ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Raja Rao’s early fictional and non-fictional production functioned as a preliminary expression of anti-colonial writing responding to, displacing, and hybridising the narratives of dominant histories of the Indian struggle for independence through a strategic use of indigenous mythology and appropriation of the English language. It assumes that the gradual formal establishment of colonial English as a literary language in Indian academic circles resulted in a debate on Indian nationalism from the 1920s to the1940s. Rao’s engagement with the Indian political debate during this period is discussed through the analysis of his two political anthologies, Changing India and Whither India?
