ORIENTALIA SUECANA VOL. LX (2011) Edited by ÉVA Á. CSATÓ JOAKIM ENWALL BO ISAKSSON CARINA JAHANI ANETTE MÅNSSON ANJU SAXENA CHRISTIANE SCHAEFER Guest editors: ALESSANDRA CONSOLARO HEINZ WERNER WESSLER UPPSALA SWEDEN Orientalia Suecana LVI (2007) 2 FÖRF © 2012 by the individual authors Orientalia Suecana is an international peer-reviewed scholarly journal founded in 1952 and published annually by the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University. The journal, which is devoted to Indological, Iranian, Semitic, Sinological, and Turkic Studies aims to present current research relating to philological, linguistic, and literary topics. It contains articles, reviews, and review articles. Starting from vol. 59 (2010), Orientalia Suecana is a web-based only publication with open access. More information on http://www.lingfil.uu.se/orientalia Submissions for publication and books for review are welcome. Books will be re- viewed as circumstances permit. Publications received will not be returned. Manu- scripts, books for review, orders, and other correspondence concerning editorial matters should be sent to: Orientalia Suecana Editorial Board Department of Linguistics and Philology Uppsala University Box 635 SE-751 26 Uppsala Sweden E-mail: [email protected] ISSN 0078-6578 Typeset by Textgruppen i Uppsala AB Orientalia Suecana LVI (2007) TITEL 3 Contents Dissent in South Asian literary cultures, ed. by Heinz Werner Wessler and Alessandra Consolaro Heinz Werner Wessler and Alessandra Consolaro, Dissent in South Asian literary cultures . 7 Alessandra Consolaro, Resistance in the postcolonial Hindi literary field: Mohan Dās by Uday Prakāś . 9 Annie Montaut, Parody as positive dissent in Hindi theatre . 20 Christina Oesterheld, Wie viel Lachen verträgt der Glaube? Urdu-Satiren in Pakistan . 33 Heinz Werner Wessler, “Who am I?”: On the narrativity of identity and violence in Sheila Rohekar’s novel Tāvīz . 49 Laetitia Zecchini, Strangeness and historicity against nativism: blurring the frontiers of the nation in Arun Kolatkar’s poetry . 60 Guzel Strelkova, Unknowable or Comprehensible – two attitudes to life and death in modern Hindi prose . 71 Thomas de Bruijn and Sunny Singh, Q&A on Sunny Singh’s short story A Cup Full of Jasmine Oil . 83 Sunny Singh, A Cup Full of Jasmine Oil . 97 Federico Squarcini, Pāṣaṇḍin, vaitaṇḍika, vedanindaka and nāstika. On criticism, dissenters and polemics and the South Asian struggle for the semiotic primacy of veridiction . 101 Studies Ashk P. Dahlén, He addressed the Kayānian king: “I am a prophet!” – The Image of Zoroaster in the Dāstān-e Goshtāsp (Tale of Goshtāsp) . 117 Forogh Hashabeiky, Life, as I see it: A typology of the post-revolutionary Persian novel written by women . 140 Michael Reinhard Heß, Qualified “heterodoxy” in a 17th century Ḥurūfī muḳaddime . 151 Johanna Lidén, Buddhist and Daoist influences on Neo-Confucian thinkers and their claim of orthodoxy . 163 Anju Saxena, The sound system of Nàvakat . 185 Book Reviews . 193 List of Contributors . 207 Orientalia Suecana LVI (2007) 4 FÖRF Orientalia Suecana LVI (2007) Dissent in South Asian literary cultures Eds. Heinz Werner Wessler, Uppsala University Alessandra Consolaro, University of Turin Orientalia Suecana LX (2011) 6 HEINZ WERNER WESSLER Orientalia Suecana LX (2011) 7 Dissent in South Asian literary cultures Heinz Werner Wessler, Uppsala University Alessandra Consolaro, University of Turin Ever since the development of modern literature in South Asia, there has been a tension between the combined, all-encompassing, national, progressivist narrative and various forms of the subaltern, which often subverts the universal claim of culturally and politically nationalist writing. The dominant nationalist discourse is meant to be all-inclusive, but it inherently produces its own forms of exclusion, cultural and social marginalization, which again encourages resistance, and some- times rebellion. The experience of exclusion and marginalization is an important element of the social and cultural fabric all over South Asia. This volume presents a selection of articles that focus on aspects of dissent in modern and pre-modern literature. The ar- ticles refer to parallel cultures in general and to subcultures in particular, but also to alternative models of cultural expressivity that tend to subvert established patterns and conventions, like parody or satire. They also highlight texts that focus on the in- terplay between ideology and cultural aesthetics. Consolaro’s contribution presents the novel Mohan Dās (Mohan Das) by the con- temporary Hindi writer Uday Prakāś as a multi-layered story of resistance, both from the point of view of content – the struggle of a young Dalit resisting the op- pression of the hegemonic caste society – and of style, the text being a call for an al- ternative canon in Hindi literature, resisting the middle-class mainstream. Montaut and Oesterheld focus on parody and satire in Hindi theatre and Pakistani Urdu literature respectively. Montaut analyses Habīb Tanvīr’s play Āgrā Bāzār (Agra Market) emphasizing how, through the use of parody, the text denounces the failure of the dominant political and cultural norms to build a fair society, and sug- gests that the rich potential of folk culture can help in countering this failure. While parody has never played a prominent role in mainstream Hindi literature and literary criticism, Urdu literature has an old and very profound tradition of literary produc- tion in the comic mode. Oesterheld focuses on some twentieth-century writers to show how the creation of Pakistan and the postcolonial geopolitical situation led to an unprecedented emphasis on the Islamic overtones even in literary productions by radical secularist authors. The necessity to defend and justify one’s Muslim identity appears to supersede the earlier more relaxed position on religion, so that bitterness prevails over humour and levity. Wessler’s analysis of the novel Tāvīz (The Amulet) by the contemporary Hindi writer Sheila Rohekar emphasizes the difficulty of asserting individual identity be- yond superimposed mainstream identity markers. The novel is a rare example of Jewish writing in Hindi. The stereotypical discourse on secularism and communal- Orientalia Suecana LX (2011) 8 HEINZ WERNER WESSLER ism is treated with a certain sensitivity that is validated by the identity of the author as a representative of a small community. Zecchini’s contribution on Arun Kolatkar’s poetry highlights the research into al- ternative ways of belonging, refusing the majoritarian and exclusive perceptions of identity and “rootedness”. Kolatkar, a bilingual poet writing in Marathi and English, rejects the binary opposition between minority and majority, hovers over bounda- ries, and asserts the existence of an inexhaustibly plural reality and identity. Strelkova’s article compares two great classics of twentieth-century Hindi prose: Ajneya’s novel Apne apne ajnabī (To Each his Stranger) and Kṛṣṇā Sobti’s Ai Laṛkī (Hey, Girl!). In her reading, this latter work, written about thirty years later than Ajneya’s, can be analysed as a “stylistically alternative model” that tends to subvert the one offered by Ajneya. Ajneya is mainly interested in the relations between an individual hero and society as a whole, while in most of Kṛṣṇā Sobti’s novels a heroine is contra-posed to family as part of the community/society. In both cases, only marginal situations can create the conditions for understanding the existential dimensions of life. The deeper layer focuses on the question of whether or not Life and Death are comprehensible and of whether or not God can be reached by human beings. The selection proceeds with two contributions shifting the focus to two other im- portant aspects of the thematic focus on “Dissent and South Asian Literary Cul- tures”. The first of these is addressed in Singh and DeBruijn’s contribution, focus- sing on Sunny Singh’s story A Cup Full of Jasmine Oil (reprinted after the article), and emphasizes the functionality of the aesthetic concept of this literary work in re- lation to the representation of rebellion. The theme running through the analysis hinted at by the author herself in the interview, is the need to refer to both Western and Indian aesthetics when analysing creative writing from contemporary South Asia, and not to give precedence to any specific hermeneutic strategy. Squarcini’s article, which concludes our selection, takes us back in time, but is also a further step in the discussion of the epistemological importance of voices of dissent. Their function as essential elements in understanding the textual production of “orthodox” traditions is emphasized. Dissident traditions have often been con- signed to oblivion, even though a mainstream tradition can achieve its privileged status only “after passing over, assimilating, defeating, or even concealing the logi- cal and historical legitimacy of its opponents and competitors”. In the process of in- tellectual production and transmission, dissenting voices therefore represent “an agonistic aspect of cultural production which is intrinsically in no way marginal at all”. Most of the articles highlighted in this volume have their origin in a panel convened by Thomas de Bruijn and Alessandra Consolaro at the 21st European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies held in Bonn (Germany) in July 2010. May 2012 Orientalia Suecana LX (2011) Resistance in the postcolonial Hindi literary field: Mohan Dās by Uday Prakāś Alessandra