Chapter 1 Nation and Nationalism
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University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/60257 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. “The Home and the World” Representations of English and Bhashas in Contemporary Indian Culture Vedita Cowaloosur A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English and Comparative Literary Studies University of Warwick Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies June 2013 [S]he wanted words with the heft of stainless steel, sounds that had been boiled clean, like a surgeon’s instruments, with nothing attached except meanings that could be looked up in a dictionary— —Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide vvv […] there are no “neutral” words and forms—words and forms can belong to “no one;” language has been completely taken over, shot through with intentions and accents. —Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF IMAGES 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 7 DECLARATION 8 ABSTRACT 9 ABBREVIATIONS 10 INTRODUCTION 11 A. AAMCHI MUMBAI 11 B. INDIAN FICTION AND THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE 25 C. THESIS STRUCTURE 36 CHAPTER 1 NATION AND NATIONALISM 40 1.1. LANGUAGE AND THE “NATION” QUESTION 42 1.2. LINGUISTIC NATIONALISM IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT 47 1.3. THE CASE OF INDIA 55 1.4. ENGLISH AND BHASHA NATIONALISM 78 1.5. THE NEHRUVIAN WAY 92 1.6. NEHRU AND THE 1980S-90S NOVEL 105 1.7. AFTER 2010 119 CHAPTER 2 RELIGION AND SECULARISM 121 2.1. THE RELIGION OF LANGUAGE 122 2.2. TRANSLATION AS TEST CASE: “ONE BUT UNEQUAL” 141 2.3. TRANSLATING NEHRUVIANISM INTO TANDONISM 152 2.4. TRANSLATING SECULARISM 169 2.5. HINDUISING GENDER AND SEXUALITY 180 2.6. THE CASE OF ANTI-SECULAR ENGLISH SPEAKERS 193 2.7. SECULAR HINDI WRITING 197 2.8. DIVIDE AND RULE 207 CHAPTER 3 CLASS AND CASTE 209 3.1. THE ENGLISH ADVANTAGE 210 3.2. GODDESS ENGLISH AND CASTE 224 3.3. INTEGRAL HEGEMONY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE 227 3.4. ELITE INGLISH AND DALIT ENGLISH 237 3.5. UNFINISHED BUSINESSES 259 CONCLUSION 261 BIBLIOGRAPHY 279 5 LIST OF IMAGES IMAGE 1. Screenshot, Wake Up Sid (2009) 11 IMAGE 2. Narendra Modi Depicted as Krishna in BJP Advertisement 132 IMAGE 3. Dalit Goddess English 224 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My first and foremost debt is to my supervisor, Pablo Mukherjee for his guidance, support and patience throughout. I thank him for helping me transform flighty ideas and general enthusiasm for the subject into coherent and scholarly arguments, and for helping me develop a newer and more critical perspective on numerous political, social and cultural issues. I am grateful to Susan Bassnett, Maureen Freely, John Gilmore, Jon Mee, Nick Monk, Benita Parry, Manav Ratti and Rashmi Varma from the department for their encouragement and thought-provoking discussions on various aspects of this research. I would also like to thank the administrative support staff of the department, especially Cheryl Cave, for all the help. The content of this thesis and my development as a scholar have greatly been shaped by invaluable—if sometimes brief—engagements with Simon James, Kylie Crane, John McKinnell, (late) Meenakshi Mukherjee, Francesca Orsini, G. J. V. Prasad, Stephen Reagan, Neelam Srivastava, Harish Trivedi and Robert Young. For this, I thank them. Big thanks also to Nandini Rao, Rammanohar Reddy, Pallavi Narayan, Saba Bashir and Achintyarup Ray without whom my research trips to India would not have been as successful and enjoyable. I am grateful to Prabha Pillai and Jyoti Shetty for proofreading my entire thesis, and to Norbert Bugeja, Sorcha Gunne and Malachi McIntosh for taking me under their wing and initiating me into the ways of Postcolonial studies. Khalid Al Hamoud, Nazry Bahrawi, John Clegg, Nesrin Degirmencioglu, Mahmoud Jeidani, Joseph Jackson, Peter Kirwan, Paul McGrath, Charlotte Mathieson, Joseph Morissey, Sian Mitchell, Yvonne Reddick, Min Rowland, Sophie Rudland, Kate Scarth, Iman Sheeha, Adam Slavny, Máté Vince and Rami Zakaria I would like to thank for their camaraderie and for helping me retain my sanity when the going got tough. Aditi Augustine, Gohar Karim Khan and their respective families have provided me with a home away from home over these past many years. For them my gratitude and love is constant. Finally, a heartfelt thank you to my family: Chacha Krishna for planting the seeds of this research in me from when I was very young, Bhaiyya Manish for his reliable presence, Mamoo Pritam for playing devil’s advocate, Dadi and Nani for their unbroken faith in me, Honita—because she is irreplaceable, and Mama and Papa for going through my undergraduate degree, Masters degree and then suffering the three years of my doctoral research with me. Papa, especially, because he has been my anchor and guide all along this—and beyond. This thesis is as much his passion as mine. 7 DECLARATION This thesis is entirely my own work and has not previously been submitted for any other degree. Extracts from Chapters 2 have been explored in: Cowaloosur, Vedita. “A Suitable (Hindu) Boy.” Eds. Francesca Orsini and Neelam Srivastava. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 15.3 (2013): 349-364. However, for the purpose of this thesis, the chapter has been expanded and its ideas developed further. Vedita Cowaloosur 30 June 2013 8 ABSTRACT Although they have cohabited in India for centuries, critical analyses of contemporary Indian literature and culture often seem to draw a distinction between the “world” of the English language and that of the bhashas (or Indian regional languages)—as though the two are sealed off from each other with no conceivable overlaps. Even sixty-six years after independence, the debate over the contested linguistic terrains of “home” and “world”— and whether these seeming dichotomies are mappable as “Indian”/“non- Indian” or “provincial”/“cosmopolitan”—continue. Through a study of contemporary and modern Indian literary and cultural discourses, I analyse the historical and ideological roles played by English language—the ways in which it has interacted with bhashas, and the importance of the literary representation of English and bhashas in the politics of Indian cultural and linguistic nationalism(s). Along with canonical Indian English writing (such as the works of Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh and Salman Rushdie) I analyse bhasha literature (especially Hindi, Bengali and Urdu) as well as Indian literature in translation as my primary texts. My study includes fiction, as well as political documents and life writing (notably those by M. K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru). The analysis of Hindi cinema, ranging from films like Mughal-e-Azam (1960) to Ra.One (2011) remains a running thread throughout, for this popular medium encapsulates the Indian linguistic debates in a way that is sometimes complementary and at other times a foil to the literary cultural discourse. In each of my chapters I analyse the mobilisation of language(s) in relation to one of the categories that, in India’s charged socio-political setting, become associated with the question of one’s communal, cultural and/or territorial “identity”—namely nation, religion, and caste and class. Though this is a thesis about language and its cultural representation in postcolonial India, I often flit to events in pre-1947 India in the course of my discussions. This is because some of the cultural moments from the colonial past are either historical precedents to, or prove to be momentous departures from, the events that I focus on in contemporary India. Their significance can therefore not be ignored in any comprehensible analysis of the roles that language has played in India after independence. 9 ABBREVIATIONS AIPWA All-India Progressive Writers’ Association Anjuman Anjuman Taraqqui-e-Urdu BJP Bharatiya Janata Party MNS Maharashtra Navnirman Sena NDA National Democratic Alliance RSS Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Sammelan Hindi Sahitya Sammelan 10 INTRODUCTION A. Aamchi Mumbai1 Image 1: Screenshot, Wake Up Sid (2009) This disclaimer was inserted at the beginning of the 2009 Hindi film, Wake Up Sid, following violent protests in some cinemas in Mumbai on the day of its release.2 The protest, which escalated into attempts at disrupting the screening of the film throughout the state, 3 was orchestrated by members of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS)—a regionalist and right-wing political organisation that claims to defend the sanctity of the 1 “Aamchi Mumbai” is Marathi for “Our Mumbai.” 2 “‘Bombay’ Lands Karan Johar at Raj Thackeray’s Door,” The Indian Express 3 Oct. 2009, 18 Oct. 2012 <http://www.indianexpress.com/news/-bombay--lands-karan-johar-at-raj- thackeray-s-door/524459/>. 3 A multiplex theatre in Pune did cancel the screening of the film, following discussion with the local MNS leader, Raje Gorde. “Pune Multiplex Cancels Wake Up Sid Screening after MNS Protest,” Daily News & Analysis 2 Oct. 2009, 12 Oct. 2012 <http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_pune-multiplex-cancels-wake-up-sid- screening-after-mns-protest_1294500>. 11 Marathi language and culture, and the rights of its speakers.4 For them, the problem with Wake Up Sid was the use of the former name of the city: “Bombay.” The producer of the film, Karan Johar, was called upon by leaders of the party to apologise to the MNS and to all Marathi speakers of Maharashtra, the state of which Mumbai is the capital. This—to the disbelief of many—Johar did!5 What, then, is in a name? The MNS actions form part of an attempt to enforce a linguistic apartheid between what is thought to be the city’s “real” and authentic inhabitants and alien interlopers.