Why Chetan Bhagat's Genre of literature irks us ?

With the launch of Chetan Bhagat’s latest book, Half Girlfriend, the literary fault lines in the country were never as clear as they are now.  It has yet again, stroked the debate on what is good writing and what is just crass and ultimately destined for a biblio-blackhole. At one end of the divide are the hard-nosed elites, who are full of contempt and derision for anything that closely resembles the much popular, Bhagat genre of writing and at the other is what one may call the new Indian reader, who considers Bhagat’s novels to be the apotheosis of writing.

If one can be accused of possessing a simple, lucid and a chatty style of writing, then Bhagat can definitely be pursued for felony. However, there are other authors who have written books that use a simple style and language and yet are never an object of such ridicule as Bhagat is. A glowing example is Paolo Coelho, he has perhaps sold more books than Bhagat and yet he is never at the receiving end of literary snobs’ pungent pugnacity.

So, if it’s not about the writing or the content of the book, then is this about politics of protecting literary fiefdoms?

India has become the third largest English language books market in the world after the US and UK. However the per capita expenditure on books is only at around Rs. 80 per annum ^[1]. Books like Half Girlfriend are generally priced in the range of Rs 100-200 which makes them a value proposition for the readers who have English as their second or third language, and this market is particularly large in India. According to data put out by Rupa Publications^[2] there is an altogether new market for books that the Bhagat phenomena has unleashed, this is typically the reader who buys 2-4 books per year, and prefers a simple, lucid and chatty style of writing. These readers are instrumental in pushing book sales to the unprecedented million copies mark.

As more and more people get hooked to English language books, the traditional, elite Indian reader has positioned himself as the guardian knight of what he perceives as true literature; largely inaccessible work characterized by its recondite prose, and in the process denigrating Bhagat genre of writing.

Consider your friend circle, undoubtedly, you will find a pseudo critic who is unsparing in his tirade against Chetan Bhagat or a Ravinder Singh books. These are typically the people who read anything over a 50-100 books per year, and in an attempt to differentiate their literary tastes they ridicule and disparage the literary wisdom of those who prefer the more simpler, and often somewhat interesting, forms of writing, like that of Bhagat. This human need to differentiate oneself from the crowd is the root of the literary polarization that we witness in society today. Nevertheless, India doesn’t seem to mind the snobs, Half Girlfriend is all set to break new records in just a few days.

-Prateek Sibal

[1] Publishing Market Profile Report – India, Global Publishing Information, United Kingdom, 2008

[2] The Age of Bhagat, Cover Story, India Today magazine, September 8,2014 issue

Related post:

“Let us not denounce challenging writing as a masquerade for literary elitism…”

This is a related piece I wrote on language and elitism and can be found here http://nastyeyedmonk.blogspot.in/2014/06/elitism-and-pile-of-literary-stuff.html