'Why Comparative Indian Literature?' by Sisir Kumar Das
This Blog-post is a response to the thinking activity task on 'Comparative Studies' given by our professor Dr.Dilip Barad Sir. To know more about Comparative Literary Studies, CLICK HERE.
The task assigned by our professor is to read the article and give an Introductory presentation on a particular topic with our group members. I, Divya Sheta, and Aamena Rangwala presented an article on 'Why Comparative Indian Literature?' by Sisir Kumar Das on 5 December 2022.
What is Comparative Literature:
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary,
Comparative Literature is the study of the interrelationship of the literature of two or more national cultures usually of differing languages and especially of the influences of one upon the other
sometimes: the informal study of literary works in translation
According to my point of view, Comparative Literature is not the study of any comparison between two texts, characters, themes, settings, and authors, but it is the study of two different literature and their culture, the people and their tradition, their environment through theoretical views. And for that, we should learn about the term of 'World Literature.
"Gothe did not tell us how to hasten the approach of world literature nor did he say what exactly it meant. But we assume that by Weltliterature he meant the memorable works in all language od world, rather than the assemblage of all literatures."
Sisir Kumar Das gave the definition of Comparative Literature,
Comparative literature emerged as a new discipline to counteract the notion of the autonomy of national literatures. Its ultimate goal, though it is doubtful whether that can ever be achieved, is to visualize the total literary activities of man as a single universe.
Here is the group presentation Youtube Video and Presentation is embedded.
Second Article: Comparative Literature in India by Amiya Dev.
Introductory Presentation Video on this article. Presented by Mayuri Pandya and Divya Paramar on 6 December 2022.
Introduction/Key Points:
In his article, "Comparative Literature in India," Amiya Dev bases his discussion on the fact that India has many languages and literatures thus representing an a priori situation and conditions of diversity. He, therefore, argues that to speak of an Indian literature in the singular is problematic. Nonetheless, Dev also observes that to speak of Indian literature in the plural is equally problematic. Such a characterization, he urges, either overlooks or obscures manifest interrelations and affinities. His article compares the unity and the diversity thesis and identifies the relationship between Indian commonality and differences as the prime site of comparative literature in India. He surveys the current scholarly and intellectual positions on unity and diversity and looks into the post-structuralist doubt of homogenization of differences in the name of unity. Dev also examines the search for common denominators and a possible pattern of togetherness and Dev underlines location and located inter-Indian reception as an aspect of interliterariness. It is t/here Dev perceives Indian literature, that is, not as a fixed or determinate entity but as an ongoing and inter literary process: Indian language and literature ever in the re/making.
Key Points:
In his article, Amiya Dev discusses the apriori location of comparative literature with regard to aspects of diversity and unity in India. His proposal involves a particular view of the discipline of comparative literature because he argues that in the case of India the study of literature should involve the notion of the inter-literary process and a dialectical view of literary interaction.
While we have a plurality of so-called major literature in India, we are confronted by a particular problem: Is Indian Literature, in the singular, a valid category, or are we rather speak of Indian literature in the plural?
The single-focus perspective is a result of both a colonial and a post-colonial perspective, the latter found in the motto of the Sahitya Akademi: "Indian literature is one though written in many languages"(Radhakrishnan)
In his opinion, an argument of unity in diversity is suspect, for they encroach upon the individualities of the diverse literatures. In other words, a cultural relativist analogy is implied here, the difference is underlined and corroborated by the fact that both writers and readers of particular and individual literatures are overwhelmingly concerned with their own literature and own literature only. It is from this perspective that to the Akademi's motto, "Indian literature is one though written in many languages" the retort is " Indian literature is one because it is written in many languages."
Gurbhagat Singh has been discussing the notion of "differential multilogue" (see Singh). He does not accept the idea of Indian literature as such but opts for the designation of literatures produced in India. For Singh, comparative literature is thus an exercise in differential multilogue. His insistence on the plurality of logoi is particularly interesting because it takes us beyond the notion of dialogue, a notion that comparative literature is still confined to. Singh's proposal of differential multilogue as a program will perhaps enable us to understand Indian diversity without sacrificing the individualities of the particulars.
However, poststructuralism understands difference as a notion of inclusion, that is, mutuality. Thus, it cannot accept the single-focus category "Indian" without deconstructing its accompanying politics. In other words, if the deconstruction of politics involves the weeding out of things excessively local or peripheral, it is appropriate because all value-loading is suspect. If, on the other hand, "Indian" is a mere description, a general signifier, then there is no need for the act of deconstruction.
Jaidev's notion of an Indian sensus communis is not that routine Indianness which we often encounter from our cultural ambassadors or in the West, that is, those instances of "national" and racial image formations that suggest homogeneity and result in cultural stereotyping. The concept of an Indian sensus communist in the context of Singh's differential multilogue or Jaidev's differential approach brings me to the question of situs and theory. That is, the "site" or "location" of the theory and of the theorist are important factors here.
Jaidev suggests in turn are rooted in a situs of the premodern age of Indian literatures (that is, in periods prior to the advent of print). Where Jaidev's structure is applicable, instead, is our contemporary literatures in India because it is here that the danger of a oneness construction -- the process of nation-state construction -- looms.
Aijaz Ahmad's In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. Ahmad describes the construct of a "syndicated" Indian literature that suggests an aggregate and unsatisfactory categorization of Indian literature (see 243-85). Ahmad also rules out the often argued analogy of Indian literature with that of European literature by arguing that the notion of "European literature" is at best an umbrella designation and at worst a pedagogical imposition while Indian literature is classifiable and categorizable.
In Ahmad's argumentation, the problem is that in the "Indian" archive of literature, Indianness ultimately proves limited when compared with the differential litereture comprised in each of the twenty-two literatures recognized by the Sahitya Akademi.
An "Indian" archive of literature as represented by an "English" archive -- while non-hegemonious on the one hand by removal from a differential archive but hegemonizing by a latent colonial attitude on the other -- also reflects the official language policy of the government: English, while not included in the Indian Constitution, is still recognized as a lingua franca of government, education, etc. For example, until recently the government sponsored the National Book Trust, an entity entrusted with the task of inter-Indian translation by a process of a first translation into English followed by translation from that into the other languages.
V.K. Gokak and Sujit Mukherjee who were speaking of an Indo-English corpus of literature that was created out of English translations of major texts from major Indian languages.
Ahmad's concern is with the hegemony of English, although he does not suggest its abolition in a way which would be close to Ngugi's arguments. On the other hand, Gokak, Mukherjee, and Motilal Jotwani -- who was a committee member for drafting the above circular -- suggested to implement English as a function, owing to the ever-growing corpus of translations from the various Indian literatures into English, thus making this new corpus of Indo-English literature available to all.
Majumdar suggests that Indian literature is neither "one" nor "many" but rather a systemic whole where many sub-systems interact towards one in a continuous and never-ending dialectic.
However, the underlying and most important finding is a pattern of commonality in nineteenth-century Indian literatures. Das's work on the literatures of the nineteenth century in India does not designate this Indian literature a category by itself. Rather, the work suggests a rationale for the proposed research, the objective being to establish whether a pattern can be found through the ages. One age's pattern may not be the same as another age's and this obviously preempts any given unity of Indian literature. Thus, Das's method and results to date show that Indian literature is neither a unity nor is it a total differential.
Das's work is similar to K.M. George's two-volume Comparative Indian Literature of 1984-85 that was researched and published under the auspices of Kerala Sahitya Akademi.
Poetry, for instance, was discussed in terms of "traditional" and "modern" but as if traditional was exclusively Indian and modern the result of a Western impact.
The Gujarati poet Umashankar Joshi -- a supporter of the unity approach -- was the first president of the Indian National Comparative Literature Association, while the Kannada writer U.R. Anantha Murthy is the current president of the Comparative Literature Association of India in addition to being the president of Sahitya Akademi.
Conclusion/Concluding remark:
In the concluding part of the article, Amiya Dev assures the readers, scholars and the students that, the problematics of unity and diversity are not unique to India. He discussed that if, for an instance, Canadian diversity, it would have been from the outside, that is. from and Indian situs. Comparative Literature has taught us not to take comparison literally and it also taught us that theory formation in literary history is not universally tenable. He suggesting that we should first look at ourselves and try to understand our own situations as thoroughly as possible. Let us first give full shape to our own comparative literatures and then we will formulate a comparative literature of diversity in general.
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