Reading Amitava on 27 Feb 2010 10:05 am
Who Reads Hindi Literature?
At last, a review that places my novel Home Products in the tradition of Hindi writing—Baba Nagarjun! Renu! Upendranath Ashk! (Meri zindagi ke paanch saal iss reviewer ke naam!)
The fact that Home Products has been written in conversation with Hindi literature is astonishing. I can think of no other English language novel that does this. Because of the hierarchy of language-medium education in India, it is rare for a writer in English to have read any literature in Hindi whatsoever. In my experience researching Hindi literature, I found that the English-educated classes outside of Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, people who could read, write and speak Hindi, had read virtually no literature written in Hindi and had heard of no Hindi author other than Premchand. The fact that I was studying Hindi literature at all was usually met with derisive laughter. What could there possibly be to read in Hindi?
As an extra bonus, the review comes accompanied by paintings of letters from the Hindi alphabet.
on 03 Mar 2010 at 1:09 am # Mumbai Paused
One look at our Indian language text books and anyone would stop reading for life.
on 03 Mar 2010 at 12:58 pm # Writezilla
Fiction & the hierarchy of language education in India…
Is Amitava Kumar’s Home Products the first English-language novel to be written in conversation with Hindi?…
on 13 Mar 2010 at 11:02 pm # Achyut Chetan
the question who reads hindi literature is closely linked to who writes hindi literature and who studies hindi literature?Fornutalely for eng-lit academia in india memsahibs like francesca orsini are bringing hindi sahitya,oral,written culture back to currency and postcolonilaity is increasingly understood in terms other than bengali,oriya and partition writings.
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I have to commend the creator of this website – nice job….
on 12 Apr 2010 at 10:04 am # Satchidanandan
Liked the approach. We need to look seriously at the dialogue developinng within indian writiong in English with Indian languages.When his ‘Suitable Boy’ was translated by Gopal Gandhi into Hindi as ‘Ek Acchaa-saa Ladkaa’Vikram Seth was overwhemed enough to say that his novel has been restored to the original. There is a dialogue in other writers too,from Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand and Bhabani Bhattacharya to Vikram Chandra and Amitav Ghosh, with Indian languages at many lvels. The identity of good English writing in India lies chiefly in its inherent bi/multi/lingualism ( You find it in the better poets too-from AKRamanujan, jayanta Mahapatra and Kamala Das to Agha Shahid Ali, Rukmini BhayaNair, Arundhati Subramaniam and Priya Sarukai Chhabria. Good to see someone thinking on thse lines and involking regional literary traditions in evaluating Amitava ‘s work, that opens the doors to a real and necessary dialogue often foreclosed by mutual recriminations..