(From “Imaginary Maps of Unknown Territories: Food Chain and Indian Poetry” On the Fringes: Marginalized Voices in English Literature, Eds. Capt. Dr. Arvind M. Nawale, Dr. Sheeba Rakesh, New Delhi: Authorspress, New Delhi, 2012, ISBN 978-81-7273-657-6). The paper was presented at " Marginality and Indian Poetry, Kavi Bharati-5, organized by Vagarth, Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal. 20 March 2010
When I was asked
to make a presentation on ' Marginality and Indian Poetry’, I was wonder-struck at
the sheer quantity of my ignorance on the topic. Frankly, the three terms in
the title ' marginality’, `Indian’ and ` poetry’ are marvelously abstract and
vague and I have a feeling that all the three are, like most of the terms used
in intellectual and non-intellectual discourses, metaphorical. The utility of
these terms, in spite of their abstract and metaphorical nature, is similar to
that of maps. Maps may not be territories, but it is better to venture with
some, however inaccurate, than with none. But that does not mean we should not
modify the maps as new knowledge and information comes up. Though maps create
an illusion of fixity, they are remarkably unfixed. No sailor these days uses
the maps used by Marco Polo or Columbus- except, of course, in literary
studies.
Northrop Frye expresses
his bafflement about the lack of word for a work of literary art similar to
Aristotle’s use of the word ` poem’ (1957:71). Bhamaha (6th cent)
uses the term ` Kavya’ to talk about all literary art including prose, verse,
dance and drama of all kinds. Kavya is not poetry because somehow the
term poetry is still fixated with the notion of verse. However, the distinction
between the artistic use of language and non-artistic use of language is fuzzy
rather than binary. Consequently, the map of poetry does not have clearly
defined borders.
In the
post-global world, one might have to consider the works of the visual artists
and poets like Eduardo Kac, with his experiments with `holo-poetry’, ` space
poetry’, `biopoetry’, `nano-poetry’ and `transgenic poetry’ seriously within
the expanding domains of poetry.
I ask myself
what territory does the term ` India’ or ` Indian’ map? Does it cover Sindhi,
Bangla or Urdu literature written outside the present day political map of
India? What about literature written in today’s Pakistan or Bangladesh before
1947? Does the term ` Indian literature’ cover the oral literatures and
folklore of hundreds of `minor’ languages on the subcontinent? Is English an
Indian language? What makes people like Salman Rushdie or Jhumpa Lahiri or VS
Naipaul ` Indian’? Is Manto or Faiz Indian? Can you classify the Bhakti poetry
as religious literature? Can you term the Vedic literature as `poetry’? It
seems that the political maps, geographical maps, cultural maps, linguistic
maps, civilizational maps and historical maps just don’t coincide and because
they don’t coincide it is impossible to make a homogenous and unity category
called ` Indian’. The problem with the ` unity in diversity theory’ of Indian
Literature is that it is sufficiently abstract to include all literature in the
world and not just Indian literature.
In spite of
differences, all literatures in the world will have some sameness at some level
of abstraction. Borges’s celebrated short story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”
suggests that all literature in the world can be seen as being composed by a
single anonymous author. In spite of all
politics of difference, there is always a possibility of imagining this single
anonymous author.
However, the
dynamics of the histories, poetics and politics which govern most of the
literatures on the Indian sub-continent are amazingly different. The languages
I work with: Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi and English have such startling differences in terms of
aesthetics, sociology, histories and geographies that I have wondered whether they
are comparable sets at all.
For instance,
the significance of the term of ` Dalit’ literature in Marathi and Gujarati is
entirely different. For some reasons, I am more comfortable with the term `
Ambedkarite’ literature, than the Dalit literature. In Marathi, a writer who does not belong to
the castes classified as Dalit does not get classified as a Dalit writer, whereas,
in Gujarati, the writers from communities which are not Dalit are included in
the Dalit literary canon. I deliberately speak of Dalit `Canon’ because there
seem to be rules of inclusion and exclusion (euphemisms for discrimination)
functioning within the Dalit category, and the politics of discrimination
within the Dalit literary canon is also on the basis of caste identity and
caste hierarchy. This means one can think of `more equals’ and `less equals’
among Dalits. The Vankar community in Gujarat and the Mahars in Maharashtra has
occupied a dominant place in the cluster of communities labeled as the Dalits. Though
all subalterns are equal, some seem to be more equal than others.
This brings me
to the problematic notion of ` marginality’. The term ` margin’ is a spatial
metaphor. And it seems to me that the metaphor of ` centre’ and ` margin’ is
built on two dimensional model of space. It is high time we point out relativism
within this model and notice that what is central and what is marginal
depends entirely on the position of the observer. If the observer is placed
closer to point A, then the point B will automatically be seen as further away
from A and hence marginal. If one positions oneself closer, to say, Indian
Writing in English, the Mahabharata composed in a Bhili language will be seen
as marginal. What most of people forget that when they classify a certain
literature as `marginal’ they are still speaking from the point of view of the
central. They are speaking from the point A. There is an implicit recognition of a
particular tradition as central in classifying something as marginal. Here in
lies the paradox of political correctness: when you are recognizing certain
discourse as marginal you are reinforcing the centrality of the other
discourse.
Consider the
duality between ` the mainstream’ and ` the Dalit literature.’ When one
considers the Dalit literature as marginal, one is agreeing implicitly to the
idea that other forms of discourses are central, when the whole idea of
centrality and marginality is actually a relative one. `Mainstream’ for whom?
`Dalit’ for whom? Are the questions not pursued to their logical
conclusion. When you classify something
as marginal, you are automatically classifying something as central. When one
is culturally closer to the oral performer performing the Bhili
Mahabharata, Shashi Tharoor’s Great Indian Novel becomes marginal and
even irrelevant. It is only when one implicitly accepts Tharoor’s Great
Indian Novel as dominant text; one can consider its other as marginal. Which
means this perception is actually reinforcing the marginality and secondary
status of the text. Condescending nature
of glorification of the Dalit literature in English studies today can seen as
an example of backdoor Brahmanism because the Dalit literature is seen as `marginal’
from what English studies recognize as the central discourse, which means the
English studies still decides what is central and what is peripheral .
I would also
like to draw attention to relativism implicit in other congenital metaphors
like ` subalternity’ or `minority’. While the languages like Marathi would be
seen as subaltern vis-à-vis English or French, a tribal language in Maharashtra
would be seen as subaltern vis-à-vis Marathi and a smaller tribal language
would be seen as subaltern vis-à-vis larger tribal languages. Once we recognize
that all points on the sphere are both central and marginal at the same time,
we will notice that some points will always appear peripheral from any point,
we will rethink the politics based on this metaphor. Most of the so called
radical discourses which seek out to interrogate the dominant discourses
circuitously reinforce the dominant status of the discourses by assuming that
the particular discourses are central and particular discourses are marginal.
We all know that though subalterns speak in various languages, the subaltern
historians always speak in English and that too right from the top of the
social, cultural and economic food chain. The food-chain, thus, is not only
conserved, but also reinforced by the so-called radical discourses.
Notes:
Frye,
Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton University Press,
Princeton: New Jersey, 1957, p.71
Kac,
Eduardo. Ed. Media Poetry: An International Anthology. Chicago;
University of Chicago Press, 2007
_____________,
Space Poetry, on Kac’s website ekac.org URL:
http://www.ekac.org/spacepoetry.html
_____________, Biopoetry.
http://www.ekac.org/biopoetry.html
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