react. When
Gandhi declared his fast till death, Nehru got anxious about Gandhi's life. He
confesses:

If Bapu died! What would India be then and how would her
politics run? There seemed to be a dreary and dismal future
ahead and despair seized my heart when 1 thought of it ...
Confusion reigned my head and anger and hopelessness and
love for one who was the cause of this upheaval. (AA 386-87)

55
 An Autohiogruphy is a great success because of its stylistic excellence. As
English is not a mother tongue to the Indian, Nehru observes in An Autohiogruphy
that Hnglish is "a foreign tongue and it is not easy to write simply and at the same
time forcefully" (AA 342). But Nehru did not have to face this problem as English
came to him earlier and more easily than to any Indian of his times. His father
Motilal, a lawyer of vast ambition and success, came from a family well attuned to the
language of power. He ensured that his son's early instructions were in English and
hence by the time he was transported to England in 1905 to join Harrow school, his
diction was already fluent. Thus, An Autobiography displayed the perfection of
Nehru's mature style which reflected his personality too: a self containment and
restraint that never lost his fluency, reflecting the power of lucidity of his mind, the
eloquence of his language and the radiance of his spirit, in M. K. Naik"s words. "...
Sincere and idealistic, urbane and cultured, vigorous yet graceful-a man endowed
with a clear and sharp mind, strong emotions, a feeling for beauty and a keen comic
sense" (82).

Throughout its 600 pages, there is hardly a sense of strain in the writing.
According to Sunil Khilnani. the writing is "... as if Nehru was always operating at a
gear lower than his full capacity" (50). There is no trace of bitterness even though it
was written during a very distressful period of his confinement in the prison. Nehru
says that "if the circumstances were different, his autobiography would 'ha\e been
different and perhaps occasionally more restrained" (AA preface xiv). But by writing
it at a comparatively young age, Khilnani adds, "it helped to endow him with the
qualities of perennial youth; it displayed him as a man of cerebral refinement,
ambivalent about public life and the pursuit of power..." (152).

Nehru's diction in An Autohiogruphy is simple in contrast to the heavy

latinized diction and the complex sentence structure and overt rhetorical opulence is
by and large simple and more appropriate. An Autobiography is Indian not because
the geographical site deals with the Indian people, places or the Indian society but
because it has succeeded in depicting the typical Indian sensibility. Though, Nehru's
English, as observed by CD. Narasimhaiah, "is much closer to the British English
even in comparison to the English of Britain's great novelists", even then Nehru never
dipped anywhere to touch the Indian sensibility (47). There is a tickling touch of
humor in describing the barracks of Naini Prison as "Kutaghar" i.e. doghouse, though

56
with a sly comment Nehru adds: "This was an old name which had nothing to do with
me" (AA 230) and his bed "heavily chained up lest I might get up and walk away"
{AA229).

But just like Gandhi's The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Nehru's An
Autobiography also lacks an important feature of the genre of the autobiography.
Though an extensive work, it too remained a partial portrait. Written at the age of 45,
it does not cover the last and the most important quarter century of his life specially
the period of being the first Prime Minster of an independent India. CD.
Narasimhaiah quotes that Mahadev Desai has veiy shrewdly observed that "Although
Nehru is sincere, we have a feeling of something missing, something kept from us."
(56). It appeared that the partial autobiography of Nehru had kept many things as
secrets from the readers. Some more personal experiences shared with his family
members: father, mother, wife, daughter should have been revealed in the text. Along
with the missing of personal documents, there are quite a few patches where Nehru
had given a dull reportage as in the chapters on the Kisans, the Agrarian troubles; No
Tax Campaigns in the United Province and the internal problems of India which
prevailed at that time, had little significance today. They are read like old newspaper
and one feels like skipping over them. But deleting these paradoxes, overall An
Autobiography is suffused with the Indian sensibility. To quote M.K. Naik:

...the book indubitably ranks among the major autobiographies

in modern world literature, by virtue of its sincerity and
authenticity, its vividness and vigor and its manifest historical
and literary importance. (85)

In a radical contrast to the autobiographies of Gandhi and Nehru, another

autobiography to catch the Western eye was Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
written by Nirad C. Chaudhuri in 1951. On the one hand, if Nehru's An
Autobiography is pulsating with human warmth. Chaudhuri"s is abstract, ponderous
and dully academic. Although the title suggests in Gerhard Stilz's words "the self-
effacement of an inconspicuous man-in-the-street, it becomes immediately clear that
the author is a brilliant, provocative and exceptional individual whose aim is to shock
the famous leaders of his day out of their self complacency" (170). Gandhi and Nehru
mentioned their autobiographies to be non-historical whereas Chaudhuri mentioned in
the Preface that his main intention in writing the text is historical and his

57
autobiography is a contribution to contemporary history, the text is calculated to join
the personal and historical dimensions of the Indian experience in the early twentieth
century {Autobiography of an Unknown Indian Preface ix, Further reference to
Autobiography of an Unknown Indian will appear as page numbers preceded by
AOAUl).

As mentioned by Chaudhuri, the book describes the conditions in which "an

Indian grew to manhood" in the form of a story of "the struggle of a civilization with a
hostile environment, in which the destiny of British rule in India became necessarily
involved" (AOAUl Preface ix), provide a parallel to each other. Though historical,
Chaudhuri professes that the book is to be given an autobiographical form "for the
presence in it of a good deal of egotistic matter" (AOAUl preface ix). Chaudhuri
wrote his autobiography keeping in his mind his readers to be not only the Indians but
specifically the people from the West. "1 have written the book with the conscious
object of reaching the English speaking world" (AOAUl Preface x).

Chaudhuri was quite fond of the European literature. He had read diligently
the autobiographies of the writers like Aksakov, Renan, Anatole France, Hudson and
Tagore, all who wrote their autobiographical masterpieces when they were advanced
in their years. An acquaintance with these writings generated in him an impulse to
write his autobiography. "...Like these writers 1 too began to be reminiscent of my
childhood when I had passed my youth" (AOAUl 141). The most notable aspect of
his autobiography is that it spans the stoi7 of the author's life up to first twenty four
years written at the age of fifty in retrospection and covers as many as 570 pages
roughly in chronological manner. The main objective of writing an autobiography in
Goeth's words, "is to exhibit the man in relation to the features of his time; and to
show to what extent they have opposed or favored his progress; what view of
mankind and the world he has formed from them and how far he himself; if an artist,
poet or author may extremeh' refiect them" (preface). But the immediate motive that
impelled Chaudhuri to embark upon the autobiographical venture seems to emanate
from his personal source. He wants a declaration " of faith for himself, because after
passing the age of fifty 1 am faced with the compulsion to write off all the years I have
lived and begin life anew" (AOAUl Preface ix). This compulsion arises from an acute
sense of failure in his life and is perhaps at the root of his autobiography.

58
 Though fairly an extensive work, this autobiography too remains a partial
work like that of Nehru who left the last twenty four years in his career untouched and
Chaudhuri covered only first quarter century of his life. He considered his
autobiography to be more of "an exercise in descriptive ethnology than
autobiography" (AOAUl 141). It offers not only a life sketch of an individual but an
autobiography of a culture. The geographical site in Chaudhuri"s autobiography is that
of East Bengal with a vivid account of his birthplace Kishoreganj, where he lived up
to the age of twelve; Banagram, his ancestral village, Kalikutch, his mother's village;
Shillong, a hill station in Assam and the city of Calcutta. Fully pictured actuality of
the villages, towns and all other places have been given their physical presence from
the quality of dust, smell of water, shape of trees, design of houses, material of roofs,
all are displayed with the human resources enfolding family life with their routine,
stresses and rituals undergoing a massive transformation under the stimuli of the
Western ideas. The fairs, festivals and worshipping all adding color to the
monotonous life of the people are scrupulously described by Chaudhuri. To quote M.
K. Naik:

There is no more vivid creation of rustic life in Bengal in

Indian English Literature than that the book offers. Seen
through the young observant eyes, it is an account remarkable
for its comprehensiveness and its living quality and provides
several glimpses into a society which has now undergone
sweeping changes. (92)

Meena Sodhi too endorses the views of M. K. Naik about the autobiography of
Chaudhuri that his autobiography exhibits "the writer's intellectual energy, his
courage and will and an unabashed interest in him, defying its professed "objective"
aim" (58).

After independence, one can notice a rich harvest of autobiographies. Among

the most outstanding of them are Morarji Desai's The stoiy of My Life published in
three volumes between 1974 and 1979 and M. R. Masani's Bliss was in that Dawn
(1977). Among other autobiography of the same period are: My Son 's Father (1968),
A't'ver at Home by Dom Moraes and My Days (1975) by R. K. Narayan. After
independence the Indians had become bold enough to express about their private lives
publically. Now there was a shift from the national and historical autobiographies to

59
the individual autobiographies, as in the autobiographies of the West, with the
preference given to the individual self A very personal autobiography Face to Face
(1963) written by Ved Mehta got published in 1957. It thrives on personal account of
Ved Mehta providing colonial as well as post-colonial picture of a middle class Indian
family. Ved Mehta has written several autobiographical writings like Dadciyji,
Mamuji, Vedi and The Ledge between the Streams.

Face to Face is considered to be the most exceptional as it retlects powerful

memory and an extraordinary power of inference of Ved Mehta, who went blind due
to meningitis at the age of only three and was compelled to live "in a world of only
four senses-that is a world in which colors and faces and light and darkness are
unknown" {Face to Face 1, Further reference to Face to Face will appear as page
numbers preceded by FTF). Face to Face was written by Ved Mehta at the age of
twenty two, too early to write an autobiography. He wrote his autobiography as a
challenge when somebody remarked that "it would be hard for him to write" (FTF
Foreword 1 1), because of his blindness. The challenge "'was the genu of the present
narrative", that coaxed Ved Mehta to write (FTF Foreword 11). Although
handicapped, he had striven unceasingly to live as a person with nonnal vision and it
is really surprising to fmd him writing like a man with full vision, observing and
depicting things as penetratingly as any normal man. In his autobiography, he had
tried to make the West see India and the Indians in a way they have not been
perceived through. It is an attempt on Ved Mehta"s part, as viewed by Phillip David
Scott, to make India "comprehensible to the West by employing a variety of English
that is less quizzical than Narayan's and still left Indians with their culturally specific
identity intact" (151).

Face to Face offers a wide spectrum of late ninetieth and early twentieth
century society prevailing at large in Punjab, in North India. The houses, the gullies
(streets), the contacts between the colonizers and the subject Indian people (men,
women and children), are all vividly portrayed. Families, the tedious metaphor for the
vastness of India have been perceived through with perfect understanding. The pathos
and agony of a blind in India without any opportunities for the mental growth have
been portrayed very scrupulously. Ved Mehta was provided ample of opportunities in
the West, where he experienced for the first time freedom and confidence to move
freely. As he himself has written in the Foreward of the text, it is the "story of the

60
reception, problems and growth of this blind boy until he reached manhood and of the
pleasures and warm friendships he experienced in the West'" (FTF Forward 12). It
also throws light on the plight of Indians during the partition of India and the
alienation of an individual in the foreign land. V. S. Naipaul precises Face to Face in
the following words;

Ved Mehta tells his story with passion, modesty and a good
deal of humor....The triumph of Ved Mehta's adaption to the
seeing world is that his autobiography is not only about his
sightlessness. He can extend his sympathy to othcrs-a poor
family in India, refugees from Pakistan, a Japanese misfit in
America. Face to Face can also stand as a book about India.
(The Statesman)

Face to Face is an action packed swiftly moving story enlivened by flashes of

subtle humor. Though Face to Face is an authentic story told with utmost sincerity
and boldness, yet according to R. C. P. Sinha, 'it lacks that poetic quality, which we
find in Helen Keller's The Story of my Life. She shows much deeper a perception than
Ved Mehta has shown in his autobiography"' (178). However there is a detachment in
his writings even while describing things around him. William Walsh commends Ved
Mehta"s work by commenting that:

...Ved Mehta is the contemporary voice of a long line of Indian

Prose Writers in English stretching back for two hundred years
...In all his works he has made the traditional view exciting and
engaging. He made the most of experience limited by handicap.
Indeed he has made blindness itself a means of insight. (166)

K. R. S. Iyengar is of the opinion that English education in India, no doubt

was "'a part elixir part poison" (29), injected into Indian life. As a result, the young
who had received the new education, became English in their tastes, dress, thinking
and other mannerisms, but the environment at their houses belonged as if to the first
century. Such was the contrast in the thinking of traditional India and the modern
India. Consequently harmonious family life dwindled. Such English educated Indian
youth felt alienated, when the British left India. They too were in dilemma; where do
they belong to? They are neither compatible with Indian culture nor with the Western

61
culture. My God Died Young (1968) written by Sasthi Brata deals with this problem of
the youth. Why did he write his autobiography at the age of twenty nine only? He
confessed that he was angry and young too and wrote his autobiography with a
"thought that by exploring radical ideas and attempting to persuade others, one could
change the world for the better" {My God Died Young Preface x. Further reference to
My God Died Young will appear as page numbers preceded by MGDY). Moreover,
the genre of autobiography writing had already been in vogue in India. He adopted the
genre of autobiography to give a vent to his anger and frustration. Sasthi Brata writes
in his autobiography:

1 think 1 caught the crest of a wave which was then sweeping

the world (as well as India). 1 expressed anger and frustration
that people of my age at the time were feeling, but had no
means of venting. A readership developed in Britain, America
and India, which astounded me" (MGDY Preface x).

Sasthi Brata wrote this book as a personal testament and not as a statement of
Indian experience. He wrote this book just to try to understand himself. In the quest
for self-discovery, he reveals with remarkable candor, the contrasting environment of
a traditional Brahmin family, where he was born and brought up for ten years in a
perfect conflict with the English education, he received at the school and the college.
He could not establish any harmony between the two and hence became a rebellious
against the Indian social set-up, which he fmds to be repulsive and authoritarian.
Hence his autobiography is an act of rebellion against a society, hag-ridden with
hypocrisy and superstition. His tone is sarcastic and humorless and R. C. P. Sinha
observes that, "the passionate frankness springing directly from his rebellious mood is
a rare phenomenon among Indian autobiographers" (193). He writes in detail about
his feeling of alienation in his own country, among his own people. He feels as if he is
not being understood by anyone in the Indian society. He feels the same frustration on
the foreign land too. He writes in his autobiography boldly about sex shunning all the
impositions of the Indian traditions and is known as bashful Brata. Hence several
inhibitions that were prevailing in the Indian autobiographies are now disappearing.

Though it was not so in the case of Indian women. Autobiography as

compared to men seems a particular difficult undertaking for the Indian women, who
lived under the cultural mores of self-denial and were generally reserved. An

5^0\^2.:
autobiography is a form, which reveals the inner being of the subject that is a kind of
self exploration that makes the private life of the writer open for all. In such
circumstances the Indian women, who are taught to be self-effacing, how can they
accomplish such a mission? Right from the ancient times women had been suffering
from this gender prejudice. Forbidden to go to school for the education, restricted to
the four walls of the house to do the domestic jobs, threatened with the dire
consequences dare she violates the nornis of the society and conditioned to accept her
woman's fate; all these restrictions for the women curtailed their freedom to go
against the existing nonns.

But under the impact of the colonization and Gandhi's move to uplift the
women by providing them all the rights of education and equality with men, Indian
women got the opportunities to explore their potential. A woman is naturally creative
and given a chance, she can prove her worth in any field. There is nothing unnatural
in her literary creativity. There had been many women in India who had an urge to
write about their selves, and after a long time of struggle in the field of literature, they
have managed a rightful place for themselves in the tradition of autobiography too.
The Indian woman has attempted her talent in projecting her self-hood in the genre of
autobiography quite successfully. Whether it is an autobiography of Sunity Devee
{The Autobiography of an Indian Princess, 1921) or Kamaladevi Chattopadhya (Inner
Recesses Outer Spaces, 1986), they voiced their feelings through their sensibilities
and their awareness about feminine problems. These woman autobiographies mainly
deal with the emotional turbulence of women and their relationships in the social set-
up.

Cornelia Sorabji, India's first woman lawyer wrote her autobiography India
Calling (1934), narrating the relentless struggle of a woman in the male-dominated
society to establish a place for herself Nayantara SahgaKs Prison and Chocolate
Cake (1954). Vijayalaxmi Pandifs The Scope of Happiness (1979), not only wrote
about their lives, but also about the prevailing politics in India. In the same period,
there emerged several Indian women autobiographers like Sita Rathanmala {Beyond
the Jungle, 1968), Kamala Das {My Story. 1976), Vijayraje Scindia {Princess: The
Autobiography of the Dowager Maharani of Gawalior, 1985). Nevertheless, the
twentieth century came up with a set of more women writers exposing extraordinary
intellectual and dashing women like Amrita Pritam {The Revenue Stamp, 1976),

63
Mrinal Pandey {Daughter's Daughter. 1993) and Shobha De {Selective Memory.
1998). They arc no longer passive and submissive like 'Situ' and 'Savliri'. but bold
and innovative in their writings. Writing an autobiography for each of them has been
a wonderful experience to construct their selfhood, which was unprecedented in India.

Now the autobiography writing is not only the forte of the Hterary people, but
several celebrities are also interested to write their autobiographies. It is a popular,
exciting and mind expanding way to learn about other people. Wings of Fire (1999),
an autobiography of India's former president, A. P. J. Abul Kalam throws light on his
early life, efforts, hardships, fortitude, luck and destiny that eventually led him to
Indian Space Research, Nuclear and Missile programs. Kapil Dev, the Indian
cricketer, wrote his autobiography By God's Decree to share his experiences of his
cricket days at very young age. Saina Nehwal, one of the most inspiring and iconic
personalities of Indian Sports wrote her autobiography Playing to Win (2012), just at
the age of twenty two. Among the recent autobiographies in India Salman Rushdie
{Joseph Anton, 2012) too figures in the genre of autobiography. Pandit Ravi
Shankar's My music, My life (1968) reveals his career as an artist. Hazari's An Indian
Outcaste (1951) presents life-story of the oppressed classes. In twenty first century we
find master pieces like My Countiy My Life (2008) by Mr. L.K.Advani. Romancing
with Life (2007) is an ever written full fledged memoir of Bollywood's ever green star
Dev Anand.

Looking back at the journey of Indian autobiographies written in English, it

may be concluded that the writing of autobiographies that was introduced in India
during the Indian Renaissance, gradually developed as a genre in the Western sense
and followed its natural tendency to display the Indian sensibility of the writers. Also
the progress of autobiography writing in English in India is due to the gross impact of
extraordinary expansion of English language during the British colonization in India.
This enabled Indian writers to express their inner most feelings in an alien language,
where they have shown a great proficiency in following all the concepts of this genre.
They have provided an insight into their private selves through retrospection and by
indulging in self- examination. Hence, autobiography that was initially to be a genre
innovated by the West has been successfully and brilliantly indigenized by the Indian
writers in English under the impact of British colonization in India.

64