When Hal Cazalet, P.G. Wodehouse’s step-great-grandson, remarked during a recent visit to Kolkata that Wodehouse may have more admirers in India than in Britain, he wasn’t indulging in polite exaggeration. He was stating a quiet truth that Indian readers have known for decades. In India, Wodehouse is not merely read; he is inherited. He arrives, often ceremoniously, from an elder’s bookshelf, like a rite of passage. “Now you are ready,” the handing over seems to say. “Meet Jeeves.”
A quintessentially English writer, deeply Indian in appeal
The enduring appeal of P.G. Wodehouse in India is one of literature’s most charming mysteries. Here was a quintessentially English writer—batting at village greens, country houses, idle aristocrats, and the mild panic of young men with too much leisure—who somehow found a second spiritual home thousands of miles away, in a country of crowded trains, joint families, competitive exams, and noisy streets. Yet, perhaps the mystery dissolves when one looks closely.
Gentle humour that resonates
First, there is the matter of humour itself. Wodehouse’s comedy is gentle, never cruel, and gloriously free of malice. In an age when wit is often confused with insult, his humour reassures. Bertie Wooster may be dim, but he is never despised. Aunt Agatha may be terrifying, but she is never monstrous. Even villains are rendered harmless by absurdity. This moral softness resonates deeply with Indian sensibilities, where humour has traditionally been a way to smooth life’s rough edges rather than sharpen them.
The joy of language
Then there is language—Wodehouse’s true magic trick. For generations of Indians educated in English-medium schools, his prose has served as both delight and instruction. Long before grammar apps and style manuals, Wodehouse taught Indians how elastic, mischievous, and musical the English language could be. A sentence could loop, digress, wink, and still land perfectly on its feet. Many Indians encountered him in their teens, when vocabulary is a hunger and style a revelation. To read Wodehouse was to realise that English was not merely a colonial inheritance or an examination tool—it could be play.
Familiar characters, familiar worlds
India’s affection for Wodehouse is also rooted in familiarity. Strip away the Edwardian trimmings and the English titles, and one finds situations Indians recognise instinctively: the omnipresent elder who must be obeyed, the overbearing aunt who controls destinies, the young man desperate to avoid an unsuitable marriage, and the trusted fixer who rescues everyone from social catastrophe. Jeeves, in many ways, is the idealised Indian problem-solver: calm, discreet, hyper-competent, and morally superior to his employer. Every Indian household knows a Jeeves figure—perhaps an uncle, a family friend, or a quietly brilliant aide—who sees ten moves ahead while others flail.
Comfort in certainty
There is also comfort in Wodehouse’s world. For Indian readers navigating political upheavals, economic anxieties, and the relentless seriousness of modern life, his fiction offers a parallel universe where nothing truly bad ever happens. Engagements are broken, reputations wobble, cows are stolen, and absurdly important objects go missing—but by teatime, order is restored. This predictability is not a weakness; it is a promise. In a chaotic world, Wodehouse guarantees a happy ending, and that guarantee has proved irresistible.
Across generations and eras
Interestingly, Wodehouse’s popularity in India has survived vast cultural shifts. He was beloved by the Anglophone elite of the Raj, then by post-Independence bureaucrats and academics, and later by software engineers, journalists, and startup founders. Each generation finds something different. Some admire the craftsmanship, others the escapism, and many simply relish the laughter. The fact that his books are reread—often obsessively—is telling. Wodehouse is not consumed; he is revisited.
A marker of taste
Finally, there is tradition. In many Indian families, Wodehouse is introduced with a sense of pride. To “get” Wodehouse is to signal that one has crossed a threshold—not of intelligence, perhaps, but of taste. The jokes deepen with rereading; the similes grow funnier with age. A teenager laughs at Bertie’s foolishness; an adult smiles knowingly at Jeeves’s restraint.
Timeless, ageless, and borderless
Humour, as Hal Cazalet observed, is timeless. But Wodehouse’s humour is also ageless, classless, and borderless. In India, he has become less an English writer and more a trusted old friend—one who asks nothing, offends no one, and always leaves you lighter than he found you. And in a country that has mastered the art of laughing despite everything, that may be the highest recommendation of all.
The writer is an independent journalist.
