The Calf became an Orphan
Zydenbos, Robert J., The Calf became an Orphan -- A Study in contemporary Kannada Fiction. Institut Français de Pondichéry & École Française d'Extrème-Orient. Publications du Département d'Indologie - Hors série. Pondichéry: Institution de Pondichéry, 1996. xviii, 301 pp.
By Jan E.M. Houben and A.G. Menon.
Before independence Indian literature was very much dominated by moralistic and anti-colonial themes, a tremendous increase in publications in the regional languages was seen in the 1950s. In these publications, themes of social, cultural, and recently also political problems, take an ever more prominent place. Robert J. Zydenbos has now researched the contemporary literature in one of these regional languages, namely, Kannada, in which such themes are clearly reflected.The Jnanpith Award, India's most prestigious literary award, has been given no less than six times to Kannada authors. Among the modern Indian languages, it has one of the oldest literatures (the first literary specimen dates from ca. 450 CE, the oldest available integral text, the Kavirajamarga, dates from the ninth century, (Zyd., Calf-Orphan:6), and in terms of the number of speakers, it is the third largest of the Dravidian languages (the main language of the state Karnataka), and the eighth largest language of India (ibidem).
Nevertheless, 'What J.F. Fleet, a nineteenth-century colonial civil servant who was one of the rare early researchers in the field of Kannada language and literature, has expressed about the state of Kannada Studies in his time still holds good today: "the study of its literature has been sadly neglected not only by foreign scholars but also by Indian scholars outside the Kannada-speaking state of Karnataka"'. This quotation from the Foreword of Robert Zydenbos' The Calf became an Orphan indicates that we have here a pioneer work on an academically neglected language and literature. In addition, this seems to be 'the first dissertation dealing with culturally specific themes in a modern Indian literature from a literary point of view'.
The book now published at the French Institute of Pondicherry, India, is a revised version of a doctoral dissertation which was submitted to the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands in 1989. It is a study of thirty-five Kannada novels and short stories by twenty-four contemporary Kannada writers which have appeared in print since India achieved Independence. The novels and short stories have been selected according to five major themes which are culturally specific to Indian and especially Kannada literature. These themes, in other words, relate to questions which are raised in Kannada (and some in Indian) writing but which are not known, and therefore not dealt with, in major Western literatures. The five themes are: Indian womanhood; confrontation with other (non-Hinduist) faiths; the caste system; the world outside Karnataka; Kannada authors and the cultural change associated with modern social, political, and economic developments.
In a discussion of the thirty-five works, Zydenbos' study lets the contemporary Kannada writers speak for themselves and for their part of India, in their own voices, in their own words. Thus the study may also serve partly as a corrective or supplement in a time when Western and Western-educated social scientists, who usually cannot even speak the language of the people who are supposedly the subject of their studies, increasingly assume the role of interpreters and intermediaries between India and the rest of world. This does not mean that the study does not take a critical look at what the writers say. Just as writers elsewhere, Indian and Kannada writers can voice prejudices, traditionally established 'common knowledge', and wishful thinking: all of which in themselves can be quite interesting. With his broad Indological background, the author has given his views on how we should understand and evaluate such statements.
The book also contains fairly lengthy summaries of the works that are discussed, so that the reader can follow in detail the reasoning which has led the author to draw his conclusions about these writings and the issues that have been raised in them. And since Kannada literature is as yet little known outside its home region, these summaries at the same time serve as an introduction to a number of major modern writings in this literature. The introductory chapter gives general information about the Kannada language and its literature. The study is rounded off by a bibliography of primary and secondary literature and an index.
At present the author is working on a comprehensive history of Kannada literature from its beginnings to its most recent developments, and he is translating some works of Kannada literature into European languages.
:Robert Zydenbos can be reached at e-mail: zydenbos@blr.vsnl.net.in