What comes to your mind when you think of Indian literature, Indian authors, or any kind of Indian writing?  

Ramayana and Mahabharata Vikram Seth, Satyajit Ray, Rabindranath Tagore, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, and other greats of Indian literature?  Contemporary writers of Indian literature like Chetan Bhagat, Durjoy Dutta, Ravinder Singh, Ashwin Sanghi, Amish? 

Wikipedia defines Indian Literature as, “Indian literature refers to the literature produced on the Indian subcontinent until 1947 and in the Republic of India thereafter”. (Source: Indian literature – Wikipedia)

While thinking about Indian literature, were you only thinking of Indian Writing in English? Quite likely, the answer to this is yes. Let’s rephrase this question a bit- Name 10 writers you have read in your mother tongue. Five Maybe?  

This is an ugly truth I discovered during my masters in English Literature. There was a big gap in the language of our literary stories, and that of our life and conversations. Someone like Gulzar, who at least most of us knew from Bollywood, had to be read in translation! 

Within the span of one semester where we studied Indian Literature in Translation, I confronted a deep cultural loss we had faced. That of being unable to read in our mother languages which are otherwise so intuitive. That of being unable to relate to the varying kinds of lives that a country like ours goes through. That of the deep cultural void it had created. This made me very angry. 

In 2016, my latent anger met Saurabh Garg’s active passion to bring ideas to life and put thoughts into action. Thus was born Purple Pencil Project, a venture to bring the spotlight back on Indian Literature and take Indian stories to the world.