|
Indian
Writing in English: Some
Issues
-- E
Nageswara Rao
It
has been over two centuries since Indians first adopted a
new languageEnglishas a medium of their creative expression.
But it is only in the last two decades that this new writing
or literature in English has witnessed a flourishing phase
with a spurt in the number of publications and some of its
practitioners getting prestigious international literary awards.
In this scenario, writers, readers, critics and the academia
can no longer be indifferent, as they have been earlier, to
this emerging and vibrant trend. This article raises some
thought-provoking questions about the nomenclature in vogue
for this body of literature, the "authenticity"
of the Indianness of some of the practitioners and the legitimacy
of the use of the term "diaspora" for all and sundry;
and dispels some widely prevailing myths about the quality,
status and validity of "Indian Writing in English".
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Writing
the Nation the "Other" Way: Sara Joseph's Alahayude
Penmakkal
-- C B Sudhakaran
Assuming
that the nation is a cultural signification and a discursive
formation, this article attempts to evaluate the role played
by narrative literature in the construction of a form of resistance
against the post-modern forces. This is done with the help
of an analysis of the Malayalam writer, Sara Joseph's novel
Alahayude Penmakkal (The Daughters of Alaha, 1999).
It thus challenges and rewrites the conventional modernist
forms of historiography and concepts of nation formation.
The subaltern perspective from which the novel is narrated,
uses the decentred collective subjectivity of a provinciality
(rather than the individualist subjectivity of the high modernist
novel), which is identified with the wretchedness of the earth
to narrate how masses of the marginalized "other"
have been consciously excluded from the bourgeois narratives
of the nation by the "knowing subject" of the modernist
historian. What is narrated in the novel, the article argues,
is the nether side of the history of civilization. The article
uses insights of the conceptualizations of Walter Benjamin,
Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha, Fredric Jameson
and Partha Chatterjee, among others.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Amar
Chitra Katha and
the Construction of Indian Identity
-- Pramod
K Nayar
This
article looks at the most popular comic book in IndiaAmar
Chitra Katha (The Immortal Pictorial Book). It demonstrates
the manner in which different notions of India are constructed
in the series. It focuses on the regional, communal and gender
identities that Amar Chitra Katha constructs through
its textual and visual representations; and pays attention
to the ideological subtexts underpinning the representations
of gods, demons, women, kingdoms, and the nation in the comic
book. It suggests that an Aryan, the upper class/caste Hindu
identity, is often projected as a secular `Indian' in the
series. Differences of region, language and culture are either
elided or exoticised in the series. It attempts to propose
other frames in which this cultural icon can be located and
read.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Vikram
Seth's From Heaven Lake: A Site of Places, People,
Culture, Customs and Art
-- Tanushree
Nayak
Travel
facilitates the optimal discovery of the locale, the environs
and the ethos of the places visited. It also results in "imploration"of
one's self. It is indeed a quest for the real self beneath
the multiplicity of trivia dominant in a quotidian existence.
Vikram Seth, an Indian writer in English, undertook such an
exploratory travel from his cozy place in Stanford to his
roots in Delhi, through China, Tibet and Nepal. His sharp
eye, occasionally marred by his poetic style, recreates the
magic, the mystery and the misery of the places he visited.
This article traces the explorations and the experiences of
human warmth and emotional empathy felt by the author for
his hosts and self-fulfillment.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Wading
through Specificities: Translating Contemporary Telugu
Texts into English
-- Alladi
Uma and M Sridhar
Translation,
an avid and frustrated practitioner once said, is forever
impossible and forever necessary. Among the major languages
of India, Telugu has suffered from the meager efforts to take
its literary treasures to the larger international readership
through competent translations. Translation, particularly
of the texts produced by the hitherto neglected "dispossessed"
groups of the society, poses several challenges. The authors
discuss the problems of putting across the dialog in the stories
of writers like Yendluri Sudhakar and the culture-specific
texts in the poems of Prasada Murthy and Karra Vijaya Kumari
and the solutions, necessarily tentative, provided by them.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Translating
Bhakti: Versions of Kabir in Colonial/Early Nationalist
Period
-- Akshaya Kumar
Multiple
translations of Kabir right from the pre-independent nationalist
to the present globalized era have engendered new semantic
possibilities to the enigmatic poetic output of the saint-poet.
The early colonial Indologists took up the task of translating
the bhakti poet, Kabir, primarily to underline first
the fissures within Hinduism, and then to appropriate him
within the reformatory rhetoric of Christianity. Translated
on the margins of an official project of orientalism, Kabir,
to begin with, was translated more as one among the poets
of the Sikh holy text, Adi Granth, than as a poet in
his own right. If Trumpp's endeavor was to translate Kabir
as a poet writing within the canonical Hinduism, the effort
of Macauliffe was to forge a poetics of distinction, through
which he could translate Kabir as counter-canonical poet.
Ahmad Shah in his translation accords an independent status
to Kabir, yet in his translation of Bijak, he works within
the parameters of Biblical idiom and tone. Tagore's translation
is an endeavor to retrieve the saint-poet from colonial appropriations
as he reinvents the poet in the advaita tradition of
the Hindu philosophy. A textual analysis of various translations
of Kabir from 1860 to 1917 is undertaken in this article to
bring out the dynamics of appropriation of the discourse of
the saint-poet during the colonial period to the specific
agenda of the translation or the sponsoring agency.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Life
of Pi : A Confluence of Interfaith
--
V M Aniamma
The
binding link, though occasionally fragile, among all religions,
is the perennial aspiration for union with Godhead or salvation
of the soul. But today's world is ravaged by religious intolerance
and strife. In this context, the Canadian novelist, Yann Martel,
stresses the urgency of religious harmony in his intensely
moving novel, Life of Pi. Pi Patel, the chief
protagonist of the novel, careers through the entire gamut
of the religious practices of multiple faithsHinduism (into
which he was born), Islam and Christianity (which he picked
up and welcomed unreservedly)and lives a life of glorious
synthesis, fully realizing the oneness that lies beneath all
the apparent dissensions, made much of by pseudo-secularists.
The ethos of integration would hopefully provide a corrective
course to the modern world.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
The
"Unmuting" of the African-American:
An Approach to Mark Twain's Fiction
-- K
Kishori Nayak
The
treatment of a segment of humanity in America, earlier derisively
called "the Negroes" and now a little more considerately
"the African-American", has had its vicissitudes
in the societal hierarchy. Literary treatment has not been
substantially different, either. This article examines the
portrayal of the Negro as well as the Black-White relations
in the American society of the 19th century. The
author takes a close look at the characters of Jim in Huckleberry
Finn, Tom in Pudd'nhead Wilson and Jasper in Which
Was It? and demonstrates that Twain shows greater sympathy
for the disadvantaged in his latter fiction, which presents
the protagonists becoming increasingly self-assertive and
even belligerent. In the early stages, Twain remained somewhat
neutral in his assessment of the racial scenario but as he
grew older he became more empathetic with the sad spectacle
of racial segregation and exploitation in the nation of "equal
opportunity."
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Mystical
Theology in Annie Dillard's Holy the Firm: A Critique
-- P G Nirmala
This
article is an attempt to place Annie Dillard's complex metaphysical
work, Holy the Firm, in the context of Christian theology
and mysticism. Holy the Firm attempts to enter through
art and the power of languagethose realms of human experience
that are inaccessible to ordinary perception. This article
examines the role of suffering in spirituality as the book
turns out to be an in-depth study of human suffering and the
redeeming power of God. The reader is shown a glimpse of the
point where matter and spirit, terror, and beauty intersect.
Taking a real life incident of a little girl, whose face is
burnt beyond recognition in a freak airplane accident, the
narrative focuses on how God's grace can transform even the
most grotesque of facts into something spiritual. The article
examines the visionary experiences of Dillard, which turn
out to be mystical in content. Her affinity to the medieval
Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich, is also examined here.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Interview
In
Conversation with Stanley Crouch
--
Nibir K Ghosh
One
of America's most provocative social critics, Stanley Crouch,
was born in Los Angeles, California on December 14, 1945.
Encouraged by his mother, Crouch began writing at the age
of eight. He attended the East Los Angeles and Southwest junior
colleges, but has no degrees. His writings have appeared in
Harper's, TheNew York Times, Vogue, Downbeat, The Amsterdam
News, The New Republic, The Partisan Review, The Reading Room,
and The New Yorker. He has served as an Artistic Consultant
for jazz programming at Lincoln Center since 1987 and is a
founder of the Jazz department known as Jazz at Lincoln Center.
His collection of essays and reviews, Notes of a Hanging
Judge, was nominated for an award in criticism by the
National Book Critics Circle and was selected by the Encyclopedia
Britannica Yearbook as the best book of essays published
in 1990.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Book
Review
English
in India: Loyalty and Attitudes
--
Annika Hohenthal
©
2001 M S Thirumalai. All Rights Reserved. IUP holds the copyright for the review.
|
