Now that it is no longer the language of the imperial power, Indian writers feel free to use English in their own way. Many of them have lived in Britain or America. The fertile combination of Indian culture and the English language has produced writers who are popular all over the world. Salman Rushdie won Britain's Booker Prize for his novel Midnight's Children in 1981. He was born in 1947, so he was a child of the "midnight hour" mentioned in Nehru's speech on independence day. He was the founder of what is nicknamed the Midnight's Children school of literature.

Other Indian writers have also explored India's post-colonial experience, using English with curry-flavoured metaphors and original imagery. Vikram Seth's book, A Suitable Boy, which is 1,349 pages long, has sold 1.5 million copies in hardback and many more in paperback. It tells the story of a Hindu girl's quest to find a suitable husband against the backdrop of a newly independent India, preparing for the first general election.

In 1996, Arundhati Roy received an advance of half a million pounds for her first novel, The God of Small Things. Other well-known Indian authors writing in English include Anita Desai, Vikram Chandra and Rohinton Mistry.

“In the English-speaking World”