659-668 Hinduism and Modern Literature.Indd
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Hinduism and Modern Literature Shifting from Tradition to posed for teaching purposes in courses for East Modernity India Company officers, also found a warm wel- come among Krṣ ṇ ạ worshippers and has been Until the 19th century, themes, motifs, and forms reprinted until today. Lallūlāl’s Premsāgar turned in the literature composed in modern languages into a kind of prototype text for the language and in India were largely traditional. Artistic refine- contents of the pamphlet literature to be found at ment and literary individualism were achieved devotionalia stores at religious places all over through the ways and means of how given sub- contemporary North India. Linguistic standard- jects were treated, and how repetition and man- ization was much induced by the production of nerism were avoided in dealing with them. religious texts production in many languages, not Subjects were mostly taken from the huge stock only through Bible translations or Christian mis- of religious imagination developed in the Sanskrit sionary pamphlets, but also through the produc- Purānaṣ and in Sanskrit epic literature or from tion and distribution of prose renderings of the bardic and folklore tradition (→ oral traditions popular Hindu stories and myths. The early and folklore; → bards). → Swaminarayan movement, initiated by Within the framings of tradition, a high level of Sahajanand Swami (1781–1830) in and around literary creativity developed in the focal points of the present state of → Gujarat, may serve as an the production, performance, and transmission example for this process. Sectarian text produc- of literature, namely, the courts and temples. tion turned out to be an important tool for the These were embedded in a multireligious and shift fromjūnī gujarātī (“Old Gujarati”) to the transcultural context with its multitude of Hindu modern spoken language as a literary and reli- and Islamic traditions and beliefs, yogic and Bud- gious medium. Many of these changes were dhist substrata, Jainism, Sikhism, and subaltern linked to the introduction and the wide spread of religiosity. Literary creativity was bound to these printing houses throughout the 19th century and sources of inspiration and allowed a high level of new forms of public space related to them. artistic refinement and individual mastery within Literature production in regional languages in its framework. In many parts of India, these tra- British India can be taken as an indicator of ongo- ditional resources are alive until today and con- ing shifts in identity construction and related tinue to infuse society and imagination. identity politics. Modern Indian literature started Around 1800, Calcutta (Kolkata) with its Fort off as a new form of creative interaction of West- William College (founded 1800) turned into a ern and Eastern reflexivity. Traditions were rein- prominent location of a new type of literature and terpreted, questioned, reconfirmed, and recovered language use. Prose literature writing had not under layers of decline and error, then recom- been completely absent until then, but had posed and reconstructed. Cultural and religious remained largely marginal in many Indian lan- defense strategies facing the challenge of a guages and Persian. Through the inspiration of British-dominated concept of modernity and people like John Gilchrist (1759–1841), advisor modernization were important motives of authors to the bhākhā munśīs (vernacular language teach- and critiques. Tradition was used as a tool to reas- ers), textbooks in various languages for the use of sert self-consciousness threatened by colonial the language courses for East India Company staff modernity. officers were produced and inspired authors to produce textbooks in the spoken language. One of the literary products of the Fort Williams Reinterpretations of Tradition College textbook production was the Premsāgar by Lallūlāl (1763–1825), a retelling of the classical Ānandamatḥ , the famous novel written by → Krṣ ṇ ạ biography following a Braj version by Bankimchandra Chatterji in 1881 (in Bengali), can Caturbhuj Miśra of the Bhāgavatapurānạ serve as the most powerful example of the effort (→ Purānas)̣ original in Sanskrit. to construct Hinduism as a source for anticolo- Astonishingly, this text, written around 1803 in nial resistance and assertive Indianness. The novel some form of early Modern Standard Hindi, com- is on the famine of 1770 in Bengal, which had 660 Hinduism and Modern Literature been under the East India Company’s direct con- century Bengali writings, and in Michael Madhu- trol since the battle of Plassey in 1757. A group of sudan Datt’s (1824–1873) Meghanādvadhkāvya saṃ nyāsīs (religious ascetics and monks) turn (Killing of Meghanād; 1861) in particular. The to revolt in favor of the suffering people. The hero subject of this epic poem is one of the highlights of of the novel, the landowner Mahendra Siṃ h, the Sanskrit → Rāmāyanạ , the fight between becomes one of them and has guns made in his Laksmaṇ ạ (brother of → Rāma) and the son of village to fight the British. However, when defeat Rāvana,̣ Meghnād. It is written in a traditional is apparent, a holy man explains to him that the 8+6-syllable-meter blank verse. The subject is British were sent to him by destiny, but the real widely known trough all kinds of vernacular ver- enemy he has to fight are the Muslims. Part of the sions all over the subcontinent (Datt had known novel is the hymn Bande Mātaram (I Bow to the subject probably from the popular Kṛttivāsa You, Mother) – devoted to the Bengali mother version), but the author is at the same time clearly goddess – which was put into partisan use by the influenced by European epic poetry, particularly svadeśī (“homemade”) movement from 1905 after Homer, Dante, and J. Milton, in treating his tradi- the partition of Bengal. It is still used as a patri- tional Indian material. otic hymn in contemporary India, even though it Authors like Maithili Sharan Gupt’s recompos- contains a deeply rooted anti-Muslim message. ing of traditional characters was not simply affir- Towards the end of the 19th century, tradition mative. In his long poems “Yaśodharā” – (wife of was more and more perceived in terms of a the historical Buddha) and “Urmilā” (wife of monolithic construction of culture cum religion Laksmaṇ ̣, Rām’s brother, in his long poem under baptized as “Hinduism.” In the world of Hindi, the title Sāket), he retells historical and mythical Maithili Sharan Gupt (1886–1965) should be stories from an imagined female perspective. mentioned, marking the breakthrough of poetry Both poems are concerned with the suffering, but writing in Modern Standard Hindi, particularly also the moral strength of abandoned wifes, his patriotic collection of hymns Bhārat-Bhāratī which has been largely neglected in traditional (The Voice of India, 1912). The publication of this poetry. Even though Maithili Sharan Gupt por- book earned him the title rāsṭ rakavị (“national trays his female characters with empathy, and poet”) by his mentor and then-editor of the Hindi almost with devotion. The ascetic strength of literary magazine Sarasvatī, Mahavir Prasad these women, and their moral superiority, make Dwivedi (1864–1938). Rāsṭ rakavị clearly indicates them fit into the classical ascetic female ideal: the the link between the political and the poetical: chaste Indian wife, ready to accept any suffering Bhārat-Bhāratī glorifies India’s past, contrasting it from an unjust husband. Gupt also translated the with the decline of the present. Even though popular quatrains (Rubaiyat) of Omar Khayam poetry of this kind may not be explicitly anti- (1048?–1122?) into Hindi, a widely appreciated Muslim, it served as an important tool to create piece of Persian lyrics in India. contemporary identity politics referring to an New readings of episodes from the Rāma story imagined homogenized version of a highly ideal- continue to be created by authors of different ized form of Hinduism as a monolithic unity. backgrounds, particularly after the destruction of Contrasting India’s golden past with the decline the Babri Mashjeed in Ayodhya (→ Uttar Pradesh) as a result of Muslim and British domination sub- in December 1992, following an intensive cam- sequently became a common feature of anticolo- paigning for the construction of a Rāmjanma- nial literary sentiments. It was convenient to bhūmi Temple on that very spot and the ensuing portray Hinduism in general as the innocent vic- communal riots all over India, leaving about three tim of malicious intruders. At the same time, tra- thousand people dead throughout India. As the dition was constantly reinterpreted and used to Hindi poet Kunwar Narain (born 1927) says in exemplify modern messages. New readings of his poem “Ayodhya, 1992,” Sanskrit literature were produced by a great diver- O Rama sity of authors. During the last decades, the space Life is a bitter fact for such readings has steadily shrunk, leading to a and you are an epic. (Narain, 2008, 51) stark diminishing of both the political and the lit- erary lives of these texts. In modern → Dalit and subaltern writing, the fig- The first examples of this modern refor mulation ure of Eklavya, taken from the → Mahābhārata, of classical subjects are to be found in 19th- has become a focal point of a counter-cultural Hinduism and Modern Literature 661 reading of the classics. Low-caste Eklavya is a tion of mentally disturbed patients of a mental kind of illegal pupil of Dronācārya,̣ the five asylum some time after partition (1947). Some Pānḍ ̣avas’ teacher, for the use of weapons. When lost mentally disturbed Hindus and Sikhs, who Dronạ discovers that Eklavya has learned to shoot had been inmates in the asylum for years, are to be with arrows by following his teachings secretly exchanged with similar Muslim patients from from afar, he demands his right thumb as India (→ madness). The absurdity of the question gurudaksiṇ ạ̄ , as the gift for the → guru after having of religious identity in the asylum exemplifies the learned everything from the guru.