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Literary Review
Theorising Indian Writing in English
THERE is a reasonably justifiable feeling among academics that Indian Writing in English, despite its phenomenal growth in the last decade, is insufficiently grounded in terms of a theoretical base. K. Satchidanandan, currently Secretary, Sahitya Akademi, is acknowledged in academic circles as a knowledgeable poet, critic and man of letters. As an editor of the Sahitya Akademi's prestigious journal Indian Literature, he had set towering standards of research and enquiry. According to him there is a "deep-seated apathy towards the issues related to literary theory and practice. One reason for the reception may also have been the near total absence of intelligent critical material in English on Indian writing in the languages." This handy and useful volume, Authors, Texts, Issues, is meant to fill the void by supplying such material. The 10 pieces, arranged in three parts, which constitute this book brought out by the kind courtesy of Pencraft International, were formerly presented as seminar papers or published as commissioned articles in journals.
Among these, "Historicizing Sarojini Naidu," "Orientalism and After," and "Translation as Writing: Towards an Indian Perspective" merit a closer reading and introspection. The essay on Sarojini Naidu salvages her lost reputation consequent on the emergence of the post-Independence academic poets on our scene. They (Parthasarathy, Nissim Ezekiel, Keki Daruwalla and others of their ilk) persist in attacking and rejecting the romantic trend in our poetry, dubbing it the "Tagore syndrome". The situation can be likened to the attack Tennyson suffered at the hands of Leavis and the Leavisites. In literary movements it is not uncommon for poets of one generation to lay charges — even as our political parties do — against their predecessors. Did not the imagists call the Georgians, Sunday picnic poets? And did not the "Movement" poets overthrow the modernists — and Eliot in particular — lock, stock and barrel? Satchidanandan's view is that it would be more realistic to accept Sarojini Naidu as a product of her circumstances, historical and literary. Only then can one understand and respond to her rural and romantic sensibility. And that is the only way to restore her to the place due to her.
Satchidanandan maintains that there is a need to evolve an Indian theory of autobiography which would be very different from the "self-portraits" we are accustomed to read. This becomes all the more necessary in the context of the emergence of the Foucaultian concepts like "self-hood" and "subjectivity". For him Gandhiji's Autobiography is typically Indian and certainly a classic worthy of emulation. Said was truly a trailblazer in postcolonial studies and his Orientalism (1978) heralded a new approach, giving a new direction to literary studies by centralising the margins. Nevertheless, it was synchronic in its method losing sight of the evolving history as an objective field of study: it totalised colonial discourse and was deterministic in its presentation of this discourse. And so, says Satchidanandan, we need today "a less formulaic and more accommodative rereading of Orientalism... without losing sight of the original paradigm drawn from Foucault" (p.120).
Translation and the problems associated with it have always been a Serbonian Bog in which armies have clashed. From Cicero and Quintillion down to the present day there has been an unending and acrimonious debate on the dogma of untranslatability. Western culture is monolingual; ours multilingual and oral. Translation is part and parcel of Indian life and ethos. Aren't there more than 4,000 versions of The Ramayana? In our daily conversation there is an inescapable mixture of our mother tongue with at last one other language, which happens to be English in most cases. Instead of keeping Arnold, or Belloc or Dryden or Steiner as our model when we think of translation as an exercise, we had better evolve a theory that would serve our cultural contexts. "Translation activity needs to be examined as policy, prioritisation, empowerment, enrichment and culture learning within post-colonial contexts since cross-cultural relations are constituted not on an abstract transcultural universal of beauty, but on immediate encounters with other cultural systems" (p.125).
The endnote to the essay "Another Life, another Poetics" says that it is a part of an ongoing study on the social dynamics and poetics of the Bhakti movement in India. More than anything there is an urgent need for a full-scale study of the Bhakti movement, which has produced some of the greatest poets of the world. India's supreme strength in literary achievement lies in this sphere unlike the Western world where devotional/ religious poetry is downgraded as minor literature. One wishes Satchidanandan undertook this stupendous project at his earliest convenience. Good luck!
There seems to be a mistaken notion as regards Sanskrit critical terms such as dhvani and rasa. There is nothing by way of obscurantism or political hegemony associated with these terms which are just figures of speech of the type of the metaphor and the simile. Here is a passage from the book:
We are not unfamiliar with the European stereotypes of India, both positive and negative. The salient features of this characterization are: the denial of empirical reality, the inability to distinguish the self from the non-self and interior from exterior, a neglect of universal human nature, a refusal to create synoptic systems, and the consequent construction of illogical bricolage of tools and systems, the theories of karma or of samsara, the hierarchies of caste, the hegemony of Vedanta in philosophy or of dhvani in literature or rasa in theatre... (p.10).
Vedanta is an eastern philosophic system. Like any other system, it is a systematic enquiry into the meaning of life. A Vedantin is none but a seeker of truth. Wherein comes hierarchy and hegemony? Thoreau said, "To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust." Dhvani and Rasa are just epistemological tools. Anandavardhana chooses examples of dhvani from literatures drawn from folk traditions (subaltern literature). Verse 13 of Part I of Dhvanyalokha defines dhvani thus: "That kind of poetry wherein the conventional meaning renders itself secondary or the conventional word renders its meaning secondary and suggests the implied meaning, is designated by the learned as dhvani." Suggestion, as all of us know, is an inherent quality of good poetry, integral to it. That is all about it. To call this obscurantist bespeaks wilful ignorance or entrenched prejudice. One is sad that with all his understanding and consideration, Satchidanandan should fall an easy prey to such insidious, vulgar views!
The essay "Signing in Different Scripts" has precious little to offer on literary criticism in Indian languages. In the discussion on drama, there is a long inventory of practising dramatists in the various languages but the problems confronted by a practising dramatist in English have not been tackled. The western models have so much conditioned us and our responses that it is well nigh impossible for an Indian dramatist to break this and create a theatre that truly represents the Indian ethos. One would certainly agree with Satchidanandan that "any essentialist attempt to construct a standard Indian literature, Indian culture or Indian character without addressing the question of this inherent and enriching plurality will only end up creating a parody of Indian reality." So far so good. But merely presenting the voice of protest in contemporary literature is not presenting the plurality of voices. And a good deal of protest literature (the literature of Harlem Renaissance or war poetry, for instance) does not often get into the mainstream. It even goes unrepresented in standard anthologies.
Satchidanandan raises many questions and articulates them with clarity and force. Supportive evidences are presented in plenty with an astonishing range and variety. Some of the basic issues such as the belief in the existence of a monolithic Indian culture, the question of relating Indian literary criticism to the Western tradition, confronting the difficulty and dilemma of translation, have all been raised over and over again. But as Eliot would say, "... there is no competition/ There is only the fight to recover what has been lost/And found and lost again."
Authors, Texts, Issues: Essays on Indian Literature, K. Satchidanandan, Pencraft International, 2003, p.128, Rs. 260.
M. S. NAGARAJAN
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