Why Have We Forgotten Our Vernacular Classics?

Literature in Indian languages is getting a raw deal. The sad reality is that our current generation is being deprived of a treasure trove of literary works. 

Roman Payne, in Rooftop Soliloquy, says “Alexander the Great slept with The Iliad beneath his pillow. During the waning moon, I cradle Homer’s Odyssey as if it were the sweet body of a woman.”

It might sound like a whine but the fact is that literature in Indian languages is getting a raw deal. The sad reality is that our current generation is being deprived of gems which reside in our literature.

Many of us, born in the pre TV era, were lucky to have parents who instilled in them the habit of reading in the vernacular. Ironically, we are not being as good parents to our own children!

Translations are fine; at least they give a chance to the reader to lay his hands on the classics but there are certain things which are best read in the language in which they are originally written. Ask any Bengali reader and he would lament that his children cannot enjoy Sukumar Ray’s Abol Tabol, the peerless book of nonsense poems which cannot but be relished fully except in Bangla.

Marathi readers, those who did not read PL Deshpande or VP Kale, were lucky to the extent that the said authors started a trend of ‘katha kathan’ i.e reading out their own short stories. But that just addresses a small issue. If one has to enjoy PL Deshpande’s Batatyachi Chawl, the iconic book on life in a Mumbai chawl, one has to read it in Marathi.

Having hummed Gyaneshwar ‘ovis’ for a long time, I was ashamed when I understood the meaning much later in life, only when I read the lines. The words, the meaning, and the whole essence of it, was of pure bhakti. What was just a ‘nice song’ became a prayer tugging at my heart strings.

Most Bengalis would admit listening to Tagore’s 2,200-odd songs classified as Rabindra Sangeet, not knowing what the words really stood for but later, when they grew older, understood the meaning and looked at the songs for the first time in a new light.

Tagore’s beauty lies in the fact that the poems are interpreted by each person at different stages in life, differently. A childhood dance song becomes a romantic lover’s poem in youth and then transforms itself into a prayer of utter surrender and devotion to the Lord.

It is impossible to read Harivanshrai Bachchan’s Madhushala in any other language except Hindi. His writing can be deeply spiritual for one and a celebration of life for someone else. Premchand’s satire on life would not be the same in any other language. But ask a Gen Y and they would have ‘heard’ of but not read Premchand!

It is not possible to enjoy any of Ghalib’s ghazals unless one reads and understands Urdu. A ghazal is first read as a set of words, understood as phrases, enjoyed as expressions, and finally visualized as scenes!

Do we have passionate teachers who make their students fall in love with Kabir? I have not met a Tamilian in a long time who has exposed his children to Thrivalluvar’s Thirukkural.

Are we on the verge of losing these precious gems? In a finely written essay, author Aatish Taseer voices the concern saying, “There are few places in the world where the past continues into the present as seamlessly as it does in India, and where people are so unaware of it.”

Growing up in a small town of Bihar, far removed from Maharashtra, my parents ensured that we read the Marathi script by subscribing to Chandamama (the Marathi edition was called Chandoba).

I was lucky that the script being Devanagri, my parents did not have the additional burden of teaching it unlike those whose mother tongue is Malayalam or Kannada or any such language. Nevertheless, the lesson learnt for me was that one of the key reasons for lack of interest in reading in the vernacular is the sheer unfamiliarity of the script.

G.K. Chesterton, with his usual tongue-in-cheek humour, said, “There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read.”

Many know how to read in their local language but the meagre amount of time one is exposed to the script makes the reading tiresome. It is easy for today’s generation to pick up an English novel and finish it within days while the same in vernacular may never see it being read fully.

The brilliant Sri Lankan art critic, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, writes in The Dance of Shiva, “It is hard to realize, how completely the continuity of Indian life has been severed. A single generation of English education suffices to break the threads of tradition and to create a nondescript and superficial being deprived of all roots—a sort of intellectual pariah who does not belong to the East or the West.”

It is time we took up the task of rediscovering India.

Sometimes the route to India is through America. Yoga became a national obsession, without taking the credit away from Baba Ramdev and his TV performances, when it became a rage in the US. Indians heard Ravi Shankar’s sitar after he was adored by the Americans.

The Indian Literature Abroad project, though talking of translations, can create a sense of curiosity amongst Indians to pick up the original. “ILA seeks to open a window to the polyphonic voices coming out of India,” the website of Sahitya Academy claims.

In 1998, Salman Rushdie in 1998 tried to be provocative by saying that Indian English was far more powerful that the vernacular languages. There is no denying that the wealth of Indian literature whether in Tamil, Assamese, Marathi, Bangla, Hindi or Malayalam, amongst others, has a treasure trove waiting to be discovered, by the world at large.

“Isn’t it surprising that no Indian has been awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature since 1913, when Rabindranath Tagore became the first Asian to famously bag the prize? It’s just plain ignorance in certain award circles that is preventing recognition,” laments Rajvinder Singh, an Indian poet based in Germany.

Arunava Sinha, a noted Delhi-based translator of Bengali literature, urges the need to take Indian regional literature to the world as it is “the literature that perhaps best tells the India story”.

I believe charity begins at home. It is for us to make our own children recognize the treasure. Is there a serious threat to Indian literature in its original form being lost to the current generation?

I believe so; unless we step up and do something about it. It might not be an exaggeration to quote Vivekananda: Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached.