In conversation
Reviving the true Hindu ethos
MEENA MENON
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In his quartet Hindu, the first of which is to be released on July 15, Bhalchandra Nemade seeks to erase the fundamentalist image of Hinduism. An engagement with the history and folk-lore of India is central to his reconstruction of the true Hindu. He speaks with MEENA MENON on the quartet.
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Once 'Hindu' meant all the people living on this side of the Sindhu/Indus river. But now Hindu has become a word in the hands of Hindu fundamentalists, it has become a matter of shame to call yourself a Hindu...
Photo: Vivek Bendre
Constant experimentation: Bhalchandra Nemade.
At the end of the interview, Dr Bhalchandra Nemade, 72, modestly assures me that his new book will be readable. While the first part of his long awaited quartet Hindu will be released on July 15, he is in the throes of writing the second volume. He has just begun an exciting new chapter where the protagonist Khanderao's friend has become the chancellor of Takshashila University. The whole idea to is to link the hero's present with the past and while doing this, some records show luminaries like Charvak, Panini and Chanakya were the professors there at that time.
Hindu switches back and forth in time from the days of Mohenjo Daro to the Mauryan period to Panipat to the present. The scale of the book is expansive and complex. Sometimes the hero is in a Harappan town or at Sanchi and in each of these places, Nemade cleverly connects past history and links it with the various running themes in his book including caste and feminism.
Nemade's first novel Kosla (Cocoon) was published when he was 24 and was translated into English and many other languages. Then came Bidhar in 1975 followed by Hool, Zarila and Zhool which formed a quartet. Apart from poetry Nemade is also a critic with many works to his credit and “Desivad” or Nativism which sets out his ideas on cultural hegemony and the English language and the need to root writing in one's own culture and milieu. While his critical works are in English, Nemade's creative work in fiction is only in Marathi. He taught English and comparative literature, linguistics, anthropology and Marathi literature in various universities, colleges and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) London. He has won the Sahitya Akademi award.
Born in 1938 in a village in the Satpuda mountains, in the extreme north of Maharashtra, Nemade spoke Khandeshi, a dialect both of Gujarati and Marathi and his first exposure to literature was in the folklore of the area which had tribals and several communities. As a first generation student from an agricultural background, his college experience in Pune exposed him to an anglicised culture which greatly annoyed him and led to a creative outburst in the form of poems. Nemade's own experience becomes the experience of Pandurang Sangvikar (the hero of Kosla) who epitomises the fate of “many village boys who end up half frustrated, half degenerated in the face of a sudden “modern” set of values.” Nemade always equated this with a loss of culture in India, which is his essential argument in Desivad.
The narratives of Pandurang and Changdev Patil, hero of the Bidhar quartet are different. Pandurang speaks in the first person while Changdev wants to be aloof from things happening around him. He is an observer, not a participant and that makes him very neutral. In Hindu, Nemade has created a new narrative and the hero Khanderao, is very committed to all that is happening around him. Excerpts from the interview:
What is the reason to call your new book Hindu?
I want to redefine the concept of what it is to be Hindu. Earlier the various groups of people were arranged horizontally but after Buddha in the Brahminical period it became a hierarchy, a rigid system. Once, Hindus meant all the people living on this side of the Sindhu/Indus river. But now ‘Hindu' has become a word in the hands of Hindu fundamentalists, it has become a matter of shame to call yourself a Hindu, this is something quite oppressive for me, I should be proud to call myself a Hindu. I know Hinduism has been non exploitative, has absorbed everything and everyone. If you confine the concept of a Hindu to a vegetarian, Brahminical, sacred thread wearing person that is not proper. Hating other communities, especially Muslims, is not a part of Hinduism. Hindus are intimate with Muslims and we have developed a unique culture with that, all over the world. I want to bring the pendulum back to the old non-exclusive and inclusive type of Hinduism.
Why did it take you so long to bring out this new book?
After the Bidhar quartet, there was a long gap. Because of my academic pursuits, guiding students... you teach phonetics and passive voice and active voice and you can't suddenly shift to Marathi syntax in the evening. I found it was getting artificial, though I tried to write many drafts. So from 1973, I have been trying to find a new structure and new form through ideas. It was when I was nearing retirement that I was able to finalise a draft of Hindu and later work on it in peace during a national fellowship at Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Simla. I could have published it earlier but I wanted to get to the bottom of things.
You are constantly experimenting with form and narrative.
In Kosla, it is a first person narrative and it was an experiment in how language alone can control about 300 pages of the text and keep the reader spellbound. It was a linguistic exercise mainly, and I used a technique, as if someone is confessing. It is so acute and intense that the listener (or reader) has to hear what he has to say. Such a narration also evokes India's rich history of oral tradition which is the basic idea of any literature. For many years it was considered even in our country that the oral tradition was a sign of backwardness, only if you are literate you become modern and so on. I have consistently opposed this in my writing.
We must be diverse and plural because our culture is diverse and plural. To bring back those notions into our practice is my obsession. I don't know how far I have succeeded but in the first novel I did it very effectively. The whole structure of the Marathi novel has changed after that.
Even in my new book I have rigorously followed that principle. Suddenly the protagonist goes back into Mohenjo Daro period or the Mauryan period and connects these flashbacks with certain concrete things. He is also bringing in a strong element of feminism, the caste system, and about 25 to 30 themes are interwoven.
In Desivad you speak of English destroying Indian languages.
All I am saying is that Indian writing in English is not authentic. Any writing has to be authentic. Suppose I write in Marathi and you follow it properly. That is authentic, the meanings of the word are known to you, and if I use a dialect or some kind of jargon everything is known to you. Because it is a linguistic activity, all the dimensions of the language are known to you when you work in that language. Under colonial rule, English has exempted writers from being authentic, they use a language which may not be understood properly and the slang they use, maybe Black slang, put into the mouth of a white girl or an Indian or a coolie. It is so superficially Indian, a sort of a touristy narration, only meant for tourists.
This is my first objection, my second is that to qualify as literature it should have roots and branches and stems. You can't just have a book as a literature. It should have folklore, it should have women's lullabies, jokes, and family jargon and reflect a whole space, a cultural space.
How do you rate your influence in the post 1960s period and what is your role in shaping other writers?
In Marathi there is a very vibrant response, you know who reads, who does, who likes, dislikes what etc My estimate in a very modest way is that I have reached a sufficient number of writers who have done experiments, all the young novelists, critics they seem to value me. There is already a word Nemadpanthi you know, a school of sorts, it has percolated into the third generation also. Which is also a responsibility; you know they have followed you, so you should not lead them into a disaster. This gives you a sense of responsibility.
The full version of this interview can be read in the online edition of The Literary Review. Webiste:www.thehindu.com
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