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With the growth of British trading interests and the rapid expansion of the British presence in India after 1757, more and more Indians started learning English. After using the language for purely commercial transactions, they started to use it for creative writing. Indians were not alone in writing in English. Natives of all the colonies of the British Empire attempted creative writing in the imperial language. There is a major difference between India and other erstwhile colonies: no written language other than English is available for the colonies established in Africa, the Caribbean islands, America and Australia. In India, we have a very long tradition of written literature, thousands of years old in Sanskrit and Tamil, and many centuries old in other Indian languages. In the first decade after India attained independence, Indian writing in English was condemned as unpatriotic; 'Angrez chale gaye, par Angrezi chhod gaye' ('The English quit India, but they left behind the English language'). It was felt that all Indians can and should produce literary works only in their mother tongue.

English writing in India gradually found acceptance and it is possible that the popularity of the fiction of R.K. Narayan had a role in this. In 1954, the Sahitya Akademi instituted awards for "the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the major Indian languages'; English was included, and the first award went to R.K. Narayan for 'The Guide' in 1960. Commissioning M.K. Naik to write "History of Indian English Literature" in line with the histories of literature in other Indian languages also served to give recognition to this writing. Many Indian universities, led by the University of Mysore, made it a subject of academic study.

The synonym for the word "OUTSTANDING" is:

prominent