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Letters (India)
The two sorts of letters discussed here are those written in English and those translated into English from other Indian languages. The writers in the main are the liberal nationalists who brought about the Indian renaissance and worked for the freedom of the country. While most of them were good scholars in Sanskrit, their knowledge of English and powers of discrimination helped them to acquire the finer qualities of the British and educate their conservative countrymen. They rarely wrote the casual personal letters generally associated with such famous English letter-writers as Richard Steele, Lady Mary Wortley Montague or William Cowper.
Since these writers could never forget their role as 'public' figures, and suppressed their private selves, their letters predictably betray a lack of spontaneity. These 'open letters' not only reflect a missionary zeal for education, helping women and abolishing the evils of caste, they also attempt to revive India's spiritual and religious traditions. They serve as footnotes to history and constitute a sort of valuable scrapbook.
Among these letter-writers are three poets - Toru Dutt, Rabindranath Tagore and Sarojini Naidu. The admirable economy of word and phrase seen in Dutt's letters is almost Keatsian; they are youthful, romantic and,...