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Post-Independence writers of Indian languages have redefined nationalism by American writer and social activist James Baldwin said in no uncertain words that he loved America so much that he continued to criticise it: he wanted his country to be better and perhaps the best. This has been the spirit of post-Independence literature in India, too. This was the distinct paradigm shift from the celebratory literature that accompanied the national struggle for freedom from British rule. So, after 1947, the year of freedom that brought communal riots with death, rape, murder and migration, it would be a folly to expect someone to cry out in pride: Saare jahan se achha Hindustan hamara. The independent nation toddling in despair in poverty with the vast gap betwixt the haves and the have-nots could have only provoked a parody on our favourite national song and this is what Sahir Ludhianvi did in a film of the 1950s: Footpath Mumbai ke hain ashian hamara`85 This did not make Sahir unpatriotic or anti-national. In holding up the mirror to the harsh reality and social injustice the writer is only calling for a change for the better Baldwin-like. This sentiment is expressed in simple eloquence by Punjabi revolutionary poet Sant Ram Udasi: Desh hai piara sanu zindagi piari nalon/ Desh ton piare tere lok haniya/ Asee todh deni lahu wali jok haniya (Our country is dearer to us than our dear life; The people are dearer even than the country, my friend; We will put an end to the blood-sucking leech, my friend). A litterateur’s concern is with the country as a people and what their condition is. Well-known Hindi poet Mangalesh Dabral, whose poetry has won him several laurels, including the Sahitya Akademi Award, points out that it is impossible for a writer to say all is well when it is not. "A writer cannot but speak out against corruption, oppression and de-humanisation. In the present times, colonisation continues to eat into our national fibre but its tools are now socio-cultural. Colonisation has been made possible even with a Coca Cola or a McDonald burger". In his poem called Ghulami, he talks about the process of neo-slavery: In dinon dimag par pehale kabza kar/ Zameenon par kabze karne ke liye log baad mein utarte hain/ Is tarhan nai ghulamian shuru hoti hain (These days the mind is enslaved first, then they move in to colonise the land. Such is the beginning of new slavery). Moving from the poetic outpourings of the ‘unacknowledged legislators of mankind’ to the world of prose, once again novelists who belong to the tribe of critical patriots have been most successful, be it Phanishwar Nath Renu, who captured as never before the rural struggle in the central plains of India with his 1954 novel Maila Anchal, Gurdial Singh with his classic Marhi da Diva (1966) portraying the life of a landless Dalit labourer in Punjab or Shri Lal Shukl, who offered a remarkable critique on the degeneration in politics in Raag Darbari (1968). A writer does his bit to bring forward the hidden or ignored malaise in a society. This is an essential task of a litterateur. It is another matter on how poignantly it is done so that it stirs a nation’s conscience. A famous verse of Kabir goes thus: Nindak niyare rakhiye aangan kuti chhawaye; Bin sabun pani bina nirmal karat subhaye (Keep a critic near you in your backyard, for he will help you cleanse yourself without soap and water). To expect brilliant minds to just play court poets in a modern democratic world is bizarre. So, let’s not be afraid of our ‘nindaks’ and pay heed to what they say.
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