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Comparative Literature in India
- Purdue University Press
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Comparative Literature in India Amiya Dev In this paper, I discuss an apriori 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 that 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. 23 In general, the perspective of India as a hegemonious language and literature area is ubiquitous. We are all aware that the so-called major Indian literatures are ancient— two of them (Sansjrit 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? Eighteenthand 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. 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...