It's indisputable that Kipling and Orwell are head and shoulders over any other writer to ever crawl out of that country, but which one is the greatest?

Out of curiosity, did any of Indian peoples have ANY sort of literary component, historically? I mean something more than things like pictograms chiseled onto tablets for official communications / public display etc.

>>24575522 (OP)
Salman Rushdie

>>24575522 (OP)
Writing in English? Mulk Raj Anand, RK Narayan, Khushwant Singh come to mind.

But for native tongues there's Tagore and the two Chattopadhyays (Bankim and Sarat) for Bengali. Check out Devdas if you can get a good translation.
For Hindi there's Premchand, of course.

>>24575566
Overrated garbage

>>24575577
>Devdas

God even the author disowned this text. Lol

William Thackeray or Lawrence Durrell for my money

>>24575535
They have the “oceans of streams of consciousness” by Somadevi which is like Aesop’s fables mixed with 1001 nights. It is considered an iconic example of Sanskrit folk literature.

>>24575794
Irrelevant. Once the work is out there it does not belong to the author anymore. It belongs to the multitudes.

>>24575535
India was pretty literary until the mughals I'd say

>>24575522 (OP)

>Orwell
The average pop novelist here mogs him to death