In recent years critics of Romantic poetry have divided into two groups that have little to say to one another. One group, as yet the most numerous, insists that to study a poem is to investigate the historical circumstances out of which it was produced; the other retorts that poetry offers pleasures fully available only to readers whose attention is focused on their language. This book attempts to reconcile the two groups by arguing that a poet's most effective political action is the forging of a new language, and that the political import of a poem is a function of its style.

This book investigates what happens to the English language when it seeks to accommodate India and what happens to India when it is accommodated within the language of a far-off European country. It explores the work of writers from Kipling to Salman Rushdie, Ghandhi to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.