9 - 11 MARCH
LEIDEN, THE NETHERLANDS
Querying Indianness
The seminar 'The Indian Character of Indian Literature' set out to investigate modern fiction in various Indian languages and to try to determine if elements could be found that characterize these works as definitely 'Indian'. The aim was to go beyond the surface of the narrative, the locale, and the Indian nationality of the characters and discover subtexts or structural elements that constitute the Indian character. Dr Th. Damsteegt (Leiden University) and the present author invited a number of Indian writers, critics, and scholars of literature to discuss the issue with European scholars of modern Indian literature.
By THOMAS DE BRUIJN
The theme of the seminar was partly inspired by a recent debate in Indian literary criticism. In the book The Culture of Pastiche, Jaidev heavily criticizes authors of modern Hindi fiction for flirting with Western existentialist and high modernist ideas. By building their characters around these attitudes, they have created pastiches which in Jaidev's eyes lack any involvement in Indian culture and social reality. Jaidev states that Indian literature can only serve the progress of the nation by staying rooted in Indian traditions and moral values.One of the authors on the receiving end of this critique was Krishna Baldev Vaid, who was also present at the seminar. Unfortunately a serious illness prevented Jaidev from coming to Leiden. The insistence on rootedness in Indian 'samskaras' as a requirement for Indian literature is also an argument that is put forward by supporters of politics of cultural nationalism in India. By imposing a monolithic 'Hindu' version of Indianness, they deny the validity and intervening in the presentation of ambivalent, hybrid, or negative notions of Indianness and thus ostracize a significant part of modern fiction in Indian languages.
Although its convenors never intended to impose any predefined notion of 'Indianness' to be demonstrated in Indian fiction, the discussion in the seminar kept coming back to the question of wether it is possible to query the Indian element in Indian literature without unintentionally affirming constructed identities or flattening out ambivalence and hybridity. What are the sources of the richness of modern Indian literature? The issue also inspired the bulk of the papers which set out to demonstrate that the very search for and definition of 'Indian' elements compromises the inherent hybridity of Indian writing.
The seminar was opened with a key-note speech by H. Trivedi, who presented an extensive array of different 'degrees' of Indianness in both Hindi and Anglo-Indian writing, which tend to complicate the search for a particular, singular Indian element ever more. Based on analyses of texts from a range of regions and social positions, a number of speakers pleaded for extending the concept of Indianness to include as many cultural identities, nationhoods, and subaltern voices as can be found in Indian culture (K. Satchitananda, K. Satyanarayana, N.S. Jagannathan, A.B. Patil). In the same vein, K.B. Vaid answered Jaidev's criticism by outlining that many of the notions of alienation and existentialist individualism, which are dismissed by Jaidev as Westernized pastiches, are also present in Indian tradition in the form of the vairagya and viraha of Bhakti and the mysticism of Indian Sufism.
Shift
Specific explorations of Indian elements in fictional Hindi writing of contemporary authors were presented by M.K. Gautam, Th. Damsteegt, M. Offredi, G. Strelkova, and M. Christof-Füchsle. A.G. Menon discussed the representation of Indian characters in two modern Tamil novels. Taslima Nasrin's controversial representation of Bengali identities was analysed jointly by Bh. Bhattacarya and V. van Bijlert. Th. de Bruijn and D. Dimitrova explored notions of Indianness in literary criticism and their influence on representations in Hindi short stories and stage plays. An analysis of the Indian element in Marathi science-fiction novels led H. Harder to argue that he could see no valid definition of Indianness in literary texts other than that they come forth from the Indian Subcontinent. D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke explored mixed identities in the prose of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. As an extra, there was a screening of Mani Kaul's most recent film: Naukar ki Kamiz, based on the Hindi novel by Vinod Kumar Shukla.
The discussion in the seminar was a rich experience as it confronted divergent attitudes in Western scholarship on South Asian culture with insights of contemporary Indian intellectuals. In the context of modern Indian literature, all elements philosophical doctrines, religious notions, cultural practices which have acquired a typically 'Indian' identity in the scholarly discourse on South Asia, have undergone a definite shift in position and meaning. In order to take this shift fully into account and understand the subtle play of power relations and social positions that controls the definition of 'Indianness' in certain contexts, the study of modern Indian literature cannot but considerably expand its horizons. Simplifications in the vein of political correctness or cultural relativism are not very helpful in this respect.
Ideally, literature in the Indian languages should be dealt with in the same manner as other modern literatures of this world. While overemphasizing the 'Indian' element is not always productive, its opposite foregoing all cultural specifics robs the reader and analyst of important tools for pointing out structures in the narrative or idiosyncrasies in thematic and aesthetic ideologies. In the case of Indian writing, only the contemporary Anglo-Indian novels would fit such a method in these works Indian reality is reduced to a mere exotic backdrop for thoroughly cosmopolitan narratives. It would not give us any insight into what Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu, or any other kind of Indian writing is about.
An alternative would be to take some distance from too close readings, chart the social structures and cultural agendas behind certain esthetic ideologies, and thus describe the development of the role of culture and literature in modern South Asian societies. Whatever new approaches may be put forward, they cannot accomplish much without a detailed and skilful reading and analysis of literary texts in Indian languages.
The seminar was a remarkable occasion as it combined the application of a high level of skilled scholarship with an informed and relevant discussion on basic tenets in the study of modern Indian writing. Witnessing the lively exchange of ideas that was fuelled by intense dedication to India's rich literatures was a memorable and inspiring experience, the fruits of which will certainly will be culled in future research in this field. *
Dr Thomas de Bruijn, IIAS research fellow
E-mail thbruijn@let.leidenuniv.nl