Salman Rushdie, Dickens and Austen as great Indian writers
anecdote · personal/autobiographical ·
retold in 6 talks
Rushdie responded to accusations of betraying his Indian heritage by declaring that his two greatest influences are 'great Indian writers': Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, the poverty of Mumbai slums is Jane Austen territory, seen freshly from outside.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 6
“The biggest influence of my work are two great Indian writers: Charles Dickens and Jane Austen.”
“jane austen is the middle-class mumbai life i come from as to poverty in india today, it's oliver twist and so on. that's the true universality.”
“If as an Indian person you read Jane Austen, all this... This is the lower middle class, middle class in Bombay... Poverty in India, it's Dickens.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
concrete universality
×3
authentic multiculturalism
×2
fighting universality
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Salman Rushdie6Akira Kurosawa4Béatrice Longuenesse2Georgi Dimitrov1Isaac Deutscher1Derek Hook1Donald Moss1Terblanche Delport1
alongside works
Every retelling 6
Rushdie responded to accusations of betraying his Indian heritage by declaring that his two greatest influences are 'great Indian writers': Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, the poverty of Mumbai slums is Jane Austen territory, seen freshly from outside., illustrating true cosmopolitanism,external gaze,culture and universality
At a round table, Rushdie responded to being accused of betraying his Indian origins by saying his two crucial Indian influences were Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Austen for Mumbai middle-class life, Dickens for Indian poverty. Žižek takes this as the model of true universality., illustrating concrete universality,true multiculturalism,universality vs. identity
At a round table, Rushdie replied to a critic that his deepest influences were Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, because Austen's lower-middle-class marriage intrigues are Mumbai today, and Dickens's poverty is Indian poverty., illustrating concrete universality,transcultural universality,literary universality
At a roundtable, someone attacked Rushdie for being too British despite Indian origins; Rushdie replied that his two great Indian influences were Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Austen for understanding middle-class Indian families, Dickens for Indian poverty., illustrating authentic multiculturalism,productive distance,a foreigner can understand a culture better than it knows itself
Accused of abandoning his Indian roots, Rushdie said his two greatest Indian literary influences were Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, explaining that Dickens's street children map onto Bombay slums and Austen's marriage plots onto Indian middle-class families. For Žižek, this illustrates true universality: being rooted in the particular while finding unexpected echoes elsewhere., illustrating fighting universality,literature and universality
At a round table, Rushdie was accused of betraying his Indian roots; he replied that his biggest inspirations are two great Indian writers, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, illustrating how particular traditions are most alive when transposed., illustrating concrete universality