Indian Writing in English

 Indian Writing in English

Hello, I am Emisha Ravani. Writing this blog as the thinking activity which is given by Yesha Bhatt ma’am for the unit of Indian writing in English. In this blog I am going to try to give the answers of given questions in the task. Click here to get the question from the teacher's blog.

Write a note on Raghunathan's views of Indian Culture.

"Change is easy, and as dangerous as it is easy, but stagnation is no less dangerous." Write a note on Raghunathan's views of change.

One of our great journalists, N. Raghunathan of the Hindu became, late in life, the columnist who wrote under 'Sotto Voce and signed himself as 'Vighneswara'. After a life-time of train ing in the exacting discipline of expression in a difficult foreign language, Raghunathan now revealed himself as the perfect humanist and the flawless literary craftsman. As the months and years passed, the 'Sotto Voce' weekly essays, with their tone of quiet assurance and look of effortless ease, became the standard bearer of traditional values and robust sanity in a world of noisy slogans and deafening cries. Raghunathan's was usually the conservative, unpopular, 'diehard' view; his assent with tradition was apt to assume the tone of dissent from current notions of progress; and yet his views couldn't be dismissed as of no con sequence, for the undertones of assent and dissent came with an accent of authority that compelled attention if not acquiescence. The elephant god 'Vighneswara' of the Hindu pantheon is both massive in bulk and slow in gait, but he has an infallible skill in works, he has a steady and clear and whole view of what he has a sense deigns to see, and he has a sense of unruffled commitment to the tasks on hand. He is at once the perfect guide to the world of knowledge and the perfect dispeller of the obstacles to right knowledge. There was thus a certain challenge in Raghunathan's assumption of 'Vighneswara' as his nom-de-plume, but we can now see that the name wasn't taken in vain.

Raghunathan discontinued the 'Sotto Voce' feature a decade ago, but the series of essays has been collected since in the volumes Sotto Voce: The Coming of Freedom (1959), Our New Rulers (1961), The Avadi Socialists (1964) and Planners' Paradise (1970). He has also published Reason and Intuition in Indian Culture (1969), being his Madras University extension lectures, but the 'essay' seems to be his real forte. Of Bacon's 'essays' it has been said that they might be Minerva's own lucu brations. Of the best essays in the 'Sotto Voce' collections too it could be said that they might be the Elephant God's own sallies of the mind. Whatever the subject-economics, politics, education, social life, literature, music, philosophy-it is touched with the seal of universality. Reading these hundreds of exercises in temporaneous comment after the lapse of many years, one can see the ribbon of stern purpose running through them all. Beneath the superfices of contemporary life and the flare-up of sharp opinion and violent action, there is the deep underground river not immediately seen but real all the same which is the true source of vegetation and life on earth. The culture of the people the complex of swabhava, swadharma, swatantra, swarajya that is the true index of this culture-has been the slow creation of the ages, and may not now be crudely tampered with except at the risk of our total discomfiture. Indian 'spiri tuality' isn't something opposed to life and world affirmation. Spirituality is an awakening to the inner or true Reality of our being, and once we have our feet on the Ground of Reality, our everyday movements will be steady with an instinct for poise and a sense of direction. But how does one achieve con tact with the Ground? Reason is a wonderful analytical instru ment, but the Base eludes it. Hence the need to invoke the higher-than-mind faculty, which for want of a better term we call intuition. Once the contact with the Ground has been

established, reason may be left to steer the surface movements with sureness and ease. This alliance between intuition and reason -this clue to enlightened and wise living-Raghunathan calls viveka. Without the continual exercise of viveka, man would be but a forked animal, a siege of contradictions and frustrations. The integrated' man is one who has achieved a harmony between himself and the world, his inner and his outer life, his thought and his word. On the other hand, like the plane that zigzags when taxi-ing and somersaults when taking off, the man afflicted with pramada-the man without viveka-has, a clouded con sciousness that knows neither right measure, matra, nor self restraint, dama, but is a prey to egoistic separativity and the misery arising out of it. The task of viveka is to maintain measure between the eternity that is Self and the manifoldness of the phenomenal play. In literature, the particular is so seized with sensibility that the particular itself becomes charged with uni versality. Literature makes such a feat of transcendence possible because of the alliance of creative imagination and deep sensibi lity, which correspond to the two terms of intuition and reason. Just as viveka in action and behaviour lies, not in running away from life's responsibilities, but in mastering and exceeding them, so too aesthetic experience is meant to be, not an escape from life, but rather a seeking after quintessential life, being absorbed in it, and distilling a joy from it akin to the Bliss of Brahman. In setting forth this argument in his lectures, Raghunathan has loaded every rift with the ore of apt scriptural citation. It is the statement of his faith as a Hindu and as a sahridaya, and this is a helpful point of reference to understand the musings and animadversions and gentle exhortations in the 'Sotto Voce'. The Church, the Academy, the Uni versity have at different times fulfilled the role of preserver of the values of culture without preventing legitimate change and healthy growth. Dr. F. R. Leavis says rightly that the University is 

...society trying to preserve and develop a continuity of conscious ness and a mature directing sense of value-a sense of value informed by a traditional wisdom. The Universities are recognized symbols of cultural tradition-of cultural tradition still conceived as a directing force, representing a wisdom older than modern civilization and having an authority that should check and control the blind drive onward of material and mechanical development.

Write a note on how Kaikini differs from other Indian poets in his poems.

One other poet who moved, in the course of a few years, from one form of utterance to another was P. R. Kaikini. His Flower Offerings (1934) had the sub-title "Prose-Poems on Truth, Beauty and Nature", and it was followed by Songs of a Wanderer: Prose Lyrics (1936). The influence of Tagore was evident:

Yesterday, when my young heart went to bed, it was full of joy, life, love and hope. 

But this morning, when I awoke from strange dreams, I found my heart was wound up with the restless shadows of a struggle within and the vaster darkness of a struggle without, blinded in a storm of blood and water.

The mood soon changed, and Kaikini, instead of singing of "joy and dynamic life", began to scream about "blood and war", and rhythmic prose gave place to free verse. This Civilization (1937), Shanghai (1939). The Recruit (1940), The Snake in the Moon (1942) and Look on Undaunted (1944) were the recordations of Kaikini's response to the changes on the Indian or world scene in the wake of the rake's progress of the Nazis and the militarists and the rape of the masses everywhere. This poetry, wrote Michael Roberts, "looks out at the world of science, politics, and everyday affairs, and it expresses a passionate sense of right and wrong". A natural calamity like the Quetta earthquake of 1935, the sufferings of embattled Shanghai in 1937, the war that Hitler precipitated in 1939, the nadir of human fortunes in 1942-these were Kaikini's themes, and what he saw in this developing world. situation was only disintegration and chaos:

Rivers of blood clotting and germ-infested germ-infested and clotting clotting Rivers and rivers of blood blood warm beating human blood rotting rotting... Time was when wonder shone supreme in our eyes But alas! today shattered and broken we fall. 

In the post-war Poems of the Passionate East (1947), more hopeful notes could be heard, for it looked as though the war ravaged waste land was to be cultivated after all.

In the prefatory note to his the night is heavy (1943), Krishan Shungloo, then a student at Oxford, explained that the "irregular pace of the verse" was chosen deliberately, being "best suited to the violence of our time and the interpretation of my moods. There are 39 poems, numbered but not titled; no rhymes, no capital letters, no punctuation marks; no clutching at false hopes, no spouting forth of cheap sentiment; it is the moan of disillution, naked and unashamed

in courting life i have wedded despair…

i too have rotted in flesh and spirit crucified my love on a harlot's bed

fraulein i mean men and women wearing the mask of life the dead souls of our civilization . . .

we are the god's jest

the cryptic joke

we doubt and have no answer …

Write a critical note on the poem of Nissim Ezekiel.

Nissim Ezekiel-English is his mother tongue, as it is Dom Moraes's has published five volumes of verse so far: A Time to Change (1951), Sixty Poems (1953), The Third (1959), The Unfinished Man (1960) and The Exact Name (1965). He also edited for a time Poetry India. An artist who is willing to take pains, to cultivate reticence, to pursue the profession of poetry with a sense of commitment, Ezekiel's poems are as a rule lucid-a merit these days-and are splendidly evocative and satisfyingly sensuous. In his first two volumes, persons and places, memories and situations, literary echoes and moments of vision, all inspired Ezekiel to poetic utterance. He was painfully and poignantly aware of the flesh, its insistent urges, its stark ecstasies, its disturbing filiations with the mind. In his later poetry, however, there is revealed a more careful crafts manship, a more marked restraint and a colder, a more con scious intellectuality, than in the first two volumes. There is a gain in quality and integrity, and he is able to achieve conversational directness and ease without losing himself in discursiveness. Obscurity and mere angularity are avoided, and beauty and bareness of statement often go together. The discipline of rhyme and regular stanza form is not shirked, except where special effects are intended, as for example in 'Memo for a Venture':

Not power nor success not popularity but principle,

a point of view, a passion

like Alexander's

and something of the saint,

from these come plenitude Probe and prodigality song grivig v in gestures of greatness.

In other poems there is bold yet apt phrasing, a verbal sting too when called for, occasionally even a touch of the frivolous or ludicrous (as in 'Very Indian Poem in Indian English'), and general competence in craftsmanship. Although there are hints of sensuality in some of the poems, that is at least not served up as something nobly spiritual. There is a vague striving after wisdom-in the latest volume, there is even a pull towards philosophy-there are feeble attempts at prayer and there are intermittent throbs of frustration. Growing old is shedding illusions, and perhaps hugging new ones. Ezekiel would like us to think that he is wading through middle age, experienc ing the anguish (in Yeats's words) of nd a vol Lo

Ins for The unfinished man and his pain Brought face to face with his own clumsiness… 

Youth's certitudes on the hither shore, mellowed age's unhurried stock-takings on the other shore; and, in between, the trying thirties and the tedious forties and fifties. In a sense, of course, it's man's destiny to be for ever evolving, and hence to be unfinished'. There is a movement, a growth; something is gained. but something is lost also. If the intellect acquires a sharper edge something else perhaps imagination, perhaps hope or self-confidence-suffers in consequence. Between the motion und the act falls the shadow, and so poems like 'Urban and Enterprise' become images of frustration:

It started as a pilgrimage,

Exa ting minds and making all The burdens light. The second stage

Explored but did not test the call. The sun beat down to match our rege.

The pilgrimage has become a weary trek, and when the goal is reached,

We hardly knew why we were there.

The trip has darkened every face,

Our deeds were neither great nor rare. Home is where we have to gather grace

It may be described as a miniature Abubusis; fancy-fed, the goal is alluring; but the process of reaching it empties the victory of its glamour and glory. A Morning Walk' sees the poet wading through Bombay (it could of course be any Indian city), and it is a mortifying experienced : 

Barbaric city sick with slums,

Deprived of seasons, blessed with rains, (Ear) Its hawkers, beggars, iron-lunged, (Tar) or Processions led by frantic drums. A million purgatorial lanes,) anch And child-like masses, many-tongued, be things whose wages are in words and crumbs.

The recurring note in Ezekiel's recent poems is the hurt that urban civilization inflicts on modern man, dehumanizing him, and subjecting his verities to pollution and devaluation. What is offered is dead-sea fruit, what we confront is the Medusa stare. Is there no remedy, then?

The pattern will remain, unless you break It with a sudden jerk...

There is a tautness and austerity in Ezekiel's best verse, and although the thorn of irony pricks now and then, the total effect is cathartic.

“India is not a country”, says Raja Rao, “India is an idea, a metaphysic.” Explain with examples.

It is the unique role of Indo-Anglian literature both to derive from and to promote and all India consciousness. It is perhaps cynocal to talk of ‘national identity’ and of oneness with the mother at a time when the forces have been let loose and linguistic and communal patients are in all over the country.

As Sri Aurobindo pointed out in the article in the Vande Mataram sixty years ago, “the sap that keeps it alive is the realization of the motherhood of God in our country, the vision of the mother, the perpetual contemplation, adoration and service of the mother”. Gandhiji too said at about the same time that the ancient Hindus saw that India was one undivided land so made by nature, that India was one nation, and to bring this home to the people they established holy places in different parts of India.

Our national epic, The Ramayana, is the epic of India; the Mahabharata is a veritable grammar of national literature, and even in Raja Ji’s abridged version in English, it has done a great deal to project a consciousness of ‘national identity.

Post-independence literature in India is rather full of muffled voices or historical cries, and the average writer’s world is filled too much with the irritations, excitements, and frustration of the movement. but there have been expectations too. Bhabani Bhattacharya’s ‘A Goddess name Gold’ is a call of Fidelity and faith addressed to the new Indian nation. In the Mahabharata all roads lead to Kurukshetra; In The Serpent and the Rope, all Road likewise lead to Benares, the eternal city on the banks of a holy river, Ganga. and so Raja Rao says “India is not a country, India in an idea of a metaphysic".

Thank you!