Racism row over India's biggest literary festival

India's biggest book festival kicks off Friday clouded by accusations of racism and an ugly public spat over the apparent obsession with former colonial power Britain in literary circles.

The Jaipur Literary Festival in the western desert state of Rajasthan is one of Asia's biggest book events, drawing many renowned international and South Asian writers and crowds of up to 30,000.

This year features Nobel winners Orhan Pamuk and J.M. Coetzee on a long list of luminaries who are set to appear in conversation in Diggi Palace, the converted 19th century mansion that hosts the event.

The atmosphere is informal and the debates are conducted in a polite and generally consensual manner, often featuring the father of the festival -- the British historian and expert on India, William Dalrymple.

But Dalrymple, a ubiquitous presence on the Indian literary scene who co-founded the modern Jaipur event in 2006, has been sucked into a damaging row after coming under attack in the Indian news magazine Open.

In an excoriating piece published on January 1, political editor Hartosh Singh Bal questioned why a white middle-aged Scottish man had established himself as a "pompous arbiter of literary merit in India."

The festival, he argued, "works not because it is a literary enterprise, but because it ties us to the British literary establishment."

After dismissing British foreign correspondents who write books about his country, Bal then suggested that Indian authors were mere sideshows in Jaipur next to the main attractions, such as hit British writer Ian McEwan.

Hurt by the attack and an unflattering portrait of him in colonial-era regalia, Dalrymple took the decision to respond to the provocation, pointing out that two thirds of invitees to Jaipur were Indian.

British writers "brown, black and white" make up "a minority within the minority" of foreigners, he wrote back, pointing out that he has written five books on his adopted country where he has lived on and off for 25 years.

The article "felt little more than the literary equivalent of pouring shit through an immigrant?s letterbox," Dalrymple said, adding that Bal's arguments "reeked of double standards and reverse racism."

"Just reverse the proposition for a moment. If anyone was to suggest that Vikram Seth had no right or qualification to write a novel about England like 'An Equal Music' ... it would be regarded as blatantly racist," he said.

In further twist, Indian author Pramod Kumar then declared that he and others had directed and conceived the first Jaipur festival. Dalrymple was guilty of "post colonial whitewashing" by declaring himself as the founder.

The row continues to rumble on on Open's website and is likely to feature prominently in the conversations of Delhi's chattering classes who make an annual pilgrimage to Jaipur.

South African-born Coetzee, author of the Booker winner "Disgrace," is scheduled to lead a panel discussion on the legacy of Imperial English.

Whether Indian writers are indeed the sideshow will be seen when national heavyweights Vikram Seth and Booker prize winner Kiran Desai take to the stage, or others speak on emerging low-caste literature and Hindi blogging.

Fans will vote with their feet.

famous short story ‘Kafan’ and many stories by Munshi Prem Chand

Saadat Hasan Manto, whose fifty-sixth death anniversary was observed on January 18, was a writer who not only enriched Urdu literature to a great extent, but influenced writers to look into the psyche of mankind. Most of the critics believe that the basis of modern short story in Urdu can be seen in Manto's works. No doubt, a famous short story 'Kafan' and many stories by Munshi Prem Chand and a collection of Urdu short stories titled 'Angaare' by a group of writers had earlier produced a powerful impact and serious writers had to review their viewpoints towards the traditional style of writing and thinking towards production of fiction and short stories.

The western literature and literary view of Russian literature (under the influence of communist and leftist parties) had also caused great influence on literary trends all over the world. However, in Urdu literature, the stories written by Manto had quite a different impression. In a way Manto had given up all hang-ups to write about society and its characters. He had to face trials for the allegations of 'obscenity' in characterization of his stories.

The opponents used to claim that such writings could promote perversion in society. He had written stories like 'Thanda Gosht' (cold meat), 'Khol Do' (open it up), 'Hatak' (insult) and others that exposed the negative face of society, but he was tried in his time not only by the courts, but also by so-called leaders of society. However, the time has proved that Manto was a genuine writer who had nothing to do with 'perversion and nudity', but he to expose evil designs and highlight pious characters of this society. For instance, his stories like 'Basit', 'Mummy', 'Doda Pehlawan', and 'Shera' dig out the good and bad characters and it is very clear that instead of concealing badness, it is far better to expose the same, so a wise way could be discovered where people could live in peace and harmony. It was Manto's works that showed that exploitation of mankind under any pretext has no justification.

Manto was also a film and radio scriptwriter, and journalist. In his short life (he died at the age of 42), he had published twenty-two collections of short stories, one novel, five collections of radio plays, three collections of essays, two collections of personal sketches, titled 'Ganje Farishte' and he was the first writer who painted real characters in his sketches while highlighting their qualities and demerits.

He was a true and courageous writer who did not compromise on his principles under any circumstances.

Relevency of Munshi Premchand in Recent Time

Here below is a write-up on Prem Chand which  I wrote for a magazine in 1980 on the Birth Centenary of Prem Chand, the Hindi  novelist, short story writer, and much more.

I am posting it on my blog to see how  far my write-up hasdated, but, more than that, to find from viewers how far they think Prem Chand is still relevant and how since his times the issues that he took up in his writings have been transformed, over-ridden or become more or less relvant in Indian literature. In 1980, when I wrote the article, I was  firmly of the view that Prem Chand was forcefully relevant . Since 1980  the political and socio-economic environment in the countrty has undergone a sea change as a result liberalisation and globalization and the emrgence of  new political forces and gradual empowerment of many communties of whose spokesperson Prem Chand was. To a certain extent these communities have become their own spokespersons. Have the new voices drowned or added greater intensity to the issues raised in Prem Chand's writings Has Prem Chand become dated or do his writings still move and entertain us, and trouble our conscience?

Here is the write-up.

PREM CHAND'S RELEVANCE TODAY

Writing on the birth or death anniversary of a writer one can easily slip into sentimentality or a meaningless verbal eulogy. Fortunately, in Prem Chand's case this danger can be easily avoided, there being so much that is still forcefully meaningful in all that he did and wrote.

As a man he was one of the most remarkable Indians of his time. All those who knew him talk of his simple, self-effacing, cheerful, unassuming nature, of his uncompromising honesty, freedom from malice, his sense of humour, his open ringing laughter. Shunning publicity he is a man who easily merges into the crowd – both as a man and a writer he remained a man of the people, identifying himself completely with the unfulfilled aspirations of the Indian masses. He was not one of the greatest Indians, yet he was one of the so many loveable, humane yet rebellious ones – a non-believing saint, as Jainendra has affectionately called him. It is not surprising that Dr Ram Vilas Sharma should have likened him to Kabir.

As a writer, his contribution to Hindi literature is so substantial that it is impossible to imagine Hindi prose fiction of the first forty years of the 20th century without Prem Chand. By switching over from Urdu to Hindi he hastened the process of modernization of Hindi literature, inducting into it the realism and social concern of his teacher, Sarshar. He weaned away the Hindi reading public from the crude sensationalism and infantile escapism of Chandrakanta and Bhootnath and brought it face to face the contemporary social reality. Through a dozen or so novels and a few hundred short stories and scores of essays spread over two decades he made Hindi literature a faithful mirror of the renascent consciousness and the awakened aspirations of the Indian people. And he was the first writer to have brought to the centre of Hindi literature the lowliest Indian and to have passionately pleaded that his life was as important as anyone else's, and that the central issue before the Indian civilization was to rescue him from the abyss of poverty and inhuman degradation, not out of mercy, not out of pity, but because social justice demanded it.

All this is enough to make Prem Chand an immortal figure in Indian literature. But there is a tendency to underplay this achievement and to dismiss Prem Chand as a second rate writer, a propagandist and a social reformer whose work has dated and become stale. That he was a propagandist and a social reformer, that he thought literature as utilitarian and wanted to use it as an instrument of social change and education Prem Chand openly proclaimed. In his writings he made it repeatedly clear that for him the attainment of political independence, to raise his voice against social injustice, to champion the cause of the poor and the repressed, the liberation of Hindi literature from eroticism and the mood and tone of abject devotion and self-surrender, to give an altogether new content and to enlarge the concept of the beautiful in literature were the most important aims.

Whether or not we approve, we must remember that Prem Chand regarded literature not as a profession but a selfless devotion, and the writer as a man who owed his responsibility to the society; and for him the greatness of a literature lay in the greatness of its message, and he had no regard for pure aestheticism. This view of literature was particularly relevant to the times in which he lived. In a letter to one Mr. Sabharwal in Japan he wrote:
     
 You may not have liked the didactic element in my (those) stories; but so long India is under the foreign rule she cannot touch the peaks of great art. It is here that the difference between the literature of a free and a subject country lies: social and political realities force us to be didactic…

The statement unambiguously reveals where Prem Chand's mind and heart lay. He believed that a sensitive writer, in the revolutionary phase such as India was passing through then, became of necessity, a handmaid of the revolutionary urge. As such the serenity and calm detachment that is the gift of stable periods of history and give rise to the greatest works of art is denied to the writer.

This, of course, cannot justify Prem Chand's recourse to idealistic solutions to the problems he raised in his novels, and one must confess that Prem Chand, Dickens like, could not completely shed his mechanical approach to plot and character. It is perhaps only in Godan that Hori's tale moves to its inexorable end through its inner dialectic. Prem Chand's idealism generally leaves us cold, but when that idealism survives in the doomed world of Hori's, it cannot be lightly dismissed. That Prem Chand should have clung to his idealism even where he found it tottering and even when he had become completely disillusioned with 'this Mahajani Sabhyata', is not a sign of weakness, but of strength and vitality drawn from the same sources as Gandhi drew from.

 What then is Prem Chand's relevance today? We do not know what will happen in the 21st century, but the issues that he raised in Indian life and literature remain alive today, in fact have become more urgent, and are likely to remain urgent at least till the end of the century. National freedom was won a long time ago, but the common man with whom Prem Chand had identified himself and made the focus of his writings still remains on the fringe of our social, political and literary concerns. Hindi literature under the impact of the West as well through its own experience has become technically more accomplished, more sophisticated, its language more precise and less verbose and its mode more introvert and introspective. But along with this superior technique it has also borrowed Western man's despair --- the kind of despair quite unknown to the vast majority of Indians. As contrasted to this Prem Chand had known the characteristically Indian despair, born not out of the consequences of an unbridled pursuit of power but of the crushing burden of the tyranny of the powerful, not out of a surfeit of material goods but out of an unfulfilment of even the minimum human needs; and he gave expression to it in his writings without succumbing to the negativism of the West. This is his greatest strength.

Prem Chand's idealism often distorts reality and makes his plots and characters mechanical, but he never pretended to be a thoroughgoing realist. For him the function of literature was both to reveal life and to 'make men better' and the Indian models before him were the authors of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. He was quite aware that both the great Indian epics had not only entertained millions of Indians for centuries but had also molded the lives and thoughts of so many men and women; and he continued to create characters who were truthful, courageous, dedicated to a life of selfless service in the image of our own ideal heroes whom many Indians, big and small, have for ages tried to emulate in real life.

Although he adapted the idealist-moralist function of the Indian epics, he, inspired by the West and the Russian Revolution, rejected  the prevalent fossilized , decadent, unjust and repressive social system and wanted it to be supplanted  by one that was just, humane and egalitarian. As a craftsman Prem Chand remained quite traditional, and may not mean much to us; as a thinker he was not original, but, I doubt, if since Prem Chand any Hindi novelist has displayed his passionate concern so comprehensive in its sympathies, and his ruthless rejection of all that was anti-man in the Indian civilization without alienating himself from the hard core of distinctively Indian humanism.

Motaram Ka Satyagrah

Based on a novel of Munshi Premchand, the play was performed by local artistes. ADM city Shailendra Singh was the chief guest for the evening and was seen discussing the play with Suresh Srivastava, the assistant director of the play. The comedy had the audience rivetted to their seats once the play began.
And The Story goes: The play, written by famous theatre personality Habib Tanveer, is a satire on the bureaucracy, the system that existed during the British rule and the problems that still plagues our administration. Rashmi a theatre enthusiast, and watched the play without uttering a word during the whole performance.

Politics, A Hot
Topic: After watching the play, everybody was seen discussing politics and its effects. A few like Rohini, Madhu and Rashmi were seen appreciating the actors' performances. Nagendra and Trilochan Nigam also discussed the play among themselves. Mukesh Sharma and Sanjay Dixit presented the mementoes to the artist at the end of play. It seemed as if Kalpana had walked in for the play right after a shopping spree as she carried a huge bag with her, while Rohini carried a huge bouquet with her.

Is it possible that a book can save your life ?

If you don't believe then then read this-------------------------

"This book has really saved my life," Paul Gascoigne once said of his
autobiography, Gazza: My Story. The great midfielder was speaking
metaphorically of course – but his assertion begged another urgent
question: could a book save one's life in literal terms, too?
Specifically, could it stop a bullet?

It's exactly this question that American short-story collective
Electric Literature set about answering last week. In a video posted
on YouTube, Electric asked, via its spokesman, comedian Tom Shillue:
"Of all the big books that came out in 2010, which would be the most
likely to protect you in the event of a shooting?"

Up before the firing squad were David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns
of Jacob de Zoet (480 pages); Jonathan Franzen's Freedom (562); Rick
Moody's The Four Fingers of Death (736); Adam Levin's The Instructions
(1,030); Joshua Cohen's Witz (800); and a Kindle (several thousand
kilobytes).

With more than 1,000 pages, and a solid hardback cover, you might
think The Instructions would be the most reliable
book-cum-body-armour. You'd be wrong. The bullet blows a hole so big
Shillue can shove his finger through it – and he's appalled.

Franzen's Freedom doesn't fare any better. Meticulously proof-read it
may have been – Franzen had the first editions recalled because of a
minor error – but it's certainly not bullet-proof. Indeed,
post-shooting, the book looks like those withdrawn first editions:
pretty pulped.

The Kindle, The Thousand Autumns, and Moody's The Four Fingers of
Death – "aptly named", Shillue points out – are similarly
unprotective. Thank heavens, then, for Joshua Cohen's Witz. "It's
almost intact!" notes Shillue, picking pieces of bullet out of the
back pages.

Of course, if you really wanted some surefire literary armour, you'd
be best off putting a Bible in your breast pocket. In 2007, a US
soldier serving in Iraq claimed he was saved from a sniper bullet by
none other than the Good Book.

"KUSUM" was a Beautiful Short Story by Munshi Premchand

Munshi Premchand (Urdu: منشی پریم چند), (Born on July 31, 1880– Death
on October 8, 1936) was a famous writer of modern Hindi-Urdu
literature. He is generally recognized in India as the foremost
Hindi-Urdu writer of the early 20th century.

The main characteristic of Premchand's writings is his interesting
story-telling and use of simple language. His novels describe the
problems of the rural peasant classes. He avoided the use of highly
Sanskritized Hindi (as was the common practice among Hindi writers),
but rather he used the dialect of the common people.

Munshi Premchand’ Story SADGATI turns 30 Years

SATYAJIT RAY's adaptation of Premchand's critically acclaimed short
story 'Sadgati' is completing 30 years in 2011. Satyajit Ray is
credited with taking Indian cinema to the global sphere where he could
ignite sensibilities. His contributions as a poet apart from being an
ace filmmaker gave cinema new dimensions. His strength of deep vision,
lively presentation and research of historical facts are even today
emulated by several filmmakers across the globe.

Satyajit Ray's Filmography :

Pather Panchali (1955) – Produced by government of West Bengal.
Aprajito (1956) -Produced by Epic Films

Paras Patthar (1958) The Philosopher's Stone or the Paras Pathar was
produced by Pramod Lahiri. The film was inspired from Parsuram's short
story with same name.

Jal Saghar (The music room) (1958)- Ray himself produced the film.
Apur Sansar (The world of Appu) (1959)-Satyajit Ray was himself as producer.

Devi (The Goddess) – Ray himself produced the film. Inspired from
Prabhat Kumar's short story with same name (1960)

Teen Kanya (Three daughters) (1961)-Based on Tagore's three short
stories, Postmaster, Monihara and Sampati.

Rabindra Nath Tagore (1961)-Produced by Films division. Government of India.

Kanchenjunga (1962)-Produced by NCA Productions.

Abhijan (The Expedition) (1962)Produced by Abhijiatrik. The film is
based on Tarashankar Banerjee's novel with similar name.

Mahanagar (The Big city) – Produced by R.D. Bansal and Co (1963).The
film is based on Narendra Nath Mitra's short story Abataranika.

Charulata (1964) – Based on Rabindra Nath Tagore's novel Nasjanirh

Two(1964) – Based on Satyajit Ray's own original screenplay; the film
was produced by Eso World

Nayak (The Hero) (1966) – Produced by R.D. Bansal and Co.

Chiria Khana (Zoo) – Produced by Star productions (1967). It was
inspired from Sarannindu's Novel with same name.

Gopie Gyne Bagha Byne (The Adventures og Gopie & Bagha)(1968) – It was
produced by Poornima Pictures, the film was inspired from Upendra
Kishore's story with similar Name.

The Inner Eye (1972) – Produced by Government of India's Films division.

Sonar Kella (The Golden Fortress) (1974) – Produced by Government of
West Bengal. Ray made the film on a book by himself with similar name.

Shatranj Ke Khiladi (1980) – Produced by Devki Chitra's Productions;
film was based on Premchand's Short story with similar title.

Sadgati (1981) – Produced by Doordarshan , Sadgati was based on
Premchand's short story with similar title.

Hirak Rajar Deshe (The Kingdom of Diamonds) (1980) – Produced by
Government of West Bengal.

Ghare Baire(1984) (The Home and the World) – NFDC,Government of India.

Sukumar Ray (1989) – Produced by Government of West Bengal. Attributed
to Ray's multi-faceted father.

Ganashatru (1989) (An Enemy of People)- Produced by NFDC,Government of India.

Agantuk (1991) (Stranger) – Produced by NFDC, Government of India.