ABDULLAH Husain is very unhappy on the boisterous reception given to Arundhati Roy on her visit to Pakistan. He has given vent to his feelings in a letter addressed to the editor of Zehne-i-Jadid, a literary journal of Delhi. But why should he write to a journal in Delhi? He should have written to the Pakistani papers, which had invited her to come to Pakistan and had arranged receptions for her in a grand way.
Abdullah Husain feels frustrated seeing that a female writer wrote just one novel and won fame and popularity while he, in spite of having a number of novels to his credit, can only aspire to this kind of fame and popularity. The reason, according to him, is that she has written her novel in English while he is fated to go on writing in Urdu.
For the consolation of Abdullah Husain, I may point out that the immense popularity Arundhati Roy now enjoys owes much to her bold stand on humanistic issues of national and international import. In the glare of this fame, her reputation as a novelist seems to have receded in the background. Does Abdullah Husain feel envious of Nelson Mandela for the popularity and respect he enjoys? Then why should he feel envious of Ms Roy ? As for the prestige and respect we accord to English writings, why should he feel frustrated on that count? He himself is engaged in trying his luck at that privileged language. We hope he will soon be able to produce his own brand of God of Small Things, which may bring for him the kind of name and fame to which he aspires.
Let me now talk a little of my own worry, which is different from that of Abdullah Husain. The phenomenon of the preponderance of English writings in India compels me to think that something has gone wrong there on a deeper level. Last month, while attending the Saarc writers conference in the Maldives, I had the opportunity of exchanging views with the Indian writers there. I communicated my worry to Ashok Vajpayee, a distinguished poet who writes in Hindi as well as in English. My argument was and is that throughout the Raj, writers in India stuck to their roots. They did learn English and borrowed much from Western thought and literature. But for their creative expression, they reverted to their own languages and found their expression to the satisfaction of their creative selves. Within the bounds of their languages, creative people achieved fulfilment. After all, Tagore was originally a Bengali writer. And Iqbal achieved greatness by writing verse in Urdu. His search for a richer expression and a wider readership carried him to Persian, a language of the culture he was deeply associated with. But the idea of employing English for creative expression never occurred to him. He was followed by poets like Firaq, Faiz, Rashed, and Miraji, who have been acknowledged as the major poets of our time. Notwithstanding their craze for modes of expression borrowed from English and other Western poetic traditions, they stuck to their own language.
It all happened in pre-Partition India during the Raj when English enjoyed the status of the rulers’ language. But after winning freedom, India seems to have chosen English for its creative expression. Writers who stuck to the local languages have lagged behind.
What does it signify? Does it mean that the creative genius of India has lost faith in its own cultural and linguistic identity? Or is it the outcome of the estrangement of its creative minds with its roots? Or have they been swayed by the glamour of a foreign language, which once ruled their land, to the point that they have lost the urge for creative expression on a deeper level? Can the soul of India with its rich cultural heritage achieve fulfilment by choosing a foreign language for its creative expression?
Ashok Vajpayee differed with me by saying that the English writers of India were not representative of their country in the true sense. They were, he said, talented writers, no doubt. But the genuine expression of the creative minds of India could still be seen in the fiction and poetry written in the local languages. He held the Indian media responsible for projecting the English writers in a way that they appeared dominating the literary scene of India. As for Westerners, the English writers of India suited them more than those writing in their own languages.
Ashok Vajpayee told me that while in the civil service, he had presented a report to the then prime minister. In that report, he had drawn his attention to this situation and had suggested that Hindi writers needed to be given a better projection when the question of representing India in international forums came under consideration. He regretted that the bureaucracy had thwarted his proposals.
With due respect to Ashok Vajpayee, it is in fact the failure of Hindi as a national language, which is responsible for this situation. Hindi perhaps is not yet capable enough to shoulder the responsibilities of the national language of such a vast multi-lingual country as India. During the period mentioned above, only Urdu and Bengali, gave the impression of being developed languages. Hindi had not yet reached that stage of development. The status of a national language was too heavy for it. Its failure to perform what we expect from a national language left a vacuum in different fields, more particularly in the field of literature. English was already there, waiting for such an opportunity. It readily sneaked in and filled the vacuum. That explains the predominance of English in different fields including literature in India.
ABDULLAH Husain is very unhappy on the boisterous reception given to Arundhati Roy on her visit to Pakistan. He has given vent to his feelings in a letter addressed to the editor of Zehne-i-Jadid, a literary journal of Delhi. But why should he write to a journal in Delhi? He should have written to the Pakistani papers, which had invited her to come to Pakistan and had arranged receptions for her in a grand way.
