Amiya Dev, "Comparative Literature in India." Assigment paper 208

Name : Upasna Goswami

Roll  no. 20

Enrollment No. 4069206420220012

Sem : 4

Paper Name :Comparative Literature & Translation Studies

Paper no.  : 209

Paper Code : 22415

Submitted to : S. B. Gardi Department of English,M.K.B.U

Email : goswamiupasna339@gmail.com

 Introduction 

Comparative approaches to Indian literature must grapple with the complex hierarchies and diversity within Indian society itself. The long-standing caste system, with its rigid divisions of Brahmin priests, Kshatriya warriors, Vaishya tradesmen, and Shudra servants, has created myriad subcultures, each with their own literary traditions and forms. This caste hierarchy has also shaped hierarchies within literature itself, privileging certain "mainstream" or Sanskritized works over those from rural, regional, Dalit, and tribal communities. 

Adding further complexity are the multiple religions, languages, and folk traditions that span the Indian subcontinent. With 24 constitutionally recognized languages and hundreds more spoken tongues, India cannot be seen as a true melting pot nor a monolingual culture. The 5% English-educated elite have dominated literary production and scholarship, often promoting an Anglicized and upper-caste view of what constitutes authentic "Indian" literature.

Attempts at comparative study have historically been marred by this casteist, Orientalist bias that disregards indigenous folk cultures in favor of elite Sanskrit traditions. However, some threads of a "home-grown" comparative approach can be found in medieval saint-poets like Namdeo who blended influences across caste and regional lines. The author argues that such culturally-grounded, intersectional comparisons are needed to develop a democratic understanding of Indian literature beyondthe Brahminical monopoly. Overcoming lingering colonial perspectives is crucial for more equitable, transcultural literary studies. (Tötösy de Zepetnek and Mukherjee )

The study of literature and literary traditions in India has been profoundly shaped by the nation's staggering linguistic and cultural pluralities. With over 20 officially recognized major literary streams spanning hundreds of spoken tongues, fundamental questions have arisen about whether the concept of a unified "Indian literature" is valid or whether these traditions must be understood as distinct "Indian literatures." This conundrum regarding unity and diversity has sparked robust scholarly debates that lie at the heart of developing an authentic discipline of comparative Indian literary studies.

In this essay, I will examine the key perspectives and fault lines within this debate, drawing primarily from the insightful analysis of scholar Amiya Dev. I will then outline Dev's critiques of earlier approaches and his proposals for an indigenous, "home-grown" model of comparative literary research in India - one that moves beyond rigid binaries to fruitfully engage the complex interliterary processes unfolding across the nation's plural traditions. Ultimately, I will argue that Dev's pluralistic yet coherent framework holds great promise for revitalizing Indian literary studies in a manner rooted in the civilizational dynamics of the subcontinent.

The future of comparative literature and comparative cultural studies in India

1. Greater institutional presence and growth: While centers and departments for comparative literature have been established at several major universities across India since the 1950s, the field is still expanding with new programs being created.

2. Emphasis on "home-grown" theory: There is a need for comparative frameworks and theoretical models rooted in India's diverse cultural traditions, castes, religions, and indigenous knowledges - moving beyond just applying Western theory. Concepts like an "encyclopedia of Indian comparative poetics" drawing from varied caste practices are proposed.

3. Interdisciplinarity and cultural literacy: Emerging technologies demand a new cultural literacy attentive to interdisciplinary politics of internationalization. Comparative humanities must engage resistant aesthetics across different cultural communities.

4. Transcultural intertextuality: Indian scholarship should explore the impacts and influences of Indian culture/literature globally, theorizing transcultural relations beyond just looking at Western influences in India.

5. Confronting caste hierarchies: This new comparativism would analyze how literary caste politics operate from the personal to global levels, de-centering elite narratives and exposing the "comprador intelligentsia."

6. Methodological reorganization: Ultimately, the author calls for reorganizing Indian scholarship into "home-grown" theory construction and application based on India's rich cultural history - a path towards a revitalized, non-national study of culture and literature independent of Western epistemologies.

In essence, the future envisions a robustly comparative yet grounded, interdisciplinary, and critical approach that dismantles persisting colonial/casteist biases in Indian literary studies. (Tötösy de Zepetnek and Mukherjee)

The Unity vs. Diversity Debate

The contrasting stances on whether Indian literary output across languages and cultures constitutes a unified whole or a cluster of separate entities can be traced back to the colonial period and the perspectives of early Western scholars. Those working in the "Indological" tradition of Oriental studies viewed Indian literary production primarily through the narrow prism of classical Sanskrit texts. This myopic approach failed to account for the vibrant diversity of India's multilingual literary ecosystems that emerged across the subcontinent over centuries. 

The reductive, homogenizing lens of the Orientalist scholars, who privileged the elite Sanskrit tradition as the solitary representative of Indian literature, effectively rendered invisible the rich pluralities of textual and performative literary streams that had taken root in the various regional languages and vernacular cultures. From Tamil and Malayalam in the south to Bengali and Assamese in the east, these scholars systematically ignored or marginalized the corpus of literary works in languages like Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Oriya and others.

This derived from both the inherent civilizational biases of the European Indologists as well as the convenient expediency of equating "Indian literature" with just the unified canon of Sanskrit to serve the project of crafting a cohesive object of study. However, such a blinkered perspective clearly failed to capture the polyphonic realities of literary production across the Indian subcontinent over millennia.

It was this problematic colonial legacy that prompted the first generation of Indian scholars and literary critics after independence to fundamentally diverge into opposing camps on this question. On one side were those who still argued for the essential overarching unity, connectivity and shared genesis of Indian literature across all the linguistic streams, seeing them as offshoots of a common civilizational trunk rooted in Sanskrit cosmology.

On the opposing side were the critics and writers who insisted on recognizing the distinct literary traditions across languages as separate, sovereign entities deserving of individuated study in their own right. They rejected the lingering biases of the colonial epistemology that rendered their respective linguistic literary canons invisible or subordinated them under an artificial, externally-imposed "Indian literature" construction.

This core ideological schism regarding the fundamental unity or plurality of Indian literary traditions set the tenor for impassioned debates among scholars, critics and writers in the decades after independence. It also framed the conversation around the nascent discipline of comparative Indian literary studies that was just finding institutional footing during this period across the country's universities.

In the postcolonial era, poststructuralist thinkers have subjected both poles of this unity/diversity binary to rigorous critique. Scholars like Gurbhagat Singh have vehemently resisted any singular, overarching construction of "Indian literature" out of "hegemonic apprehensions" - the fear that such a move would inevitably privilege and be equated with one dominant linguistic/cultural group's narrative at the expense of all others. Singh instead proposes the notion of a "differential multilogue" that maintains and celebrates the radical differences between India's myriad literary cultures without attempting to impose any unitary framework.

However, Dev argues that both the homogenizing "unity" stance and the atomized "plurality" position pose distinct problems in adequately capturing the intricate relationship between commonalities and specificities across India's literary landscapes. The unitary view, he contends, risks flattening and subsuming vital particularities under a singular majoritarian force. Yet the absolutist plural position also overlooks some deeper cultural commonalities, overarching aesthetic codes, and ideological affinities that have historically cut across the surface diversity of traditions. Moreover, Dev critiques how both sides of the debate have tended to veer into abstract theoretical terrains rather than grounding their enquiries in keenly observed realities and applications.

Aijaz Ahmad's Influential Critique 

Dev substantially builds his arguments on the influential and trenchant critique advanced by the eminent Marxist literary theorist Aijaz Ahmad regarding contemporary attempts to construct a homogenized "Indian literature" canon or curriculum. In his seminal work In Theory, Ahmad unpacks how such pedagogical proposals and institutional drives, whether pushed by scholars or government bodies, are inherently riddled with problems.

Ahmad contends that these modern-day efforts to develop an aggregated, unified constellation of literary texts deemed representative of an essentialized "Indian literature" still inescapably derive from and perpetuate the majoritarian language politics and hegemonies that arose under the colonial context. Whether manifesting through a push for English translation anthologies or compilations in other dominant languages like Hindi, such synthetic models remain marred by the hierarchical dynamics they inherited.

For Ahmad, these contrived, ahistorical constructs of an "Indian literature" fundamentally lack legitimacy as they neglect and occlude the authentically distinct literary histories, epistemologies, knowledge archives and textual genealogies that have separately and distinctively unfolded over centuries across the different linguistic traditions of the subcontinent. By flattening this rich diversity and subsuming it under a unitary, exogenous category, Ahmad argues that such projects effectively enact an epistemological erasure of the varied literary cosmologies and unique narrative trajectories of cultural-linguistic communities like Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati and others.

Moreover, he takes issue with the facile analogies often employed to legitimize these "Indian literature" models, which seek to unconvincingly equate them with more organically developed, pluralistic concepts like that of "European literature." Ahmad counters that while the notion of a "European literature" operates as a reasonably open-ended pedagogical umbrella precisely due to its accommodation of distinct, sovereign literary streams, the drive to construct an overarching "Indian literature" is a more pernicious project anchored to explicit nation-building and cultural hegemony agendas.

Whereas "European literature" evolved as a supple framework to comparatively study the literary traditions across that continent without subsuming them into a artificial monolith, the "Indian literature" push, according to Ahmad, stems from a deeply problematic politics of flattening India's immense civilizational diversity into a singular national-cultural identity and assertion. This inherently privileges certain dominant linguistic traditions while invisibilizing or diminishing the plural literary cosmologies that emerged from myriad histories, knowledge systems and lived realities across the subcontinent.

By unpacking these concerns, Ahmad provides a forceful rejoinder to the uncritical, hollow universalizing impulses that often animate such "Indian literature" model-building, highlighting how they inevitably ignore and undermine the very essence of India's vibrant literary cosmologies - their self-arisen pluralities across linguistic cultures that exceed any reductive, monolithic framing. His critique serves as a vital counter-narrative to such homogenizing narratives.

Ahmad also takes issue with specious analogies that equate these contemporary "Indian literature" constructs with more organically developed concepts like "European literature." While the notion of a plural "European literature" operates as a reasonably open-ended pedagogical umbrella, he argues that the push for forging an overarching "Indian literature" stems from a deeply problematic

Works Cited

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Dev, Amiya. “Comparative Literature in India.” Purdue e-Pubs, https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1093&context=clcweb. Accessed 24 April 2024.

Dev, Amiya. “Comparative Literature in India - Amiya Dev.” ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/27239965_Comparative_Literature_in_India. Accessed 24 April 2024.

Dev, Amiya. “"Comparative Literature in India" by Amiya Dev.” Purdue e-Pubs, https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol2/iss4/10/. Accessed 24 April 2024.

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