Towards the Concept of a New Nationhood: Languages who may not be so literate – a bus stand coolie for instance

– a bus stand coolie for instance – speakes Tamil,

and Literatures in India Telugu, Malayalam, some Hindi, and some English. It is these people who
have kept India together, not merely those who know only one language of
U. R. Ananthamurthy hegemony.
(Talk delivered at Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, India on 3 September, People in India have always lived, even in the past, in an ambience of
2006) languages. Shankaracharya, the great philosopher who wrote in Sanskrit,
must have also spoken Malayalam; he was from Kerala. Ananda Tirtha must
Some years ago I was in Syria meeting Arab writers from several parts of have spoken Tulu at home and Kannada in the streets, but he too wrote in
that country, and most of them asked me this question: ‘You have twenty- Sanskrit. Ramanuja, who must have been profoundly moved by Tamil saints
two languages, but you are one nation, whereas we have one language, one – they were non-Brahmin saints, and they wrote in Tamil – took a lot from
religion, but we are twenty-two nations! How do you explain that?’ What them, but also wrote in Sanskrit.
follows may provide a tentative explanation of this mystry called the Indian These philosophers who propagated the nations of monism, dualism and
nation. I invoke two names, those of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath qualified monism, travelled throughout the country and aquired disciples.
Tagore for this purpose. They provide an idea of the nation which is very They also influenced mystical poets who wrote in regional languages, and
different from the European idea of one language, one race, and one religion. whose utterances became myths and poetry in languages of the common
Hence, although there was an attempt to evolve a European kind of nation, people which I call bhashas. With such happenings a profound egalitarian im-
the idea of the nation, evident in all the Indian literatures, was very different. pulse shot through the hegemonic structure of Indian society. The caste sys-
India contains many Indias; one encounters this when looking at literatures tem was questioned not after the Europeans came to India; it had been ques-
in the twenty-two languages of India. Whatever one can truly say about tioned much earlier. In the 12th century, the great Kannada Vachanakara
India, its exact opposite can also be maintained with equal truthfulness. poet, Basava, got into great trouble for arranging a marriage between Brah-
According to the 1961 census, there were 1,652 mother tongues, classified mingirl and a Pariah.
under 105 languages. These languages belong to four language families: the The Buddha, on the other hand, chose not to write in Sanskrit, the ‘father
Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Tibetan and Astro-Asiatic. But 90 of these 105 tongue’. (My friend, the scholar A. K. Ramanujam always called Sanskrit
languages are spoken by less than 5 per sent of the population and by 65 the father tongue, somewhat like English is today.) The saint-poets of the
small tribes. There are fifteen languages that are written, read and spoken medival period in India did not use Sanskrit at all, they used rather the
by 95 per cent of the people in India. From this, the country might seem like ibhashas, the languages of India. They were mystic whose experience of God
a Tower of Babel. However, by knowing two or three languages one can get was immediate and not speculative. But they were deeply concerned with
by nearly anywhere in India. the society. Hence, although they were mystic, they were not apart from the
In our everyday speech activity, we find that many of us use at least society. Belonging to different parts of India, these mytics, by opting to use
three languages: one at home, another on the streets, still another at our the language of everyday speech to convey their religios experience, actually
office. We constantly translate from one language to the other. When you began to communicate with their gods in the languages of the streets and of
narrate to your old mother what happened in your office, you are translating the kitchen. There was indeed a special language to address the God, but
spontaneously. And vice versa. Plurality in language and translation are by their use of a familiar language, the mystic brought God to the common
inseparable. people. As a direct consequence, their poetry empowered women and the
One of my pet theories is that, in India, the more literate a person is, the lower castes for the first time. For instance, in Karnataka, mensturating
fewer languages he or she knows. Those who are literate only in English are women are considered impure. But the mystics said: ‘No, they are as pure
tempted to use only English. But in small town where I come from, even one as ever,’ defying a commonly held belief of the time. In this sense, the

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empowerment of women in India goes back to 800 years. they are rendered for us in Hindi.
The spiritual insights and philosophical subtleties which marked Sanskrit, More significant than this in our understanding of what constitutes a text
the language of the elite classes, thus became the possession of the Indian is a unique Indian phenomenon often bypassed. Kalidasa’s Shakuntala isn’t
bhashas. Since the medieval period, these bhashas have been the conduits a text in a single language. An early poet of our times in Kannada, Shishunal
of egalitarian passion working through the history of India. It has been a Sharief has poems where the first line is in Kannada, the second line is in
continuous process of inclusion, rather than a negation of any language; of Telugu and the third in what may be called Urdu. He came from an area
Sanskrit in the past, or of the bhashas, or of English later on. where these languages are spoken. As he was a mystical poet of the people,
The most recent of these great saints, who may be described as one if the I am sure his immediate audience would understand all these languages and
great critical insiders of Indian civilization (I use the term ‘critical insider’ their copresence in the same poem must have made a unique sense to them.
for many of these people; they are insiders to our tradition, but they are They were listining to the silence beyond the spoken word – especially to the
critical of this tradition even if they are within it), was Mahatma Gandhi, silence celebrated in a variety of words.
who wrote in Gujrati, Hindustani, and also in English. Along with this free play of languages, which existed in an ambience al-
In our times, English serves the communicative function that Sanskrit lowing for shifts and mixtures, and also because of such a free play aside
did in the past. It was Sanskrit that our writers had to cope with then. A from hegenomic indications that languages carry with them, the poets of
14th century Kannada writer once remarked that there was nothing left in the past in Indian languages could acquire the territory of Sanskrit for their
Sanskrit, as every thing is taken away from it. The Indian bhashas, which vernaculars. The use of vernaculars never seemed to threaten free communi-
had earlier digested the essence of Sanskrit, today cope with the challenges of cation with others, isolating each language group in its own territory. Such
the West. Thus Kafka, Tolstoy and other European writers have influenced a process of cultural inclusion and quiet synthesis has gone on in India for
writers in the Indian bhashas. more than a thousand years. First, if it was the language of the Gods making
I do not use the term ‘mother tongue’ as it is understood by Europeans. way for the language of the common people, now it is the official domain of
For instance, some of the best Kannada writers such as Conrad, who wrote in English making way, however reluctantly, to the vernaculars in the process
their language of adoption, these cases are very few. In India, however, many of the empowerment of the people. Translation, oral as well as textual, was
writers do not speak the same language in which they may be writing. I once the pricipal mode in the past as well as the present for such negotiations.
asked one of the greatest Kannada poets, who used the Kannada language In support of my ideas, here are some concrete examples. The coastal
magically, just as Blake used English, whether he had always spoken that Karnataka has small town called Udupi, a name made familiar by its inhab-
language. He replied ‘No, I spoke Marathi at home, but until I was 12 or itants who have opened restaurants all over India. There are at least three
13, I did not know that I was speaking two languages!’ He was then a very languages spoken in and around Udupi. Tulu is the language of a large num-
colourful old man. At that point, his daughter-in-law came into the room ber of its inhabitants, the peasants and workers and it is also a language rich
where we were talking in Kannada and whispered something in his ear. He in folklore. Not only the lower castes speak it, but a Sanskritised version of
turned and spoke to her in Marathi, without realising that he was speaking in it, considered impure by native shudra speakers is spoken as mother tongue
Marathi. This kind of shift takes place constantly and quite unselfconsciously. by the Brahmins as well. Next to Tulu is Konkani, mainly the language of
the trading castes.
Multiple tongues and texts Kannada exists in Udupi along with other languages. One could say it
is perceived as the language of high culture, whatever that means. Kannada
Shifts in tongue and texts are true of a large number of writers in Hindi is also the mother-tongue of a large section of people. However, the point I
who speak Rajastani, Bhojpuri and many other languages related to Hindi. want to make is this. A large body of Kannada literature in the past as well
The characters in their fiction may be actually speaking these languages, but as the present has come from this costal region. If one encounters a stranger

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on the streets, the language used for communication is Kannasa. But a Tulu habharata has been used freely for this purpose. Therefore, it is possible to
or Konkani speaker encountering other speakers of those languages would say that apart from the innumerable languages of India, there are, metamor-
invariably use the language native to the speaker. Otherwise it would be phically speaking, two more languages: the two great epics, the Ramayana
considered arrogant behaviour. And almost everyone of the native Tulu and and the Mahabharata. Many Indians, I dare say, have never read for the
Konkani speakers would understand Kannada and if he or she happens to be first time this epics. Yet they have encountered them right from childhood,
a writer, most probably the language of choice for writing would be Kannada. through several modes.
Thus Chomana dudi, a celebrated novel in Kannada by K. Shivaram A translator of Indian literature once narrated the following experience.
Karanth, is written in Kannada. Choma the hero of the novel is an untouch- He was collecting oral stories in Kannada language. There are a thousand
able, and in real life, he would be mostly speaking in Tulu. In fact, one could such stories in Kannada, which are sung or narrated from memory by non-
say much of the novel takes place in the language of Tulu, and the author literate rural people. In the original episode in the Ramayana, Rama advises
Karanth while writing the novel is truly translating from Tulu to Kannada. Sita that she should stay back in the palace and not accompany him to the
But is this not true also of the good fiction in English written in India? forest where he has been exiled. He says: ‘You do not have to come with
Isn’t Salman Rushdie translating from Bombay Hindi in many of his creativly me. You are princes. Your feet are tender and you have been brought up
rich passages? The best effects of Arundhati Roy, I feel, lie in her great with such care, so do not come to the forest with me.’ But Sita says: ‘No,
ability to mimic the Syrian Christan Malayalam. RajaRao’s path-breaking I am your wife, and I should go!’ However, in one of the folk stories, when
Kanthapura, although it is written in English, is truly Kannada novel in its Rama similarly advises Sita, she says: ‘In every other Ramayana I know of,
texture as well as narrative mode –deriving both from the oral traditions of Rama lets Sita go with him. How can you deny it to me?’ Thus India knit,
Karnataka. With most of the truly creative novelists in English, who seem according to this traslator, through an inter-textuality, which occurs not only
to have made a contribution to the way the language English is handled I across the texts which we read, but across oral texts as well. That is why I
would venture to make this remark. For them to create a unique work in state that the Ramayana and the Mahabharata could be two languages which
English is to transcreate from an Indian language milieu. knit India together. This rural Sita is aware that there are other Ramayanas
Epics as Language: A thousand years ago, Pampa, another great Kan- without even knowing the names of the authors.
nada poet (the fact that I cite examples from my language should not be
mistaken as chauvinism, it merely gives me a sense of authenticity) wrote of Plurality and hybridity, unity and diversity
Arjuna, his hero. Being a Jain, he could not make Krishna his hero, Krishna
being a spiritual figure. He instead made Arjuna the hero of his work, and For the modern Indian writer, therefore, there is a confluence of lan-
identified him with his own ruler, the Hindu king Arikesari, who was also guages: Sanskrit, English, perhaps translations from French and Portugese,
his friend. Idealizing Arikesari, he created the Hindu king after Arjuna. He and certainly Russian, because Toltoy was read even during British rule. En-
also did something very interesting: he mixed his own narrative with that of glish was used not only to read British writers. I do not think Jane Austin
the Mahabharata. He used a new figure of speech, Samasa Alankara, which ever influenced an Indian writer, but Tolstoy certainly did. English, being
draws very unrealistic equations between a great epic of the past and a con- a hospitable language offering many translations, was used to read much of
temporary event. Personally, I think this a great device, one which Pampa the work from Europe.
used to voice his worldly concerns. It was a daring initiative, to make one’s I wish to emphasize this element of plurality within India. For instance,
own river flow into the rivers of the past. there was an attempt in Tamil, the oldest of the modern languages, to de-
Not only have experiences been transferred from one language into an- velope an alternative to Sanskrit poetics and grammar, and also a theory of
other in a continuous and spontaneous act of translation in the course of daily poetry that was very different. Great writers like Tagore and Gandhi became
life, but Indians have also lived simultaneously through many ages. The Ma- much more than literary figures for the people who spoke the languages in

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which they wrote. uneasy and I start to feel that there is something common after all betwen a
An interesting point may be made here. While there are certain metrical Bengali and myself and everyone else. We are all Indians. So unity-diversity
compositions which can only be read, there are also compositions, in a certain appears true only in actuality and in these last fifty years we have seen an
kind of rhythm, which can be easily memorized. Some of the great poets on-going drama of unity in diversity.
used rhythmical expressions that enabled a composition to directly enter the As far as diversity is concerned, over the last fifty years there have been
memory of the people. There are wonderful memory devices within those many attempts at grasping the post-colonial situation. Paradigms have been
metres, and they are present in the common speech of the people. tried and given up, communities imagined and been dissolved, traditions
Literary figures were however generally in the high mode, which is classi- constructed and de-constructed, the principles of unity and of difference al-
cal. There are thus two streams entering into India’s languages: the classical ternately appealed to. Further, the western presence has been acknowledged
and the desi, or the indigenous stream. After Kalidasa (this is a daring and negated, the radica Eurpean concepts and models have alternated with
statement that I make, as I have always done), there had been no great lit- a return to indigenous roots, to the classical and folk elements of India’s
erary figure in India until Kabir came on the scene. Interesting here is the heritage. Decolonization has become a major preoccupation.
fact that at one time a literary figure could emerge only in Indian bhashas, Creativity in India has just been released afresh. Literary discourse is
Bengali, which is neither as widespread as Hindi nor is ancient as Tamil. marked by the negotiation of the necessary heterogeneity, using a concept of
One of the Indian bhashas like any other, Bengali produced a literary figure identity that lives through difference and hybridity. Over time, this hybridity
equal in sttttature to Kalidasa, a figure who will be emulated all over India. enters the languages. There are a number of words of Portuguese and Arab
This must have been due to the spirit of nationalism in those days. Since origin in Kannada, and quite often people speaking that language are not
independence, however, we have again become so Euro-centric that we can even aware that they are using words from other languages; such is the way
not think of any Indian language producing a literary figure for the whole with the Indian bhashas. The philosophers say that there is a little fire
country. Instead, we borrow our literary figures from Europe. somewhere in the atma (soul) which can digest anything, known in Sanskrit
I would like at this juncture to say something about unity and diversity. as the jeernagni, the digestive fire. I consider the Indian bhashas the great
Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the great philosopher, once said at Sahitya jeernagnis of India, because they digested Sanskrit at one time, as they digest
Academi, the Academy of Indian Letters, that since all the twenty-two lan- Europe now. They have been transacting with different languages in this
guages are represented there, Indian literature is one, although written in manner right through their history.
many languages. The use of the phrase ‘unity and diversity’ in politics and A great and new phenomenon in the Indian languages were the dalits, the
in culture has now become cliched. In fact, I would shy away from using untouchables, who wrote, first in Marathi, then in Gujrati and are writing
the phrase myself, until I suddenly realized it could still be applied, if one now in Kannada, Telugu and Tamil. Thirty centuries of silent suffering, a
thought of it as a process. whole culture of silence, lay behind their articulations of indignition. There
If you overstress unity in India, and maintain that there is only one India, is a kind of subaltern protest in their writings. They have succeeded in
then diversities begin to appear. This becomes a political phenomena too. re-drawing the literary map of their languages by exploring a whole new
Thus, after Indira Gandhi, who wanted a strong Centre, there have been continent of experience, and also in revitalizing language with styles, timbers,
problems in Assam, in Punjab and in Kashmir. It has been argued that words and phrases so far kept out of literary use. The tendency of Indian
as Tamil is older than Hindi, Hindi should not be imposed on Tamil. This languages has been that whatever is closest to Sanskrit has been used by the
could be stretched to mean that Hindi should not be imposed on Bengali, elite groups. When new groups begin to talk, words which have never been
or on Marathi. So, if one overly stresses unity, diversities begin to assert used in a literary context enter in the literary texts. I shall have something
themselves. On the otherhand, trying to emphasize diversity, arguing that more to say about this phenomenon a little later on.
Indians are all different, and that they have nothing in common, makes me In addition to this dalit literature, India also has a committed feminist

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literature. Some of the great women writers are Lalitambika Antarjanam, were taken inside to a cool dark hall which was the centre of the house,
Mahadevi Varma, Mahashweta Devi and Vaidehi (Karnataka). These are called nadumane. If the women were Brahmins, they went deeper into the
not self-consciously feminist writers, but I shall not dwell further on this. house., to the place for family dining. The spaces of the house had their own
Last of all, let me make a personal statement, since I am myself a creative meaning, depending on where you were and where you sat. The nadumane
writer. I feel uneasy when I write just academically, because I may not be had coloured bamboo mats spread on a smooth, cold and swept floor. The
handling the issues objectively and rationaly. But when I write in a creative family dining space, more private, had wooden planks to sit on.
idiom, I am more comfortable. So I will end my observations about Indian Adjoining this was the most private place of all, the kitchen, which had
literature, and how it makes for a new kind of a nation, on a personal note. a niche for the household god, where an oil lamp burnt night and day. Only
I use traditional Indian home, my own childhood home, as a metaphor for my mother had free entry to this space; even my father could go there only
Indian literature. after he had bathed and removed his everyday shirt. Next to the dining hall
My father and his friends frequented the fronyard of the house, which had was a big bathroom, and near that was a work-shed for the servants. Beyond
a raised urban platform under a country-tiled roof, known in Karnataka as that was the backyard; the most magical space for me. Had I not frequented
Mangalore-tiled roofs. The upper classes usually have Mangalore-tiled roofs it and eavesdropped on the gossip there, I would never have become a writes,
over their homes, while less well-off have round-tiled roofs. In the frontyard because I got my material from the backyard.
of my home, caste was not a problem. My father’s non-Brahmin friends Into the backyard came women of the village, either to draw water from
in the village came to consult him about auspicious days for weddings and the well, or just to talk to my mother, or receive a gift of leftover special food
other ceremonies and, more frequently, to settle land-related disputes. They which my mother would give them unsolicited. These used to be gracious
sat around him on coloured mats. The very poor who belonged to the same moments of kindness and friendship and courtesy among the women. A
caste sat on one of the steps leading to the platform. This was like a porch, woman might refuse politely, but my mother would keep talking and say ‘not
a matless, quite cold, but well-swept space. for you, but for your child’ ! After the exchange of such civilized courtesies,
My father offered everyone palm and betel nut, and even tobacco to chew. much more would take place in the backyard as the women relaxed and the
This frontyard space, framed impressiveely by massive, well-carved pillers, coversation became more intimate.
was a place of authority, yet cheerful and full of tidings of the temporal My mother was ritually more othadox than my father, who drank coffee
world outside and the spiritual world beyond. On auspicious occations, for and who knows what else in the town. Yet, in the backyard, caste barriers
example, traditional story-tellers would be invited to recite in the frontyard. among women were forgotten and they would confide the secrets of their
As a child, I came to know of the affairs of the world, I heard even of sexual lives. I heard a lot as a child about the sexual life of women, and
Edmund Burke and Gandhi, in this man-dominated frontyard of the house. about affairs in the village. So I knew that no matter what was presented
My father was a self-taught man, literate in English, Sanskrit and Kannada, in the front, the spiritual India, there was something else at the back, even
and therefore an unusual and soughtafter scholar in the hilly villages around. in the village. This is how writers are made, in the backyeard, not in the
He spoke enthusiastically to villagers of the freedom struggle, then being led frontyard of civilization. The frontyard produces professors!
by Mahatma Gandi. And the villagers would gossip, narrating again and Women would talk the everyday sorrows of the complicated relationships
again the same stories about the british government and its officers, whom between men and women, and speak of bodily aches and pains that would
they admired for their efficiency, and generosity. On auspicious occations, never get cured and could never be shared with their menfolk. The world
some elder of the other who came as a guest to our house would describe the of the frontyard and the world of the backyard were such different worlds!
glories of the Dasara in Mysore. Or he would choose an appealing episode The backyard world was not only the secret world of women. Here mother
from the Mahabharata and sonorously read it out. cooked delicious smelling dishes from herbs and leaves that grew beneath
There were only men in the frontyard, and if women came at all they the untended bushes. Only my mother knew them by their names, and

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every small thing that grew had a name which never entered the learned people emerge into the frontyard of all civilizations, like the dalits and women
dictionaries of my language. today, bringing memories and desires to integrate with the mainstream of the
My grandfather would also venture into the backyard to collect roots and frontyard literature, the world literature. The backyard, which is still the
leaves of plants as medicine for the sick in the village. It taboo to reveal world of women, of secret therapeutic herbs, and roots and tendrils for the
names, which were mostly in Sanskrit, or even identify the plants. Such creation of new dishes, keeps literature in the bhashas continuously supplied
medicines were effective only if secrecy was observed. Today, I wish secrecy with fresh themes and stylistic patterns.
had been observed, because, under globalization, most of those medicines Sanskrit as a language had no backyard of its own. It had to admit the
are going to be American medicines and will cost large amount of money to bhashas of the backyard to ensure the survival and continuity of its spiritual
obtain. substance. In the bhashas of India, the fronyard contains the classical lit-
Grandfather used to assure me as a child that he would pass on to me erature, Sanskrit literature. However, what dominate the goings-on in the
the secret knowledge when I grew up. But I grew up to be a different kind fronyard of our lives are not just the Sanskrit classics. There is also the
of person because of the influence of my father’s frontyard, where the use powerful presence of English, the language of modernity. But neither San-
of Sanskrit led to Anglicization and worked on me to make me modern. So skrit nor English have any power if isolated from bhashas, in fact they are
the education that began in the frontyard of my traditional home finished in impotant if they fail to interact with the world of the backyard.
England and America, the great frontyards of modern civilisation. Literatures in the bhashas have also constituted themselves as literary
The indian literatures in the bhashas have a frontyard and a backyard as traditions, in search of their own particular royal highways. Tamil and Kan-
well. I use the word bhashas since I do not like the word ‘vernacular’. It is nada have searched actively, and discovered their royal highways. A royal
very condescending word and should never be used. Nor I am happy with the highway is meant for those who can compete with the classical Sanskrit tra-
word ‘regional language’. One does not call Portuguese a regional language, dition. What happens then to the backyard? The linguistics of cultures such
so I do not want to call any of my languages a regional language. All the as those small, powerless castes and their areas are undermind in the process.
languages of the world are also regional languages. Even the word ‘dialect’ I Yet while these sub-groups can be undermined, they cannot be destroyed.
do not like, for it is of dubious usefulness. For if a dialect has an army and When the royal highway becomes pompous and loud and artificially rhetori-
a national poet, then it becomes a language. cal, and therefore solely a voice of public emotion, it looses the flexibilty and
Which is the frontyard of India’s bhasas? I will take the example of truthfulness of common speech. It is at such moments of cultural crisis that
Kannada, my own language. The frontyard had Sanskrit literature of pan- the traditions in the backyard make a comeback and revitalize our languages.
Indian fame. But it had a secret backyard, fragrant, fertile and neglected. This was what Blake and Hopkins did to the English language in their own
Here one could find the innumerable indigenous folk and oral traditions in country, and what has been done with much greater consequence for our
Kannada, the desi traditions. The classics in Sanskrit constitute the marga, culture by poets such as Tukaram, Basava, Mirabai and Kabir. When such
the great road. Desi and marga are actually the words used by Pampa a people speak the language, they bring new life into the languages.
thousand years ago. His genius lay in the telling combinations he made of Women have without doubt been empowered by the great saint-poets of
the two, and what he did had implications for the treatment of his themes; India. So it is misleading to speak about literature in the Indian bhashas
it was not just as aesthetic exercise. without recognizing its intimate relationship with larger political and cul-
The universal truths celebrated in Sanskrit literature were not only given tural questions. The tradition of lively dialectical contention between the
a local habitation and a name but, cohabiting in Kannada with the folk royal highway and the indigenous in India will be marginalized if globaliza-
imagination, they became pulsatingly alive. The two worlds of the frontyard tion encroches upon everything; if everything looses out to the corporate
and the backyard have been meeting ever since in Kannada literary works. world. That is the danger in India today. Even Yadavs, who are supposedly
The backyard is inexhaustible. From it, as literacy spreads, more and more born into the lowly but noble caste of Krishna in India, have begun to rule

11 12
in the manner of barbarians. Even the so-called sons of the soil, such as
the Shiv Sena in Mumbai, seem only too eager to sign a memorendum of
understanding with polluting and exploitative industries which threaten to
deplete the fertile backyard. There is still a fertile backyard. But if this
continues, there will be no place for either a leisurely fronyard, ot for a dark
and fertile backyard, in the industrial and corporate no man’s land which we
increasingly inhabit in India today.

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