Globalization and three South Asian women writers, continued....

   One could say that the attitude of the three Indian women authors(one of whom is diasporic, and eventually two ) is that of Chinua Achebe in his essay, “ The African Writer and the English Language,” in which he says, “ But for me there is no other choice. I have been given this language and I intend to use it.” The significance of this comment lies in the fact that the use of English as a medium for  creative writing is as hotly contested  in India  as it is in Africa.  Once again I use Achebe to sum up the position contra the use of English: “The real question is not whether Africans could write in English but whether they ought to. Is it right that a man should abandon his mother tongue for someone else’s? It looks  like a dreadful betrayal and produces guilty feeling.” The proponents of regional language literature hold that using English abets and furthers the global project of western hegemony, and it cannot be denied that there is some truth to this, since English affords writers access to a wider international market and provides for greater international visibility. For instance, Senegalese writer  Mariama Ba’s   book Une Si Longue Lettre is less read in French than it is read in its English translation So Long A Letter because as Christopher Miller points out it is academies in the West that determine which texts will be read, and which not.