Bridging Generations: Chauhan’s Poetry from India

Within the evolving landscape of Indian English poetry, Abnish Singh Chauhan occupies a distinctive position as a bridge between generations. His poetry harmonizes devotion and humanism, reaffirming the enduring role of verse as both a spiritual practice and an ethical dialogue. Like Nissim Ezekiel, Chauhan discovers spirituality within the sphere of everyday ethics; and like Jayanta Mahapatra and A.K. Ramanujan, he transforms intimate experiences into metaphysical reflections that unveil the inner rhythms of cultural memory and emotional life.

Yet, Chauhan’s true distinctiveness lies in his moral optimism, a quality increasingly rare in the disenchanted poetics of the modern age. Where Ezekiel often approached Indian reality with irony, Chauhan regards it with reverence; where Mahapatra lingers in the shadow of loss, Chauhan envisions renewal. His imagination does not seek transcendence beyond life but regeneration within it. In this sense, his sensibility aligns with post-liberal Indian poets such as R. Parthasarathy and Keki N. Daruwalla, who reconcile modern scepticism with traditional faith, shaping a poetics that is both self-critical and spiritually restorative.

Chauhan’s poetry thus extends the continuum of Indian English verse, linking the Romantic nationalism of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, the pioneering voice who first articulated the Indian sensibility in the English language, to the contemporary creativity of poets such as P.C.K. Prem, D.C. Chambial, C.L. Khatri, R.K. Singh, S.A. Hamid, Binod Mishra, Sudhir K. Arora, and Sudarshan Kcherry. This lineage is not merely historical but evolutionary, representing the transformation of Indian poetic consciousness from colonial imitation to postcolonial affirmation and finally to globalized introspection.

Derozio’s Romantic idealism marked the beginning of an Indian poetic self-awareness, where the English language became a medium for national sentiment and moral inquiry. Chauhan inherits this ethical impulse but reconfigures it within the context of a postcolonial India negotiating between tradition and modernity, faith and rationality, individuality and community. His poetry continues the Romantic belief in the redemptive power of imagination, yet tempers it with the ethical realism and existential sensitivity of the modern Indian mind.

In bridging this wide historical spectrum, Chauhan acts as a cultural mediator, drawing upon the humanistic heritage of the past while engaging the complexities of the present. His verse neither rejects tradition nor surrenders to it; instead, it reinterprets inherited values through a contemporary lens. This dynamic interaction between continuity and innovation situates Chauhan at the crossroads of India’s poetic evolution, where poetry becomes a dialogue between memory and modernity, faith and freedom.

Through this continuity, Chauhan preserves the moral and aesthetic lineage that has long defined Indian English poetry, a lineage in which verse functions not only as an artistic pursuit but also as an ethical conscience. His poems, often meditative and humane, extend the Indian tradition of sahitya as sadhana, where the act of writing embodies moral responsibility and creative devotion. In this sense, Chauhan’s art reflects the classical Indian understanding that beauty (saundarya) and virtue (dharma) are not separate pursuits but mutually sustaining dimensions of human experience.

By revitalizing this synthesis in an age increasingly marked by cynicism and fragmentation, Chauhan ensures that Indian English poetry remains both rooted and responsive, ethical and exploratory. His contribution is not confined to stylistic innovation or thematic diversity alone; it lies in his capacity to reaffirm the moral imagination as the central force of poetic creation. Thus, Chauhan’s poetry stands as a vital continuum of conscience, keeping alive the ancient Indian conviction that the poet’s word can heal, redeem, and renew the collective spirit of humanity.

From a theoretical standpoint, Chauhan’s work exemplifies what contemporary critics describe as ethical modernism, a literary mode that sustains moral seriousness amid postmodern fragmentation. His verse resists the nihilism and irony characteristic of deconstruction, reclaiming instead the affirmative potential of art as an instrument of empathy, conscience, and transformation. By fusing ethical inquiry with aesthetic precision, Chauhan redefines the contemporary Indian Engilsh poetry as a space for spiritual renewal, cultural continuity, and the enduring affirmation of human values.

--- Dr Priyanka Chauhan, Gwalior, M.P.