Home is India-- the consensus of three different writers-- Raja Rao, Balachandra Rajan, and R.K. Narayan

The basic incompatibility between the East and the West has interested, many writers since E. M. Forster and Rudyard Kipling. Meenakshi Mukherjee, who explains and justifies the validity of the "east-west encounter" theme for Indian novelists in English, also expresses disappointment, however, at the "arbitrary" and contrived resolutions usually presented by these authors. C. Paul Verghese goes so far as to say that such themes have become "stale" and new areas should foe explored by these writers. The present thesis counters the above statements by demonstrating that while the final choice made by three very different novelists, Raja Rao, Balachandra Rajan, and R. K. Narayan, "Home is India" is indeed a part of the mainstream, there is enough evidence to show that the choice is far from arbitrary. Furthermore, the continued interest in this theme, and the innovative alternatives portrayed by Narayan in particular, clearly prove that this theme is far from stale. The in-depth studies of Raja Rao and R. K. Narayan reveal that they are exploring a problem of the modern Indian intellectual that sociologists have noted as an important movement in a changing India. Finally, the present analysis brings to light a hitherto unnoticed, similarity of basic philosophic beliefs among the three writers. This similarity manifests itself most clearly in the sequence of events portrayed by The Serpent and the Rope, Too Long in the West, and The Vendor of Sweets.