Awakening readers to good literature

The Politics of Modern Indian Language Literature by MK Raghavendra attempts to understand the relationship between bhasha writing and national culture

- Prasenjit Chowdhury

book that undertakes to interpret a range of literature produced in Indian languages after 1947, with a sweep wide enough to negate Salman Rushdie's old claim that prose writing in English by Indians in this period was stronger than that produced in the 16 "official languages" of India, would normally be a multilingual compendium.

The Politics of Modern Indian Language Literature: Implicit and Symptomatic Readings, edited by MK Raghavendra, aims, instead, for a political interpretation of a few seminal texts.

This book, then, represents the first comprehensive political scrutiny of the concerns and attitudes of Indian language literature after 1947.

Its scope encompasses languages of the cultural margins of the nation such as Kashmiri and Manipuri, and of minority communities and women too.

It also strongly pitches for removing asymmetry in the exposure of specific languages, as Indian literature is produced in a wealth of languages.

"English language translations would hence be the best way to make Indian literature in various bhashas available to other writers, although only a small proportion of the total literature has been translated into English," Raghavendra writes.

Rushdie's contention stirred up a debate that is now rather dated.

Arguing that Indian English writers - Rushdie's anthology began with Jawaharlal Nehru and ended with Kiran Desai - were better than bhasha writers was plain mischief-mongering.

The editor of this volume takes up a vast body of Indian writers, grouping them across five sections.