Comparative Literature
in
India
1. In this article, I
discuss an a priori location of comparative literature with regard to
aspects of diversity and unity in India, a country of immense
linguistic diversity and, thus, a country of many literatures. Based on
history, ideology, and often on politics, scholars of literature argue
either for a unity of Indian literature or for a diversity and
distinctness of the literatures of India. Instead of this binary
approach, my proposal involves a particular view of the discipline of
comparative literature, because I argue that in the case of India the
study of literature should involve the notion of the interliterary
process and a dialectical view of literary interaction. Let me begin
with a brief account of linguistic diversity: previous censuses in 1961
and 1971 recorded a total of 1,652 languages while in the last census
of 1981 some 221 spoken languages were recorded excluding languages of
speakers totalling less than 10,000. Many of the 221 language groups
are small, of course, and it is only the eighteen listed in the Indian
Constitution as major languages which comprise the bulk of the
population's speakers. In addition to the eighteen languages listed in
the Constitution, four more are recognized by the Sahitya Akademi
(National Academy of Letters) for reasons of their significance in
literature (Assamese, Bengali, Dogri, Indian English, Gujarati, Hindi,
Kannada, Kankani, Kashmiri, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi,
Nepali, Oriya, Panjabi, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and
Urdu). However, this total of twenty-two major languages and
literatures is deceiving because secondary school and university
curricula include further languages spoken in the area of the
particular educational institution. This diversity in languages and
literatures, however, is not reflected in either the general social
discourse or in literary scholarship. In general, the perspective of
India as a hegemonious language and literature area is ubiquitous.
2. We are all aware that
the so-called major Indian literatures are ancient -- two of them
(Sanskrit and Tamil) ancient in the sense of antiquity while the rest
of an average age of eight to nine hundred years --- except one recent
arrival in the nineteenth century as an outcome of the colonial Western
impact (Indian English). We also know that although some of these
literatures are more substantial than others and contain greater
complexities, no further gradation into major and minor major ones is
usually made. A writer in any one is counted as much Indian by the
Sahitya Akademi as a writer in any other and no distinction is made
between one literature prize and another. Thus, while we have a
plurality of so-called major literatures in India, we are confronted by
a particular problematic: Is Indian literature, in the singular, a
valid category, or are we rather to speak of Indian literatures in the
plural? Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western Indologists were not
interested in this question, for Indian literature to them was mainly
Sanskrit, extended at most to Pâli and Prakrit. For example, with
all his admiration for Sakuntala, William Jones was oblivious of
literatures in modern Indian languages. Non-Indian Indianists today,
too, are more often than not uninterested in the question. Although
they do not consider Sanskrit-Pâli-Prakrit as "the" only
literature of India, these scholars are still single literature
specialists. Similarly, literary histories written in India by Indian
scholars also focussed and still focus on a single literature.
3. This single-focus
perspective is a result of both a colonial and a post-colonial
perspective, the latter found in the motto of the Sahitya Akademi:
"Indian literature is one though written in many languages"
(Radhakrishnan). However, this perspective was opposed by scholars who
argued that a country where so many languages coexist should be
understood as a country with literatures (in the plural). The argument
was formal and without any serious political overtones, only insisting
that instead of Indian literature, singular, we should speak of Indian
literatures, plural. Presently, a different kind of resistance has
emerged to the unity thesis in the form of what may be called
"hegemonic apprehensions." This perspective includes the argumentation
that the designation "Indian literature" will eventually be equated
with one of the major literatures of India, perhaps or likely with the
largest single spoken language and literature. What speaks against this
argument is that, for example, the literature of one of the smallest
spoken languages --- of a non-Indian origin too --- is sometimes
claimed to be the only truly Indian literature because of its freedom
from regional ties. In brief, arguments of unity in diversity are in my
opinion suspect, for they encroach upon the individualities of the
diverse literatures. In other words, a cultural relativist analogy is
implied here, difference is underlined and corroborated by the fact
that both writers and readers of particular and individual literatures
are overwhelmingly concerned with their own literature and own
literature only. It is from this perspective that to the Akademi's
motto "Indian literature is one though written in many languages," the
retort is "Indian literature is one because it is written in many
languages."
4. The above briefly
outlined problem of unity in diversity and its perspectives are the
bases of Comparative Literature as a discipline in India. Let me first
mention Gurbhagat Singh who has been discussing the notion of
"differential multilogue" (see Singh). He does not accept the idea of
Indian literature as such but opts for the designation of literatures
produced in India. Further, he rejects the notion of Indian literature
because the notion as such includes and promotes a nationalist
identity. As a relativist, Singh accords literatures not only
linguistic but also cultural singularities. With regard to the history
of comparative literature as a discipline, he rejects both the French
and the American schools as well as the idea of Goethe's Weltliteratur. Instead, he argues for a celebration of
difference and has anticipated Charles Bernheimer's much discussed Comparative Literature in the Age of
Multiculturalism. For Singh,
comparative literature is thus an exercise in differential multilogue.
His insistence on the plurality of logoi is particularly interesting
because it takes us beyond the notion of dialogue, a notion that
comparative literature is still confined to. Singh's proposal of
differential multilogue as a program will perhaps enable us to
understand Indian diversity without sacrificing the individualities of
the particulars. Singh's notion of differential multilogue reflects a
poststructuralist trend in Indian discourse today, a trend that
manifests itself among others by a suspicion of the designation of
Indian literatures as one. One of the reasons for this suspicion is
that the key to the notion is held centrally, whether by an institution
or a synod of experts leading to an accumulation of power. If we agree
that power is the most ubiquitous social evil then the more
decentralization the better. Decentralization minimizes the aggression
from above as well as impels grassroots movements from below. In such a
situation, the matter of difference is thus thoroughly contextualized.
In literature, difference does not deny the possibility of
interliterary spaces but, on the contrary, welcomes them provided they
do not come as a program of action organized from above. The notion of
difference and interliterary processes has, in fact, recently engaged
Indian scholars with regard to the problematics of inter-Indian
translation particularly in the day-to-day interaction of different
languages ( for a full-fledged theoretical framework of the
interliterary process, see Durišin; Gálik at http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb00-4/galik2-00.html ). If difference is understood and
enacted as self-containment and concomitant self-complacency, then
there is a problem with regard to the concept of mutuality. However,
poststructuralism understands difference as a notion of inclusion, that
is, mutuality. Thus, it cannot accept the single-focus category
"Indian" without deconstructing its accompanying politics. In other
words, if the deconstruction of politics involves the weeding out of
things excessively local or peripheral, it is appropriate because all
value-loading is suspect. If, on the other hand, "Indian" is a mere
description, a general signifier, then there is no need for the act of
deconstruction. Poststructuralism is by no means purist; what matters
more than anything else is the historical perspective that upholds
difference. In turn, if we deconstruct this predilection for
difference, we will see that our predilection is not so much a matter
of Weltanschauung but rather a reaction to the possibility
of power accumulation in the name of "Indian literature." If Indian
literature had not been so heavily publicized and hammered down, as it
were, into our national psyche, if our individual literatures had been
left alone and not asked to pay their dues to "Indian literature,"
there would be no resistance to the notion of unity in diversity. And
it cannot be denied that in the pursuit of "Indian literature" some of
us have shown negative discrimination towards texts produced in "less
important" and "different" literatures. The poststructuralist stance is
particularly wary of rhetoric in the name of integration and a call to
emotion in the name of nation runs against its basic principles.
Nationalism and fundamentalism of any type are built on regimentation
and exclusion.
5. Yet, there are some
problems with poststructuralism in Indian scholarly discourse and that
is the prominence of theory to the detriment or non-existence of
application. Instead of fitting theory to the experience of literature,
the latter is fit to theory, thus resulting in an over abundance of
meta-theory. Ironically, Indian poststructuralism inflicts upon itself
a sameness with difference-speakers elsewhere and does not seem to
recognize that difference-speaking in India may be different from
difference-speaking elsewhere. At the same time, this poststructuralism
does not seem to recognize that given all the differences pertaining to
the Indian experience, underlying it and tying together the different
entities, there may be a commonality, a sensus communis of a broadly cultural kind. Jaidev,
criticising the fad of existentialist aestheticism in some contemporary
Indian fiction, develops an argument for this cultural differential
approach. However, and importantly, Jaidev's notion of an Indian sensus communis is not that routine Indianness which we
often encounter from our cultural ambassadors or in the West, that is,
those instances of "national" and racial image formations which suggest
homogeneity and result in cultural stereotyping. The concept of an
Indian sensus communis in
the context of Singh's differential multilogue or Jaidev's differential
approach brings me to the question of situs and theory. That is, the "site" or
"location" of theory and of the theorist are important factors here. I
am convinced that situs is as important as theorization,
particularly in a country where the decolonization process is still
incomplete and where a neo-colonial situation is in the making. A wrong
theory is bad, but a right theory from a wrong situs is equally bad. It
is situs that Tagore spoke of in many of his prose texts and it is
situs that Gandhi so consistently practised. And in Indian Marxism,
too, the question of situs has again and again appeared as a particular
problematic. Now, if situs means cultural and linguistic rootedness,
then the notion of commonality is applicable, although we cannot ignore
the danger of commonality turning itself into self-referentiality or
even nationalism or racism. At this point of potential danger, the
enactment of a dialectic may be the solution. Let the Indian theorist
have his/her situs right by heeding to commonality, but let him/her
also stand guard against commonality turning self-referential. In other
words, the theorist must make sure that commonality will not be turned
into an ideological and political commodity. But under no
circum-stances should the theorist deny commonality because of
expediency or fear and neither should he/she take refuge in suggesting
a superior and detached intellect. That way lies alienation, and
alienation is a further aspect that the Indian theorist must resolutely
resist.
6. Commonality and the
oneness I am suggesting here as a primary situs of the Indian theorist
and theory is not exactly the cultural commonality Jaidev had in mind
in his critique of cultural pastiche, however. Jaidev's concept of
oneness provides an ambience for particular concerns with regard to
cultural and artistic expression such as the case of language overlaps,
the bi-and-multilinguality of authors and their readership, openness to
different genres, the sharing of themes based in similar social and
historical experiences, emphasis on the oral and performing modes of
cultural and artistic transmission, and the ease of
inter-translatability. On the other hand, these characteristics of
Indian cultural commonalities Jaidev suggests in turn are rooted in a
situs of the premodern age of Indian literatures (that is, in periods
prior to the advent of print). Where Jaidev's structure is applicable,
instead, is our contemporary literatures in India because it is here
that the danger of a oneness construction --- the process of
nation-state construction --- looms.
7. Another example where
nation-state orientation and nation-state cultural and literary
identity construction is discussed in detail is Aijaz Ahmad's In Theory : Classes, Nations, Literatures. Ahmad describes the construct of a
"syndicated" Indian literature that suggests an aggregate and
unsatisfactory categorization of Indian literature (see 243-85). Ahmad
also rules out the often argued analogy of Indian literature with that
of European literature by arguing that the notion of "European
literature" is at best an umbrella designation and at worst a
pedagogical imposition while Indian literature is classifiable and
categorizable. Further, he argues that while European and African
literatures have some historical signifiers in addition to their
geographical designation, these are recent concepts whereas Indian
homogeneity has the weight of tradition behind it. In Ahmad's
argumentation, the problem is that in the "Indian" archive of
literature, Indianness ultimately proves limited when compared with the
differential litera-ture comprised in each of the twenty-two
literatures recognized by the Sahitya Akademi. While it is evident that
in each of these languages and literatures there is material taken from
the others or another, their totality does not constitute one archive.
Rather, they constitute twenty-two different archives. An "Indian"
archive of literature as represented by an "English" archive -- while
non-hegemonious on the one hand by removal from a differential archive
but hegemonizing by a latent colonial attitude on the other -- also
reflects the official language policy of the government: English, while
not included in the Indian Constitution, is still recognized as a
lingua franca of government, education, etc. For example, until
recently the government sponsored the National Book Trust, an entity
entrusted with the task of inter-Indian translation by a process of a
first translation into English followed by translation from that into
the other languages.
8. The notion of an
"English" archive of Indian literature came about two decades ago by
the suggestion of V.K. Gokak and Sujit Mukherjee who were speaking of
an Indo-English corpus of literature that was created out of English
translations of major texts from major Indian languages (see
Mukherjee). Thus, the idea of Indian literature was authenticated and
not only that, a history too was proposed for it with forms and
techniques varying from age to age. Further, Gokak and Mukherjee
suggested the canonization of their proposal by inserting the
Indo-English corpus into university curricula. It was along these lines
of ideology and political economy that a decade ago recommendations
were made by a government committee to institute a Master's program in
Indian literature following an undergraduate degree in any single
Indian literature ("University Grants Commission Circular Letter").
Ahmad's concern is with the hegemony of English, although he does not
suggest its abolition in a way which would be close to Ngugi's
arguments. On the other hand, Gokak, Mukherjee, and Motilal Jotwani ---
who was a committee member for drafting the above circular ---
suggested to implement English as a function, owing to the ever-growing
corpus of translations from the various Indian literatures into
English, thus making this new corpus of Indo-English literature
available to all. In turn, this new corpus would suggest an Indian
communality resulting in a more or less homogeneous Indian literature.
In addition to the argument against this construction of a national
literature advanced by Ahmad, there are other problems with the notion
and its implementation. It is true that the ideal of one language in
India has been made real by now by ideological and political
mechanisms. The official national language is Hindi and if literary
texts from the other languages could be in toto translated into Hindi,
we could possibly arrive at a national Indian literature. However, in
this case we would again arrive at a hegemonizing situation. On the
other hand, it is clear that in the realm of education, English is the
largest single language program in our colleges and universities.
9. It is for the above
reasons that I propose, instead, the notion mentioned previously:
Indian literature is not an entity but an interliterary condition in
the widest possible sense of the concept which is related to Goethe's
original idea of Weltliteratur and its use by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto. The interliterary condition of India, we
should remember, reaches back much farther than its manuscript or print
culture. For instance, bhakti --- a popular religious movement as both
theme and social issue (stretching from the eighth to the eighteenth
century) --- had a variety of textual manifestations in various Indian
languages. There are many other similar literary and cultural
textualities in India whose nature, while manifest in different other
systems of a similar nature are based primarily on themes or genres,
forms and structures observable in historiography. It is possible, in
other words, to think of a series of such sub-systems in which the
individual literatures of India have been interrelated with one another
over the ages. For example, Swapan Majumdar takes this systemic
approach in his 1985 book, Comparative
Literature: Indian Dimensions,
where Indian literature is neither a simple unity as hegemonists of the
nation-state persuasion would like it to be, nor a simple diversity as
relativists or poststructuralists would like it to be. That is,
Majumdar suggests that Indian literature is neither "one" nor "many"
but rather a systemic whole where many sub-systems interact towards one
in a continuous and never-ending dialectic. Such a systemic view of
Indian literature predicates that we take all Indian literatures
together, age by age, and view them comparatively. And this is the
route of literary history Sisir Kumar Das has taken with his planned
ten-volume project, A History of
Indian Literature, whose first
volume, 1800-1910: Western
Impact / Indian Response,
appeared in 1991.
10. The approach Das has
taken is methodologically pragmatic : He has a team of scholars working
with him (at least one scholar for each language) who collect the
initial data which he then processes through a number of checks
resulting in a chronological history of literature. In it we have
simultaneous listings of similar events from all the twenty-two
recognized literatures: Authors' births and deaths, dates of text
composition and publication, classification in genres, text
dissemination, reception, literary reviews and their impact, literary
society formations and debates, translations from both inside and
outside, and so on. These constitute, on the one hand, literary data;
but on the other hand they are also data of relevant social events. The
mode of assortment will naturally vary from volume to volume depending
on the nature of the data. The work Das proposed is not only a
comparative chronology but it will include a narrative based on it. Of
course, the narrative is his own reading of the chronology, and other
readings are possible. One of the interesting conclusions he arrived at
with the first volume in question and based on his reading of the
established chronology, is a structure of pro-phanes and meta-phanes.
Certain features of these -phanes may be generic, thematic, stylistic,
or found to have appeared in one literature early, in another late. It
is an engaging discovery and may also be true of the other ages.
However, the underlying and most important finding is a pattern of
commonality in nineteenth-century Indian literatures. Das's work on the
literatures of the nineteenth century in India does not designate this
Indian literature a category by itself. Rather, the work suggests a
rationale for the proposed research, the objective being to establish
whether a pattern can be found through the ages. One age's pattern may
not be the same as another age's and this obviously preempts any given
unity of Indian literature. Thus, Das's method and results to date show
that Indian literature is neither a unity nor is it a total
differential.
11. Interestingly,
although Das does not call himself a comparatist and does not locate
the project in that discipline, his work is comparatist. In many ways,
Das's work is similar to K.M. George's two-volume Comparative Indian Literature of 1984-85 that was researched and
published under the auspices of Kerala Sahitya Akademi. George's work
was not as comprehensive as Das's: it only dealt with fifteen
literatures and that too in a limited way. It had a generic bias, that
is, it approached the literatures in terms of a few given genres.
George's genealogy too is by and large given and not arrived at from
the literatures themselves. In my view, George's work also demonstrates
Western hegemony. Poetry, for instance, was discussed in terms of
"traditional" and "modern" but as if traditional was exclusively Indian
and modern the result of a Western impact. Another problem of George's
two volumes was that although they were titled Comparative Indian
Literature, there was no comparison built into the findings and the
fifteen individual literatures were placed simply side by side. Thus,
comparison was only suggested, that is, the reader was required to make
whatever comparison was necessary or appropriate.
12. With regard to the
inherently and implicitly advantageous discipline of comparative
literature it is interesting that the Gujarati poet Umashankar Joshi --
a supporter of the unity approach -- was the first president of the
Indian National Comparative Literature Association, while the Kannada
writer U.R. Anantha Murthy is the current President of the Comparative
Literature Association of India in addition to being the president of
Sahitya Akademi. The discipline of comparative literature, that is, its
institutional manifestation as in the national association of
comparatists reflects the binary approach to the question of Indian
literature as I explained above. However, the Association also reflects
a move toward a dialectic. This is manifest in the fact that Murthy's
approach concerns a subtle move away from the routine unity approach
and towards aspects of inter-Indian reading. In other words, the method
of Comparative Literature allows for a view of Indian literature in the
context of unity and diversity in a dialectical interliterary process
and situation. There was a time when I spoke in terms of an extra
consciousness on the part of individual language writers: for Bengali
literature, for instance, I saw a Bengali+, for Hindi literature a
Hindi+, for Tamil literature a Tamil+, etc. My understanding of Indian
literature consisted of the author's extra consciousness and not of an
archivable entity as such but rather a state of mind in order to
justify the unity of Indian literature. However, today, with a focus on
reception and the theoretical premises offered by the notion of the
interliterary process, I understand Indian literature as ever in the
making.
13. Apart from reception
studies, there are of course other aspects which support my
understanding of Indian literature in an interliterary process: we are
located in our own languages --- whether with an active or passive
bilinguality --- where we have access to one or two other languages.
Through inter-Indian translation we have also access to texts from a
fourth and more languages. Now, as readers, consciously or
subconsciously we place the texts in additional languages beside our
original and first text. Or, one may say that alternatively these other
language texts impel us to do so. Here is an example of this process:
recently, while reading an early twentieth-century Oriya novel, I was
reminded of an acclaimed pioneer of Bengali fiction. Thus, the case of
Bengali influence on Oriya may be argued here, although evidence to the
contrary may also be the case. Sisir Kumar Das's concept of pro- and
meta-phanes may explain this, but my point here is whether or not we
can use this active juxtaposition towards a possible commona-lity in
genre history. Suppose my reading of a Marathi classic of the late
nineteenth century induces a similar juxtaposition with a Malaylam
novel of about the same time or a Hindi or Urdu or Gujarati novel.
Juxtapositions do not mean that we have already made up our mind about
the so-called Indian novel of the first phase and reduce these texts to
their common denominator. On the other hand, the texts are very much
themselves, the Oriya absolutely Oriya, the Marathi absolutely Marathi,
and so on. This is far from setting up initial postulates for the
Indian novel of the first phase and testing the texts against them.
Thus, inter-Indian reception presupposes that our situs is in our first
text, that is, first language literature. This is crucial for there is
no no-man's land or neutral territory between Indian literatures.
14. Finally, let me
assure you that, obviously, the problematics of unity and diversity are
not unique to India. However, in keeping with my proposal that the
situs of both theorist and theory is an important issue, I demonstrate
here the application of the proposal. If I had discussed, for instance,
Canadian diversity, it would have been from the outside, that is, from
an Indian situs. I am not suggesting extreme relativism, but
Comparative Literature has taught us not to take comparison literally
and it also taught us that theory formation in literary history is not
universally tenable. I am suggesting that we should first look at
ourselves and try to understand our own situations as thoroughly as
possible. Let us first give full shape to our own comparative
literatures and then we will formulate a comparative literature of
diversity in general.
Works Cited :
—Ahmad,
Aijaz. "'Indian Literature': Notes towards the Definition of a
Category."
In Theory: Classes,
Nations, Literatures. By Aijaz Ahmad.
Bernheimer, Charles, ed.
Comparative
Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1995.
—Das, Sisir Kumar. A History of Indian Literature. Vol 1: 1800-1910: Western Impact / Indian Response. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1991.
—Durišin, Dionýz. Theory of Interliterary Process. Bratislava: VEDA/Slovak Academy of
Sciences, 1989.
—Gálik,
Marián. "Interliterariness as a Concept in Comparative
Literature." CLCWeb: Comparative
Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal 2.4 (2000): <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb00-4/galik2-00.html>.
—George, K.M., ed. Comparative Indian Literature. Madras and Trichur: Macmillan and Kerala
Sahitya Akademi, 1984-85. 2 vols.
—Jaidev. The Culture of Pastiche: Existential
Aestheticism in the Contemporary Hindi Novel. Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced
Study, 1993.
—Majumdar, Swapan. Comparative Literature: Indian Dimensions. Calcutta: Papyrus, 1985.
—Mukherjee, Sujit. Translation as Discovery. New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1981.
15-73.
—Ngugi, wa Thiong'o. "On
the Abolition of the English Department." Homecoming: Essays on African and
Caribbean Literature, Culture and Politics. By Ngugi wa Thiong'o. London: Heinemann,
1972. 145-50.
—Singh, Gurbhagat.
"Differential Multilogue: Comparative Literature and National
Literatures." Differential
Multilogue: Comparative Literature and National Literatures. Ed. Gurbhagat Singh. Delhi: Ajanta
Publications, 1991. 11-19.
—"University Grants
Commission Circular Letter." No. F5-5-85 (HR-1) New Delhi (25 March
1986).
Professor Amiya Dev
taught 'comparative literature' at Jadavpur University for three and a
half decades, with frequent visiting professorships abroad. He has
published articles and books widely in this area, which include the
edited volumes, 'Comparative
Literature : Theory and Practice',
'The Renewal of Song : Renovation
in Lyric Conception and Practice'.
In the 1990s he served as Vice-Chancellor of Vidyasagar University. Now
he resides in Calcutta.
Note: The
present publication is an updated version of Amiya Dev, "Unity and
Diversity in India and Comparative Literature," in Comparative
Literature Now: Theories and Practice / La Littérature
comparée à l'heure actuelle. Théories et
réalisations. Ed. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, Milan
V. Dimic, and Irene Sywenky. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1999.
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