Dilip Chitre is no more. His works are with us. Will be with us as they are so good. His voice, so intense about poetry and art. So sharp and unhesitating about the work of writing. His keen cultural mind will be with us. Dilip Chitre, Arun Kolatkar, and a few others did work the significance of which is yet to be properly understood. Their entire movement within literary/cultural ’sub’culture (rather than the highway of official literature) is very intriguing. Slowly I hope we will make sense and learn from it. Preserve it too.

My friend Prasad writes this as a kind of obit.

Dear friends,

I’m in total shock after just receiving the terribly sad news that one of my heroes and friends, Dilip Chitre, passed away early this morning (Thursday) in Pune. He was 71 and had been struggling with cancer over the past year.

Below is a short piece, with a great photo of the man at his casual best:

http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/renowned_poet_dilip_chitre_passes_away.php

One of the hardest parts of getting this kind of news is of that its reminder that another generation is passing on. Dilip’s foremost peer, Arun Kolatkar, passed away in 2004, and this past year we lost two major Indian critics, Bhalachandra Rajan and Meenakshi Mukherjee. Others of Dilip’s millieu (like Namdeo Dhasal) are also not doing so well health-wise. This is also the generation of South Asian artists who did things purely for the love of it; there was no real money (let alone fame) to be made in this field when they started out in the sixties and seventies.

I am more shocked, than sad. I was just talking about him yesterday with a friend, advising that she meet him while she’s in India. I was also planning to purchase his most recent two books online, and have been thinking of him and his family while reading Dom Delillo’s White Noise, which references the Bhopal tragedy that happened 25 years ago; I believe Dilip and his family were in Bhopal at time, and a few years back they lost their son (who’s probably age) due to health issues that  they fear were related to that horrible event.

In fact, he was on my mind this morning, and I was thinking about how nice it would be meet him again on my next trip to India, after I am done my PhD and with both Soumil and Sheila this time. All such hopes will remain unfulfilled, and so be it.
Dilip left us all a great legacy of poetry (English and Marathi), translations, film and paintings. I am also fortunate to have two cassettes of a recorded conversation that he and I had when I met him last time in 2006, and in  which he expressed many ideas that I would have otherwise not seen in print. The  urgency of going through this material feels that much stronger now than ever.

I didn’t mean to turn this into an obituary, but now that I have, I’ll just say this: the work of Dilip Chitre (to which I would never have known about were it not for  my dear friend and mentor, Jayant Deshpande, in Pune) is single-handedly responsible for providing me with a perspective on my Maharashtrian heritage, one that I would never have known about from family or community peers, here or back home. It was  a perspective devoid of nostalgia or sentimentality, and though often drenched in irony, skepticism and profanity, it was also one of deep humanism. I rediscovered
Marathi culture through Dilip’s work, and it’s led me to rediscover other aspects of India and South Asian culture. In short, the work that I do as a student of literary criticsm and postcolonial theory would not be the same were it not for this set of influences.

For those of us who knew Dilip, let us all pray (however we may) for the journey of his soul, and the peaceful mourning of his widow, Viju.

And for those who did not, I highly suggest you put one of  Dilip Chitre’s books or translations on your reading list.

peace,
Prasad

 

Dilip Chitre, RIP

We will miss you, passionate poet, tuka’s friend.

 

Lukacs, Tagore, Gandhi

Reading Lukacs’ reflections on Tagore one would be reminded of the harm that a colonial atmosphere could bring upon a mind irrespective of ideological alignments. It is silly simply to say Lukacs is blinded by colonial optics. What however is significant is the intellectual apparatus available to Lukacs, or better still, that Lukacs chose to avail himself, is incapable of cognising significance beyond certain European structures of views and feelings.

It would be interesting to read Amartya Sen on Tagore after reading Lukacs. Here is Sen, a fellow Bengali, who finds in Tagore a vision of multiculturalism. Both are good reads.

George Lukacs on Tagore:

Tagore himself is — as imaginative writer and as thinker — a wholly insignificant figure. His creative powers are non-existent; his characters pale stereotypes; his stories threadbare and uninteresting; and his sensibility is meagre, insubstantial. He survives by stirring scraps of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita into his works amid the sluggish flow of his own tediousness.

Read more.

Amartya Sen on Tagore:

Rabindranath did come from a Hindu family—one of the landed gentry who owned estates mostly in what is now Bangladesh. But whatever wisdom there might be in Akhmatova’s invoking of Hinduism and the Ganges, it did not prevent the largely Muslim citizens of Bangladesh from having a deep sense of identity with Tagore and his ideas. Nor did it stop the newly independent Bangladesh from choosing one of Tagore’s songs—the “Amar Sonar Bangla” which means “my golden Bengal”—as its national anthem. This must be very confusing to those who see the contemporary world as a “clash of civilizations”—with “the Muslim civilization,” “the Hindu civilization,” and “the Western civilization,” each forcefully confronting the others. They would also be confused by Rabindranath Tagore’s own description of his Bengali family as the product of “a confluence of three cultures: Hindu, Mohammedan, and British”.¹

Rabindranath’s grandfather, Dwarkanath, was well known for his command of Arabic and Persian, and Rabindranath grew up in a family atmosphere in which a deep knowledge of Sanskrit and ancient Hindu texts was combined with an understanding of Islamic traditions as well as Persian literature. It is not so much that Rabindranath tried to produce—or had an interest in producing—a “synthesis” of the different religions (as the great Moghul emperor Akbar tried hard to achieve) as that his outlook was persistently non-sectarian, and his writings—some two hundred books—show the influence of different parts of the Indian cultural background as well as of the rest of the world.

Amartya Sen: “Tagore and His India”

Read more

Tagore links:

Free Tagore books at Project Gutenberg.

Tagore special issue of Parabaas journal.

Buy Gitanjali at Amazon.

Tagore on Gandhi buy from Flipkart

Ashis Nandy’s discussion of the divergence between the attitude toward nationalism in Tagore and Gandhi is interesting. His book on this is: “Illegitimacy of Nationalsim: Rabindranath Tagore and Politics of Self.”

 

Asserting atheism

A group of atheist organisations, Big Apple Coalition of Reason, is getting

from: cnn.com

active in raising awareness about living without god. Some of us might feel it is time atheists started to spread rationalism a little more actively and visibly. This organisation has planned a program at the busiest junction in New York – the New York Subway station with posters that assure a happy life without the aid of divine crutches.

More here.

 

Does Obama deserve Nobel? Have your say

from: Indian Express

When Obama was racing to become the first Black US President, and when he achieved it, the idea of hope for the humanity, of working on the basis of idealism, of seeing and solving problems, all these got revived. Obama’s own rhetoric of  ‘we can’ was the main impetus. Also the fact that it was a historical first.

What was surprising was that this idea of linking hope with Obama’s election was not limited to US, nor to the media. A wide spectrum of people in other parts of the world felt Obama’s election is a corrective step in US politics. The sheer enthusiasm among people to go with Obama’s hope was amazing. Here is a link to one such view.  In India too there were debates about who can be the Indian Obama.

More to the point is the revival of a positive politics of caring. Two terms of Bush in US had driven the world to hopelessness. Obama seemed to set the terms afresh. He became an icon of hope. The ‘we can’ campaign became more than an election campaign. It became a new message for many. The callous monetary logic and the skeptical vision was never challenged as successfully as the Obama phenomena did.

At this point, Obama as US Prez, hope is still breathing, several people sigh with relief at his administration, his approach to issues. Yet, Nobel?

Isn’t it a bit too much too soon? I for one feel Obama is still a promise. But Nobel is given to achieved results. On that count, hopefully by the time he is through Obama will have much to boast of, but right now he is still ‘work in progress’.

Read this opinion.

 

Banavasi vistas

Banavasi is a major historical site in the Uttara Kannada district. After Varanasi, Banavasi is supposed to be the oldest city of India. Banavasi was the capital of the Kadamba dynasty. Now it is known for the Madhukeshwara temple, built perhaps in 9th century. Kadamba kings are the first royal dynasty of Karnataka. They established their empire in 345 A.D. and ruled for nearly two centuries.

Pampa, the ancient Kannada poet, regarded as the first Kannada poet, hails from here. Dr Jyotsna Kamat has an informative piece on her site.

A few pictures of the temple at Banavasi.

photo: kamalakar

photo: kamalakar

 

Jayant Kaikini’s poem Bobby

It is no secret that I am an unabashed fan of Jayant Kaikini who writes poetry and fiction in Kannada. He has such a fresh pair of eyes with which he sees so much that I can never see. Well, see his poem Bobby for example (in my translation). If my translation displeases you, do comment, I will work on it.

Bobby

* Jayant Kaikini

Have you conversed with dogs?

Rubbing your cheeks against their

striped, spotted throbbing throats,

have you listened to their hot breathed exuberance?

Have you felt slighted as it eloped

with a bitch during mating season

ignoring the feed and

you too?

It is angrrrry at somebody in the deserted backyard -

standing with woof woof breathless ado

tongue in a tizzy, then, the moment

you touch its back like cooled off milk

it begins to soften, have you experienced it?

Have you felt proud

when it barked by mistake at you

and in utter remorse weaved itself around your feet?

Once, limping, mewling, thigh-wound bleeding,

bitten by someone, it comes to you,

lies near you in pain lifting all four,

tear line at eye’s edge,

snivelling every time medicine is applied,

whining at night, growling at each touch;

have you felt scared at this

strange deformity,

been melted by the wagging tail?

A visitor warns, it may be rabid, the tail is too rigid.

Frightened you make queries, hire a gun man and

get him to take aim concealed and

shoot.

At the moment of the shot

have you noticed its frantic gaze facing the cocked gun?

In those eyes – distant wrecked ships – dying days -

rain soaked cemeteries – sounds… didn’t you hear?

In those eyes, oblivious of even your limbs,

didn’t you merge with the world?

 

Back to blogging

I have been away from blogging on sotosay for so long that it would appear i am no more. well now i want to get back.

 

Tipu Sultan, Kannada Nationalism and Communal Design

D. Shankar Murthy, a minister in the Karnataka Government, initiated a public debate surrounding Tipu Sultan. I do not have access to all the opinions expressed in this debate. I have followed some of the debate in the Kannada daily, Vijaya Karnataka. It does seem a royal sling match, with Kannada writers and intellectuals reacting to each other with the readers throwing in their bit.

The moot question is whether Tipu Sultan deserves to be respected in Karnataka. The minister apparently said something to the effect that Tipu was against Kannada and hence Kannadigas should not bother about him much. The debate of course makes Tipu’s religious faith the core issue. One set of opinion, expressed in detail by the novelist S. L. Bhairappa, is that he was anti-Hindu, anti-Kannada, and was no way a patriotic figure; another set of opinion, with Girish Karnad holding the brief (he has a play on Tipu, published recently), which says that the anti-Tipu sentiments are a sign of the growth of Hindu fundamentalism in Karnataka.

Both parties take antagonistic positions and hence it is not really a discussion. As it is with these issues, there would be no final word on it. Controversy about the Datta mandir resurfacing again, this debate may end soon, with media busy with things more juicy.

It is true that the question involves the issue of historical interpretation. But, I would be interested in the question of the interpretation of the history of such a controversy. The historical debate, if competent historians participate, may or may not conclude. (Btw, a group of historians from all over
India, have released a public statement asserting that Tipu was not anti-Kannada; but the opposite party wouldn’t hear any of it, as they would term these historians as leftists). But, we can see some reasons why such controversies are generated and sustained by media and other vested interests. Few would really bother about whether or not Tipu was anti-Kannada, and some would say, if he was, so what, and if he wasn’t so what. I think, political class in Karnataka are smelling elections. So the frying pan is hot. It is useful if polarizing issues such as Muslim Tipu vs. Kannada or
Belgaum for Karnataka kind of issues are on the top of peoples mind. I suspect, with the kind of noise on Kannada gaurava, border issue etc. the present dispensation will rush to the electorate soon. There is something apart from the elections coming, I think, something more ominous: communal riots.

Oh! These political gimmicks. And look at us, taking their baits and troubling our little heads over the crumbs of sensationalism that they throw at us. Recently somewhere, there was a report on how Karnataka is presently the site for
Gujarat experiment. No wonder, there is a hurry to invoke the Muslim kings and their anti-Kannada stances. After all, in Karnataka, only Ram cannot wean the electorate; mix Ram with Kannada nationalism, lo, you have a heady mix for some bloody drama on the street. Even as I write this I think tools for the street fight are getting readied. In the Tipu sultan debate righitists are busy with complaints about Muslims who speak Urdu at home and not Kannada. Surely, if the B.J.P. gets its Ram + Kannada nationalism right, as Mody did in his second innings, they can almost get the assembly maths right.

Shame has no limits when power play is in full swing. Kill, oh! Kill, for the elections are near. That seems to the real ‘mantra’. 

 

Working Class and Modernity

I want to contradict in this post the common belief that the elites in our society modernized themselves first and only later did the poor and the working classes follow the path of modernism. I want to suggest that it is the poor and the working classes who opened up to modernity first and the modernism of the elite is merely novelty and not modern.

When did modernity come to the working classes is a question that raises some interesting issues. Even as the debate on the nature and origins of modernity continues, the experience of modernity by different social groups becomes an issue that refracts that debate interestingly. Arjun Appadurai has pointed out in his book Modernity at Large (1997), that “Modernity now seems more practical and less pedagogic, more experiential and less disciplinary than in the fifties and sixties when it was mostly experienced through the propaganda apparatus of the nation-states and their great leaders.” He goes on to argue that for the working classes and the poor the experience of modernity is more recent and made available through cultural modes like film, television, music etc. I like the point about the difference between the way modernity is accessed by the elite and the poor: one mainly through high discourses the other through mass media.

In Appadurai’s thesis there lurks an old issue about modernity: the time lag, i.e. the gap between the fifties and sixties when elite access modernity and the 80s and 90s when the working classes do. In other words, by the time the poor arrive to modernity the elite have gone ahead or have milked modernity; when the poor are accessing modernity, in the 80s and 90s therefore elite are elsewhere (postmodernity?). Now this poses a question about the efficacy of thinking in such a chronology. I think the time lag that informs this thesis is problematic. While the elite themselves are ‘late-entrants’ to modernity in relation to the ‘West’, the working classes in India would be placed further back and thus within the nation-state the subjects are seen living in different time zones and multiple backwardness.

This time lag haunts many areas. For example technology, knowledge systems, health care etc. Leaving it at that, let me attend to the issue of lateness and what view of working class agency we find in Appadurai’s thesis. He seems to view the lateness as an absolute and in this book doesn’t enquire into the question of agency. I would like to wonder why the working classes / the poor / those travelers in the third class compartments and the mass that produce the great leaders, chose not to access modernity earlier. Has it got something to do with anti-modern political strategy? And what of those who did access modernity earlier and chose to access a certain sense of it. I am thinking of the great many Dalits who chose to follow Ambedkar and chose to convert along with him. In this we see an experience of modernity that is less tuned to economical and technological modernism but to a social theory. Here we see a notion of the modern as the moment of equality and the breakdown of the feudal hierarchical social stratification. The rejection of the social apparatus that is committed to stratification is one determinant of modernity.

Seen thus, we can say that experience of modernity is different for different people. Considered as a sociological phenomenon, modernity has to be seen with respect to a society’s commitment to reorganizing its internal relations, according greater stress on values that give impetus to movement and freedom rather than to sterility and submission.

The working class and the poor in fact were the first to stake claim on modernity in this sense. The elite modernism is a mechanical one and hence not a fundamental break from the earlier regimes of social organization. In fact, in as far as the elite society transformed the modern apparatus only to entrench the age-old rigidities; they hardly represent the ‘modern’.    

The proposition here is a bit polemical. There are many strands of historical and political inflections that it has to address for any serious negotiation of the issues touched upon. Here I only wish to state an extreme viewpoint and hope to move towards a more nuanced approach in further engagements.

 

Memory, Narrative and Radical Politics in South Asia

A narrative is an arrangement of memory – personal or impersonal in relation to the narrating individual. As an arrangement of memory, that a narrative betrays attitudes to past goes without saying. What is also true is that it betrays the attitude towards the present and future.

The selection of memory and its valuation within the narrative reveals on the one hand, the desire for retaining something of the past and on the other, a desire for changing something of the past. These two desires that drive the narrativising are contingent upon the nature of future desired. Seen thus, a narrative may be said to hanker after the bygones in a nostalgic manner or to want a violent revision of things so as the past is not repeated. In our reading of the narratives we might be able to distinguish between these two forms of desires. Now, when we see a narrative as a desire image, the question to ask would be about the nature of the memory.

On this issue, two kinds of politics may be easily noticed. One may be seen in narratives belonging to feminist, dalit, queer and such literary categories. The other may be seen in what is usually called the ‘mainstream’. In the former one hardly ever comes across a hankering for the past, except a particular type among them that recreate originary myths. In the latter category, we often come across nostalgia of an implicit or explicit kind. The former belongs to the genre of future-generation (in the sense of generating, producing the future), the latter to the past-regeneration. I mean to say, that feminist, dalit, queer and such narratives usually project a desire for change not only of the present (that may be common across these two types), but a rejection of the past too. In the mainstream narratives though the desire for changing the present may be found, it is likely that the alternative is seen in what was. Thus, these are two opposite tendencies: searching for a future of the present creation, and searching for a future that is a recreation of the past.     

In assessing the radicality of ‘mainstream’ narratives, we may examine its structure of memory to determine what tendency towards future is contained therein. A ‘mainstream’ narrative that calls for future-generation as against past re-generation, I think is radical as against the one that seeks to re-create past in the future.

This framework might be relevant in studying South Asian narratives, given the specific nature of its oppressive social structure. The past and the continuing oppressive apparatus of brahminical patriarchy in
South Asia renders memory being valued differently for the different social groups. In this context, the future-generation possesses greater significance than past re-creation. The politics of recovery is especially problematic in the South Asian context and its difference with the radical politics of future-generation is linked to the way past is approached.

Note that what I am trying to say here is purely speculative. I am aware that it is foolish to make such sweeping generalizations. It is better to make the kind of statements I have made here with reference to particular texts and also refer to particular discourses of past. However, I am only trying to think of a framework within which I can study how memory is approached in narratives in two distinct ways, and how their politics would be different.   

 

‘Twain shall never meet’

For a laugh, read Jug Suraiya at Times.

 

Back from Britain, I can report that the clash of civilisations is very much in evidence there. There is an unbridgeable divide between the locals and the visitor from the Indian subcontinent. And the schism has nothing to do with being Islamic or not… It’s far more fundamental, in the strict sense of the term: it’s the irreconcilable difference between those who wipe and those who wash. To paraphrase Kipling: East is lota, and West is TP/ And never the twain shall meet/ Not even when both stand presently/ At God’s great toilet seat… For the subcontinental knows, as an article of faith, that you can wipe and wipe till — to mix metaphors and anatomy — you are blue in the face but you’ll still be a dirty bum…