INDIAN WRITERS IN COUNCIL PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIRST ALL INDIA WRITERS CONFERENCE JAIPUR, 1945 EDITED BY K. R, SRINIVASA IYENGAR, M.A., D. LITT., Professor of English, Andhra University, Waltair. INTRODUCTION THE BACKGROUND The AllIndia Centre of the P.E.N. had been in existence for five years when, on its behalf, Shrimati Sophia Wadia, its Founder, extended a warm invitation to the International P.E.N. Club to hold its Congress in India in 1940. The Congress was to have been held in the ordinary course in Tokyo, but at the time of the Prague Congress in 1938, the Japanese Centre withdrew its earlier invitation. This was Indias opportunity, and Sophia Wadia seized it. She now suggested that the Congress might be held in Mysore, and promptly Sir Mirza Ismail, then Mysores Dewan, accepted the suggestion: The prospect of having amidst us such a distinguished body of writers from all the world over is one that should commend your proposal to acceptance. 1, therefore, hereby extend on behalf of His Highness a most cordial invitation to the members of the P.E.N. to hold their 1040 Congress in the Mysore State. Already, during the first five years, the AllIndia Centre had much useful activity to its credit, Its monthly journal, The Indian P.E.N., the many public lectures arranged under its auspices, the personality of the National President, the late Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, the tireless energy and idealism of the Founder, these had given the India Centre a certain status in the literary world. Shrimati Sarojini Naidu, then one of the VicePresidents of the India Centre, in the course of her message to the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Centre held in March 1938 remarked: I think that during the year the P.E.N. has done remarkable and enduring work in bringing the literary activities of all the prov inces together in the monthly bulletin. It is very stimulating for writers to be brought in touch with the work of fellow writers in other tongues and other provinces, and to grow more and more conscious of the unity of Indian literature through all the diversities of languages and cultural zones. It is a great service to render and the P.E.N. may well be proud of its accomplishment as a link between linguistic areas of Utera, v enterprise and achievement,