In memoriam

Vijaydan Detha (1926-2013)

IN the 1950s Vijaydan Detha read and was greatly inspired by 19th century Russian literature. He felt that without returning to his village and writing in Rajasthani, he would at best remain a mediocre writer, though he had at the time already written 1300 poems and 300 stories in Hindi! In 1959, Detha returned to Borunda village and was inspired to, as he says, ‘garland the age-old Rajasthani folklore with fresh story writing skills.’ Detha was a teller of magical rearranged folk tales with new meanings, progressive messages artfully woven into folk themes and local symbols.

He noted that writing for him was ‘like singing is for the koel, or dancing for the peacock. ‘It is only after people started liking my stories that I became conscious of my writing.’ Once the Sahitya Kala Akademi officially recognized Rajasthani language, Detha received his first award. In his long career, he produced more than 800 short stories in Rajasthani. ‘My main themes are against god, religion and wealth,’ Detha said, declaring his radical values based on socialism.

Vijaydan Detha was shortlisted by the Nobel Prize selection committee for literature, a recognition of Rajasthani as a rich and separate language in its own right. It is said that he was among the top four of those shortlisted for the Nobel in 2011. Rajasthani, according to the renowned linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji, should be considered a separate language

Detha, along with Komal Kothari, set up the cultural institution, Rupayan Sansthan, in his ancestral village, Borunda to map the cultural landscape of Rajasthan through a collection of folk tales, legends, dialects, songs and music and exploring their connections to the local ecologies like types of crops grown, species of trees and grasses. They found that castes had evolved on the basis of eco-agricultural grassroots, literally.

Detha lived a long life which he attributed to the satisfaction of a life well lived. He came from the community of Charans, whose occupation was to sing praises of their feudal lords. His father, Sabaldan Detha, was a good poet in the Charan tradition. But Vijaydan was radicalized by his wide reading and made a transition from being a Charan glorifying the feudal lords to a writer with Marxist convictions. And this he did in the Jodhpur region, which even today remains a stronghold of feudal culture.

What is amazing about his writings is that with his knowledge of world literature and socialist ideas, an impressive command over Rajasthani and his immersion in village life, he could reveal the mysteries of the potential double-edged character of the idiom, in a culture which in many ways remains deeply conservative, justifying long veils and a deification of sati. Yet, at the grassroots level, the idiom and language in its depth and richness to a discerning eye reveals a dialectical interplay and double face, where hidden and hinted meanings serve to startle the reader.

Embedded within the glorification of religious folk heroes, feudal lords, a culture of sati and unparalleled devotion to husbands, were also subtle subversive messages, making fun of the ruling order by deploying a critical gaze which sometimes passed for humour. To this subtle and faint interplay, Detha added and interwove another layer of twists and surprises, sometimes hidden and sometimes not so subtle progressive meanings, providing a moving critique of our times where the old order, hierarchies and oppressions persist in new forms. At another level, some of the stories are also fun, poignant fairy tales for children with symbolic local animals and plants, reminiscent of the Danish writer Hans Christian Anderson.

In his writings Detha mocked the feudal order: ‘Had the feudals known they would have murdered me.’ It is amazing that Detha and his partner Komal Kothari were, as early as in the 1950s, so brave and bold, making themselves vulnerable by questioning the feudal order, literature and history writing, which was a means to glorify the rulers and patrons.

Detha recognized the need for an alternative narrative of the common folk and the deep connection in Rajasthan between culture and the environment and between stories and the day-to-day life of ordinary villagers. He and Komal Kothari excavated the rich heritage of songs and music in which the classical blends with the folk, representing an intriguing fusion of Muslim musicians and Rajput Hindu culture. They devoted their life to this project. Generations of foreign scholars have failed to find such wealth of ethnographic scholarship and material in the universities. No surprise that they preferred to camp in Rupayan and later at Komal Kothari’s house in Jodhpur to learn from the oral narratives of Detha and Kothari. The tales, songs, music and deconstruction of their significance was rich education.

Detha started a hand composing press and with the help of experts from Ajmer began to train villagers in the art of printing and binding. The stories published in the periodical Lok Sanskriti, started by Detha and Komal Kothari, were subsequently compiled into a book Bata ri Phulwari or Garden of Conversations.

In college, Detha was drawn to Sarat Chandra, who became his first guru. ‘I would keep wiping my tears and continue to read him. However many times I read a Sarat Chandra story, it would seem like brand new,’ he often said. The other guru was Chekov about whom he said that no one has been able to take the short story forward from where he left it. Detha for a long time was rather critical of Tagore’s sentimentalism, till he was finally floored by Gurudev’s Stripatra. Both his translation of the Bengali original and his response to the story, Priya Sharada ko Patra (Letter to Dear Sharada) are testimony to his unique empathy with a woman’s inner life.

But in the end his real gurus were the villagers of Borunda, particularly the women whose rich gossip, peppered with anecdotes and telling proverbs were music to Detha’s ears. He noted, ‘When I returned to the village, I realized language is made not by professors of linguistics but by the illiterate rustic folk. I learnt the art of language from them. I’m still paying guru dakshina.’

One of his most moving stories is about a bhand who in Rajasthan is more than a Bahurupiya. To test (and mock) him, the Raja challenges him to prove his genuineness by playing the role of Sati. True to his calling, the bhand transforms himself into a spirit in woman’s clothes and burns himself. Even as the insensitive Raja and his coterie carry on merrily, unmindful of their injustice, the bhand’s work, which he considered as an art form and to which he was totally dedicated, triumphs even in death.

Another fable is about a Rajasthani woman, who drags her husband to the village pond to watch the moon and its reflection. Gradually she realizes that her husband is insensitive both to her and the environment. Looking at the moon’s reflection in the water kindles a strange awareness that the moonlight was caressing her cheeks, while her husband looks on bored and half asleep. As a faithful wife who keeps her husband besides her, but at the same time longing for a connection with someone more sensitive, she ingeniously manages to have a romantic encounter with the bright moon which caresses, fondles and kisses her in the reflected water. Separation being unthinkable, such are the mysterious ways in which Indian wives imagine, find and steal moments of tenderness and fulfilment while the uncaring and unknowing husbands hang around.

Detha was perhaps a bit too idealistic and far removed from the more prosaic worldly concerns, shielded or isolated by the curtain of haze raisad by the village dust. In the contemporary world a writer must not only write, but also focus his energy to find a good publisher, editor and promote (some would say market) himself by organizing book release functions and press conferences in five star hotels.

It is a sign of the times that one had to search for his books in Jodhpur, forget the Jaipur or Delhi bookshops. For that one must visit the Sahitya Kala Academy, Delhi. Had his books been translated into English, well produced and promoted by a leading publisher, they would have sold well. Only when the film Paheli, based on his story, was widely seen did people get a glimpse of his genius. It is, however, another matter that the film is remembered more for its star cast than its writer.

While many writers desire celebrity status at public events, Detha was convinced that his art flourished best in solitude. According to him, ‘In solitude, my art has become better. If I’d got diverted to thinking about publicity, my creative powers would have weakened.’

Mani Kaul, the art film director, refers to this dedicated sensibility of Vijjy (as Detha was fondly known) to keep his gems hidden, covered with the village dust, and not let them be affected by the city’s cultural pollution. Detha’s tribute to his village Borunda, near Jodhpur, was to live rooted there as a son of the soil and be nourished by the wonderful Rajasthani language and thereby enrich world literature. Any individual seeking total authenticity and a committed life is arguably an endangered species in today’s world. Many believe that had he written in English (or even in Hindi) as many flourishing Indian writers do, he would probably have been given the recogniton he so richly deserved..

It is a sad comment on Indian society, media and commerce today that an Indian writer, the first after Tagore to be shortlisted for the Nobel Prize for literature, remains relatively unknown, unread and uncared for. Even the news about his death passed unnoticed.

Prahlad Shekhawat

Director, Alternative Development and

Research Centre, Jaipur