What has brought about a rare unity among Hindi writers, left, right and centre?
Is it just a shared sense of humiliation? Or has Uday Prakash’s recent stand against Kalburgi murder and barb at their perpetual subservience played a part in making them take a stand?
The World Hindi Conference organisers have, involuntarily, brought about a rare unity among Hindi litterateurs of left, right and centre ideologies. Most of the prominent Hindi writers have not been invited to the ongoing three-day conference in Bhopal which Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated on September 10. And even those who were invited boycotted the meet to protest against the organisers’ controversial decision to exclude deliberations on Hindi literature from the global meet’s agenda.
However, as a prominent Marxist writer admits, this fragile unity is borne more out of a shared sense of humiliation than a genuine anger against “the dangerously illiberal BJP governments in states and the Centre”. This observation finds ample resonance in noted writer Uday Prakash’s polemical view that “the Hindi-speaking region has always yielded to subjugation and same is true about its literature.”
Prakash has recently been in news for returning his Sahitya Akademi award as a mark of protest against Kannada scholar Professor MM Kalburgi’s murder in Karnataka by unidentified assailants on August 30. The former vice-chancellor of Hampi University had raised the hackles of right-wing outfits such as the Vishva Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal with his views on idol worship by Hindus.
In a recent interview to Catchnews, Prakash cautioned:
A mirror to Hindiwallahs?
Has he overstated his point out of sheer anger over the Kannada writer’s murder? Or, has he really shown a mirror to Hindi writers?
Most of the dozen-odd Hindi litterateurs, writer-journalists, culture activists the Scroll spoke to tended to agree with Uday Prakash’s viewpoint. A few of them, however, pointed out that many left-leaning writers had registered protests against Professor Kalburgi’s murder in north Indian cities such as Bhopal, Jabalpur, Lucknow, while admitting that stronger actions were needed to wake up people against increasingly intolerant right wing forces.
However, most of these left-liberal personalities with such views also happened to be Prakash’s friends from his home state Madhya Pradesh. Prakash’s close friend and prestigious BD Goenka awardee journalist-poet Raaj Kumar Keswani said he couldn’t agree more with the rebel writer. “Not only in literature, in all spheres of creative writing, including journalism, conformism has increased alarmingly. The regrettable trend is more pronounced in the Hindi belt as Uday Prakash rightly pointed out.”
Keswani, though, was optimistic that “the cosy-club relationship between the establishment and the intelligentsia is sure to break up as saffron dictatorship under the Modi regime is most likely to degenerate into an Emergency-like political chaos.” Recalling a surge in rebel literature after the Emergency, he said, the "best writing always emerges during the time of crisis.”
Octogenarian editor-writer Gyan Ranjan shared both Udai Prakash’s cynicism and Keswani’s optimism. Editor of Pahal , one of the most prestigious Hindi literary magazines, for over 42 years, Ranjan reasoned that protests by the Hindi writers have been rather subdued in the past partly because, with all their weaknesses, the previous governments did not pose so great a danger to creative freedom as the Modi government does.
He said he barely escaped arrest during the Emergency because there were “many liberal enough people in the Madhya Pradesh government” who respected freedom of expression. “But”, he warned, “dissenting voices face existential crisis and not just danger to creative freedom as saffron forces rise menacingly with tacit blessing of the BJP government. Professor Kalbugi’s murder is another chilling reminder of this. ”
Veteran theatre director Arun Pandey of Jabalpur faced threat to his life from saffron activists in 2002 when his group “Vivechana” staged Uday Prakash’s play Aur Ant me Prarthana (And prayer at the end). In the midst of the performance, Bajrang Dal and VHP members barged into the theatre hall and vandalised the show in Jabalpur. The play has an oblique reference to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh which the hooligans did not like.
Pandey completely endorsed Prakash’s decision to return the government award. The theatre director also felt that most Hindi writers succumb to allurement or pressure when chips are down.
Timid response
“What to speak of government, we have seen prominent writers prostrating before just a bureaucrat. Can we forget how Hindi litterateurs would wag their tails before then culture czar and IAS [Indian Adminsitrative Service officer] – poet Ashok Vajpeyi in 1980s and 1990s?”
Vajpeyi was trustee-secretary of multi art complex Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal. During his stint, the Hindi literary world appeared to be divided neatly between those who supported or opposed him. With Vajpeyi at the helm of Bharat Bhavan, the fulcrum of Hindi literary polemics seemed to have shifted from New Delhi to Bhopal. On one side were litterateurs known as ideologically social democrats and ranged against them were Marxists. Veteran Hindi critic Dr Namvar Singh was leading the Marxist charge against Bharat Bhavan, ably assisted by Gyan Ranjan from Jabalpur. Ranjan, though already famous, had risen to prominence as a leftist torch-bearer after he successfully organised a national convention of the Progressive Writers' Association in 1981 in Jabalpur. The meet was acknowledged in literary circles as the most successful since the association’s first conference in 1936 in Lucknow which was presided over by Munshi Prem Chand.
Ashok Vajpeyi’s younger brother Udayan, a noted poet himself, said he too is agitated over Kalburgi’s murder and the timidity of the response from Hindi litterateurs. But he said the government was displaying even more timidity by not inviting prominent litterateurs in the World Hindi Conference. “The government is afraid of intellectuals,” he said. “And such a government can never be democratic.”
Need to speak up
Noted poet Rajesh Joshi, who is leading the protests against the World Hindi Conference, said he didn’t mind that he was not invited but would like to know what the participants and organisers had to say on Kalburgi’s murder. “Independent-minded writers have been kept off the event because the government was apprehensive they would have discussed issues like murder of Kalburgi which it does not want discussed,” he charged.
Like Uday Prakash, Marxist poet Joshi is also a Sahitya Akademi award winner. However, Joshi is non-committal over whether he too would return the award. Speculation is rife in Hindi literary scene that some poets, notably Virendra Dangwal and Manglesh Dabral are mulling returning their respective awards bestowed on them by governments for literary contribution in the past.
Octogenarian journalist-activist Lajjashankar Herdenia said that if the Hindi litterateurs don’t unite against fascist forces now, the very socio-political fabric of secular India will be in peril.
Herdenia is known in Bhopal for always being at the forefront in organising protests against regressive decisions of governments, on such varied causes as communal riots, the appointment of Gajendra Chouhan as FTII chairman or the murders of professor Kalburgi, CPI leader Govind Pansare and rationalist Narendra Dabholkar.
“Unlike in the past, careerism has crept into creative writing in the Hindi belt. Most writers are employed in government or private sector, particularly in teaching, and they don’t want to jeopardise their career by openly raising their voices against the establishment”, he said.
However, as a prominent Marxist writer admits, this fragile unity is borne more out of a shared sense of humiliation than a genuine anger against “the dangerously illiberal BJP governments in states and the Centre”. This observation finds ample resonance in noted writer Uday Prakash’s polemical view that “the Hindi-speaking region has always yielded to subjugation and same is true about its literature.”
Prakash has recently been in news for returning his Sahitya Akademi award as a mark of protest against Kannada scholar Professor MM Kalburgi’s murder in Karnataka by unidentified assailants on August 30. The former vice-chancellor of Hampi University had raised the hackles of right-wing outfits such as the Vishva Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal with his views on idol worship by Hindus.
In a recent interview to Catchnews, Prakash cautioned:
“Don’t expect anything from the sphere of Hindi literature. No luminary from the Hindi belt has ever been the cause of any positive change in the Indian sub-continent. Ambedkar came from West India, Gandhi was from Gujarat and Vivekananda came from Bengal.”
A mirror to Hindiwallahs?
Has he overstated his point out of sheer anger over the Kannada writer’s murder? Or, has he really shown a mirror to Hindi writers?
Most of the dozen-odd Hindi litterateurs, writer-journalists, culture activists the Scroll spoke to tended to agree with Uday Prakash’s viewpoint. A few of them, however, pointed out that many left-leaning writers had registered protests against Professor Kalburgi’s murder in north Indian cities such as Bhopal, Jabalpur, Lucknow, while admitting that stronger actions were needed to wake up people against increasingly intolerant right wing forces.
However, most of these left-liberal personalities with such views also happened to be Prakash’s friends from his home state Madhya Pradesh. Prakash’s close friend and prestigious BD Goenka awardee journalist-poet Raaj Kumar Keswani said he couldn’t agree more with the rebel writer. “Not only in literature, in all spheres of creative writing, including journalism, conformism has increased alarmingly. The regrettable trend is more pronounced in the Hindi belt as Uday Prakash rightly pointed out.”
Keswani, though, was optimistic that “the cosy-club relationship between the establishment and the intelligentsia is sure to break up as saffron dictatorship under the Modi regime is most likely to degenerate into an Emergency-like political chaos.” Recalling a surge in rebel literature after the Emergency, he said, the "best writing always emerges during the time of crisis.”
Octogenarian editor-writer Gyan Ranjan shared both Udai Prakash’s cynicism and Keswani’s optimism. Editor of Pahal , one of the most prestigious Hindi literary magazines, for over 42 years, Ranjan reasoned that protests by the Hindi writers have been rather subdued in the past partly because, with all their weaknesses, the previous governments did not pose so great a danger to creative freedom as the Modi government does.
He said he barely escaped arrest during the Emergency because there were “many liberal enough people in the Madhya Pradesh government” who respected freedom of expression. “But”, he warned, “dissenting voices face existential crisis and not just danger to creative freedom as saffron forces rise menacingly with tacit blessing of the BJP government. Professor Kalbugi’s murder is another chilling reminder of this. ”
Veteran theatre director Arun Pandey of Jabalpur faced threat to his life from saffron activists in 2002 when his group “Vivechana” staged Uday Prakash’s play Aur Ant me Prarthana (And prayer at the end). In the midst of the performance, Bajrang Dal and VHP members barged into the theatre hall and vandalised the show in Jabalpur. The play has an oblique reference to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh which the hooligans did not like.
Pandey completely endorsed Prakash’s decision to return the government award. The theatre director also felt that most Hindi writers succumb to allurement or pressure when chips are down.
Timid response
“What to speak of government, we have seen prominent writers prostrating before just a bureaucrat. Can we forget how Hindi litterateurs would wag their tails before then culture czar and IAS [Indian Adminsitrative Service officer] – poet Ashok Vajpeyi in 1980s and 1990s?”
Vajpeyi was trustee-secretary of multi art complex Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal. During his stint, the Hindi literary world appeared to be divided neatly between those who supported or opposed him. With Vajpeyi at the helm of Bharat Bhavan, the fulcrum of Hindi literary polemics seemed to have shifted from New Delhi to Bhopal. On one side were litterateurs known as ideologically social democrats and ranged against them were Marxists. Veteran Hindi critic Dr Namvar Singh was leading the Marxist charge against Bharat Bhavan, ably assisted by Gyan Ranjan from Jabalpur. Ranjan, though already famous, had risen to prominence as a leftist torch-bearer after he successfully organised a national convention of the Progressive Writers' Association in 1981 in Jabalpur. The meet was acknowledged in literary circles as the most successful since the association’s first conference in 1936 in Lucknow which was presided over by Munshi Prem Chand.
Ashok Vajpeyi’s younger brother Udayan, a noted poet himself, said he too is agitated over Kalburgi’s murder and the timidity of the response from Hindi litterateurs. But he said the government was displaying even more timidity by not inviting prominent litterateurs in the World Hindi Conference. “The government is afraid of intellectuals,” he said. “And such a government can never be democratic.”
Need to speak up
Noted poet Rajesh Joshi, who is leading the protests against the World Hindi Conference, said he didn’t mind that he was not invited but would like to know what the participants and organisers had to say on Kalburgi’s murder. “Independent-minded writers have been kept off the event because the government was apprehensive they would have discussed issues like murder of Kalburgi which it does not want discussed,” he charged.
Like Uday Prakash, Marxist poet Joshi is also a Sahitya Akademi award winner. However, Joshi is non-committal over whether he too would return the award. Speculation is rife in Hindi literary scene that some poets, notably Virendra Dangwal and Manglesh Dabral are mulling returning their respective awards bestowed on them by governments for literary contribution in the past.
Octogenarian journalist-activist Lajjashankar Herdenia said that if the Hindi litterateurs don’t unite against fascist forces now, the very socio-political fabric of secular India will be in peril.
Herdenia is known in Bhopal for always being at the forefront in organising protests against regressive decisions of governments, on such varied causes as communal riots, the appointment of Gajendra Chouhan as FTII chairman or the murders of professor Kalburgi, CPI leader Govind Pansare and rationalist Narendra Dabholkar.
“Unlike in the past, careerism has crept into creative writing in the Hindi belt. Most writers are employed in government or private sector, particularly in teaching, and they don’t want to jeopardise their career by openly raising their voices against the establishment”, he said.
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