Category Archives: Indian English Literature

Nov20

Generic Conditions of the Novel and Nation

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Published in Journal of School of Letters, JNU, Delhi, Volume 13, 2010.

This article aims to rework two very famous formulations on novel and nation. It has become necessary for students of literary discourses to take into account Benedict Anderson and Frederic Jameson while studying novels. In this essay reviewing their positions, I try to rework their theses by tracing certain commonality between nation and the novel as structures of organisation. I argue that novel is a parasitic category forming itself through forms other than itself just as nation as an identity category devours and re-configures pre-existing forms of collective identities. This generic similarity alerts us to the historical connections between the novel and nation and requires us to deploy this factor in our studies of novels. In connecting the novel with the exclusionary conditions of the production of national identity via the generic commonality between the novel and nation we also begin to notice that novels position themselves in the conflictual site of the ideological battle between contesting nationalisms. Therefore, novels may be studied to discover the implicit construction and contestation of nation.

 

The novel is one kind of narrative with which we world our worlds. Narratives do not just word our worlds but also world our words. Our cognition of our own being in the world is enabled by the stories we gather up in our existence in the world. This ‘worldliness’ enters into our structure of feeling and our structures of expressing. It is in this sense that our words are already a part of the world we inhabit.

This paper examines one of the ways in which the study of the novel as a genre may be contextualised in the figure of ‘nation’. I aim to rework two very famous formulations on novel and nation. It has become necessary for students of literary discourses to take into account Benedict Anderson and Frederic Jameson while studying novels. In this essay reviewing their positions, I try to rework their theses by tracing certain commonality between nation and the novel as structures of organisation. I argue that novel is a parasitic category forming itself through forms other than itself just as nation as an identity category devours and re-configures pre-existing forms of collective identities. This generic similarity alerts us to the historical connections between the novel and nation and requires us to deploy this factor in our studies of novels. In connecting the novel with the exclusionary conditions of the production of national identity via the generic commonality between the novel and nation we also begin to notice that novels position themselves in the conflictual site of the ideological battle between contesting nationalisms. Therefore, novels may be studied to discover the implicit construction and contestation of nation…

…

Oct20

Agha Shahid Ali: Tonight

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Agha Shahid Ali’s gazal ‘Tonight’ is a superb poem. As is suitable for a ghazal it is a virtuoso. The complex weaving of history, the intertextuality, the internal echos all dazzle the reader by the sheer brilliance and control. To write a gazal in English and then to make it self-reflexive is no mean act. Hats off, Ali saab!

Amitav Ghosh’s article on Agha Shahid Ali is a must read to know this little great man. The article starts thus:

The first time that Agha Shahid Ali spoke to me about his approaching death was on 21 April 2001. The conversation began routinely. I had telephoned to remind him that we had been invited to a friend’s house for lunch and that I was going to come by his apartment to pick him up. Although he had been under treatment for cancer for some fourteen months, Shahid was still on his feet and perfectly lucid, except for occasional lapses of memory. I heard him thumbing through his engagement book and then suddenly he said: “Oh dear. I can’t see a thing.” There was a brief pause and then he added: “I hope this doesn’t mean that I’m dying …”

Read the rest of the article here.

Image from: google images

Tonight

by Agha Shahid Ali

Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar
—Laurence Hope

Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight?

Whom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight?

Those “Fabrics of Cashmere—” “to make Me beautiful

“Trinket”—to gem—“Me to adorn—How tell”—tonight?

I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates—

A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.

God’s vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar—

All the archangels—their wings frozen—fell tonight.

Lord, cried out the idols, Don’t let us be broken;

Only we can convert the infidel tonight.

Mughal ceilings, let your mirrored convexities

multiply me at once under your spell tonight.

He’s freed some fire from ice in pity for Heaven.

He’s left open—for God—the doors of Hell tonight.

In the heart’s veined temple, all statues have been smashed.

No priest in saffron’s left to toll its knell tonight.

God, limit these punishments, there’s still Judgment Day—

I’m a mere sinner, I’m no infidel tonight.

Executioners near the woman at the window.

Damn you, Elijah, I’ll bless Jezebel tonight.

The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer

fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight.

My rivals for your love—you’ve invited them all?

This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight.

And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee
God sobs in my arms.  Call me Ishmael tonight.

Sep29

A.K. Ramanujan’s ‘A River’

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image from: the telegraph

image from: the telegraph

R. Parthasarathy, in his introductory note on Ramanujan in Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets, reads ‘A River’ as a poem that exposes the callousness of the old and the new poets to suffering. But the irony in the poem extends to the speaker also, mocking the irrelevances he indulges in.

There are people who hold AKR very highly as a poet primarily for the technical finesse of his poems. One of the legends about him is that he used to revise his poems umpteen times, some undergoing as many revisions as sixty. It shows in his poems. No flab in them, pared to the minimum, enriched in possibilities through irony, line division and word placement.

A.K. Ramanujan in his poetry is a modernist to the T. In his themes as well as poetic strategies, he displays the international modernist attitude. He is right there with other modernists in writing about the existential issues, about the tension between being and world, about duality in relation to past, about scrutinising the self. His poems deploy all the modernist poetic trappings: tension, irony, obscurity, fragmentation, montage-like structure, ambivalence, imagistic, concrete.

“A River” immediately invokes binary structures: “new poets” and “old poets”; city of “temples and poets”; songs of “cities and temples”; the flood in the poems and as “people” saw it; a “couple of cows”; pregnant woman with “identical twins” etc.

The poem also presents alternative perceptions of the river in Madurai. One of them is available in poetry – old and new – which “sang” of cities, temples and the river in flood. On the other hand, “people everywhere” saw something else, which the speaker also concurs with. The speaker of this poem as the persona “he” has seen Madurai and has heard reports of the flood. The river as seen by the speaker is different from this report, which in turn is different from the description available in poetry old and new.

Thus, the view available of the river is diverse. The old and new poets see only the richness of the river when in flood; they see none of its impoverishment during summer. How about the present poets? This speaker sees the impoverishment during summer and the damage it causes during flood. He sees no richness. Thus, a dual view is available from the poets.

People seem to have a different “kind” of view. People seem to see the river in a contingent manner – as the flood is rising. The speaker-persona has his own report, which is different from the view of the old and new poets or the views of the people. He seems to pick up the details from the oral reports “everywhere” and then adds his own “poetic details” that veer away from the pathos of what he is describing with the triviality of his additions. Thus, instead of a serious criticism what we get is an unsure comment on the situation ending in parody. The indeterminacy in the poem is the result of the multiple possibilities that memory presents.

A River

In Madurai,
city of temples and poets,
who sang of cities and temples,
every summer
a river dries to a trickle
in the sand,
baring the sand ribs,
straw and women’s hair
clogging the watergates
at the rusty bars
under the bridges with patches
of repair all over them
the wet stones glistening like sleepy
crocodiles, the dry ones
shaven water-buffaloes lounging in the sun
The poets only sang of the floods.

He was there for a day
when they had the floods.
People everywhere talked
of the inches rising,
of the precise number of cobbled steps
run over by the water, rising
on the bathing places,
and the way it carried off three village houses,
one pregnant woman
and a couple of cows
named Gopi and Brinda as usual.

The new poets still quoted
the old poets, but no one spoke
in verse
of the pregnant woman
drowned, with perhaps twins in her,
kicking at blank walls
even before birth.

He said:
the river has water enough
to be poetic
about only once a year
and then
it carries away
in the first half-hour
three village houses,
a couple of cows
named Gopi and Brinda
and one pregnant woman
expecting identical twins
with no moles on their bodies,
with different coloured diapers
to tell them apart.

Sep18

The Locations of Indian English Novel

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Following is an extract from my article published in The Journal of  Contemporary Literature. Vol. 2, No. 1. January 2010. pp. 34-49.

Many Worlds of Indian English Novel

This paper surveys the field of Indian English Novel in order to arrive at an understanding of the major areas of concern for any study of the field. This survey is conducted by examining certain prevalent assumptions, both positive and negative, regarding the field. The examination takes into account the implications of the naming of the field itself and explores various subject positions from which a fruitful negotiation of the field is possible. The paper begins with an exploration of the sociological status of the field of Indian English novel by attending to such characterisations of the field as elitism, alienated, inauthentic and ambivalent. Then I go on to examine issues related to the stability of terms that name this discourse by way of which I set out to identify the problematic of constituting the field. The paper further takes issues of nation, nationalism and how these frame a study of Indian English novel. And finally it examines the postcolonial interventions and suggests that the issues of language, modes of production, circulation and consumption lead us to characterise Indian English Novel as a fuzzy discourse.

There is a tendency to view Indian Writing in English as an ambivalent discourse. This characterisation reduces the complexity to a binary of indigenous and alien and asserts that English being an ‘alien’ language for Indians, it should not be used for creative expressions. The objection does not include usually such writings as journalistic, personal, administrative or professional. However, the reductionism in this objection becomes clear if we step across the colonialism/nationalism binary and attend to the deployment of English for various purposes by Indians.

While the English language is a social marker of privilege in India, it would be erroneous to restrict elitism to having access to English language or to assume that access to it is the final barrier for the subaltern. Elite and subaltern are contingently produced social relations. In fact, the context of social relations is the only site where elitism/subalternity can be discerned. Caution is needed against unproblematically bracketing literature written in English as being elite and thereby implying that what is not in English and is in modern Indian languages as not being elite. Speaking of the literary field, we may notice that novelists who write in the modern Indian languages and those who write in English occupy similar terrain of social status, as against the multiple layers of economic and cultural hierarchy that exist in Indian society. There are situations when the relation of English to any of the modern Indian languages is characterised by privilege. However, the modern Indian languages (even the ones that are officially ‘recognised’) do not in themselves form a level field. The relation between the various Indian languages is also characterised by privilege and underprivilege, something that might be seen operating behind the many language riots. Further, even within a language group social relation is characterised by hierarchisation at various levels. This applies to literary texts as well, and it is not necessarily the English texts that are privileged always and everywhere. More pertinently, an antagonistic view of Indian Writing in English as an alien discourse misses the rich and resonant interaction between Indian languages and English on the one hand, and on the other, the intertextual discourse that Indian English literature develops out of its being housed within the tradition of literatures in India. As Vinay Dharwadkar says,

[…] after nearly two centuries of continuous aesthetic refinement, the highly crafted ‘English’ of Indian-English literature is full of the long shadows of the Indian languages. The indigenous languages are among the social, political, and aesthetic elements that have penetrated the English language in its alien environment on the subcontinent… To the great distinction of Indian-English writers and their collective creativity, this shadowy interspersion constitutes a pervasive, internal ‘decolonization’ of English at the level of language itself.

The increased currency of the Indian English novels within the global postcolonial knowledge industry in the present juncture has definitely privileged the novels written in English. But the fact that this was not always the case and that this privilege is true only of novels (of a particular kind) suggests that our reading of elitism/subalternity with respect to the field of Indian English literature should be more nuanced. For example, right now, poetry written in English has few takers and the poets struggle to find publishers.

The unqualified branding of Indian English literature as elite has little purchase if made in dissociation from material conditions and the issues of reception and dissemination. Such a belief is the outcome of a commonsensical idea that English is an elite language. This is based on the reading of the socio-cultural scenario wherein residues of colonial consciousness hold English as a superior language. Another reason is the economic and social opportunities, especially in the new economy, that are available to those who speak English. Imagining the exceptions will better explain the issue. One, a person in India without ever knowing/learning English can live an elite life in many socio-cultural situations. On the contrary, a girl, proficient in English, working in a call centre (with all her American accent) might be subjected to several layers of subordination. This, however, is not an exercise in denying the fact that in India English is a privileged language and the language of the privileged, but to indicate that the terms ‘elite’ and ‘subaltern’ need to be understood in the context of social relations. Meenakshi Mukherjee locates this issue in the larger political and economic context:

The demands of economy, both national and global, create a thrust towards a homogenisation of culture, and in India the language that can most effectively achieve this is English, which is also the language of upward mobility… It is logical that reading habits should also follow this trend. Whether it is desirable or not, seen from this point of view, the growing visibility of English as the preferred language of literature in India seems to be an irreversible process.

The beginning, development and the contemporary practice of Indian Writing in English evidences its deployment in diverse ideological and cultural contingencies. In his excellent essay on Indian Writing in English, Vinay Dharwadkar identifies four ‘subject-positions’ that writers of Indian Writing in English come to occupy. He traces the complex inter-relations and interactions between these and the development of the various genres in Indian writing in English. The four subject positions Dharwadkar discusses are: collaboration, provincialism, nationalism and cosmopolitanism. He associates ‘collaboration’ with the imitative discourses wherein approximation with the metropolitan colonial culture is deemed a positive value and hence the attempt results in valorising the imperialist discourse. The second subject position, provincialism, is associated with the spirit of reviving the indigenous traditions with the village as the metaphorical locale of such discursive articulation. Ideologically this position presents a strong critique of the colonial power and situates itself as a resistant discourse to both the metropolitan as well as the Indian urban culture. The third subject position in Dharwadkar’s scheme is nationalist, which sets itself up as the inclusive counter discourse to colonialism, aspiring to resist the ‘foreign’ and representing the solidarity of the ‘national’. The fourth subject position identified by Dharwadkar is cosmopolitanism which does not ideologically align completely with any of the three subject positions, but negotiates with the metropolitan, national, and provincial culture to produce a discourse of modernity. Dharwadkar develops a much-nuanced reading of the historical processes under which the many discursive forms developed in relation to socio-cultural and historical conditions:

Each of the four subject-positions that appeared in the Indian cultural sphere and in print in the nineteenth century was constituted dynamically in its differentiation from the other three positions, with which it interacted conflictually, continuously and untrancendably. Each position was a condensation point for a historical process, a geographical location, an ideology, a cultural identity, a corresponding political strategy, and a characteristic mode of representation and style of writing.

It may be safely used as the framework to understand the positions within Indian English Novel. If at all, the complexity has increased and it may be possible to find a couple of more subject positions in the contemporary historical condition. I would add globalisation, modern conservativism, and emancipatory modernisation. The first of this relates to Indian writings in English (much of it in mass media) that situate themselves in a postnational condition of globality with nation as having no claim on identity or affiliation. The second subject position is ideologically conservative and is like the revivalist category mentioned by Dharwadkar, but materially it locates itself in modernity even as it ideologically rejects it. The third valorises modernisation as a means of empowerment and deploys English language for that purpose. Here, the resistance is to the indigenous orthodoxy and the metropolitan culture of late capitalism is a strategic means of militating against the discursive structures that perpetuate traditional dispossession. This is mainly found in anti-caste discourses. Thus, Indian Writing in English is a discourse of many dimensions that at once addresses a number of complex, accrued, and multi-sourced socio-cultural tangles, and issues of political economy in India. The demand often made against the Indians’ use of English for creative purposes becomes a hopeless romantic objection which views language use in a simple identity binary of self and other. Therefore, questions of validity of Indian Writings in English are largely irrelevant considering the various ideological, cultural and social locations of this discourse and its deployment for different purposes by different people.

Constituting the Indian English Novel

Constituting the field of Indian English Novel presents a peculiar problem as the term suggests solidity to notions such as India, Indian English and novel. For example, nation has come to be seen as a construct and the processes of formation of a nation are considered to be never complete. This constructivist view of nation holds that a discrete identity of nation is not readily available; that is always discursively staged. From this standpoint, each of the three words here throws up tangled issues. How does one interpret the term ‘Indian’ when used in naming the field of ‘Indian English Novel’? Can one, contrary to the indeterminate notion of nation and identity, claim it to be a stable pointer to the inside and the outside of the field? Naming is an act of delimiting and structuring. The nomenclature assigned to this field is reductive and shows up many cracks under close scrutiny. The name it bears can only feebly contain the many contending issues that beset any claim of coherence within. For example there is the well-known gender question: that women writers had for long received less attention or that female life is inadequately represented in literary traditions. This debate alerts us to how the name ‘Indian’ might act as a mechanism of appropriation of a large cultural and societal space while glossing over the muted voices within. Thus, the question of naming a field in terms of national identity is deeply problematic. The case of V.S. Naipaul is an interesting one because, though he is a Trinidadian, who never held Indian citizenship or lived in India, his works were included for long in the syllabi of Indian English Writing courses in many Universities in India. In fact, in a book published as recently as 2001, Tabish Khair discusses Naipaul within the canon of Indian English Fiction. (Ch. 11) So does Vinay Dharwadkar in his 2003 essay on the formation of Indian English Literature. (252) Diasporic novelists bring to the fore another problem by rendering it impossible to claim that any novel on India or any novel by a writer of Indian origin can unproblematically belong to Indian English literature. The diasporic writing also challenges any easy notion of ‘Indian’ as well as the kind of Indias appearing in their works considering that they deal with the memory of homeland. In many cases the representation of homeland is keyed more to the conditions of diasporic existence in the host country. The challenges that diasporic writings throw at categorisation of literature on national basis are discussed by Arif Dirlik:

As literature has been placed at the service of exploring ethnic and transnational (or diasporic) identities, the construction of identities in literary work has been confounded with the ethnography of culture, subjecting the writer to pressures that subvert the autonomy of creative work. Compounding this confusion is the question of the cultural belonging of literature as it is divorced from earlier associations with nations and national languages.

The emergence of Indian English novels into prominence in metropolitan academic spaces in the era of globalisation has raised questions about the relation between the diasporic and the India-based writers and their works. There is an asymmetrical relationship between the two in terms of the reception and dissemination of their work within as well as outside India. The former by now are well established in the canons of postcolonial cultural studies with the latter receiving comparatively less attention. R. Raj Rao points out this schism and notes bitterly:

The current hype surrounding the Indian English novel has nothing to do with [the] writers based in India. These are serious writers but they have none of the benefits of those writers based abroad… Those who write only in English and are based in India are nowhere men and nowhere women.

This phenomenon has serious consequences in the way literary representation of India takes place as well as literary discourses are shaped. The development also needs to be studied in terms of the nature of ‘India’ portrayed and how this participates in the generation and normalisation of a particular kind of representation. In other words ever since the international market, academy and readership have valorised such writers as Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati Roy, Rohinton Mistry and Bharati Mukherjee, the representation of India by non-diasporic writers also has come to be influenced by the success of these writers. This may be seen as a kind of orientalisation and Vinay Dharwadkar in fact makes exactly the same point when he says, “it leads to a renewed exoticization – practically a re-Orientalization – of India in diasporic writing.” (257) Anis Shivani (2006) discusses this with reference to four diasporic novelists, Amit Chaudhuri, Pankaj Mishra and Manil Suri.

Sep14

Rama Mehta’s Inside the Haveli

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Below is an extract from my article on Rama Mehta’s novel Inside the Haveli. The article was published in South Asian Review vol. 30. No. 1. September/October 2009. pp. 286–301. It is titled “Emplotment of Aristocratic Nation in Rama Mehta’s Inside the Haveli”

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In South Asian debates, the nostalgic mode of cultural memory deploys binary oppositions such as ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ so as to defend the perpetuation of cultural orthodoxy. The terrain of postcolonial debate has witnessed the resurgence of this kind of defence of cultural orthodoxy in the name of critique of modernity often. One of the sites for the assertion of cultural orthodoxy has been the space of ‘nation’. In as far as ‘nation’ is a modern form of sociality in South Asian societies it is fraught with issues of derivation. One familiar trope in the critiques of nationalism is the one based on its ‘alienness’. Such a critique is usually predicated upon a defence of cultural orthodoxy: the brahminical patriarchy. The charge of ‘alienenss’ in such critiques is a reductive examination of the phenomenon of nationalism ignoring the plural conceptions of nation. The labelling of nation as a derivative discourse legitimizes a hegemonic notion of cultural interaction whereby the reconfigurations effected in the concept are devalued. These critiques of nationalism ignore contestations of nation and nationalisms by rendering them as singular. Thus, an important critical engagement evident in past and present mass movements is negated by this critique though it has acquired greater visibility.

Nations are not imagined into being in abstraction but through associations based on shared practices and dissociations based on differentiations. These two processes are never complete or coherent, thereby leading to an unstable production of identity that is forever in the making. This instability in and the continuous production of the collective identity hence characterises nation as a field of contestations. ‘Nation’ as a collective identity is continuously under construction and forever pluralized. Beginning with this constructivist notion of nation, this paper examines the configuration of collective identity in Rama Mehta’s Inside the Haveli. The argument I present here is that the novel valorizes feudal aristocratic patriarchy via a plea for preserving the local tradition by ignoring the class and gender refractions therein.

Inside the Haveli is Rama Mehta’s only novel though she has published academic books and children’s fiction. Her works of fiction for children are Ramu and Life of Keshav. Rama Mehta’s academic books include The Western Educated Indian Woman (1970), The Divorced Hindu Woman (1975), and India: Now and Through Time (co-author) (1971). The novel was published in 1977 and thus 1970s is the period in which Rama Mehta published all her works. Significantly, the novel and the non-fictional books have common concerns as they all circle around the issues of women’s relation to tradition and modernity. The particular intervention that this novel made in the contemporary debates about the conflict/continuity between tradition and modernity was enthusiastically received. This is apparent in its positive reception. The novel won the 1979 Sahitya Academy Award and was heralded by established critics such as Srinivass Iyengar:

Inside the Haveli is a sensitive piece of realistic fiction, even an authentic sociological study, and it is written with a naturalness and poise that are disarming and effective at once. The evocation of scene, character and especially of atmosphere is almost uncanny… The balance between repose and movement is well sustained, there is romance but no cheap sex, there is tension but no violence, and there is a feeling for the values and verities.[i]

Published at a time when in India the desire for modernity was strong even as pride in tradition was fierce, Inside the Haveli is a novel that sets up a face off between tradition and modernity and it is seen as offering the best of both the ‘worlds’.[ii] Its popularity seems to be not so much due to resolving the conflict between tradition and modernity, but for favouring tradition and maintaining a conservative outlook, both in ideological framing of the narrative as well as the style in which it is rendered. That the novel’s ideological framing of modernity can at once gather up pedagogic import is suggested in the praise showered on it by Viney Kirpal:

Rama Mehta’s intentions in writing this novel are to help the western educated Indian reader regain his belief in his own traditions… The resolution of the novel is that Geeta gradually grows away from the westernised perception acquired from her education and learns to appreciate the dignity, solemnity, meaning and worth of indigenous traditions[iii].

This paper proposes to examine closely the deployment of the thematic of tradition and modernity and explore how this stages ‘nation’. The analysis of the novel takes into account the institution of two temporal and spatial categories in the novel, one representing the traditional aristocracy inhabiting the haveli and the other representing the world outside it which is integrated into nationhood. The novel then goes on to valorize the former, defending its socio-cultural practices by glossing over the inherent oppressiveness. Contrary to its initial claim of common bond among the inhabitants of the old city of Udaipur, the novel reveals processes of othering within the old city based on class and gender. It ends up contesting the horizontal life effected by nation on behalf of the aristocracy, the defence of which is made in the novel by defending its traditions. The novel, however, effectually silences the dissent based on class by portraying the generosity of the aristocracy. Thus, in this novel, contestation of nation as a modern collectivity is undertaken from the point of view of the aristocracy. It deploys the thematic smoke screen of the conflict between tradition and modernity only to naturalize the perpetuation of patriarchal hierarchy.

Inside the Haveli demarcates its narrative paradigm by instituting a division between the magical time of traditional community and the flat horizontal time of nation-state. The former derives its enchanting character in its difference from the memory-less domain of the latter. The novel opens with a highly resonant description of Udaipur’s ‘Old City’ in its distinction from the new township: “Udaipur was once the capital of the state of Mewar; now it is only a town like many other towns in Rajasthan.”[iv] (3) The contrast invoked in the words ‘once’ and ‘now’ introduces the nostalgic and rues the levelling of Udaipur with ‘many other towns’ in the time of the nation-state. The insertion of Udaipur into the flat horizontal plane of nation-state is viewed as undermining its magical uniqueness.

The novel characterises this ‘magicality’ as being generated in the now through a memory of the past: “But the change in its status hasn’t diminished its beauty, nor the air of mystery that hangs over what is now known as ‘Old City’.” (3) There is a suggestion that the diminution in the status is occasioned by the integration of the state of Mewar into the Indian nation-state, into becoming one among the many towns of Rajasthan. The likeness to other towns is seen here as a diminution in status. Thus, the coming of the nation-state (the state of Mewar has been dissolved into the Indian nation-state at the time of Indian independence, and the beginning of the novel is twenty-five years from that time) has brought about a reduction in the status of Udaipur.

The change in the status nevertheless is only a limited ‘loss’ because, the novel goes on to assert, its ‘beauty’ is undiminished. The result of this contradiction is the production of magicality: ‘the air of mystery’ that ‘hangs over’ the city. The severance is neither complete, nor is the flattening all-penetrating because this mystery, this nostalgic production of the magicality that sustains the past through remembered practices sets up the ‘old city’ as distinct. Therefore, “the wall still divides Udaipur into two halves. The new township is beyond the old wall and the city within it.” (3) The topographical division also marks a deeper distance as the ‘old city’ and the new township are enveloped in the novel’s narrative prose in distinct zones of time. In two paragraphs of contrasting visions of each other, the novel points to the distance in terms which focus on the continuity with the past for the old city and an absence of collective memory for the new township. (5) In the first of these paragraphs, the view of the township by the people of the old city is presented:

They have seen the rows of neat houses on either side of the broad tarmac road. The air is clean and in it there is no cow dung smoke but there is no soul in the new township. Its people have not memories of what Udaipur was like, they are newcomers, they don’t have common ancestors. They don’t belong to the soil of Mewar. (5)

This view of the township as a body without past, without memory, without soul and without roots is an index of the collective identity invoked in the novel. It is an identity that is specific to Udaipur, issuing from the memory of its glorious past (“No one in the city can forget those days when Udaipur belonged to the people” (5)). Unlike the old city, the new township is a conglomeration of people without collective memory, ancestors, common customs and a sense of belonging. Thus, the old city and the new township occupy different horizons of collectivity, the four hundred years old wall signalling the distance. Though this wall is crumbling, there are big gaps (presumably symptomatic of the ambivalent space where the old city and new township form continuity), it still ‘divides’ Udaipur.

The view of the old city by the people in the new town is less penetrating. While the description of the new township seen by the people of the old city is detailed enough, the description is minimal when the people in the new town see the old city: “They are puzzled by the wall–enclosed havelis… There is no way they can look into the courtyards… The town people leave the old city, without having fathomed what goes on inside men’s and women’s apartments of the haveli.” (5) The differentiated visions of each other, one penetrating while the other puzzled, sets up in the novel a preferred site of narrativization. The old city from now on becomes the closed off horizon of the narrative universe. The narrative dismisses the new township, never to venture into it, though its presence continues to index the ‘crumbling’ wall and the growing gaps in it.

[i] K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Indian Writing in English. rev. edn., New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Limited, 1985. p. 753.

[ii] See R.K. Asthana, “Tradition and Modernity in Inside the Haveli”, in R.K. Dhawan, (ed), Indian Women Novelists, vol. IV, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1991. pp. 193-201.

[iii] Viney Kirpal, “How Traditional can a Modern Indian be: Analysis of Inside the Haveli” in R.K. Dhawan, (ed), Indian Women Novelists, vol. IV, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1991. p. 176.

[iv] Rama Mehta, Inside the Haveli. (1977), New Delhi: Penguin, 1996.

Nov9

Embedded Imagination and Otherness in Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence

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Intersections is a journal maintained by Australian National University’s Gender Relations Centre. The current issue is a special issue on “Face)t)s of Woman: Gender in the Indian Cultural Context” guest edited by Subhash Chandra. The journal’s editor is Carolyn Brewer.  It has several interesting articles including those by Joya John, Malashri Lal, Chaitya Das etc. Access to the journal is free. My article on Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence appears in the issue. Below is the basic argument I make in the paper. Here is the link. Do visit.

Shashi Deshpande’s novel That Long Silence, through details of everyday practices, routine, mundane, and particular stories, engages with issues of collective identity. The novel explores how images of nation are embedded in the ordinariness of lives and how the nation-state through an affective mechanism of individuals’ imagination institutes them as citizen-subjects. Through this exploration the novel develops a critique of the patriarchal construction of ‘nation’ and contests the legitimisation of the male discourse as the ‘normative’ national discourse. I wish to argue in this paper that the equalised terrain of the victimisation of women that the novel presents glosses over the cultural marks of the women characters represented in the novel leading to the appropriation of the cultural other into a universalised brahminical ‘woman.’ This critique is further supported by calling attention to the way there is a belittling of female discourse in the novel.

Nov2

Raja Rao’s Kanthapura, nationalism and caste

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Raja Rao’s Kanthapura enacts some of the motifs of postcolonialism. In my previous post here I point out that Raja Rao critiques the simple position al010that the discourse of colonialism instituted a notion of the natural superiority of the colonising race and this was internalised by the colonized. In the second piece on the novel I point to how the novel problematizes viewing colonial modernity as having had a liberating impact on the Indian society. Let me take this reading further.

The problematising potential of the novel extends to anti-colonial nationalism too. In order to examine this let us turn to another dimension of the novel. The emergence of novel as a genre in 19th century India raises the question of whether it is derivative. While there is a debate on this issue, the novel’s role in enabling the notion of nation-state to take shape is an important one. Benedict Anderson has argued that novel is partly responsible for a community to imagine itself as a nation. The novels written in 19th century and even beyond in India may be used to support this claim. While in Kanthapura, the action is restricted to the village itself with none of the characters venturing too far out, yet the village is not insulated against the happenings in other places. In fact, the stimulation for action is not local. The grand events that form the focal points of the novel take place in response to events elsewhere – Lahore, Bengal, Gujarat, etc. The village community moves from an insulated identity towards a national identity. In one sense, Kanthapura chronicles the formation of a national identity within a remote village. This thematic is also supported by the manner in which the village becomes a kind of a microcosm of the nation. The narrative tends towards mythicizing. For example Moorthy’s fast, Ramakrishnayya’s death, the receding of the flood, and nationalist struggle itself are mythicized. The narrative takes recourse to Vedantic texts and Puranas and inserts nationalist struggle into them. For example, in a harikatha, Jayaramachar brings in an allegory between Siva, Parvati and the nation. The three eyed Siva stands for Swaraj. Later Rangamma standing in as the commentator of Vedanta after the death of her father reads the Puranas allegorically, interpreting hell as the foreign rule, soul as India and so on. Shall we say nation is thus constructed hermeneutically?

The process of imagining a community – of imagining nationhood – also underlines the homogenising tendency of nationalism. The congress workers, who so vehemently are ‘swadeshi’ and give up anything foreign, unwittingly embrace the European model of nation. This notion requires a nation state to have a singular form. A nation is a community of people who have a common language etc. Thus in Kanthapura, Congressmen including Moorthy follow the same model of the nation-state. Sankaru epitomises this: his insistence on speaking Hindi even to his mother instead of the local language Kannada; his fanatic resistance to the use of English and so on. This conception of the nation informs that of everyone: e.g. the narrator visualises Moorthy {when in prison} to be wearing kurta pyjama instead of dhoti. The Hindi teacher is not from any Hindi speaking region but a Malayali [Surya Menon]. Thus, the very conception of ‘Nation’, which is conceived after the European model of the nation-state, undermines the ‘Swadeshi’ spirit of nationalism. Any pure form of nationhood untouched by colonialism is seriously questioned.

Another problem arises when this novel is read as a record of a nation-in-the-making.  It would seem to exemplify Jameson’s argument that third world literature is necessarily a national allegory. When we keep in mind that Benedict Anderson’s thesis about the emergence of nation-state is a work on the emergence of nation-state in Europe, Jameson’s argument seems to put third world literature in the past of European literature. This only re-enacts the familiar theme that comes across in the colonialist historiography of Indian nationalism: that Indian nationalism is a learning process as has been pointed out by Ranjit Guha (Subaltern Studies I). This particular view of nationalism characterises Indian nationalism as a response to the stimulus of colonial administration. The view of the history of the colonised society as a march towards the teleological goal of becoming ultimately ‘Europe’ places them always at a past time in relation to the colonisers present time. The denial of coevalness of time is a necessity in the discourse of colonialism.

This view of India’s history being bound to Europe takes us to Dipesh Chakravarthy’s thesis that as far as history as a discourse is concerned, Europe remains the sovereign theoretical subject of all histories, including the one we call Indian (Provincialising Europe OUP, 2001). Further, he says, as opposed to other narratives of self and community, history is the meta-narrative that looks to the state/citizen bind as the ultimate construction of sociality. Other constructions of self and community speak an anti-historical consciousness. With modernity, history becomes the site where the struggle goes on to appropriate other collocations of memory. In Kanthapura, the narrative in the beginning reflects an ahistorical consciousness. The description of the village life is as a timeless continuum in the form of Sthalapurana. Or the Harikatha wherein nationalist figures become mythical. Whereas, colonialism disrupts the narratives of the community and introduces ‘history’. In as far as the change in the narrative technique, which becomes more linear while narrating the freedom struggle in Kanthapura, history really begins with Europe inhabiting Kanthapura. This is most clearly suggested in the loss of mythicizing tendency of the narrative in the later part when the arrival of newspapers, novels and pamphlets has exposed the first person narrator to techniques of historicizing.

This whole reading of the novel harps back upon the exchange between the coloniser and the colonised. The interesting insights offered by the novel are about the immense complications and violence that attend the arrival of colonial modernity in India.

The novel highlights with no subtlety the collusion between colonialism and Brahmanism. The manner in which Moorthy becomes an outcaste in the Brahmin quarters with his campaign against untouchability indicates the tension between Brahmanism and nationalism. For Brahmanism, the colonial ruler is not the enemy but Gandhi’s anti-untouchable movement is. The collusion between Brahmanism and colonialism is suggested through the alliance between Bhatta, Bade Khan the policeman and the Sahib of the Estate. Swami, who is waging a war against ‘caste pollution due to this pariah business’, sees British rulers as protectors of the ancient ways of Dharma. Swami receives a large amount from the govt as Rajadakshina and is promised that he would receive moral and material support in his war against caste pollution.

While this reading posits nationalism in conflict with brahminism, something more interesting is available if we push our reading a little further. Moorthy’s politics in the village mobilises people of all castes for the struggle against colonisers. In so doing Moorthy radicalises his sociality by visiting the untouchable quarters, and even having milk offered by one of them. Interestingly after this he is troubled by his action and takes a bath. Though he does not change his sacred thread as then he would have to do it daily, he does take a little Ganga water and we are promised that he would do that every time he visits the pariahs. His politics aims at assimilating the lower castes into the nationalist movement. This may also operate as a move towards containment. For example, the discourse of nationalism meets the discourse of religion at different levels in the novel. While Bhatta, Swami and their followers {who have often material motives such as Venkamma) resist Gandhism in the name of religion, in Kanthapura, the nationalists increasingly employ the religious discourse and customs and symbols for nationalist purposes. Religious resources are mobilised for the politicisation of the people. But the customs, rituals and symbols that become tools of nationalist mobilisation are primarily Brahminic: arthi, puja, conches, bells, Vedanta, bhajan etc. They do not include the cultural practices of the lower castes though their participation is prominent.

The overall idea I have of the novel is that it is an immensely clever novel that very ably reflects much of the nationalistic themes including the patronising attitude towards the lower caste society. The novel, much like hegemonic Indian nationalists, deploys anti-caste postures to dissemble the projection of brahminical culture as the legitimate national culture.

Oct29

“a high-class cheez”

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Novelist Chandrahas Choudhury on the state of novel in English in India:

In a scene early in Vikram Chandra’s massive 2006 cops-and-robbers novel Sacred Games, the small-time gangster Ganesh Gaitonde sells some stolen gold and feels, for the first time in his life, wealthy and powerful. He goes looking for pleasure on the streets, and a pimp offers him “a high-class cheez.” But no sooner is Gaitonde left alone with the prostitute than he begins to feel set up. He has only one way of finding out whether his “cheez” is as high-class as promised. “Speak English,” he orders the woman. When she complies, Gaitonde cannot understand the words, but it doesn’t matter. “I knew that they were really English,” he thinks to himself. “I felt it in the crack of the consonants.”

The prostitute’s utterances in English earn her fee, just as the Indian novelist who chooses to write in English has often been accused, especially by readers and critics at home, of being inauthentic or a sellout, forcing characters with their roots in the words and worldview of some other Indian language to “speak English.” The debate, of course, is old, fraught with the historical baggage of India’s British colonial past…

More here.  To read more of Chandrahas Choudhury go here.

Oct29

Dalit English Poet – Meena Kandasamy

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Recently I came across an exciting voice in Indian English poetry: Meena Kandasamy. I first read her poems in a blog and found about her through blogs, her own as well of others. This is an indication in itself that blogging is beginning to be the dominant medium for accessing poetry. Blogging has several advantages in this respect as it unshackles the poets from being dependant on publishers or magazines. It is as democratic as is currently possible. More and more poets, despite their background, can find their  readers without being subjected to the humiliating process of the publishing industry.

Meena Kandasamy has some interesting things to say about blogging. She is a Dalit writer from Tamilnadu who writes poetry in English. She is also an active translator. Her blog makes for interesting reading. A new voice in the field of Indian English Literature, she is very articulate about the aspirations of the dalits. One of her recent blogs was insightful. Here she talks about blogging, caste oppression and women. Here is an excerpt:

from: Meena Kandasamy blog

Big media houses which own the major publications rarely give opportunity to Dalit (ex-untouchable) writers, and there’s an absence of Dalit/anti-caste writers who write in English. The elitist writers want to write the feel-good stuff, India Shining myths, and that’s the work that gets into print. So, I wanted to tap the power and enormous outreach of the internet: how anyone can write and be read/heard in the virtual space. I was not writing because anyone was commissioning me, I didn’t have to follow other people’s diktats, I could speak my mind. Google and tagging ensure that I can get heard without having my own column in any newspaper. Sometimes its helped me bring some happenings to light—such as the recent inside story of Dalit students being beaten up at a law university in Chennai (the mainstream media merely reported it as a “clash” at first) and so on. Blogging on feminist issues, with a caste perspective, was also something that I set out to do, because feminism in India forgets that caste exists at all, and that women at the bottom of the caste hierarchy do suffer more.

Since the cost of establishing alternative media in India is extremely high, activist groups have taken to the Internet in a big way. There is a hunger to use the potential of this media, and human rights defenders are doing it the right way. The campaign to free Binayak Sen; the exposes on state terrorism, fake encounters and police atrocities; the virulent speed in which fact-finding reports can be circulated; the ease with which the LGBT community in India came together and organized their shows of strength in every major city—these have all been possible because of the digital sphere and the space for social networking, discussion and dissemination that it allows.

She has another blog where she has posted several of her poems. She has published a collection of her poems called Touch. Kamala Das wrote the forward where she calls Meena an exciting writer. Believe her. Or decide after reading her poems. One of them is ‘Becoming a Brahmin‘:

Algorithm for converting a Shudra into a Brahmin

Begin.

Step 1: Take a beautiful Shudra girl.
Step 2: Make her marry a Brahmin.
Step 3: Let her give birth to his female child.
Step 4: Let this child marry a Brahmin.
Step 5: Repeat steps 3-4 six times.
Step 6: Display the end product. It is a Brahmin.

End.

Algorithm advocated by Father of the Nation at Tirupur.
Documented by Periyar on 20.09.1947.

Algorithm for converting a Pariah into a Brahmin

Awaiting another Father of the Nation
to produce this algorithm.

(Inconvenience caused due to inadvertent delay
is sincerely regretted.)

While this poem is a frontal attack, there is a nuanced poem which is rich in irony yet trenchant in its critique of the caste system – varna system.

TOUCH

Have you ever tried meditation?
Struggling hard to concentrate,
and keeping your mind as blank
as a whitewashed wall by closing
your eyes, nose, ears; and shutting out
every possible thought. Every thing.
And, the only failure, that ever came,
the only gross betrayal—
was from your own skin.
You will have known this.

Do you still remember,
how, the first distractions arose?
And you blamed skin as a sinner;
how, when your kundalini was rising,
shaken, you felt the cold concrete floor
skin rubbing against skin, your saffron robes,
how, even in a far-off different realm—
your skin anchored you to this earth.
Amidst all that pervading emptiness,
touch retained its sensuality.
You will have known this.

Or if you thought more variedly, about
taste, you would discount it—as the touch
of the tongue. Or, you may recollect
how a gentle touch, a caress changed
your life multifold, and you were never
the person you should have been.
Feeling with your skin, was
perhaps the first of the senses, its
reality always remained with you—
You never got rid of it.
You will have known this.

You will have known almost
every knowledgeable thing about
the charms and the temptations
that touch could hold.

But, you will never have known
that touch – the taboo
to your transcendence,
when crystallized in caste
was a paraphernalia of
undeserving hate.

Photo from: Meena Kandasamy blog.

Oct25

Bibliography – Indian English Literature

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Here is a fragmentary bibliography for the study of Indian English Literature. I am posting these fragments with the hope of putting together a more comprehensive bibliography some day.

General Resources on Indian English Literature

1. King Bruce, Modern Indian English Poetry. New Delhi: OUP, 1989.

2. Khair, Tabish. Babu Fictions: Alienation in Contemporary Indian English Novels. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001.

3. Lal, Malashri. The Law of the Threshold. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1995.

4. Mukherjee, Meenakshi. The Twice Born Fiction. New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann Publishers: 1971.

5. Naik, M.K. Twentieth Century Indian English Fiction. Delhi: Pencraft International, 2004.

6. Shirwadkar, K.R. The Indian Novel in English and Social Change. Bombay, Shalaka Prakashan: 1991.

7. R.K. Dhawan, (ed.), Indian Women Novelists, vol. I – IV, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1991.

8. M.K. Naik, S.K. Desai, G.S. Amur (eds.), Critical Essays on Indian Writing in English. Delhi: Macmillan India, 1972.

9. Sudhakar Pande, R. Raj Rao (eds.), Image of India in the Indian Novel in English 1960 – 1985. Bombay: Orient Longman, 1993

10. Viney Kirpal (ed.) The New Indian Novel in English: A Study of the 1980s. Bombay: Allied Publishers Limited, 1990.

11. C.D. NArasimhaiah (ed.). Makers of Indian English Literature. Delhi: Pencraft International, 2000.

12. K.K. Singh.

Indian English Poetry After Independence. Jaipur: Book Enclave, 2006.

13. Jaydeep Sarangi (ed). Explorations in Indian English Poetry New Delhi: Authorspress, 2007.

14. M.K. Naik.  Indian English Poetry: from the Beginnings upto 2000. Delhi: Pencraft International, 2006.

15. Saryug Yadav and Amar Nath Prasad (eds.) Studies in Indian Drama in English. Bareilly: Prakash Book, 2003.

16. C.L. Khatri and Kumar Chandradeep (ed.) Indian Drama in English : An Anthology of Recent Criticism. Jaipur: Book Enclave, 2006.

17. Basavaraj Naikar (ed.).  Indian English Literature, Vol.I – VI, New Delhi, Atlantic Pub., 2007.

18. Nandini Sahu. The Post-Colonial Space : Writing the Self and the Nation. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2007.

19. Nand Kumar. Indian English Drama: A Study in Myths. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2003.

20. K. Venkata Reddy and R.K. Dhawan (eds). Flowering of Indian Drama : Growth and Development. New Delhi: Prestige, 2004.

21. Neeru Tandon (ed.). Perspectives and Challenges in Indian-English Drama. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2006.

Shashi Deshpande: That Long Silence

1. Joshi, Padmakar. Shashi Deshpande’s Fiction – A Study in Women Empowerment and Postcolonial Discourse. New Delhi: Prestige Books. 2003.

2. Saikat Majumdar, “Aesthetics of Subjectivity, Ethics of ‘Otherness’: The Fiction of  Shashi Deshpande”, Postcolonial Text, vol. 1, no. 2 (2005).

3. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, “The Feminist Plot and the Nationalist Allegory: Home and  World in Two Indian Women’s Novels in English” in Modern Fiction Studies. vol. 39, no. 1 (1993). p. 80.

4. Parvati Bhatnagar “‘Go home like a good girl’ : an interpretation of That Long Silence by Shashi Deshpande” in R.A. Singh (ed.) Critical Studies on Commonwealth Literature. Jaipur, Book Enclave, 2003.

5. V.K. Pandey. “Sufferings and suppressed desires of women in Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence”  in Binod Mishra (ed.). Critical Responses to Feminism. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2006.

Girish Karnad Hayavadana

1. Tripathi, Vanashree, Three Plays Of Girish Karnad: A Study In Poetics And Culture. Delhi, Prestige, 2004.

2. Manoj K. Pandey. The Plays of Girish Karnad and Tradition. New Delhi: Adhyayan, 2007.

3. P. Dhanavel. The Indian Imagination of Girish Karnad. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2000.

4. Jaydipsinh Dodiya. The Plays of Girish Karnad : Critical Perspectives. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2004.

5. Mohit K Ray. “Tradition and Avant-garde in Girish Karnad’s “Hayavadana” in R.A. Singh (ed.) Critical Studies on Commonwealth Literature. Jaipur, Book Enclave, 2003.

6. Sudha Shastri and Amith Kumar P.V. “Locating Bakhtinian Carnival in Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana and Naga-Mandala” in Urmil Talwar and Bandana Chakrabarty (eds). Contemporary Indian Drama: Astride Two Traditions. New Delhi: Rawat, 2005.

7. Anshuman Khanna. “Karnad’s Hayavadana: myth redefined” in K.V. Surendran (ed.). Indian Literature in English: New Perspectives. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2002.

Mahesh Dattani Final Solutions

1. Charu Mathur. “Dramatic structures in Mahesh Dattani’s Tara and Final Solutions” in Urmil Talwar and Bandana Chakrabarty (eds). Contemporary Indian Drama: Astride Two Traditions. New Delhi: Rawat, 2005.

2. Venkat Ramani. “Meaning in Abyss: Dattani’s seven steps around the fire” in Urmil Talwar and Bandana Chakrabarty (eds). Contemporary Indian Drama: Astride Two Traditions. New Delhi: Rawat, 2005.

3. Sangeeta Das. “The sensational issues in the plays of Mahesh Dattani” in K. Venkata Reddy and R.K. Dhawan. Flowering of Indian Drama : Growth and Development. New Delhi: Prestige, 2004.

4. Neeru Tandon. “Mahesh Dattani and Badal Sircar” in Neeru Tandon (ed.). Perspectives and Challenges in Indian-English Drama. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2006.

5. Reena Mitra. “Mahesh Dattani’s Final Solutions and Other Plays: “A Living Dramatic Experience” in Reena Mitra. Critical Response to Literatures in English. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2005.

6. Amar Nath Prasad “The plays of Mahesh Dattani: a fine fusion of feeling and form” in Amar Nath Prasad. British and Indian English Literature : A Critical Study. New Delhi: Sarup and Sons, 2007.

Jayant Mahapatra

1. PRASAD, MADHUSUDAN ed. The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1986.

2. MOHAN, DEVINDER. Jayanta Mahapatra New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1987.

3. DWIVEDI, A.N ed. Studies in Contemporary Indo-English Verse Bareilly: Prakash  Book Depot, 1984.

4. King Bruce. Modern Indian English Poetry. Delhi: OUP, 1989.

Nissim Ezekiel

1. KARNANI, CHETAN. Nissim Ezekiel. New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1973.

2. DWIVEDI, SURESH CHANDRA. ed. Perspectives on Nissim Ezekiel New Delhi: K.M. Agencies, 1989.

3. “Nissim Ezekeil Special Issue”, JOURNAL of Indian Writing in English 14.2, 1986.

4. RAHMAN, ANISUR. Form and Value in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1981.

5. WISEMAN, CHRISTOPHER. “The Development of Technique in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel” in KULSHRESHTHA, CHIRANTAN, ed. Contemporary Indian-English Verse: An Evaluation. New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1980.

6. SREENIVASAN, S. “The Self and Its Enchanted Circle: A Perspective on the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel” Littcrit 16.1&2, 1990.

7. RAIZADA, HARISH. “Nissim Ezekiel’s Poetry of Love and Sex” in Madhusudan Prasad (ed) Living Indian English Poets. New Delhi: Sterling, 1989.

8. DAS, BIJAY KUMAR. “The Search after Reality: A Study of Ezekiel’s Poems” Journal of Indian Writing in English, 10.1&2, 1982.

Daruwalla, Keki N.

1. DWIVEDI, A.N. “K.N. Daruwalla’s Poetry: An Assessment” in DWIVEDI, A.N ed. Studies in Contemporary Indo-English Verse. Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1984.

2. INAMDAR, F.A. “K.N. Daruwalla’s Poems: Individual Response” in RAM, ATMA. ed. Contemporary Indian-English Poetry Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1989.

3. KING, BRUCE. “Keki Daruwalla: Outsider, Skeptic and Poet” The Indian Literary Review, 4.2, 1986.

4. MUKHERJEE, PRASENJIT. “Relating the Subjective: An Approach to the Recent Poetry of Keki N. Daruwalla” Chandrabhaga 4, 1980.

5. NABAR, VRINDA. “Keki N. Daruwalla: Poetry and a National Culture” in Shahane, Vasant and Sivaramkrishna, eds. Indian Poetry in English: A Critical Assessment. Madras: Macmillan, 1980.

6. NAIK, M.K. “‘Drama Talk’: The Poetry of K. N. Daruwalla” in Naik Studies in Indian English Literature New Delhi: Sterling, 1987.

7. Prasad, Madhusudhan. “Keki N. Daruwalla: Poet as Critic of His Age” Literary Half-Yearly, January 1987.

8. VENKATACHARI, K. “The Idiom of Autochthon: A Note on the Poetry of Keki N. Daruwalla” in Madhusudan Prasad (ed.) Living Indian English Poets. New Delhi: Sterling, 1989.

Ramanujan A.K.

1. DWIVEDI, A.N. A.K. Ramanujan and His Poetry Delhi: Doaba House, 1983.

2. King Bruce, Three Modern Indian English Poets, Delhi: OUP, 1994.

3. BHASHYAM, KANAKA & CHELLAPPAN, K. “Encounter and Synthesis in the Poetry of A.K. Ramanujan” Journal of Indian Writing in English July, 1984.

4. CHAR, M. SREERAMA. Prayer Motif in Indian Poetry in English. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1988.

5. PAL, K.S. Ezekiel and Ramanujan: A Comparative Study. Delhi: Astha Prakashan, 1981.

6. DEVY, G.N. “Alienation as Means of Self-exploration: A Study of A.K. Ramanujan’s Poetry”, Chandrabhaga 6, 1981.

7. MARZI, TAQI ALI. “A.K. Ramanujan’s ‘Particular Hell'” in SHAHANE, VASANT and SIVARAMKRISHNA, M. eds. Indian Poetry in English: A Critical Assessment Madras: Macmillan, 1980.

8. NAIK, M.K. “A.K. Ramanujan and the Search for Roots” in PRASAD, MADHUSUDHAN ed. Living Indian English Poets. New Delhi: Sterling, 1989.

9. NAIK, M.K. “Landscapes and Inscapes”, Kavya Bharati . 1, 1988.

10. DAS, BIJAY KUMAR. ” Ramanujan’s ‘A River’: An Explication” Journal of Indian Writing in English 13.2, 1985.

11. PARTHASARATHY, R. “How It Strikes a Contemporary: The Poetry of A.K. Ramanujan” SHAHANE, VASANT and SIVARAMKRISHNA, M. eds. Indian Poetry in English: A Critical Assessment. Madras: Macmillan, 1980.

12. REUBEN, ELIZABETH. “The Presence of the Past: The Sense of Time in the Poetry of A.K. Ramanujan” Journal of Indian Writing in English. 17.1, 1989.

13. SRINATH, C.N. “The Poetry of A.K. Ramanujan” in DWIVEDI, A.N ed. Studies in Contemporary Indo-English Verse Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1984.

Das, Kamala

1. KOHLI, DEVINDRA. Kamala Das. New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1975.

2. Rahaman, Anisur. Expressive Form in the Poetry of Kamala Das. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1981.

3. RADHA, K. Kamala Das. Madras: Macmillan India, 1987.

4. De SOUZA, EUNICE. “Kamala Das” in Shahane, Vasant and Sivaramkrishna, eds. Indian Poetry in English: A Critical Assessment. Madras: Macmillan, 1980

5. DWIVEDI, A.N. Kamala Das and Her Poetry Delhi: Doaba House, 1983.

6. RAGHUNANDAN, LAKSHMI, Contemporary Indian Poetry in English: with Special Emphasis on Ezekiel, Kamala Das, Parthasarathy and Ramanujan, New Delhi: Reliance Publishing House, 1990.

7. KULSHRESHTHA, CHIRANTAN., ed Contemporary Indian-English Verse: An Evaluation. New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1980.

8. AGRAWAL, ISHWAR NATH. “The Language and the Limits of the Self in the Poetry of Kamala Das” in SINHA, KRISHNA NANDAN Indian Writing in English 1979.

9. Daruwalla, K.N. “Confessional Poetry as Social Commentary: A View of English Poetry by Indian Women” in RAM, ATMA. ed. Contemporary Indian-English Poetry Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1989.

10. JUSSAWALLA, FEROZA. “Kamala Das: The Evolution of the Self” in Journal of Indian Writing In English 10.1&2, 1982.

11. BREWSTER, ANNE. “The Freedom to Decompose: The Poetry of Kamala Das” Journal of Indian Writing in English 7.1&2 1980.

12. RAMAKRISHNAN, E.V. “Kamala Das as a Confessional Poet” Journal of Indian Writing in English 5.1, 1977.

Gieve Patel

1. KAPOOR, PREM P. “Violence, Pain and Death in the Poetry of Gieve Patel” in RAM, ATMA. ed. Contemporary Indian-English Poetry. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1989.

2. NABAR, VRINDA. “Gieve Patel: Poet as Clinician of Feelings” The Indian Literary Review. 3.3, 1985.

3. SAHA, SUBHAS. “Gieve Patel’s On Killing a Tree: An Analysis” in DAS, BIJAY KUMAR, ed. Contemporary Indo-English Poetry. Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1986.

4. SARMA, M.N. “The Ambiguous Fate of Being Human: The Poetry of Gieve Patel” in SHAHANE, Vasant and SIVARAMAKRISHNA, eds. Indian Poetry in English:  A Critical Assessment. Madras: Macmillan, 1980.

5. VIBHAKAR. “Gieve Patel’s Poetry: An Exploration of the ‘Body'” in DWIVEDI, A.N ed. Studies in Contemporary Indo-English Verse. Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1984.

Amanuddin, Syed

1. DWIVEDI, A.N. Syed Amanuddin: His Mind and Art. New Delhi: Sterling, 1988.

2. DWIVEDI, A.N. “Re-creating ‘The Living Scenes of Contemporary Life: The Poetry of Syed Amanuddin” in DWIVEDI, A.N ed. Studies in Contemporary Indo-English Verse. Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1984.

3. DWIVEDI, A.N. “Poetry of Syed Amanuddin: A Study in Diction and Versification” Journal of Indian Writing in English. 13.2, 1985.

4. YASEEN, MOHAMMED. “Syed Ameeruddin’s Poetry: A Critical Appraisal” in DWIVEDI, A.N ed. Studies in Contemporary Indo-English Verse. Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1984.

Honnalgere, Gopal

1. SRIDHAR, S.N. “A Note on Honnalgere’s Zen Tree and Wild Innocents” Journal of Indian

Writing in English 3.2, 1975.

Raja Rao. Kanthapura

1. NAIK, M.K. Perspectives on Indian Fiction in English New Delhi: Abhinav  Publications, 1985.

2. K.K. Sharma, (ed.) Perspectives on Raja Rao Ghaziabad: Vimal Prakashan, 1980.

3. Meenakshi Mukherjee (ed.) Considerations: Twelve Studies of Indo-Anglian Writing, New Delhi: Allied, 1977.

1. NAIK, M.K. Raja Rao Madras: Blackie & Sons, 1982.

2. NARASIMHAIAH, C.D. Raja Rao New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann, 1973.

3. NARAYAN, SHYAMALA A. Raja Rao: Man and His Works New Delhi: Sterling, 1988.

4. RAO, K. RAGHAVENDRA. The Fiction of Raja Rao Aurangabad: Parimal Prakashan, 1982.

5. SHAHANE, VASANT A. “Raja Rao: Kanthapura” in PRADHAN, N.S. ed. Major  Indian Novels: An Evaluation New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1986.

V.S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas

1. Hamner, Robert D., ed. Critical Perspectives on V. S. Naipaul. Washington, D. C.: Three Continents Press, 1977.

2. Hughes, Peter . V. S. Naipaul. London: Routledge, 1988.

3. Kamra, Shashi. The Novels of V.S. Naipaul: A Study in Theme and Form. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1990.

4. King, Bruce. V. S. Naipaul. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2003.

5. Kumar, Amitava. The Humour & the Pity: Essays on V.S. Naipaul. New Delhi: Buffalo Books , 2002.

6. Macdonald, Bruce F. “The Birth of Mr. Biswas.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 11.3 (1977): 50-54.

7. Manjit Inder Singh. V. S. Naipaul. Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 1998.

8. Mason, Nondita. The Fiction of V. S. Naipaul. Calcutta: The World Press, 1986.

9. Panwar, Purabi. V.S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. Delhi: Pencraft International, 2003.

10. Rai, Sudha. V.S. Naipaul: A Study in Expatriate Sensibility. New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1982.

11. Ramadevi, N. The Novels of V.S. Naipaul Quest for Order and Identity. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1996.

12. Walsh, William. V. S. Naipaul. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1973.

13. S.P. Swain “The crisis of identity: Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas” in Mohit K. Ray (ed.) V.S. Naipaul : Critical Essays. Vol II. New Delhi, Atlantic Pub., 2002.

Oct21

An Essay on Nissim Ezekiel’s Background, Casually

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from: google images

from: google images

Nissim Ezekiel’s poem ‘Background, Casually’ is one of his most known poems. If ‘Night of the Scorpion’ is a popular anthology piece, this poem is more keenly read by the more academic readers of his poetry. The poem’s significance to Ezekiel’s oeuvre lies partly in it being an autobiographical poem which is seen to indicate crisply his ‘official view of life’ as it were (whatever that means). Ezekiel’s general tendency in his poems to be more communicative than be imagistic is evident here. Similarly, the ironic tone that swings between whipping the self and the society around it is also on abundant display in this poem. Some of the other recurrent motifs of Ezekiel’s poetry that we see in this poem are:

* finding satisfaction in limited ambition

* a set of experiences stated as providing deep insights

* use of unrhymed metrical lines

* probing the question of identity in a firm social context

* controlled fragmentation unlike the modernist tendency of obscurity

The poem is divided into three sections which approximate the childhood, adult and old-age experiences of the poet-speaker. The three sections do not merely present a chronology of significant experiences but reflections over these experiences that draw out lessons on the status of the identity of the self. Allow me to comment, in a rather school boyish manner, stanza by stanza.

Background, Casually
by Nissim Ezekiel

from: google images

from: google images

1

A poet-rascal-clown was born,
The frightened child who would not eat
Or sleep, a boy of meager bone.
He never learned to fly a kite,
His borrowed top refused to spin.

Notice the references to facts twisted to accommodate the present assessment of that fact. The first line for example is the present valuation of the past. The line also introduces a preference made all through the poem: the self perception of the speaker as a poet. This self-perception is immediately attached to irony with the addition of rascal and clown. From irony, this present perception of the past slides to self-pity, a rather clever ploy that corners the readers sympathy as well as explains away the lack of heroism in the self. The reader is required to agree that this ‘boy of meager bone’ with not even the skill to fly a kite, is not destined to achieve anything too noble; so the assertions of self-satisfactions at the poetic achievements of this self in the third section of the poem come to be accepted easily.

I went to Roman Catholic school,
A mugging Jew among the wolves.
They told me I had killed the Christ,
That year I won the scripture prize.
A Muslim sportsman boxed my ears.

I grew in terror of the strong
But undernourished Hindu lads,
Their prepositions always wrong,
Repelled me by passivity.
One noisy day I used a knife.

The second stanza slips from third to first person. In the 2nd and 3rd stanzas the multicultural mix of the society in which the speaker has grown up is introduced through the self-pity ploy. These two stanzas insistently introduce a major strand of this poem’s thematic: identity. The challenge to coherent formation of identity is indicated here as related to the mixing of cultures that are not devoid of intolerance toward one another. Amid the unhappy school life, a poetic career has without much ado announced itself: ‘That year I won the scripture prize’. This line is suggestive of the inclination of the child.

At home on Friday nights the prayers
Were said. My morals had declined.
I heard of Yoga and of Zen.
Could 1, perhaps, be rabbisaint?
The more I searched, the less I found.

Twentytwo: time to go abroad.
First, the decision, then a friend
To pay the fare. Philosophy,
Poverty and Poetry, three
Companions shared my basement room.

The last line of the 4th stanza is typical of Ezekiel in the use of antithesis. Intimations of failure are always around the corner in his autobiographical poems. The above two stanzas squeeze a long duration into rapidly moving lines. Growing up amid diverse influences the speaker expands the base of the incoherence of his identity to include yoga, zen, jewish theology. The alliterative line ‘philosophy, poverty and poetry’ burdens the experiential statement with the load of a life-time inclination. Many of Ezekiel’s poems suggest this inclination: ‘Enterprise’ for example. Usually they indicate symptomatically the poetic credo of this poet: to treat personal experiences philosophically to produce poetic significance.

2

The London seasons passed me by.
I lay in bed two years alone,
And then a Woman came to tell
My willing ears I was the Son
Of Man. I knew that I had failed

In everything, a bitter thought.
So, in an English cargoship
Taking French guns and mortar shells
To IndoChina, scrubbed the decks,
And learned to laugh again at home.

The second section of the poem brings in adult experiences as suggested toward the end of previous stanza. Amid rather tedious lines the above quoted stanzas introduce the summary dismissal of the self that recurs in Ezekiel’s poems. The sense of failure is recurrent. But Ezekiel usually positions these statements strategically in the poems. Their function is not to state to the reader the sense of the speaker’s disillusion. These lines are positioned by Ezekiel in such a way as to herald the experiments that lead the self toward the present significance. This strategy is also to be found in ‘Enterprise’. The stanzas also indicate the speaker’s decision to turn away from the metro-centricness of the colonial mentality. The last line could have been interpreted as being puerile patriotism had it occurred in a poem less ironic than ‘Background, Casually’.

How to feel it home, was the point.
Some reading had been done, but what
Had I observed, except my own
Exasperation? All Hindus are
Like that, my father used to say,

When someone talked too loudly, or
Knocked at the door like the Devil.
They hawked and spat. They sprawled around.
I prepared for the worst. Married,
Changed jobs, and saw myself a fool.

The song of my experience sung,
I knew that all was yet to sing.
My ancestors, among the castes,
Were aliens crushing seed for bread
(The hooded bullock made his rounds).

A lasting question, something that has characterized Ezekiel’s approach generally, is introduced in the first line of the next stanza: ‘How to feel it home’ is a question raised by many of Ezekiel’s poems about identity. What I want to indicate is that the manner Ezekiel frames the identity question is apparent here. Ezekiel makes out a case for homely feeling as a measure of identity. With homely feeling comes a responsibility. For Ezekiel, this responsibility requires that one not only see ones home in appreciation but also with a certain critical distance. Ezekiel practically indicates the figure of the ‘homely critic’ as the frame of reference. This homely critic manages a stance that is not shy of scathing criticism, yet asserts the value of home. It is thus that Ezekiel develops a critique of Naipaul’s tourist perspective of India in his well known essay that appeared in Adil Jussawala edited ‘Penguin New Writing from India’: ‘Naipaul’s India and Mine’. It is an essay that would have won the prize for walking the tight rope. For in this essay, Ezekiel defends the indefensible. The essay was written at a time when the patriotic pitch was so shrill against Naipaul that anybody critcising him would have sounded like whistling along. Ezekiel maintains a remarkable cool in pointing out the perspectival problem in Naipaul’s narrative. We easily see Naipaul’s ‘An Area of Darkness’ full of prejudicial whining at personal slight and inconvenience rather than a balanced criticism.

3

One among them fought and taught,
A Major bearing British arms.
He told my father sad stories
Of the Boer War. I dreamed that
Fierce men had bound my feet and hands.

The later dreams were all of words.
I did not know that words betray
But let the poems come, and lost
That grip on things the worldly prize.
I would not suffer that again.

The third section swiftly moves on in life: the speaker is mature now. He is through his experiments. He is ripe with his experiences so that he can now give out his conclusions. That is, within the poem the narration of experiences is now over, and it is time to draw out philosophical implications. ‘The later dreams were all of words’ picks up the theme of poetic career. The poem is now poised to give us a peep into the poetic process.

I look about me now, and try
To formulate a plainer view:
The wise survive and serve–to play
The fool, to cash in on
The inner and the outer storms.

This is a remarkable stanza which very concisely states a complex attitude to poetry. The speaker puts simply that his approach to poetry is rather pragmatic. The inner and the outer storms are not to be seen as problems to be solved: it is not a measure of ones wisdom to solve them. The wisdom is in playing the fool yet cashing in on these inner and outer storms by making them the subject of ones creativity. It is a pithy way of saying that the poet has to respond through his/her creativity.

The Indian landscape sears my eyes.
I have become a part of it
To be observed by foreigners.
They say that I am singular,
Their letters overstate the case.

I have made my commitments now.
This is one: to stay where I am,
As others choose to give themselves
In some remote and backward place.
My backward place is where I am.

These two stanzas, jerkily moving away from the earlier stanza, sum up the speaker’s socio-political stance. The colonial divide between the metropolis as the centre and ‘India’ as a backward place is alluded to here. Staying in India is seen as a committed move. The ambivalent place of the ‘homely critic’ is stated in the first line of the above quoted stanzas: ‘Indian landscape sears my eyes’. The necessity to assert ones commitment to ones station arises because of the ‘the foreigners’ viewpoint. From their point of view, being in the ‘backward place’ warrants an explanation. The speaker seems to agree that his station is backward, though it is his own.

What I find interesting in the poem is the way it frames the question of identity. The poem quite clearly takes India as the place from which this view is generated. The view that raises the question of identity and the backwardness of the place, first of all, sets up a binary opposition. This binary opposition conveniently sets up two categories: something called India and something called foreign. With this opposition there is a termination of the question. Then the poem sets out to resolve the puzzle. It admits that the ‘identity’ of the speaker spills over a pure category. That is what the ‘foreign’ experiences suggest in the poem. Therefore, the speaker has to point out the ambivalence in the identity of the self – critical yet committed to home. This view at once enables a distance from the totalized category of ‘India’ and an identification with it. The problem of course is that, the binary invoked here deals with essentialisms. The perspective developed in the poem is very comforting in a way, and often is seen as politically correct too. But it confronts the question of identity in a reductive polarization between ‘India’ and ‘the foreign’.

Oct12

Anand Thakore, the poet

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“Surfaces of things / Willfully arranged to center me”

Says an innocuous line from Anand Thakore’s poem ‘Glacier’. I think it is an apt way to describe the human self. Though the poem bends in other directions, I would like to read in these lines a commentary on the way human life is ‘placed’ by things. The poem too accumulates several things in its movement. The idea that human life is entirely given to things, that it is the place of things that really direct human existence, is quite strongly brought out in the above quoted lines of the poem.

Anand writes poems which are dense in the way things are touched, caressed with words. It is always that the ‘he’ ‘she’ or ‘I’ of the poems are surrounded by things in his poems. In this respect his ‘Sequence addressed to hanging objects’ is very interesting.

Anand Thakore is a Bombay poet. That is the things of Bombay make him for me in his poems. He is a singer among other things and a passionate poet. Very alert to the craft of writing poems, very alive to the life of words in poems, very keen to the music of the lines, Anand writes like only a musician or a painter can.  Many poets push the words for their ideas, some for its sound. Mahapatra is like that: he gives importance to sound.

For Anand craft is all.  His poems display a desire to exhibit virtuosity. Wherever it clicks the poem becomes masterly. How many Indian poets have tried villanelle for example? Anand manages it very well in ‘Vacillations of a recondite nudist’ and two other poems. Apart from Keki Daruwala not too many Indian poets have tried dramatic monologue. Anand has a Mahabharata series which are dramatic monologues.  A Ghazal? That too. Very few Indian poets writing in English try ghazal form, fewer still succeed. Anand wins over here, even if you are an aficionado of Urdu ghazals. You keep coming across such fetes by him which makes you get more and more interested in reading him on. Anand’s eager explorations of poetic forms reveals his desire to hone his pen as a crafty one. He is a stylist.

Anand Thakore1

Some arresting lines from his collection Elephant Bathing

Rain poured in torrents when I reached the grounds…

Like a great hurt beast no will could tame. (Dead, at your mother’s funeral)

He is published by Harbor Line, Bombay. Here is the Ghazal:

GHAZAL

Shall I hold my tongue, lord, or call tonight?

Contain myself, or start another brawl tonight?

My dead mentor returns. Shall I silence him with words,

Or wrap his image in a shawl tonight?

I am lured by the dark I longed to outgrow.

I long to crawl back into that caul tonight;

And the words of the saints fade like bad dreams.

Their voices will not fill this hall tonight.

Leave me, Lord, leave me alone with my song,

For I shall not be your thrall tonight;

And leave the door open, behind you, when you leave.

I have another guest to enthrall tonight:

Come, my heart, let us be friends again,

And celebrate the ancient fall tonight.