Flipped learning - Prose writers and Poets

This Blog post is a response to Flipped learning task on  Prose writers and Poets given by our professor Ms.Yesha Bhatt ma'am. To know more about this task, CLICK HERE. 

Task No.1 Three Prose Writers

Indian writing in English or Indo-English is a term that is reflected in literature written in English by Indian authors. It remarkably differs from Anglo-Indian literature which was created by Englishmen in India who were fascinated by her romantic and exotic charm. They made India the main theme of their writings. It is “for the most part, merely English literature marked by Indian local color.” Indian writing in English began much before the establishment of British colonial rule in India and has survived the collapse of the Empire. The resilience of Indian writing in English is largely due to the English education provided by the Christian missionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth century and the high adaptability of the Indian mind to Western education. Indian writing in English was able to mutate by combining typically Indian “feeling,” “emotion” and “experience” with the “discipline” imposed by English.” Here K.R.S.Iyenger mentioned these three prose writers:

Professor Radhakrishnan, the best-known of the three, is a philosopher-states- man with an international reputation, a scholar with a phenomenal memory, a resourceful and eloquent and effective speaker, and a voluminous writer with an uncanny flair for lucidity and epigrammatic strength.

Raghunathan, better known by his nom-de-plume Vighneswara, is a deep student of English and Sanskrit literature, and was for many years the leader-writer of the Hindu; but it was as the writer of the ‘Sotto Voce’ weekly causeries that he made a significant impact on the readers of Swatantra and Swarajya.

Nirad Chaudhuri, an “unknown Indian” till 1951 when his Autobiography made him famous, is a master of prose style, an intellectual who has the courage to stand aside and be different from the crowd, a critic of Indian society with an almost Swiftian capacity for making surgical probes. Each in his own way has tried to interpret Indian history and thought, and although their approaches are different, there can be no question about their integrity.

1. Write a note on S.Radhakrishnan's perspectives on Hinduism.

The double merit of the work was that it was an interpretation of Indian philosophy from within, and it was also an exposition of Indian philosophical thought in an idiom at once intelligible and attractive to the West. That he was no mere historian of Indian philosophy but also a thinker in his own right, that he was a Hindu for whom philosophy was not just a cloak but rather a way of life, a means of. understanding life and a force for changing life was presently revealed in his Upton Lectures (The Hindu View of Life, 1927) and the wide-ranging Hibbert Lectures (An Idealist View of Life, 1932). These lectures were addressed in the first instance to Christian audiences in the West. The apologist of the Hindu view of life – and of the ‘idealist’ view of life in terms mainly od Advaita Vedanta – had to speak in an idiom that could define the uniqueness of the Hindu and Vedantic view of life, yet insinuate its filiations with the Western Christian way of life.| He explained things with a lucid clarity that seemed to be almost deceptively simple:

The Hinduism of the Hindu View of Life is not Hinduism as it is, or ever has been; but as Professor Radhakrishnan would have it to be after he has remolded it nearer to his heart’s desire.

Radhakrishnan was bold enough to rethink the ends and means of human life from the wider perspective of traditional Hinduism and modem thought. There are no new questions in philosophy; the old questions are—What do I know? What ought I do? What may I hope for?—are as valid today as ever, but one’s answers need to be formulated in relation to contemporaneous urgency.

From the year 1900 to 1904, he attended the college, named Elizabeth Rodman Voorhees College in Vellore, which was run by an American Arcot Mission of the Reformed Church (of America). It was here, where dr. S. Radhakrishnan was introduced to the Dutch Reform Theology, which criticized the Hindu religion in more than one way by saying that Hinduism is intellectually incoherent and does not have any ethics. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan was proud of his Hindu religion and this criticism appeared to him as a crippling assault on his Hindu sensibilities (feelings). While living in Vellore, he married his distant cousin, named Sivakamu. They remained married for 50 years, till his wife died.

2. According to Radhakrishnan, what is the function of philosophy? 

An Idealist View of Life is unquestionably Professor Radha- Krishnan's most valuable contribution to constructive philosophy, for in it East and West meet creatively and achieve a voice of articulation intelligible to all. What is the function of philosophy? It is, says Radhakrishnan,

 “to provide us with a spiritual rallying center, a synoptic vision, as Plato loved to call it, a Samanvaya, as the Hindu thinkers put it, .... a spiritual concordat which will free the spirit of religion from the disintegration of doubt and make the warfare of creeds and sects a thing of the past”. The philosopher’s plain duty, then, is to “find out whether the convictions of the religious seers fit in with the tested laws and principles of the universe”. 

And this is what Radhakrishnan sets out to accomplish in his Hibbert Lectures. A good teacher, he knows the art of taking his listener from the familiar to the recondite. Thus, for example, about the Hindu theory of Karma:

The cards in the game are given to us. We do not select them. They are traced to past Karma, but we are free to make any call as we think fit and Quad only suit. Only we are limited by the rules of the game We are freer when we start the game than later on when the game has developed and our choices become restricted. But till the very end, there is always a choice... Even though we may not like the way in which the cards are shuffled, we like the game and want to play.

The whole work is verily a compelling spiral of argument in defense of the idealist view of life, for “it is this mysterious, unclear and inarticulate knowledge (of the universe as Spirit) that brings us closest to reality”

Task.2 The New Poets

Write a critical note on the poems by Nissim Ezekiel.

Nissim Ezekiel's poetry is noted for its ironic and often sarcastic treatment of the Indian middle class at its worst. In his early poems, such as "The Professor" and "The Patriot", Ezekiel pokes fun at the pretensions and materialism of the Indian middle class. In his later poems, such as "The Night of the Scorpion" and "The Community", Ezekiel addresses more serious themes, such as death, suffering, and the human condition. While Ezekiel's poetry is not always easy to understand, it is always thought-provoking and well worth the effort.

Ezekiel is a master of irony and satire, and his poems are often witty and biting criticisms of the Indian middle class. In "The Professor", for example, Ezekiel mocks the intellectual pretensions of a middle-class man who is more concerned with appearances than with substance. In "The Patriot", Ezekiel takes aim at the materialism and self-absorption of the middle class, satirizing the way in which they use patriotic rhetoric to justify their own selfish interests.

While Ezekiel's early poems are primarily concerned with poking fun at the foibles of the middle class, his later poems address more serious themes. "The Night of the Scorpion", for instance, is a dark and harrowing poem about a woman who suffers a scorpion bite and is saved by the selfless act of her husband. "The Community" is a poignant poem about the isolation and loneliness of the human condition, in which Ezekiel compares the human race to a "community of ghosts".

Ezekiel's poetry is not always easy to understand, but it is always thought-provoking and well worth the effort. His use of irony and satire is often biting, but it is also effective in highlighting the absurdity of the human condition. Ezekiel is a master of language, and his poems are beautiful and haunting explorations of the human condition.

Task No.3. Conclusion

What were the reasons that writers of Post-Independence Indian Writing in English preferred to write in English rather than their mother tongue? Explain with some examples.

Iyengar’s pioneering work in the creation of a history of Indian writing in English opened up new avenues of criticism and “these studies have done much to establish the parameters of a discussion of the nature and role of Indian writing in English including its form, its audience, and its effectiveness.” [14] The readership and production of numerous writings both in quality and quantity in vernacular languages in India is by far larger than the English counterpart. One has to assess the readership of Indian English writing which is at best nominal in India, the target thus seems to be the widely English-speaking western world. A few popular novels by Kipling, Kim, and The Jungle book became extremely popular but the perspective remained of the white man. E.M.Forster’s ‘A Passage to India’ provides an imperial writer’s ambivalent attitude towards the ‘other’, non-Eurocentric culture and the distrust is palpable.

One can argue that the earlier writers of English did write to a Christian western world, explaining almost apologetically India’s pluralism and trying to fit in the constraints demanded by English literature and are accused of “exoticizing” India to foreign readers. The readership issue of Indian English literature has assumed dimensions more varied than just simple publishing politics. Even now the debate continues and those who choose to write in English argue that English is also an Indian language and they know this language the best. They are accused by those writing in vernacular of not being in touch with the masses and aiming only for self-aggrandizement. Interestingly, a new generation of writers has slowly emerged that does not feel the need to provide a glossary for Indian vernacular terms or the Indian way of life. Desai reiterates the fact that “a new generation of Indian writes, addressing Indian subjects and items in a language taken from Indian streets newspapers, journals, and films, and a class of enterprising business who decided they were worth publishing – marked the ’80s and ’90s.”