Agyeya (1911-1987)
Nicola Pozza
T
he postmodern era of deconstruction and hybridism has witnessed the rise of an overall opposite tendency to seek primordial and exclusive identities in one’s “tradition”, even if these identities can hardly prove to be anything but purely hypothetical. As a result, this quest for national, cultural or linguistic identities has been, and continues to be, the subject of intense study and debate among social scientists and historians.1
Clearly, the relevance of a notion such as “national identity” requires careful examination. In this respect, analysing works by creative writers, who are for the most reluctant to construct essentialist categories, can certainly be rewarding. This might even be truer in the case of S. H. Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’ (1911-1987)2, one of the major Hindi writers of twentieth-century India, who had constantly regarded general and conventional categories — such as “Hinduism”, “Indianness”, or “Hindutva” — with much suspicion, and who was therefore not at all inclined to readily use ontological and essentialist concepts. And even when he declared himself to be, consciously, “Indian”, he never limited this identity to a fixed identity, depending on a specific region or society of India.3
Despite his natural reluctance towards such imposed identities, Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’ nevertheless wrote an essay called “Bhāratīyătā” (“Indianness”). This short essay, first published in 1960 in the collection Ātmanepada, questions the relevance of the common opinion, or doxa, that “Indianness” is “a particular spiritual quality which distinguishes Indians from the rest of humanity” (Vatsyayan 1965, p.29)4. Pointing out the evasiveness of such a definition, he pleads on the contrary for a personal and internal answer particular to each individual, “in order to give that tradition new life, to propel it forward with new vigor” (Vatsyayan 1965, p.29)5. Such a position, with its emphasis on the individual, seems a priori opposed to collective notions such as “nation” or “Indianness”. Nevertheless, despite, or rather because of this tension between the two poles (to paraphrase the topic of his famous poem “Nāc”), analysing the author’s texts in the light of these notions will be most interesting in order to examine whether any definition of “national identity” can emerge out of it.
I will first briefly look at some of Vatsyayan’s essays in order to outline a few important features proposed by the writer in relation to the so-called notion of “Indianness”. I will then analyse their presence and use in his second novel, Nadī ke dvīp (1951, translated in 1980 by the author into Islands in the Stream), and in a selection of poems, with the two following questions in mind: Does any notion of “Indianness” really emerge from them? And how do these texts deal with the tension between the writer’s constant emphasis on the individual’s freedom and the common idea of a cultural and national identity?
I intend to describe what emerges from a contemporary reading of his works with respect to our topic and to show the contrast between his continual emphasis on the need for a free and individualistic experience with regard to customs and widely shared opinions, and the (unconscious) bond and belonging to the Sanskritic culture and tradition that runs through his writings. To position myself in this debate about “identity”, I will borrow the words of the scholars Jean-Luc Racine and Stuart Hall respectively:
(1) I do not think that identity is always an illusion, but most certainly those who deny the ‘difficult identities’ or the ‘ambiguous identities’ too often make identity a trap, while they pretend to find the way of freedom or liberation through it. (Racine 2001, p.398, my translation)
(2) Perhaps instead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished act, […] we should think, instead, of identity as a ‘production’, which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation” (Hall 1990, p.222).
1 “Indianness” in Vatsyayan’s essays
In Vatsyayan’s essays, the question of “Indianness” – whenever it occurs – appears to be linked to a few recurrent topics: the notion of time; the connection between individuals and their society; the question of their freedom and the linguistic aspect of his texts.
The notion of time
This notion is at the core of the essay called “Bhāratīyătā”, which the author starts by stating that the doxa defines “Indianness” or the “soul of India” as “eternal” (Vatsyayan 1965, p.29). Confronting a sceptical listener with that conventional definition of Indianness, he then makes that common opinion criticise the sceptical listener – who can be seen, in fact, as the voice of the author:
Look! This man doesn’t understand or believe in the immortal Indian spirit! He’s unfamiliar with his own culture, the greatest inheritance of mankind. He’s broken himself away from the eternal soul of India. (Vatsyayan 1965, p.29)
However, and without rejecting the validity of the notion of “Indianness” and of its “essence”, Vatsyayan insists, in his usual Socratic way, in questioning general truths, on the grounds that “it is necessary that each individual ask [sic] this question [i.e. “what is Indianness”], find [sic] the answer within himself, and that he then absorb [sic] whatever new inspiration he can obtain” in order to give to his “tradition” a new life and to “propel it forward with new vigor” (1965, p.29). Therefore, despite his insistence on the individual nature of the answer to this question, he does not reject the very idea of an identity particular to India or to the Indian spirit. Of course, he does not take the common point of view for granted, and uses the remaining part of his essay to show how the “eternalistic” view of time leads to wrong conclusions.
This particular “feeling about eternity” (sanātana kī bhāvănā) is due, he continues, to the way the “scriptures” have depicted the divine lives and the span of the various “Ages” (yuga). But, concludes Vatsyayan, this “sense of the eternal is not a feeling for a long tradition in time, but is a feeling of the unreality of time” (1965, p.30).
The consequence of this feeling is that things occurring in that kind of time have become unreal too. This point of view on life has then given birth to a “feeling of acceptance” (svīkār kī bhāvănā), which conventionally constitutes, says Vatsyayan, the “second distinctive attribute of ‘Indianness’” (1965, p.30). These two conventional attributes of Indianness can only lead to inertia and to a static culture.
Besides the notion of time viewed as eternity the author also rejects historical time. Because of the scientific and historical perspective on reality, says Vatsyayan, this second notion of time has become omnipresent in the West and has actually “destroyed eternity” (1981, p.11). This idea is developed in a series of lectures on the theme of time given in 1972 and published as a collection of essays in 1981 (A Sense of Time). Herein Vatsyayan notes that none of these perceptions of time can fit with the personal experience of time, which is the hallmark of literature.
Against the two previous perceptions – time as eternity, which is unreal, and time as history, which is materialistic – he argues for “the conquest of time through immortality in the present – however short or rare such moments of beatitude may be” (1981, p.24; my emphasis). And he adds, a few pages later: “Eternity in the present context means timelessness, not infinite time. [It is equivalent to] the timelessness of a permanent Now” (1981, p.29).
What matters in this context, is the difference Vatsyayan postulates between the idea of infinite time, which remains unreal for the individual, and the timelessness of the permanent “Now”, gained only through personal experience.
Consequently, which conclusions does Vatsyayan draw from the widespread and common feelings he has underlined in his essay “Bhāratīyătā”? Although he cannot accept these feelings and the static tradition that, he claims, will necessarily result from them, he is neither willing nor ready to “conclude that Indian culture is unacceptable or that Indian tradition should be abandoned” (1965, p.31). Instead, he stresses, in the concluding paragraph, the need for:
a free thirst for truth which, […] though living in its own time, still looks ahead, not to a time without beginning nor to a time without end, but to that time ahead of us to which our own time gives birth and of which we are the creators. (1965, p.31)
He concludes, only “such a thirst for truth can bring into existence a truly salutary ‘Indianness’” (1965, p.31).
Individuals and their society
How does Vatsyayan see the connection between individuals and society, or, how does he position himself in connection with, and within society? Although he continuously stresses in his writings the importance, for every individual, of independent thinking and consciousness, he nevertheless repeats that he and his poetry do belong to the traditional poetry of India: “As far as I am concerned, I do not consider that there is such a thing in my poetry that cannot be approved by the very traditional Indian poetry” (2004f, p.10).6
On the other hand, Vatsyayan states that the prayogvādī (the “experimentalist”) should not restrict himself to the individualistic world of his experimental poetry; on the contrary, “the first challenge that experimentalism has to face” is to find “how to convey in its entireness what is felt by an individual to the collectivity” (2004g, p.16).
If, according to Vatsyayan, this question of communicability has become so problematic in the modern world, it is because of the complexity of contemporary society. In what seems to me a surprisingly oversimplified vision of the past, the author imagines that “the life of all the members of that [ancient] society was uniform, […] and therefore a word would generally produce the same image or thought or feeling in their mind” (2004g, p.15). Nowadays on the contrary, continues the author, society has become plural, and so have the meanings of words. As a consequence, contemporary writers, and especially poets, are confronted with a double challenge. As the “ancient comprehensiveness (vyāpakătvă) of the language is no more” (2004g, p.16), poets have first to find a better meaning of a word than its common or ordinary one, and then convey this meaning to the reader.7
Thus arises the question of the link, and its potential tension, between the personal, singular experience of a writer and its transmission to the society as a whole, between the truth of an individual experience and its possibility of an echo among his/her readers. As far as Vatsyayan is concerned, he asserts himself that characters depicted in his fictions truly represent a real, although particular, class of a society, despite the fact that they do not speak for the whole society. As a consequence, and in regard to the question of the validity of the artist’s experience, it is not the pervasiveness of his/her point of view in the society that matters so much as the level of maturity towards which his/her experience leads. Later, Vatsyayan becomes more affirmative and explicit about this link:
I am convinced that somewhere there is a distinction between the relation of a group within a community to that community, and the relation of the writer to human society as a whole. In the latter context I venture to suggest that the writer’s basic relationship must be, can only be, one of harmony, of contact, of being in communion with (2001).8
The question of freedom
Related to the importance of the artist’s personal experience and feeling is the question of the level and nature of freedom an individual can reach. Without individual freedom, there is no place for any true value in the society according to Vatsyayan. In order to change a static culture and a passive tradition into lively ones, individual freedom – or “independence” as he calls it later (i.e. in Hindi, svatantrătā and svādhīnătā) – is therefore essential. This is even truer “in the domain of art, where the priority of freedom contains its proper meaning [and where] the conscience of man is the only basis of his freedom. […] Criticism, literature, Hindi – none of these parts of the culture are fixed in the sky; they can only be alive with the support of an independent culture” (Vatsyayan 2004e, p.57).
The linguistic aspect of the texts
Language, and more precisely the role Hindi played in Vatsyayan’s writings, represents another major aspect of the writer’s stand on Indian identity. In this respect also, one gest the feeling that Vatsyayan did not hold a firm position. On the one hand, he claimed that “hybridism possesses some appropriateness too: The poet uses that kind of language by which he lives every day. When we use a hybrid language in our conversation, when the whole society lives through it, why should it not be admitted in poetry?” (2004d, p.73). But, the Hindi he actually uses in this quotation, and elsewhere in this book as well as in his poetry, is a highly Sanskritized Hindi in which one can hardly feel any hybridity. For sure, Vatsyayan’s literary and philosophical sources of inspiration emerge from many different cultures and languages, but the linguistic use he makes of them gives to the reader the feeling that he eventually wanted to cling almost exclusively to the Sanskrit component of the linguistic and cultural heritage of India.9
At some point, he even denies English, or any “non-Indian” language, the capacity to create a literary work worth representing the Indian reality:
How can the work of a writer be Indian if the latter does not know any Indian language? […] The reason has always been the same: his/her creation is not enough Indian; either the picture is incomplete or distorted, or the sensibility is alien (Vatsyayan 2004b, p.100).
This is one of the most astonishing paradoxes in Vatsyayan’s view on literature and Indian identity, especially when one knows how deep, rich and sincere was his cosmopolitanism.
In concluding this ection on the author’s essays, Vatsyayan’s views on Indian identity can be summed thus. First, he considered himself to be part of that identity. Although the way he represents himself in the text “Bhāratīyătā” — i.e. as the single listener who is sceptical about the general/conventional definition — makes him singular, he nevertheless wants to include himself among the people concerned with Indianness by using the first plural pronoun “we” (ham10). Secondly, he does not really reject the notion of time as inappropriate in the definition of Indianness. He only refutes the kind of feeling commonly associated with it, i.e. the feeling of eternity, in favour of a personal perception of time, rooted in the present. And third, he maintains that a tradition can remain alive only as long as it is based on the creative experience of independent and free individuals.
Do these views on Indian identity in the argumentative texts fit with the picture presented by his fiction?
2 “Indianness” in Agyeya’s fiction
Reading Nadī ke dvīp (Islands in the Stream) for the first time, one can easily think that this novel is purely idealistic, with no real link with the Indian socio-historical context of the 1940s-50s. In the event, one might ask, how can such a work be useful in dealing with a topic like “Indian identity”? We could turn to the author especially since he/she takes the trouble to explain his/her point of view on his/her own work; it would be too serious an omission not to take such comments into consideration.
In this case, Vatsyayan’s following comment on the four characters of his novel indicates links between individuals and society, asserting that if they do not correspond to a whole society, they are nevertheless meant to represent specimens of a certain class of that society:
And even if that class is only secondary from a quantitative point of view, […] the characters of that novel are real and true; they are not equivalent to an ordinary type, neither to an extraordinary symbol. And my belief is that the picture of the life of the characters of Nadī ke dvīp and its society is a truthful picture (2004c, p.41).
Among the four characters of the novel, Rekha plays a crucial role. Be it for her freedom of thought and behaviour, or for the way she links the human to time, it is she who shows the way to Bhuvan and gives him the impulsion to go a step further than his own views in his quest for truth. She can be seen as a specific illustration of the pre-Independence period and of the brand-new independent India in the eyes of Agyeya.11 She is depicted as courageous and free: she fights for the possibility and right to divorce, and she disregards the rumours that will certainly arise from her sexual relation with Bhuvan in the Himalaya. However, she is not the kind of woman to be self-satisfied with the freedom she obtains from others. Despite the freedom she eventually gets because of her divorce, she cannot but question the very significance of this freedom: “Free – free from what – free for what? Free to brood over memories, free to die – free to remain for ever in the bondage of the past…” (Agyeya 1980, p.261).12 It is she also who first uses the metaphor of the “islands in the stream” (nadī ke dvīp) in order to describe the nature of the relationships between individuals as well as the human relation to time. Thanks to her, Bhuvan learns that time is “only a succession of moments” and not some abstract concept:
“[Rekha]: For me there isn’t even a flow of time – there is no flow, only a succession of moments. Like humanity, the flow of time also is for me just a concept; the reality is the moment. The moment is absolute.” (Agyeya 1980, p.37/Agyeya 1998, p.36)
Nevertheless, and even if Rekha asserts that she is fulfilled, she is not a model for the new, post-colonial period. In reality, her fate is to disappear from the intimate life of Bhuvan, after escaping death from haemorrhage while she is pregnant.
What then about her language? Rekha uses many different languages in her songs and poems: Hindi, Bengali, Braj and English too; linguistically speaking, she is, like all educated Indians, cosmopolitan. However, her multilingualism is considered only as a borrowing. Once, Bhuvan is complaining about her way of speaking:
“[Bhuvan:] You seem to be talking only in quotations – won’t you say something of your own?”
To which she answered absently, “My own? What have I which is my own? I talk in quotations because I live only in memory.” (Agyeya 1980, p.164/Agyeya 1998, p.185)
The fact that Rekha lives “in memory”, and is not really able to apply her own philosophy on time and freedom, makes her unfit as the future model of the nation. This is why Gaura’s (i.e. the second female character of the novel) importance increases as the novel develops. She can be seen, as it were, as an illustration of the new synthesis Agyeya was slowly developing in his writings. On the one hand, she embodies a mixing of Indian and Western cultures — for instance when she plays during Christmas with both the figures of Krishna as a child and of Jesus. On the other hand, she also represents a reappraisal of some religious (bhakti) and artistic (classical music) aspects of Hindu culture. Nevertheless, she still holds to a “traditional” view of freedom based upon the notion of self-sacrifice (ātmadān) and the idea that a woman can only obtain freedom through renunciation and abnegation.
If the Hindu socio-religious model of renunciation meant for the sannyasins has never been an ideal to pursue in Agyeya’s texts, abnegation and the idea of sacrifice nevertheless played a major role for some of his characters — women especially but for some male characters who think of it as a solution to their personal problems.
However, abnegation and sacrifice are seen as mere escape from the reality. It is especially true in the two novels following Independence, and even more so in Apne apne ajnabī (To Each His Stranger, 1961), where the idea of abnegation, as illustrated by the behaviour of Selma confronting death, is not retained by the narrator as the concluding solution to the novel.
On the contrary, commitment and responsibility — and not abnegation — are seen in Agyeya’s writings as essential to the acquisition of a genuine and lasting freedom of liberation. In fact, Agyeya sees a general lack of commitment of individuals and responsibility toward society as the main reason for the failure of Indian society in “post-Independence” India (Agyeya 2002, p.129-30).
Bhuvan, the main character of Nadī ke dvīp, illustrates such a commitment at the end of the novel. He was not compelled to enrol in the army, and yet he does so, committing himself into a cause much wider than his own individualistic interest or India’s sole national interest. His action is meant for the welfare of the world, or rather for the freedom of humanity against Fascism. Let us not forget, however, that it is Rekha who actually guided Bhuvan on his way to freedom; it is she who gives him new hopes and new perspectives:
“Certainly there are lots of fallen flowers amongst us which receive homage; but there are also deep roots capable of throwing new shoots which, however, are ignored. That’s what I meant — the two sides —”
She left her sentence unfinished and there was another silence. (Agyeya 1980, p.113/Agyeya 1998, p.120)
“Silence” (maun) is the last aspect I would like to emphasize here. I have so far talked of words, ideas, symbols, etc., but silence — blanks between words — plays a really important role in Agyeya’s creative writing (this aspect is less evident in his essays). I would personally read and see these blank spaces as a way to symbolize on the one hand the doubts and uncertainty prevalent in post-colonial India, but also, on the other hand, this specific moment of the “now”, this juncture between the past and the future,13 which is for Agyeya the only real perception of time, and the only gate to liberation–through a complete presence in one’s self and to the instant; precisely to that “now”.
This last point highlights the central place in Agyeya’s writings of the notion of juncture or conjunction (sandhi), which is so important in traditional Indic culture. Juncture is related to time (conceived in this case as a permanent “Now”), to space (symbolized by places where connections and links occur, such as mountains and bridges), and to language (juncture of words and meanings, “manifested” by silences and hybridity). By giving such importance to the idea of conjunction, Agyeya, nolens volens, strongly links himself once more to the Sanskrit tradition.
In conclusion
So what do Agyeya’s writings suggest about the much notion of “Indian-ness?”
a) Time is a central if not essential aspect of Indian identity; however, the kind of time Agyeya wants us to take into consideration is a personal time, which emphasizes the instant as a permanent “Now”. It is therefore opposed to the general idea of time as eternity or to the mechanical division of time. In this view, the “Now” is seen as an acme or a zenith in experience.
b) In relation not only to time, but also to space and to language, the idea of conjunction (sandhi) plays the role of a central symbol in Agyeya’s personal quest and artistic creation. Whenever significant decisions have to be taken by his fictional characters, they are taken in places and during moments corresponding to this idea — for instance and most typically at dusk in the Himalaya.
c) The more an individual is truly free, independent, the more the society and the tradition can benefit from his/her personal experience. Tradition can live only through committed and free individuals, and not through repetition. As a consequence, the ideal of sacrifice in Agyeya’s writings is replaced by commitment and responsibility in the pursuit of liberation.
d) If characters, and individuals in concrete life, are not strictly the representatives of a group or of the whole society, they are, nevertheless, fully connected to it, because they represent specimens of a class or of that society. Despite their unconventional behaviours and worldviews, Agyeya’s characters should be seen (according to the writer at least) as truthful ways to depict time and society.
e) Finally, although Vatsyayan claimed that hybridity in language is widespread in the society and benefits it, he strongly privileged the use of a Sanskritized Hindi, thus implicitly forgetting the Muslim part of Indian culture. This contradiction between the writer’s position and his writings is of course not limited to him; it reflects a rather common situation among Indian intellectuals of his generation.14 This tension makes his writings all the more interesting for research on such a problematic topic as “Indianness” or “national identity”.
Integrating in a few lines all (or most of) these aspects, the following two poems written in 195815 can be read as a synthesis of Agyeya’s expression of “Indianness.”
Maiṁ ne dekhā, ek būṁd
Maiṁ ne dekhā
ek būṁd sahăsā
uchlī sāgar ke jhāg se:
raṁgī gaī kṣaṇ-bhar
ḍhalte sūraj kī āg se.
Mujh ko dīkh gayā:
sūne virāṭ ke sammukh
har ālok-chuā apnāpan
hai unmocan
naśvarătā ke dāg se!
I saw a drop
I saw
a drop suddenly
springing from the foam of the see:
it flushed an instant
from the fire of the sunset.
I could see:
facing the empty vastness
every affinity touched by the light
is a release
from the cremation of transience.
Sāgar-taṭ: sandhyā-tārā
Miṭtā-miṭtā bhī miṭā nahīṁ ālok,
jhalak-sī choṛ gayā
sāgar par.
Vāṇī sūnī kah cukī vidā: āṅkhoṁ meṁ
dulrātā āliṅgan āyā
maun utar.
Ek dīrgh niḥśvās:
vyom meṁ sandhyā-tārā
uṭhā sihar.
Bank of the ocean: the evening star
Although fading, light did not fade,
it left like a gleam
on the ocean.
A voice, void, said goodbye: in eyes
came fondling in an embrace
settled silence.
A deep sigh:
in the sky the evening star
raised, a thrill.
To decide after the reading of these two poems whether they can be seen as specimens (or even proofs) of any existing and clear-cut “Indianness” is of course debatable, acknowledging the fact that such literary pieces cannot — or should not, at least — be monolithically interpreted. “Identity” in Agyeya’s works — if any has to be found — is best depicted as a labyrinthine bridge. That is, an identity which, like a “bridge”, cannot exist without linking two different worlds and without moving from one world to the other, and vice versa. And “labyrinthine”, because there exists no simple dichotomy between “East” and “West”, between India and other countries. The ways to reach and link one culture to the other, one identity to the other, are by nature multiple, sinuous, unpredictable, and everything but univocal.
The writings of Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’ offer a challenging approach to the question of national identity in general and of “Indianness” in particular. Every single feature highlighted in this paper in regard to “Indian identity” can be linked to “Indian culture” — it is true. Nevertheless, framing and constructing on their basis a fixed and essential “Indian identity” would remain a pure chimera. This resistance, by a writer like Agyeya, to any determined identity, be it national or cultural, coupled with the actual polyvalence of the notion of “Indianness” represents for the contemporary reader and for scholars a meaningful illustration of the help literatures in “regional” languages can provide when dealing with complex and moving notions such as ‘nation’ and ‘identity.’
1Notes The following list – which is far from being exhaustive, and includes only books, not articles – gives an idea of the importance of the notions of “identity” and “nation” in these studies for twenty years now or so: Beyond Representation: Colonial and Postcolonial Constructions of Indian Identity (Bates 2006); Communal Identity in India (Chakrabarty 2003); Religion, Identity and Change (Coleman and Collins 2004); Between Tradition and Modernity: India’s Search for Identity (Dallmayr and Devy 1998); Representing Hinduism: The Construction of Religious Traditions and National Identity (Dalmia and von Stietencron 1995); Beyond Hindu and Muslim: Multiple Identity in Narratives from Village India (Gottschalk 2000); The Colors of Violence: Cultural Identities, Religion, and Conflict (Kakar 1996); Gender, Caste and Religious Identities (Malhotra 2004); La question identitaire en Asie du Sud (Racine 2001); Myths of the Nation: National Identity and Literary Representation (Sethi 1999); Tage der Unzufriedenheit: Identität und Gesellschaftsbild in den Romanen muslimischer Hindischriftsteller (1965-1990) (Stark 1995). 2Vatsyayan is the family name the writer usually used for his essays, while ‘Agyeya’ (“unknowable”) was the pseudonym he used for his fictional works. This “rule” has been preserved for this paper. The son of an Indian archaeologist, Agyeya was born on March 7, 1911, on the spot of an archaeological camp in what is now Uttar Pradesh. Due to his father’s occupation, Agyeya had the opportunity to travel and live in almost every part of the Subcontinent. Later he also travelled to Europe, Japan and the United States, where he gave classes and lectures. He was arrested and jailed in 1930 for sedition against the British power. It is there that he wrote his first poems and mentally built the plot of his first novel or “autofiction”, Shekhar: Ek jīvanī (“Shekhar: A Biography”). After some collections of short stories and poems, he organised the All India Anti-Fascist Convention in 1942, before enrolling in the British Indian Army in 1943, in order to fight against what he considered to be the biggest danger for humanity, that is Fascism. The same year, he edited a groundbreaking anthology of poetry (Tār saptak) including seven poets of the new generation — including him. He left the army at the end of World War II and dedicated his time to creative writing and essays, and to the edition of several revues, both in English and in Hindi. In spite of the distance he kept from his own Brahmanic social milieu and the way he developed his thoughts according to mainly European literary criteria, he remained attached to his Indian cultural background and specifically to the literatures and philosophies of the Sanskrit tradition. 3I am Indian for sure and consciously enough too, but my roots do not belong to any single place or region of India; in no single society have I managed to establish my identity” (“maiṁ bhāratīyă to hūṁ aur kāfī sacet rūp se hūṁ, lekin bhārat ke kisī ek sthān meṁ yā pradeś meṁ merī jaṛeṁ nahīṁ haiṁ, kisī ek samāj meṁ apnā tādātmyă sthāpit nahīṁ kar pāyā hūṁ”) (Joshi 1983, p.63). 4My reading of the essay is based on its original Hindi version (“Bhāratīyătā”); quotations, however, are taken from its English version (“Indianness”). 5Of course, it should not be forgotten that Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’ was above all an artist, a poet, and as such never accepted any settled identity, either personal or applied to social reality. As Malinar rightly stresses: “Suspension of identity is a way to remain in receptive and also creative contact with the world – and a way to retain one’s freedom” (1997, p.249). 6Translations of Hindi quotations are henceforth mine, unless specified. 7Years later, Vatsyayan still thought that writers were facing the same problem: “Today the writer is facing an important problem: There are many obstacles on the path of the contribution he wants to, or can give to the social life” (2004h, p.229). 8First published in 1961 in an article named “The Writer at Bay”. 9Vajpeyi even calls him “the last Sanskrit poet of Hindi” (“hindī ke saṃskr̥t kavi haiṁ”) (2012, p.12). 10In this case, this is not a mere rhetorical device; on the contrary it fits with Vatsyayan’s habit to carefully use pronouns and voices, making use, for instance, of the “I” (maiṁ) when asserting his own thinking in the text. 11As mentioned in note 2 above, ‘Agyeya’ is the name used when dealing with Vatsyayan’s fictional works. 12The quotation used here – as well as the others from the novel – is taken from the English translation of the original Nadī ke dvīp (Agyeya 1998, p.303). Henceforth, page numbers following the quotations correspond first to the English version, and second to the Hindi version. 13Agyeya has symbolized this perception of the time by the ḍamarū, the musical percussion instrument which is narrow in the middle and wider at its ends. 14Although from a younger generation, Dipesh Chakrabarty represents another example of this kind of “forgetting”, which he explicitly acknowledges in his introduction to Provincializing Europe: “I am also very sadly aware of the historical gap between Hindu and Muslim Bengalis, which this book cannot but reproduce. […] I have not been able to transcend that historical limitation, for this forgetting of the Muslim was deeply embedded in the education and upbringing I received in independent India. Indian-Bengali anticolonial nationalism implicitly normalized the ‘Hindu.’” (2008, p.21) 15Both from Arī o karuṇā prabhāmay (my translation).
References
Agyeya. 1980. Islands in the Stream: A Novel. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House.
— 1998. Nadī ke dvīp [1951]. New Delhi: National Publishing House.
— 1999. Arī o karuṇā prabhāmay [1959]. New Delhi: Bharatiya Jnanpith.
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Dr Nicola Pozza is a senior lecturer at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, where he teaches Hindi language and literature as well as the history of modern Indian literatures. After a PhD on “The Notion of Freedom in Agyeya’s fictions” and researches on 20th century India, he now focuses his research on translation practices and theories, as well as travel stories and migration issues in Hindi literature. His current project is entitled “From Idealized Himalaya to Shining Delhi: Exploration, Migration and the Construction of Space in Hindi Narratives.” To date, he has translated into French several Hindi short stories, as well as the Hindi novel Khālī jagah by Geetanjali Shree (Une place vide, Infolio, 2018). In connection with his academic activities, he pursues the translation of modern Indian fictions and poems (Kunwar Narain, Manohar Shyam Joshi, Uday Prakash, etc.). He can be reached at: nicola.pozza@unil.ch
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