How Good is the Indian Muse

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B. S. Murthy

Where to look for the soul of India in print?  Is it in the writing of those for whom the muse is their mother tongue or those who happen to muse in the alien English?  Where to savour the flavour of Indian life in fictional form?  Is it in that ‘stronger and more important body of work of Indian writers working in English’ as trumpeted by Salman Rushdie or in the true to life depictions on the variegate canvas of regional languages as seen by the vernacular writers?  The issue never ceases to rear its ugly head at slightest provocation, and the recent international festival of Indian Literature in New Delhi provided just that.

In retrospect, it appears, as though Salman Rushdie did a disservice to the folks of his own ilk by launching that surprise attack, without readying the defenses, against a numerically superior adversary.  When the retaliatory strike came accompanied by such furious war cries that could have made General Rushdie more sleepless than the fear of Khomeini’s fatwa ever did, he escaped to the distant shores of the U.S, leaving his foot soldiers in India, and elsewhere, under a virtual siege and vulnerable to sabre – rattling by the now unified regional writers.  In the absence of proper ammunition or having reconciled to the futility of joining the battle, outnumbered as they are, and or both, the Indian Writer in English opted for peace with the weapon of silence in a war of attrition which was thrust upon them by the foolhardiness of their general.

But yet, rankled as they are with a hurt feeling and provoked by the continued limelight and the relative prosperity of the enemy under siege, the army of the regional warriors goes out for a kill from time to time.  And certainly it is an overkill to suggest that ‘any Tamil writer would have put more life into his novels than Narayan did.  Had it been stated when RK was alive it would have amounted to saying; ‘I would have written your novel better had you given me the plot’! While riling the living Indian Writers in English, so the regional writers have started vilifying the dead amongst them as well, an Achilles like abuse of Hector’s body!

Agreed, that it was all started by Salman’s surmise but why the regional writers fail to make it an informed debate instead of bad mouthing the Indian Writers in English.  It is time for that and the circumstances of my being would place me in a position to do that.  Being a Writers Workshop novelist, Benign Flame if one is curious, I have no admittance into the club of Indian Writers in English and for not writing in my mother tongue I am unknown in my own state! As a Sikhandi of an Indian writer, I know the constraints of writing in English and getting the work published, and being a literary nonentity I understand how it feels in not getting due recognition.  But if one allows his frustration to take better of his reasoning, he is bound to lose sight of the involved issues for an informed debate, and that is what is happening with the regional writers, by and large.

What it takes to be a writer and what’s the utility of writing itself? Naturally, this should be the starting point of such a debate. If writing skills are sufficient to make a writer out of a man could many in a given language not master them?  If we are talking about writing of original thinking and not to the copycat variety, it means that a writer should be an intellectual of sorts.  Thus the happy blend of writing ability and ability to think in varied proportions, never mind which is perdominant, in some would make them to qualify to be a writer.  After all, if Flaubert embellished his thoughts with fluid French, the polish of the language did not Voltair’s profound intellect, but yet they both enriched the French literature, didn’t they?  So is it not absurd to suggest that some of the regional writings couldn’t be brought to the international limelight because the flavour of the originals cannot be captured in English translations?  If not the beauty of the language, surely the intellectual underpinnings of the writing shouldn’t be beyond the capacity of a translator to transcend into English.

The ultimate test of any writing would be its ability to influence social thinking to any degree.  Wasn’t Rousseau’s Social Contract the harbinger of the French revolution?  Wasn’t it Das Kapital that ushered in communism?  Didn’t Tolstoy’s writings brought the serfdom to end in Russia?  Weren’t Dostoyevsky’s arguments that tilted the world opinion against the capital punishment?  That none of them wrote in English and the translation of their works into it followed their regional fame should remove the misconception that writing in regional languages is a handicap. Conceded that the lesser geniuses too are entitled to have a place under the universal English sun.  What are the grounds then of the regional writers claim to fame?

That the human condition of the Indian society in their domain is still governed by age-old thinking, insulated from the nuances of human psychology, would expose their collective failure to modernize the mindset of their readership and contribute to change.  It can be said with a measure of assurance that modernity of thought in our society wherever it is found is owing to the exposure to the writing in English, not necessarily the Indian writing in English.  That being the case, what benefit the English translation of the regional writings is going to have is anybody’s guess. It’s nobody’s case either that the Indians writing in English have made any profound difference, themselves being victims of split personality what with their heart in here and the mind on the western market, and the soul missing altogether.

The whole thing boils down to moolah and media. What rankles the regional writers most is the occasional advance of astronomical proportions that an upstart of an Indian writer in English pockets.  While they remained poor, writing about the poor and the powerless for long, it seems unjust to them that someone making about the debut without having even a nodding acquaintance with the wretched of the land should be so rewarded by unfair system! What pains them too is, the novice of an Indian writer in English becomes a nationally recognizable face, so to say, overnight by the media coverage, while they go unnoticed even in their own galli for all their toil.  Of course, it could be doubly frustrating for any soul but intellectuals should be made of a different stuff, that too the writing kind.  Isn’t it?

After all, there are things that we owe in life to positional advantage, and writing in English could be one such, that is, if one gets published.  On the other hand, there are pitfalls too in that there are no literary magazines that give a break to those writing fiction in English as is the case with the regional literary scene.  Thus while many who write in English would get stuck with the manuscripts for pillows, for the rest of their lives every ‘me too’ writer in the regional languages gets published often enough to become a doyen in the due course.  Can’t the intellectualism of the regionalists come to grips with this irony of Indian literary phenomenon? Why should someone choose to be a writer?  If it is for self-expression why crave for public recognition?  When a book infects at least one reviewer to write an informed review, wouldn’t it be worth more than all the hype in the world?  Couldn’t a private conversation with some one who quotes from the book be far more rewarding than the publicized interview where the book figures only in the passing?

The problem is writing has come to be regarded as a means to acquire name and fame, if not money, and it does not matter as long as the writer is in the news, never mind whether someone really comes to read to enjoy and be provoked by the book.  Unfortunately for literature the greater rewards of writing lost their relevance and the lesser benefits came to mean everything.  Till this is understood unkind cuts would continue to be inflicted in the arena of Indian writing.  That is for sure.