R.
K. Narayan has emerged as a complex writer whose limpid novels reveal
unsuspected depths. He has consciously attempted to naturalize or Indianize the
Western novel by transporting the traditions of linear narration, Victorian
realism and the modernist psychological multi-text upon the circular and
digressive structure, and the symbolical and ethical framework, of the ancient
Hindu narratives. This fabular quality in Narayan’s fiction confers
universality and depth and extends the significance of the novels beyond their
immediate small-town context. This paper gives a detailed analysis of R.K.
Narayan’s The English Teacher in the
light of postcolonialism by pointing out the tension or the conflict that one
can find between colonialism and nativism.
