Translation
Unflinching realist
RABAB NAQVI
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Yashpal's mission was the repudiation of backward elements in Indian society through stories.
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The Second Nose and Other Stories, Yashpal, translated into English by Anand, Rupa and Co., 2006, Rs. 195
YASHPAL (1903-1976) was an outstanding Hindi fiction writer of the second half of the 20th century. Prof. Gopi Chand Narang, President of the Sahitya Akademi, has compared his novel Jhoota Sach to Tolstoy's War and Peace. As a short story writer, Yashpal has been compared to Anton Chekhov. An unflinching realist like Chekhov, Yashpal wrote in the preface of his first collection of short stories, Pinjare-ki Uran, that the basis of our imagination lies in the necessities and facts of life.
At the very outset of his career, he began one of his life-long missions: the repudiation of what he considered to be backward and unrealistic in Indian society. Some of the things he wrote about still happen. In March 2006, several Indian newspapers carried Tripala's story, the woman who killed herself in a village in Haryana because she was expected to have sex with all the brothers of the husband. Tripala's tragedy reminded me of Surju in "The Witch" published over 60 years ago. Surju also kills herself for the same reason.
"The Witch" is one of the 15 stories in The Second Nose and Other Stories, the latest of his books to be translated, rendered into English by his son, Anand. As Virendra Yadav, the well-respected Hindi literary critic who has written extensively on Yashpal, said on the occasion of the release of the book in Lucknow, "It is remarkable how well the translation has retained the spirit and flow of the original stories in Hindi."
Diverse concerns
A prolific writer with diverse concerns, Yashpal covered an overwhelming range of subjects in his short stories and novels. From social, cultural, and political issues of the day to esoteric subjects such as sea pirates plundering Greek sea-going vessels on the eastern coast of India in first century A.D.
For Yashpal, the progress of women was the first condition for social reform. In the anthology, there are several stories about women. Whether educated or uneducated, Yashpal's women characters are strong, intelligent and courageous beings who are caught in a web of unfortunate circumstances not of their making.
Several Hindi scholars have pointed out that no other Hindi writer's work has as many Muslim and Christian characters as Yashpal's writings. The protagonists of three stories in this anthology, "The Second Nose", "Kala Admi" and "Honest Bread" are Muslims. The last story in the anthology, "The Mire of Sin", is about a Jesuit priest giving some startling and unconventional instructions to a devout Christian.
In the same vein, Yashpal questions religious myths and superstitions and the need of the people for supplication to a deity or a faith, with a combination of subtle humour and tongue-in-check approach, in "The Devi's Blessing" and "The Priest Who Saw God".
Yashpal examined the dark corners of the Indian psyche and "the complicity of the Indians with the British". "Kala Admi", "The Testimonial of Loyalty" and "The National Anthem" are about such characters. "Saag" depicts how a handful of British succeeded in ruling over millions of Indians. The fear of the White sahib made them suspicious and distrustful of each other.
Fearless critic
Yashpal fearlessly criticised the British, relentlessly questioned social customs, cultural traditions, religious practices and the political duplicities of his time. In return for his outspokenness, he earned not only the wrath of the British government, but also of politicians and of orthodox Hindus.
Since some of these stories appear here for the first time in English, the present anthology will "give a larger view of Yashpal as a short story writer, as well as provide a taste of his forthright approach to the questions of his time".
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