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- Convenors:
-
Ulrike Stark
(University of Chicago)
Francesca Orsini (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)
- Location:
- C401
- Start time:
- 28 July, 2012 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel will focus on developments in Hindi literature in the post-liberalisation era. Contributors will identify new and influential voices in contemporary Hindi writing, analyse recent trends, and investigate the role of the changing literary market and the new web media since the 1990s.
Long Abstract:
Plenty of exciting new writing and new voices have appeared in Hindi since the 1990s, and although certain strands (like Dalit writing) have received considerable attention, there has not yet been a collective attempt to step back and take stock of where Hindi literature is now. As Hindi is turning from scorned vernacular into "cool India's preferred bhasha" (Hindustan Times, 2008), Hindi literary criticism has largely failed to engage with the literary production of the past two decades. Given the rapid socio-economic changes of the post-liberalisation era, much attention has focused on the sites of globalised India (call-centres, gated communities, etc.)—have Hindi writers concerned themselves with these changes, and if so how? What trends can we identify, on the basis of the most significant texts and authors of the past twenty years?
The papers will:
- Analyse particular texts from this period, highlighting their significance and impact upon the Hindi literary scene;
- Identify particular trends or genres of writing;
- Discuss important critical interventions by contemporary critics on the current Hindi literary scene;
- Probe the literary marketplace, production trends and consumption patterns
- Investigate the role of the internet and Hindi/bilingual web journals as new sites of literary expression, criticism, and dialogue
- Discuss socio-literary features, such as the rise in literary and non-literary translations, readership, the role of particular journals (e.g. Tadbhav)
Accepted papers:
Session 1Richard Delacy (Harvard University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examinesa recent critically acclaimed Hindi pastoral novel Chak, by the celebrated feminist writer Maitreyi Pushpa, to think through literary responses to liberalization in South Asia and anxieties over Hindi as a literary register in the new millennium.
Paper long abstract:
With South Asia's rapid economic and social transformation in the post-liberalization period, the Hindi novel has returned to the village in search of an authentic South Asian identity. The novels of the celebrated and prolific writer Maitreyi Pushpa embody this recent shift to non-metropolitan Hindi writers. Having migrated to the metropolis in search of literary opportunities such writers represent the abandoned hinterland in a nostalgic, yet ambivalent mode as the authentic site of South Asian identity. Pupsha's work turns a highly critical, gendered lens onto problems of contemporary everyday life in rural India. However, in Pushpa's fiction the village should not be abandoned despite the moral degeneration of its inhabitants from the corrupting, exploitative forces of global capital. Pushpa's fallen village - and her authentic South Asian identity - finds its savior in the strong, independent female rural subaltern, who accomplishes a successful journey from the domestic sphere to the public/political sphere, redeeming a specifically South Asian rural landscape. Examining Pushpa's third novel Chak (1997, 2004), I interrogate how anxieties over the recent economic transformations emerge in Pupsha's gendered portrayal, and the contradictions/complexities inherent in the invocation of an authentic South Asian village identity, at a time when increasingly villagers are forced to migrate to India's metropolitan cities. I examine how the novel struggles with its own status as a commodity as it critiques global capital and entreats the reader to reflect on a literary form of Hindi that now seems distant from the contemporary, global world of metropolitan South Asia.
Ulrike Stark (University of Chicago)
Paper short abstract:
Shukla's award winning novel Divar mem ek khirki rahti thi (1997) marked a significant departure from the tradition of social realism in the modern Hindi novel. The paper analyses Shukla's creative use of language as a tool to transcend both realism and reality: toward a poetic of the quotidian.
Paper long abstract:
Vinod Kumar Shukla has often been credited with introducing magic realism and postmodern linguistic experimentation in modern Hindi prose fiction. Following the highly acclaimed Naukar ki kamiz (The Servant's Shirt, 1979) and the sombre Khilega to dekhemge (Let it bloom, 1996), his third novel Divar mem ek khirki rahti thi (A Window lived in a Wall, 1997) is a celebration of ordinary Indian life that both showcases and transcends the confines of lower middle class existence. A framing device and central metaphor of the narrative, the window in the wall opens into a sensuous poetic landscape and enchanted realm of the imagination, where the novel's characters are at liberty to experience desire, abundance, and freedom from social constraints. The paper explores how Shukla playfully, and subversively, uses language and imagery to create a magic of the mundane. As the novel sympathetically evokes the plight of the common man, can we read Shukla's radical refusal to engage with the ramifications of a globalized Indian modernity as a response to dominant trends in contemporary Indo-English and Hindi fiction? Does his magic realism signal a self-assertive return to archetypal forms of Indian narrative?
Jason Grunebaum (University of Chicago)
Paper short abstract:
Survey of recent translations of Hindi fiction into English.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will survey translations of Hindi fiction into English, both print and online, from the past decade or so. Who are the intended and hoped-for audiences for the translations? The paper will also address the need to think about different English-speaking audiences: are the English readers of Hindi literature in translation South Asian or non-South Asian, generalists or specialists, and does it make a difference? The paper will also discuss the relationship in the marketplace between Hindi authors and writers of the South Asian disapora writing in English. Cultural and linguistic issues peculiar to translating Hindi literature will raised, and strategies for creating a wider worldwide audience for Hindi literature in translation will also be discussed.
Francesca Orsini (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)
Paper short abstract:
The most successful Indian novels in English dealing with post-liberalisation India, A. Adiga's The White Tiger (2008) and Vikas Svarup's Q&A (2005), both feature subaltern protagonists catapulted themselves into spectacular professional success. What about post-liberalization fiction in Hindi, which has tended to focus on small-town characters and stories of curbed ambitions, joblessness or job frustration, and limited mobility?
Paper long abstract:
The most successful Indian novels in English dealing with post-liberalisation India, A. Adiga's The White Tiger (2008) and Vikas Svarup's Q&A (2005, aka Slumdog Millionaire), both feature subaltern protagonists who catapult themselves into spectacular success thanks to their ambition and professional success. In almost magical fashion, they not only escape the slavery of low-paid manual labour, they come to impersonate the figure of the successful businessman-entrepreneur. English does not matter much to them since the borders between English and Hindi seem to have become more porous in the post-liberalization informal economy.
What about post-liberalization fiction in Hindi, which has tended to focus on small-town characters and stories of curbed ambitions, joblessness or job frustration, and limited mobility? Even Dalit narratives which encapsulate great mobility (Surajpal Chauhan's repeated assertion that he is now an officer in the office where his father was a sweeper) dwell rather on the limits of such mobility, the unescapable stigmas, rather than on success.
In order to to explore this question, my paper will explore the representation of work and ambition in a range of recent Hindi fictional writing dealing with characters who are part of the new economy such Prabhat Ranjan's stories (Janakipul), Neelakshi Singh's novel Shuddhipatr and Alka Saraogi's Brek ke bad.
Alessandra Consolaro (University of Torino)
Paper short abstract:
This paper aims at pointing out how contemporary Hindi writing makes a parallel use of both established publishing tools and the internet: writers can thus reach a wider and more interactive audience, changing the “traditional” relation between writer and reader.
Paper long abstract:
Kuṇal Siṃh (born 1980) is one of the representatives of the so called "new generation" in Hindi writing. He has published poems, short stories, and a novel. He is a translator and also a columnist for the literary monthly Nayā Jñānoday, writing on cinema. His passion for cinema is confirmed by his blog "Kunal talkies". He also has a literary blog, "Bhāṣāsetu", that he edits together with Suśīl Kānti. I'll analyze some of Kuṇal Siṃh's published works, his literary blog, and his Facebook page, trying to point out how contemporary Hindi writing makes a parallel use of both established publishing tools and the internet. Writers can thus reach a wider and more interactive audience, changing the "traditional" relation between writer and reader.
Thomas de Bruijn
Paper short abstract:
The unlimited communication potential of the internet has also touched Hindi writing in a big way. Many venues have started to emerge from the 1990s when web-based journals or portals appeared. Journals have been the live blood of the innovations in literature in all Indian languages. They created a literary field with its own specific codes and rituals for accession. Did these change with the seemingly open and unlimited web-based venues. This paper dives in and compares a reader's experience of a selection of web-based venues with that of a reader of the 1950s who looked at Indian writing through the journal Ajkal.
Paper long abstract:
Web based journals of Hindi writing are ubiquitous. So is the presence of Hindi writing of varying artistic or literary ambition on the web on other sites that feature information on Indian culture, news, services etc. The web opened up possibilities for reaching out to a vast readership that is truly global. It allows forms of cultural production that are detached from the 'soil', meaning the social and physical restraints of paper based publications in a community bounded by national borders. What does this do to the outlook of the works being published?
Paper based journals played an important role in the development of artistic models and perspectives in Hindi writing. They formed a literary field, with a particular set of codes and rules, hidden or transparant. Critics or editors instigated major stylistic changes such as the rise of modernist fiction in post-independence Hindi literature.
Does the web and its apparent openness change the 'game', giving access to other authors, critiques and readers?
This paper will address these questions by an empirical experiment, comparing the reader's experience when browsing websites that have a strong literary profile, with that of a reader of paper based Ajkal of the 1950s. This will provide a multilateral view of the changes the web brought in the literary field of Hindi writing.