Colonial administrators found vernacular novels a valuable source of information on native life and customs.” Support the statement with suitable examples.
(1) Colonial administrators : It helped the colonial administrators to get information ‘ on native life and customs which was very useful for them in governing Indian society with its large variety of communities and castes. The British knew little about life inside Indian households. The new novels in Indian languages often had descriptions of domestic life. They showed how people dressed, their forms of religious worship, their beliefs and practices, and so on. (2) Indians : Indians used the novel as a powerful medium to criticise what they considered defects in their society and to suggest remedies. Writers like Viresalingam used the novel mainly to propagate their ideas about society among a wider readership. Novels glorified the past and helped in creating a sense of national pride among their readers. Different types of people read novels in the same language. This created a sense of collective belonging on the basis of one’s language. Generally, people living in different regions speak the same language in different ways. With the coming of novels, such variations were used in the print and novels. This made readers familiar with the ways in which people in other parts of the land spoke their language. Thus, the novels brought different peoples from different regions closer to each other.
